ConnieLene – KnitDesigner

I have been so tied up with establishing this new garden here in Miranda, where there was none before, and have not been knitting nearly enough.

We are also in the midst of a drought like no other on record in New Zealand and we use rain water for all of our watering needs. Best Beloved and I did install an additional water tank at the end of 2011, quite soon after we arrived back in New Zealand and that gives us 50,000 litres of water storage. Sounds great but sadly I left the hose on some weeks ago which depleted it somewhat. We save dish washing and hand washing water for the trees and to flush the toilet. Our rain water is used for everything else from drinking, showering, water for the chickens and for the steers when they are in our paddock and obviously to water our extensive vegetable gardens.

The steers belong to next door family but our paddock is used in turn to help feed them and to help maintain the health of our paddock.

Knitting – well not much is happening. I am playing with ideas, trying things – but making little progress – it has been too hot with temperatures about 28 to 30 degrees Celsius (82 to 86 Fahrenheit – doesn’t sound so hot but it is for me) on most days since late December and right now at 11 am on an April autumnal day it is already 23.6. When it is too hot over the mid 5 or 6 hours of the day it is also too hot to be shrouded in knitting.

So my stack of books by my seat grows, my swatch pile grows as do my very bad sketches.

Surely it will soon rain and cool down and I can get on with the knitting.
Hope so!!

Last Friday the 3rd of August was 6 months or 26 weeks since our last day in the Netherlands.

What have I created?

Not very much at all. Well not in the knitting arena.

I have established vegetable gardens, started an orchard, and we are not buying vegetables except for avocado, the rest including potatoes and onions are from our garden. We will run out of onions and potatoes fairly soon – but I have to report that I thought growing them was a bit silly – given our space constraints. The taste is a sensation – so I will continue and we are planning to plant a larger crop in a new section of garden not yet prepared.

I have knitted a baby blanket (in only one colour) yikes!!!, a knee rug of several earthy shades of mohair – all using my garter stitch diagonal knitting blanket pattern.

I have knitted and written the pattern for Best Beloved’s neck warmer using Naturally Vero on Etsy here for about NZD 3.75 depending on the exchange rate.

Best Beloved's Neck Warmer