knits

The short sleeved baby cardigan - using this pattern - is finished. It's for a my second grandchild due in Spring. Very exciting.

And three new things being knitted all at once in the round and on double points. 

Cooler autumn weather is great for knitting.

Listening: Black sheep podcast. This is a Radio New Zealand podcast series about some of the more interesting characters (and some villains) from NZ's history. ****

cake and elephants

It's the middle of the feijoa season and we have an abundance. We've been giving them away to neighbours and workmates (isn't everybody at this time of year?) but still have too many. If you're in the same situation you might like to use some up by making this recipe for ginger and feijoa cake. It's delicious, moist, easy to make and uses up 500 grams of feijoa pulp. It's good with lemon icing and might be even better with the addition of walnuts.

I was hoping to have a small herd of elephants made but I'm afraid there's only two. I used this free pattern.

Reading: I've just started The last hours by Minette Walters. It's set in Dorset, England in 1348 and tells how the lady of the manor and her serfs survive the plague. Lady Anne is progressive in her ideas about equality, education, religion and healthcare possibly because Walters is writing from a modern perspective. The characters are (so far) predictable. The book is unbelievable but I don't want to stop reading it.

Watching: Wild, wild country on Netflix. This is a documentary series about guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and the commune he established near the tiny, isolated town of Antelope, Oregon in the 1980s.

works in progress

It's wild and blustery day today. This is our first "significant winter storm" and the end of a lovely, long summer. Interestingly, today, as this storm blows in, New Zealand commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of its worst maritime disaster, the sinking of the inter-island ferry, the Wahine.

I have some things in progress to show you. I'm knitting another puerperium baby cardigan like these ones (here and here). But this time it's guilt-free knitting as I finally purchased the full pattern - Beyond puerperium - that goes from newborn size up to 2 year-old and includes 4-ply, 8-ply and 10-ply yarn options. The puerperium must be one of the most popular free patterns on Ravelry and I've wanted to acknowledge Kelly's generosity - by actually buying the pattern - for ages.

Plants are always works in progress, if you think about it, and I recently re-potted my ficus. This is my indoor plant success story; it's still alive - and flourishing - after being in my care for a whole year. I'm also very proud of the spider plant that I grew from a cutting. I love propagating plants - so easy really but so rewarding too. I have a few other cuttings ready to be potted up: another spider plant and some succulents and cacti.

The elephant is really just a spur of the moment try-out of a pattern I found. More on that next time.

Drinking: red bush (rooibos) tea

Listening: Border trilogy (podcast) on Radiolab - the background story to USA's protection of its southern border with Mexico

joy and comfort

New black and tan checked linen apron to replace this old work horse. I've added pockets this time.

And, with no particular baby in mind, a baby cardigan fresh off the needles - although a long time on the needles. I put off knitting those tiny sleeves for months and then had problems with the front button band that I did and undid four times and still didn't get the best finish. However this is a good free pattern that I'm likely to make again. Details here on Ravelry.

Reading:
The gentle art of Swedish death cleaning : how to free yourself and your family from a lifetime of clutter by Margareta Magnusson. The idea is that you ought to sort your stuff out before you move out of the large family home into a smaller apartment and, preferably, before you die so that other people (probably your grieving children) don't have to do it for you. Margareta doesn't give a lot of detailed advice but chats away in a lovely friendly way. I was very fond of her by the time I finished her book. She suggests you should start your decluttering early (at about 65 years of age), take your time and focus on one room at a time.***

Goodbye, things : the new Japanese minimalism by Fumio Sasaki who is a serious minimalist and lives in a tiny apartment in Tokyo with very few possessions. Even if you're not interested in living in such a seemingly extreme way this book is worthwhile to get us thinking about consumerism. In the 2013 documentary My stuff by Petri Luukkainen, Petri puts everything he owns into a storage unit. He can retrieve one thing a day for a year to discover just how much he really needs. It turns out he could get by with 100 things but needed 200 to live with some “joy and comfort".***