still here – still crafting and researching

Well, I may be a bit quiet on the blog front but my computer time has been swallowed up by a resurgence in my interest in researching my family history. Anc*try is always adding new databases but recently they have added the London Electoral Register and I’ve been searching for where my family members were living. In Australia, home ownership is the norm so it’s strange to find people living in the same few rooms for upwards of twenty years – but that’s the nature of the place and time, I guess.

Anyway, I have also been sewing – I have almost finished a quilt top that started out as a scrappy coin quilt but has turned into something a little different. I have learnt a bit making this “flimsy” but I’ll post about that when I complete the top.

As for knitting, I was shopping at the Big Box Store for fabric but "just happened to wander through the yarn department. A ball of Moda Vera Noemi caught my eye. It was a little more expensive that I would normally pay for an acrylic/nylon blend but the long colour repeats got my attention so I bought one ball and cast on for a simple garter stitch shawl – letting the bouclé type yarn do all the work. I soon realised that one ball (273 yards) wasn’t going to go very far so added another five balls to my collection: one in the original colour way (“turquoise mix”) and two each of “purple mix” and “red mix”. I started the second ball of yarn at the opposite end so the colours change more logically.

I’m reasonably happy with the result but have cast on a second shawl (using the “purple mix”) using needles three sizes larger (6:00mm US 10) and like the drape better.