A room just for knitting

For the past few months, I have been toying with the idea of buying a house. It's just one of those things that "you do" as part of growing up, and I felt that it was about time I bought one.. something along the lines of "growing up, investing for your future ra ra ra".

So anyways, last week I saw a house that I liked, made and offer and got it! I now have to just organise finance and settlement and it's all mine.

While I was looking at houses, there were a few criteria that I really wanted, with those being a 3x2 , nice kitchen, and nice bathroom. My significant other was puzzled though, given that it would just be the two of us in the house (and me only being there 1/3 of the year given I work away), he wasn't sure why I wanted three bedrooms.

I pulled him aside and told him nicely.. 1 for us.. 2 for a guestroom or study.. and 3 for my knitting room. hehe. He was somewhat amused by my need to have a knitting room, but he was very obliging on the basis that it would create less mess for the house (my knitting stuff is everywhere), and that it would be my little retreat. I'm so happy to have an SO that is happy to indulge my knitting wants and needs - no matter how silly they seem!

But anyways, settlement isn't for awhile and I'm planning on doing a bit of work on the house, but i'm definitely looking forward to it!

On knitting notes, I had an urge to start a new project today. Thermal is going well - I have to just do the sleeves and finishing and it will be done, but I was flicking through my old VKs and rediscovered this:

While I won't be wearing it the way the model is, I do love the quirkiness of it! I'll be doing it in this yarn (the colour is a bit off in the photo.. ) and it should be a quick knit:

In happy news, I've also discovered my local newsagent stocks VK, Knit1 and KnitSimple so I no longer have to trek out to Borders or my LYS to specifically buy my knitting mags. I haven't seen IK there , but the new one isn't due to arrive in Australia for a week I believe.. *fingers crossed*

Jumping on the bandwagon

In my efforts to destash my unconsciously growing stash, I've jumped on the (long gone) bandwagon that is known as Thermal. As much as I tried hard not to jump on the bandwagon and follow the other hundreds of people before me that have knitted this sweater, I could not for the life of me resist - it just looks like such a cosy, easy to knit, easy to wear sweater! What more could I want?

So I cast on for it yesterday and my, it has grown quite a bit! I'm taking a 7 hour train journey tomorrow so I should also make good progress on the sweater.


Besides that, I've just been hectic crazy with Chinese New Year and enjoying my R&R week. At the moment, there's a cyclone up where I work so I'm here in Perth until the cyclone danger dissipates - and one of my workmates reckons it won't be till Monday or Tuesday at the earliest!

Anyways, short post this one as I have to pack for my short trip :) Have a good weekend!

FO: Noro Cashmere Island Scarf

Everyone knows the ubiquitous Noro Scarf that has been done by hundreds of people and still counting, so I won't go into too much depth for this post. However, after I finished my last project, I was a bit stuck on what I should knit considering that my only condition was that it had to be knit from stash. After getting some great and useful comments about the seahorse cami, I decided to leave that for another day and rummaged a bit.

Alas! I had two skeins of Noro Cashmere Island in my stash, which had been gifted to me by my secretpal 11, Genevieve. Now I must admit that I've never understood the fascination with Noro Yarns. To me, the colours were garish, the yarn (Iroha that is) a little wanting, and overpriced for what I thought it was.

However, armed with not much confidence, two skeins in hand and not much time to decide on a pattern, I went for that noro scarf. The result was a surprise, and the end FO was a very soft scarf, made from a pattern which utilises Noro's colour schemes very well.