my handsome haberdasher

One day, we went to the local craft superstore to get some jeans fabric to patch up Hugh's favorite pair of jeans, which were going a bit see-through in the crotchal region. He bought half a metre, which was way more than he needed, so after he patched up his jeans, he decided to make a skirt. Two hours later, I had a new wrap skirt! How crazy is that? How did I land myself such a talented man?

He didn't use a pattern or anything. He just winged it. And it's not a simple rectangle of fabric, wrapped around my waist. It has shaping and detailing and a hole to thread the side-tie through! I love it.

grateful

This might be stating the obvious, but it is amazing to not be living paycheck to paycheck anymore! Or worse, living on no income at all, hoping a tax return will come through in time.

There are debts I should be paying off. Well, just the one debt: my student loan. But it's amazing to be able to start saving money for trips and things!

That's all. I just feel so lucky at the moment.

Mama's here!

Mama arrived in Melbourne on Saturday morning, and after a quick brunch at our favorite Italian grocery store cafe (where she tried an affogato, yum!) we headed to the beach.

It was pretty empty! This is a relatively unknown beach, and it's gorgeous. I was talking about it to my coworker today, and he was sad to hear that I read about it online, because it's one of his favorite surf spots and he doesn't want people to know about it!

Hugh bought me a new boogie board a month ago, so we did a bit of surfing while Mama explored the rock pools.

We drove to the nearby town, then walked up to their lighthouse as it started to rain a bit. The views from there were beautiful, but Hugh pointed out the storm clouds headed our way. They looked far enough away, but we only made it halfway back to the car before the storm reached us. We were drenched in seconds! Then the wind picked up and started tossing around power lines, and then the lightning and thunder came! Yikes! We took shelter in a public toilet until it let up a bit.

Since I still had my bathing suit on under my clothes, I stripped off as soon as we got in the car. We drove to Queenscliffe for fish and chips for dinner, and I had to put my soaked jeans back on for that. 😝 Blech!

All in all, I think it was a pretty good first day in Australia for Mama!

Work in progress: Stella jumper

I have been knitting a jumper (translation: sweater) lately. I fell in love with this sparkly wool when I first saw it months ago, but I didn't have the funds to buy it. (It's Patons Australia Stella.) I think it was $7-$8 a ball. Then it got discontinued and disappeared from our local craft store! But then I found a few left at a fabric store in the city, for half the original price, so I snatched up 8 balls.

I started to knit another Agnes sweater (from Quince&Co.), and I got most of the way done with it before I remembered that I'd seen a chunky knit lace sweater pattern in Knitsy that might be fun to try out. But that pattern was knit in flat pieces and I prefer to knit top-down in the round.

See, a bit boring.

There are lots of reasons why I prefer to knit top-down in the round: you can try on as you go, and knitting on circular needles puts less strain on your wrists; but mainly, I'm lazy and impatient. Knitting flat pieces means you have to seam everything together at the end, and I just like to be done once the knitting has finished! Let's call it efficiency instead if laziness.

Anyway, I started to knit this lace pattern in the round. It involves repeats of 8 stitches, and I arbitrarily decided when to start the repeats. When I got to the bit where you separate the sleeves from the body, I realised that my lace pattern would be a big old mess because I hadn't placed it correctly to finish one repeat and then start another. It was more like, "get halfway through the lace repeat then start the next repeat three stitches in."

So I pulled out some graph paper and started sketching, working backwards from the separation stage to the collar stage.

I made a few mistakes along the way.

Sadly, I still didn't get it quite right, but it's much better! The interruption in the pattern happens under the arms, so it shouldn't be very noticeable. I might try to write the pattern up for Ravelry, in which case I'll fix the mistake.

we're in Adelaide!

It is my darling boyfriend's 30th birthday! Happy birthday, Handsome! Since it is also his twin sister's 30th (funny how that works!), we arranged to go to Radelaide for the weekend.

It is really good to be back in Adelaide. I felt this way when we came back for Christmas, too, and I can't figure out if I just prefer Adelaide when I'm visiting short term, or if I'm only loving it because the weather is gorgeous, or if I'd actually like to move back here. It's beside the point, really, since we have no plans currently to move back here. There are no whisky distilleries in Adelaide! Yet.

Yesterday, we had lunch at Penfolds' Magill Estate. I know I'm prone to exaggeration, but the food was AMAZING. We had a five-course set menu, and there was pork belly with macademia and a creamy brown sauce, oil-poached trout that didn't have a hint of fishiness, and melt-in-your-mouth wagyu beef. The portions were small, so no one left feeling overstuffed. It was impeccable. Hugh picked a Shiraz from 1984, which was apparently a bad year for wine, but it was still really nice and smooth. I quite enjoyed it, though Hugh thought it was "past its prime." Let's hope the same is not true of boys born in 1984!