He looks unhappy, but it's mostly because I HAD to take a photo or two!
Anyway, I thought I'd better do something quick, so I've had a play with my knitting machine, which hasn't really been getting much of a workout lately. I decided on tubular knitting and three varying size tubes, one inside each other. I like the result, though it's perhaps not quite long enough. I might have to do one very very long thin tube to get the length. That's daunting, as the shortest tube is 500 rows. 
Had wondered if my seaweed project would have enough inspiration to be worthwhile, and, if I would find 'new' seaweed to add to the collection. 
The next project is to dye some of the linen to knit a sample for my 'Knitting the Kimberley' piece. Dyeing small amounts is fun and to try and minimise the mess......I always get myself in a mess....too impatient......I decided to put small cups in a pot. Worked well. I tied the linen in four continuous skeins and dyed the alternate skeins the same colour. I used a brown and blue which, given I just picked up what Procion dyes I had and mixed the brown with red and black, fairly haphazardly, I am pretty pleased with. I've kept t
he left over colours for reference. Knitting next.
I also finished the fibre sandwich skeins, we created at Experimental Spinning in December. The first I did by wrapping around a white core and binding with the same white cotton. The second I spun a fine black single and plyed trying for a knot yarn. It turned out more of a squiggle than a knot but I still like the effect. 
Unfortunately, Sunday wasn't so successful. Again, I didn't sell anything. From an overall point of view, whilst not alot of people came to the market, it was enough to think that you could build on it. I tried my new line of 'wrist warmers'. I do need to find a more interesting way of displaying them, maybe another tube or two?
Having abandoned my double knitting scarf, I've started a black and grey scarf, inspired by 'Knitting New Scarves'. Using the idea of picking up stitches down the centre of garter stitch rectangles/squares as a starting point, I decided I didn't want to make different sizes and then link them together, and sewing in ends(!), so instead of casting off for each square, I left the last stitch, picked up the stitches from that rectangle and cast of extra stitches, knit that as before, then using the last stitch of the previous colour, used that as the first stitch in the pickup. I quite like the effect and there are many more possibilities in this technique.
On a lighter note, whilst at the beach, I went to the Warley Home annual book sale. It's big and full of second hand books at ridiculous prices. One year I want to get there the first day rather than the third or last day. I did manage to find this book for $2. 'Stylish knitting: from handspun or commercial yarns' printed in 1988. It's not really interesting for its 'stylish' designs, but that it uses handspun, but not your average 2ply things like: knickerbocker yarn, slub, knop, boucle and curled loupe yarns and puts them in far more 'fashionable' articles than the usual handspun. And there are instructions courtesy of Mabel Ross.
forgotton to take my camera on this trip, I diligently photographed for the rest of the week. I did however, feel a bit odd at times standing and to all intents and purposes photographing sand and not the view!
photographic journey'. It was $80 before Christmas and just $15 after. I snapped it up. It is full of the most beautiful photography: plant, animal and insects. Poor hubby, he was the one who was supposed to be spending his Christmas gift voucher at Angus & Robertson, and he couldn't find anything!
There are so many ideas in this book that it was hard picking only a couple of pictures to show you. I like this grey, as it's just slits and she's added the embelishment later. That could be anything. Long icords, flowers are just my immediate reaction.
Creating waves like this is just having a fabric which is either shorter or in this case, different sized stitches on the front and back.
What is also really interesting is the way some of the challenges of making commercial scarves and still make them interesting enough have played out for her. Using garter stitch, knitting scarves in the round. These are the basic ideas I've been playing with. It's really good to know that it's a reasonable way to go.
This book is going to take quite a while to digest. There are even a couple of scarves I'm going to have to knit from the pattern to see how she does it.
If you want to make scarves, make a space in your library for this. Thanks Catherine.
Note: 'Knitting New Scarves' by Lynne Barr. Published by Harry N. Abrams, Inc. New York, 2007
Note: The Book Depository. www.bookdepository.com.uk
