After the cowl I had quite a bit of alpaca yarn left over. What to do? Perhaps a flap hat. It’s warmer than a similar hat I made with wool, that’s for sure. To make it even warmer, I might line it with polar fleece. That would make it wind-proof and very snug.
My sister-in-law, L, gave me some wonderful wool/alpaca yarn for my birthday last March from this great shop in London (gosh, I wish I had a shop like that up the road). With all my other projects it’s taken awhile to get to the yarn. I wanted to make a garment that I haven’t got yet, and this cowl/capelet/poncho in alpaca would keep my top half extra warm on these cool days.
I learned a new stitch (slip stitch smocking), practised a new way to cast on and off (tubular provisional method), and got a good looking garment at the same time.
It’s certainly very warm for its weight. It would be a good piece to take on future urban travels into colder climes.
I like sock projects because they’re very portable. I took this project with me to Running Waters, although I didn’t end up doing very much because I was busy doing other things. I ended up finishing it back at home.
I used up some of the sock yarn left over from other projects here. They’re wool with a bit of nylon for strength, and have been great to wear this (unusually cold) winter around the house and while taking the dog out for her afternoon walks.
I haven’t abandoned my knitting over the winter. In fact, I have been rather busy. This boy’s jumper was knitted up in late autumn/early winter for my friend’s son E. It has many variations but I chose to do a collared jumper as I don’t think three year old boys like hoodies very much!
Last summer we grew our first pumpkins. Having never grown them before, we weren’t quite prepared for how the plant literally took over the garden. The runners seemed to grow inches overnight! For all that, we were gifted with three pumpkins – two of a grey variety, and one of a patchy green variety. We picked them back in May, but didn’t eat them until two months later. The grey pumpkins have been rather starchy with not much sweetness, but the green one was absolutely wonderful, full of sweetness that we couldn’t quite believe. We certainly enjoyed our pumpkin soup that week.
Back at home, I have been busy painting bigger works out of my photos and smaller pictures.
Of course, the cliffs were a big feature. I just can’t seem to get enough of them.
And the white trunked gums – they’re so elegant.
Well, that’s all from Central Australia. It’s been a very inspiring and creative time.
Remember the clay pan and how we all used the clay to paint with? I really liked painting with it to recreate the clay pan surface.
I also did a few pure watercolour works: of the grasses on rock and the trees at sunset.
But our biggest project that week was to create a concertina book, and fill it. I used all the techniques and mediums that I learned:
1) Oil pastels covered by black ink and then scratched
2) Watercolours
3) Inks
4) Clay with ink and oil pastels
Yes, there was also plenty of art-making going on at camp. I had my trusty sketch book so I could do quick watercolours on the go.
We learned how to work with oil pastels and ink – new mediums to me. Their strong colours really worked when depicting the outback. I learned how to combine these with watercolours, as this work demostrates.
Static and Silence 