2013 was our second year attending the Australian Sheep and Wool Show. We haven't discovered any other large wool shows in our area so this is an exciting time of year.

It was three degrees walking around the Ballarat showgrounds so we rugged up with our woolly scarves and hats and gloves. It was mostly inside but the sheds were rather chilly.

Lots of pretty colours everywhere!

I got some more lovely stash:
Garrett hand painted laceweight yarn from Wool n Wire


and Skein DK in Quill from ZigoZago ^_^

Have dropped behind in the last months, but hope to catch up on my blog, even if just for a record of projects completed over the years.

Amelia by Laura Chau (Knitty | Ravelry)

Amelia is a free pattern on Knitty, and I first heard about the pattern on the Stash and Burn podcast archive where it was mentioned as one of their most practical knits. Compared to two previous sweaters that I made out of somewhat 'primary' colours (Owls, Tubey) and which didn't really turn out to be practical knits for our weather here in Melbourne except at home, I was much happier with this one.
Since I finished this project in July 2012 it has pilled a little, but I haven't found much yarn that doesn't pill, which makes these large projects a less tempting unfortunately.

Before the next semester of uni steals away my blogging time again, here's one of the large projects I've been working on:

Henami stole by Melanie Gibbons (pattern website | ravelry)


From the pattern description:
The Henami stole is asymmetrical. One side has a beaded cast on and a basketweave lace pattern inspired by a traditional Sashiko, or Japanese quilting design. The second half of the stole is dedicated to cherry blossoms blowing in the wind. 

I'd recommend this pattern to anyone who enjoys following lace charts. Instead of the monotonous progression of many scarves, every row of this one is enjoyable in seeing what comes next.

The yarn is Schoppel-Wolle Lace Ball (ravelry) which I found at Wonderflex, Malvern. Long gentle colour repeats make this wonderful to work with. I would definitely be interested in trying some of the other colour combinations.

We are back from our travels and have got through the madness of the last weeks of work and Christmas. We had a fantastic time, and between visiting many castles and galleries I managed to seek out quite a bit of yarny goodness.
They had great samples knitted up from many of the yarns...
When leaving the shop a man stopped me in the street and said something I couldn't understand. It turned out I had bought so much wool the zip on my bag wasn't staying closed any more and things were spilling out :p
I also took a long Metro ride to the famous Loop in London. I picked up three pretty skeins but spent most of the time looking over all the colours :)

After 6 weeks in plaster (netball injury) I have two hands again! I managed a fair bit of spinning and plain knitting while broken (Asunder with some handspun) but had to hold my right hand completely still and just use the left :(
Looking forward to getting back into my favourite project (Honeybee Cardigan), but have very little mobility in my right wrist so purling is still fairly tricky and painful.