A tiny bit in love

I don’t often wish that Spider was a girl…I love him for what he is…which is very much a boy boy. But when something is as cute as the thing I’m making at the moment I do feel  a bit of a pang that I’m not making it for my own child.

If I can work out how to do buttonholes by the weekend then I may be able to put some pictures up of not only this cute “thing” but the cute pair of PJ’s I made…

In the meantime, should you want to see Spider looking rather spiffy then I urge you to pop over to Is it Finished Yet ? where he is modelling his “Victorian Era” look – today at school they were encouraged to dress up as Victorians and my wonderful Mum at 24 hours notice managed to whip up a fabulous waistcoat out of old curtains.  Let’s hear it for Grandma’s !

FO Fingerless gloves (Handmade)

I didn’t make much this christmas, to be honest the day job was taking up so much of my time that I didn’t want the added stress of deadlines…but I did spend a couple of hours whipping up a pair of fingerless gloves (from the Handmade by Thompson and Badger) out of some left over sock yarn

I made them for Spider’s teacher as I noticed her wearing a variety of pairs over the last 3 months.

I’m not really into fingerless mits/gloves or arm/wrist warmers myself I do have a bit of a thing about gloves though…so perhaps I should try making a few different pairs this year instead of socks.

Trying to decide now whether I want to have a handmade christmas this year or not…if I start now it might actually be achievable for once and to not find myself on christmas morning desperately trying to finish things off and get dressed at the same time.

FO: Easy as Pie Bag Encore (The Bag Bible)

For some reason it has been 21 days since I last posted. Probably due to not having my own laptop and not wanting to upload photographs onto a borrowed machine.

Not that there has been a lot of “making” recently…almost everything I touch recently has been going wrong so here is something that didn’t go wrong and which I was so pleased with I made it twice more !

Once upon a time a girl wanted a house…but she was studying…and had a very low income…so instead she hung around Habitat and occasionally bought things for the house she would one day have and dreamed of dinner parties at which she would have a blue tablecloth and crystal wine glasses…

16 years later it was time to retire the blue tablecloth as the girl no longer had the sort of life that involved dinner parties and the tablecloth (being linen) creased and was hard to iron…oh and attracted stains more than a white shirt attracts bolognaise sauce…

So I recycled it  once

Twice

Three times

The pattern is from The Book Bible by Lisa Lam(U-Handbag) and in order are the Easy as pie Bag, the Flat bottom bag and the Pleated tote the bags provided wrapping paper for a Secret Santa present, a present for Spider’s teacher and the last one went as a cover for a bottle of wine for KTCupcakes (I also delivered her last years christmas present at the same time which was another Easy as pie bag in red and black)

Good Intentions

I tried to do a post last night reviewing 2011 and looking forward to 2012 but WordPress wasn’t playing ball and now I’m living the next year the golden haze has somewhat worn  off last nights good intentions.

Last year my aims were:

- Re-learn to sew

- Learn to crochet

- Lose weight and make myself over

- knit more things for me

Most of these aims will have a post of themselves at some point in the next month…I think I’ve probably been 50% successful.

On the sewing aim I think I’ve moved from being a relearning beginner to intermediate and (thanks to a lovely girl) I work with I have managed to grasp the basics of crochet.

Losing weight just didn’t happen at all and as for knitting for myself well all those retirements and 40th birthday present meant that didn’t happen either (I spent the last hours of 2011 knitting like a demon to try and finish the last 40th present off )

So in 2012 I am going to be a little bit selfish, more things made for me and that does mean jumpers and other clothes (yes even some sewing). Losing weight is again a top priority (because mentally and physically I just feel like a slug)  and as part of that I finally took my measurements (now you know why some of the golden glow has gone !).

The unofficial aim of 2011 of knitting a sock  a month sort of worked (until September when it all fell to bits) if you argue it was really an aim to use up 100g of 4ply a month ! So I’m going to continue with that but this time it will be socks (because I don’t inflict them on other people).

I also want to try and complete the Vintage Style for Kids sewing but those e patterns are working out hard to print out to the correct measurements so I may take some liberties…

The garden also needs to be taken by the scruff of its neck and shaken into order…

I want to read more too…

But mainly, and this is why the targets are quite vague, I want to have fun…what with one thing and another last year it was quite difficult to have fun…but this year fun with the family and spending time together doing things (rock climbing again perhaps…it’s been almost 7 years…) takes priority.

Which means one thing…I need to be better organised !

The Bloggerverse Community

I sometimes think having a blog is a bit over-indulgent, a bit egotistical, a bit “not me” at least it would be if I actually thought that there was anyone reading it apart from my Mum, some real life friends and a few people I’ve met through the internet who have similar interests…

No this blog is for me and it’s so I can interact with other people with similar interests…sort of an individual internet forum and I get to visit other people’s personal space…and about sharing…

Which is a long way of saying that the lovely and talented Mrs Lacer made me a christmas card and it is fantastic…and it has skulls on it…and I don’t think I have any other friends who would put a skull on a christmas tree just for me…and possibly Mrs L’s other friends wouldn’t appreciate it as much as I do… so I love the internet, and I love having a blog…and I love the connections you make.

Thank you also to Emma Pad Pad Paddy for the card it was fantastic  and it makes me feel awful that this year i am using purchased cards but I am being a swan this year (frantic paddling above the water to keep going and meet deadlines)…

Oh and cards from me despite being purchased are running late as half my addresses are still on old emails…which I can no longer access due to the ribena incident…and I’m so glad I’m not cooking or making presents this year as I think I would be about to meltdown due to a too large “to do list”…

ETA I haven’t met either Emma or Mrs Lacer (although I almost tried to hand deliver Mrs L’s card last week when work took me to her home town…except I had by that time lost her address (thanks Spider))...it is all as a result of blogging

What black hole did I fall down ?

There is a rumour that I was so shocked by taking my measurements that I have lost the power of speech let alone the ability to type. I am pleased to say that is not the case as there have been so many other things going on that I’ve actually not yet had the chance to get the tape measure out.

No silence has been down to a much more fundamental but slightly more serious reason….

Here is a test for you. Carefully identify what I said and what I should have said out of the 2 scenarios

1.  Boy: “Mummy can I play with your computer ?”

Mummy: “Yes but make sure you leave your drink on the other side of the room on the book case”

2  Boy: “Mummy can I play with your computer?”

Mummy: “yes but make sure you don’t spill your drink”

A you can probably imagine from the above, yes Ms Ribena did meet Mr Laptop and no it was not happily ever after. Instead it involved my husband, a screwdriver, a spare replacement hard drive, a reload of data and a loss of all old emails, knitting patterns and photos stored on the laptop.

Spider is feeling a bit subdued…at least he was until he went down with a christmas flu…

Blogging will be a bit sporadic for the next few weeks as the rebuilt laptop is not yet up and running…tomorrow Spider and I have a Star Wars festival planned which involves a sofa, the duvet and all 6 films back to back

Wish me luck

Body Image and Reality

I don’t have a negative body image. Honest I don’t.  I love the body I imagine I have. My legs are 3 inches longer, calves not so pronounced and my waist is the 24 inches it was when I was at university, I am curvaceous but proportionately so…yes I love the imaginary me I really love the imaginary me.

 I have issues with the real me. The real me hates shopping for clothes because nothing fits. Nothing fits because clothes manufacturers make clothes for the average figure and there is nothing average about me. Clothes manufactures make blouses to fit a C cup…I’m an F/FF. My body fits into 3 different clothing sizes 14, 12 and 16, so as you can imagine I never ever buy dresses because they only fit where they touch! Trousers are a nightmare…if they fit in the hips then they are way to baggy in the waist and I look like a sack tied up with a bit of string if I cinch them in with a belt…which is still, (despite my now larger waist) cinched in to the very smallest hole in the belt… that’s of course if the trousers reach my waist, because it’s difficult to get any trousers these days that poke much above the groin area as most trousers are low rise… I hate the whole buying clothes experience so much that I just don’t do it. Which means that eventually after years and years of wearing the same thing over and over again, you  reach crisis point…really I can’t go on like this, there is nothing left but my underwear…

But then you can buy clothes I guess and alter them to fit…but if you are going to go through that sort of hassle then you may as well make them from scratch? (Let’s put aside for now my fear of taking a pair of scissors to something I have just spent a large sum of money on).

So why not make things from scratch? Ah yes you’re scared of cutting aren’t you and you have lost confidence in your ability to sew…err, actually no, I’ve been slowly beavering away here with my sewing machine getting practice in plus the corset course made me feel much better about what I produced, it made me realise I’m not a complete dunce, I can do it if I slow down and take my time.

So? OK so I admit it. I am scared of the tape measure. I spent a large amount of time waiting for Little Red in the City to come out, pre-ordered it, couldn’t wait to get my hands on it and yet, 6 months on I have made nothing. I have made nothing because every single pattern involves you taking accurate measurements of yourself. I also have at least 4 Colette patterns plus my new book but I have made nothing, because I have to measure myself.

It is quite one thing to say you accept your body, that you accept the fact you have a backside the size of Norfolk and a chest that could put someone’s eye out if you turn to quickly…plus that roll of fat around you waist. You can accept it. You can then ignore it on a daily basis and pretend it isn’t so and live happily in your imagination with the body image you… But now…now I have to steel myself to cold reality. Get the tape measure out and accept the cold certainness of the figures I will mark down in my book…because otherwise I will be naked by Christmas.

The Leftover Roast Potato in the Fridge Syndrome

(Admittedly in this house a cold roast potato would not be the best example  of this syndrome as cold roast potatoes are rarely left in the fridge for long…)

You know what it’s like you have left over food, you put it in the fridge to be used later, you have good intentions but you don’t use it up at the start of the week and by the end of the week you are reluctant to open the fridge as you know the leftovers are still there staring out at you accusingly…

My WIPs have been like that of late. The guilt of not finishing things has been crippling me…I don’t want to work on the WIPs as they have been there so long that all love for them has gone, but because I know I should be finishing them I don’t start anything new…instead I do nothing…

This week I have been feeling rather low and blue. November and February are the worst for this as the colours are drained out of the world and the sky is just grey…so there I was feeling sorry for myself then the postman came to my rescue.

I ordered the Colette Sewing Handbook back in August and for some reason, at the same moment it was announced as being out in America, Amazon emailed to say they could no longer get hold of it and cancelled my order ! So in a fit of pique I ordered from Amazon.com who although couldn’t get it to me until the end of November  could still get it to me before UK Amazon who emailed me 2 days after my US order to say they could now get it again…but not until December…

I felt low…I needed cheering up, a month is a longtime to wait , so I ordered Sewing for Boys. On Thursday it arrived (hurrah !) and I curled up on the sofa on Saturday morning to plan…but what was this ? A knock on the door from the postman with another parcel…and this one from America (double hurrah !)

BUT of course I’ve been unable to settle down and enjoy them because of all those unwelcome ghosts of  projects past (and not complete)… so I’ve been having a weekend of tidying up, finishing things and parceling things up… a bit of clearing the decks.

Hopefully it will boost my mood and a bit of forced finishing might make me feel “unbocked” and a bit more “creative”…also since some of these unfinished things are 40th birthday presents it might also put smiles on other faces before their next birthdays come round !

(Some of the unfinished objects involve Vintage Style for Kids projects…which I’m begining to think I need to intersperse with other things as making the paper patterns up is challenging in itself…)

Blimey

I have a commission…

At the end of October my friend KTCupcake had her hair cut, accompanied by my god daughter Cookie…Cookie had with her a knitted handbag made by her ever loving godmother…

The hairdresser liked the bag so much that she sort me out through Facebook and has requested something similar…

This is the infamous fluffy fairy monster bag…not sure I can recreate it as it is  bag of spontaneity and circumstance…and it’s construction is a saga that I have not as yet felt up to blogging…but I suspect it’s debut on the web is now imminent…

 

FO: Bathat for a Bat Boy

In honour of the season I present the Spiderbat…in a new hat

Unfortunately I wasn’t thinking when I knit it and messed up the decreases to the centre…fortunately you can only see that if you are looking down from above…

Details on ravelry (feeling lazy tonight !)

Dens of Sin Part I

March 4th

I have been a very very naughty girl.  I have fallen off the wagon big time. I can now kiss farewell to ever having a tidy organised house again…stash is back.

But I am leaping ahead of myself here. More later. In the meantime I have a rush job on for my son’s girlfriend’s birthday present…she is 4 years old so it shouldn’t take long.

Pictured : JaegerMohair silk DK(aster), Rowan cashcotton 4ply (citron and peppermint), Rowan KSN (ballerina) Debbie Bliss Cotton DK (Black and what is meant to be bright red but seems a bit pink, too late to change now) – oh and some Kiddy Print, a delightful surprise freebie

My Sister Knits

How rude of me, I was so excited at getting the parcel of yarney gorgeousness that I just leapt straight into blogging and didn’t bother introducing myself…so some history.

 

“My sister knits” was going to be the name of this site, but just before I ventured into cyber space I discovered that “My sister’s knits” was already in use for a yarn shop in America somewhere and was one of the contributors to a book I’d recently got out of the library One Skein Wonders.

 

I was a bit of an unusual teenager. Was probably described as nerdy, after all glasses, head in a book all the time (even when walking to school) and…I knitted ! What sort of 13 year old knits for godsake ? Me, I preferred to think I was creating a form of art. I was a bit unartistic in all other ways, but I could do this.

 

At this point I was going to insert a picture of me and my favourite jumper the Toulouse Lautrec from Knitting Masterpieces, knitted at the age of 17 and still going strong some 20 years later…but the only one I have features a horrid 80’s perm I wish to forget about !

 

Years later I discovered that my brother, who I loved and hated in equal measure (but then this is the essence of a sibling relationship) was proud of me. Not because of my degree, the going back to college to get a postgrad qualification, not the struggling on low paid jobs in order to qualify as a lawyer or the further determined striving to get into a field of law that I was happy with (environmental) but no, he was proud of me because “my sister knits”. Its always the unexpected that catches in your throat.

Knitting on a train

It’s a big train. A big empty train. There are lots and lots of unoccupied seats. Why why why do you have to sit next to me ? Do I look friendly ? Does my knitting make you feel safe and secure ?  Do you realise the effect you are having on my tension ?  I am so terrified that I will take your eye out with the unpointy end of my furious needles… please please get off at the next stop otherwise I will have to unravel what I have done and start again as its far too tight.

Learning to Knit Part 1: Knitting Heritage

My Mum taught me to knit at the age of I think 8. She was taught by her Mother, my Nana.  I love the idea of it being handed down along the matrilinical line…Nana probably learned from her Mother, but Mary Ada was a bit severe in later life, can’t imagine her doing anything like knitting, but then again perhaps she did, prim and upright, tension tight and regular, nothing out of place… however to get back to Nana, who was everything Mary Ada wasn’t…

 

Nana was a quietly amazing woman. At about the age of 80 she had a stroke and was paralysed down her right side. This is probably why I don’t have memories of her knitting, but boy could she crochet –after having taught herself to do things with her left hand that is.  Nana crocheted square after square for the Red Cross, she was still going strong into her 99^th year…who knows perhaps she still would if the taxi drivers hadn’t suddenly refused to drive her there (H&S issues apparently), she kinda lost the desire to live and slowly faded away 4 months short of her 100^th birthday.

 

I dabbled with knitting for several years, making dolls clothes, experimenting with mixing different oddments of yarn, textures and colour combinations and then, when I was about 15 or 16 a book came out  Knitting Masterpieces – making pictures with wool ! I was hooked – it didn’t take me long to complete the “corrupt official” and the “Toulouse Lautrec”…and then I discovered other books…

 

Teenage years can cause friction between mother and daughter, but Mum and I, I think have always had knitting at least in common. But some years ago she came down with RSI (that’s 30 years as a computer programmer for you) and hung up her needles so to speak…I kept going…I didn’t think I would ever stop.

Ladybird Hat: Zoe Mellor

Ladybird ladybird, fly away home...

Pattern: From Animal Knits, Zoe Mellor

Yarn:Debbie Bliss DK Cotton (colours ) – 100g total

Needles: 4.5mm (unbranded metal)

Time: 1 evening and 2 train journeys, approx 6 hours

Not the best effort I most admit. The cotton was a joy to knit with but I’d ordered the wrong shade of red and the deadline (Saturday) meant I didn’t have time to change, I also ran out of black towards the end so the spots on the front are actually acrylic rather than cotton (don’t look too closely).

Hopefully it meets the approval of a fashion conscious 4 year old princess…

I used to knit

Having knitted through the teenage years, the student rented accommodation (including the 18 yo sister of a friend leaving £10 for something I had just finished knitting as she thought it would look better on her !) , through my 20’s knitting for friends having children, knitted through the house renovation from derelict hole to Victorian gothic heaven (OK that was just the bedroom), into my 30’s and marriage…I stopped.

There were no reasons for ceasing to knit, I think it was just a gradual process, a number of factors lead to a decline in activity and then a final abandonment of the needles when I became a Mum myself.

Contributing factors

- a series of boyfriend’s who smoked

- an incidence of competitive knitting when 2 german flatmates of a boyfriend, grabbed my needles and proceeded to show me how much more efficient their continental style was

- lack of cash and a growing dissatisfaction of knitting with acrylic

- not realising that I should be lengthening sweaters to deal with the fact I have a long long back (and very short legs)

- living in a house full of plaster dust and builders rubble for 4 years whilst I renovated it

- hating making up, especially when making toys

- kittens

- more kittens

and then when I was expecting what is now my boy, I just didn’t have the energy to knit…and after he was born I had neither time or energy.

So, last November in a fit of organised zeal I placed my stash on freecycle and threw away all the half made bits stored in plastic bags under my bed

I became an unknitter…

The monsters under the bed

Under my bed with my stash lurked some horrible monsters that just zapped my enthusiasm for knitting, mainly because I was wracked with guilt everytime I looked at them and had to remember just how long they had been WIP’s.

The worst of all was a black white and brown cotton eifel tower, roses and fans jumper dating from 1987 (teenage years, magazine Pins and Needles), I’d been knitting this on and off since my  O levels, part of the reason it took so long was that during the student years I couldn’t afford the yarn and tended to buy 1 ball at a time as and when I had the money…the other draw back was the number of ends that had to be weaved in plus some of the struts on the tower and the bars of the fans had to be embroidered – making up was going to be a big job and therefore I delayed finishing it so that I could just avoid the task.

Second on the list was a lilac 4 ply jumper I’d been making for an Auntie since 1990…as that Auntie had passed away in 2003 I figured perhaps it was time to put the jumper to rest…

Also lurking is my attempt at a shetland wedding shawl. Inspiration from Pins and Needles (the sewing/knitting mag my Mum bought most of her married life til 1990), yarn used was as close as I could get to lace during the 80′s from my LYS, either a Patons or Sirdar 3ply, might even have managed to get a 2ply – that lurked in bag getting grubbier and grubbier from house move after house move, slightly tea spatted from my time at university, waiting waiting waiting for the final ball to finish it off…

Finally, assorted bits of baby clothing for friends started and never finished – these just got chucked. The other articles were frogged and freecycled with the rest of the stash.

The only things I kept were 2 balls of Debbie Bliss (recently bought) waiting to become a tiger hat, odds and ends waiting to become the clothes for a bear my Mum had knitted (last thing before she gave up) and a bag of green wool I’d borrowed from a neighbour to make a dinosaur puppet…this was it, my last stand knittingwise, after this I would even give the needles away.

So I cast on in black to start the tiger hat – and that is possibly where the trouble started…

FO: Saartje’s Bootees

Saartje's Bootees

Pattern: Saartje’s Bootees

Yarn: Rowan 4ply cashcotton

Needles:2.75mm (unbranded metal)

Time: a kid’s party

The lovely Vonnie (Adventures of a Lady in Training) was using a pic of her version of these as her pic on Twitter and I fell in love with them immediately. Although I had planned to do them by the end of march they were not next in the queue as I have to finish off the dinosaur puppets and knit yet another Tiger Hat before my boy’s birthday at the end of the month.

However I had a party to go to yesterday and I didn’t want the hassle of carrying several balls of double knit around with me, let alone carrying the pattern book with me , so I took these and ran them up in less than 2 hours…they are not quite in keeping with the pattern as I didn’t know what longtail cast on meant.  Also I didn’t have any 2.5mm needles so I took a risk on 2.75 being ok tension wise, and it seems to have worked.

Just needs some small buttons to finish them off.

Tiger’s say grrrrr Mummy !

Who needs a crash helmet ?

When I was expecting the arrival of “Gonzo” (the working title for what eventually became the delightful young man above) I had planned to knit, after all, I’d knitted for every other baby I knew so why not my own ? But it was not to be, my copy of Double Knits:Zoe Mellor remained untouched throughout the entire 9 months.

But to say that I haven’t knitted for my boy (who for the purposes of blogging is called Spider, his name for himself) would be untrue. Just before his 2nd birthday I finally managed to knit him the Tiger Hat from Double Knits which he absolutely adored for the 4 hours it was in his possession before it got left behind in a cafe in Banbury. He was devastated, because he loved Tigers…but he got over it, or so I thought. For his third birthday I’d managed to find the time to make the bear hat from the same book, but at some point over this last year it seems to have disappeared.

When I bought the wool for the bear hat I’d also bought some Debbie Bliss DK in orange and black to redo the tiger hat. When I destashed I kept it back as I’d hoped to make a christmas present for the next door neighbour’s son with it – one of the last 3 projects I ever intended to do.

Spider, saw me knitting and started asking and asking for another hat and so that’s why one wet February day I was wondering around John Lewis, surfacing 30 minutes later without the orange and black wool but clutching a hank of kidsilk haze and some mirasol (electric purple and so so soft)...

London Commute

“What is she doing here on our train ? Our early morning oh so serious people only dress in black and grey train ? Our train where people read important papers for important conferences, read auditing magazines or tap away furiously on lightweight laptops ?

 

She, with her plastic cook shop carrier bag and her knitting magazine, yellow trainers and pink fleecy jacket doesn’t belong here on this train full of working people, how dare this stay at home mum catch our early train. Shouldn’t she be at home getting her children ready for school ?”

 

So sorry that I offend. If you like I can whip out my journal of planning and environmental law so that I blend in with the rest of you unsmiling serious people, but in 90 minutes I will have the joy of “Regional Spatial Strategies” and listening to important people tell me things I need to know, and since my employers don’t pay travelling time I intend to enjoy this train journey as me time, to enjoy the sunshine and the flowers, to read what I like…for 90 minutes I just want candyfloss for the brain…I can be serious later…

Teaching an old dog…

Having spent a week or so thinking about it, I have come to the conclusion that the real reason I stopped knitting was that I was bored.

 

I mean when you think about it, I’ve basically been doing the same thing since I was a teenager namely picture knits with the occasional bit of cabling thrown in for variety. I have also fallen into the habit of using acrylic for everything, picture knitting otherwise can get very expensive as sometimes you find yourself paying for a full 50g when you only want a couple of yards ! Also when knitting for children I have to force myself to use anything but acrylic as they grow so fast and only get a years where out of something, whereas some of my jumpers (made with wool admittedly) are still in reasonable nick some 20 years later – or would have been if I hadn’t donated them to the RSPCA charity shop at the same time as I destashed.

 

I hate acrylic. I really hate acrylic and I am not going to use it again unless the pattern calls for it.

 

What I am looking for is a year of “innovation” from me that is.  I am going to try and make sure that everything I make from now on teaches me something new. I am also going to try and use more natural fibres and try and make sure that what I create comes up to my personal threshold of “beautiful”…although I probably have a slightly warped idea of beauty but the story of my photography project (City and Guilds) can wait for another day !

 

Apparently, this year is the year if “natural fibres” anyway so I guess it is timely !

FO: Finally, the Dinosaur Puppets

just hatched

Pattern: From  Making Dinosaur’s

Yarn: Odments of green and brown, mainly DK

Needles: mainly 3.25mm

Time: Far too long

The intention was that after these were finished I’d lay down my needles – I now know that this isn’t going to happen.

The good news with these is that I met the deadline. The bad news is that in order to finish the brown one off I ended up buying more yarn as the multicoloured brown/green was really really horrible.  Most of the brown puppet is left over copper cotton from a scarf (waiting finishing touch) but I also bought 2 balls of brown acrylic (25g) from Jackson’s in Reading and a ball of weird brown fluffy stuff with no label from the oddments basket…I therefore have more yarn to use up rather than less.

Both children loved the puppets and the paper mache eggs – although I doubt these will last long…I am relieved and lightly proud of these. I really hated making up as there were too many ends to weave in and lots of little bits to sew on. Arms could have been better unfortunately it was only when sewing the last arm on that I finally understood what the pattern was trying to say about folding it over !

Stash and Stash Envy

I have stash envy. That’s not surprising you are probably thinking, since you destashed before Christmas and now don’t have any stash at all.

But no I had stash envy before. You see my stash was always comprised of left over bits that you probably couldn’t do anything with, and even if you did the finished product would take ages because there would be so many bits to weave in. I was therefore envious of knitters who had a proper, organised stash. Those people who could see a pattern and go, ah yes I have x balls of Rowan Whatever DK which would be perfect for that.

These people know what they have, where to find it and know what changes they need to make so that the finished item looks good…my stash was a box of mixed up bits under the bed that never seemed to go down…plus odd balls that I picked up in sales but never used as I was saving them for “something special” .

So I am going to try a new approach.

• I am going to check my tension before starting – that way I hopefully will feel more confident about yarn substitution
• I am not going to buy “bargains” unless I have a strong idea of what I am going to do with it 
•  I am going to find patterns that use up my oddments on a regular basis so that I don’t end up with a large box of bits lurking like a scarey spaghetti monster under the bed 
• I am going to be stricter with myself and not start something new if there is something waiting to be finished off 
•  What stash there is will be organised, the labels kept with the half balls

Things are admittedly already going wrong – so I am going to spend April putting myself back on track. I have already partly done this with the wonderful Dead Fish Hat – but I need to find some space in the house as a “knitting corner” where I can keep all my paraphanalia

Knitting for Charity

It is perhaps unfair to blame either Spider or John Lewis for the fact I’ve gone back to the needles. I think it possibly started at Christmas and then a conversation with some work colleagues got me thinking again…and by the time I went looking for tiger wool in John Lewis I was probably just looking for an excuse.

 

At  Christmas my Mum gave me several balls of Snowflake Chunky and a pattern for a cat tea cosy. I’d asked for a tea cosy for Christmas – she decided I could knit one – I hadn’t told her I’d hung up my needles…I spent several days stroking the yarn, and decided that OK, one last item after I’d finished the 3 unfinished items that survived the destash.

 

Then at work one Friday lunchtime we were noodling around the internet trying to find a cause that we could make cakes for – we like cake competitions at work, any excuse for a bake off. One colleague Portia (we’re lawyers and she has a name that sounds like a race car anyway) discovered an organisation that raised money for Sailors…and to cut a long story short something on their website led me to trying to prove to them that you could knit a hat in an evening.

 

One evening later I had an incredibly large red hat…and the start of a need to knit…at the same time as I picked up the red yarn for the hat I’d picked up 3 balls of pink wool as I’d also, whilst noodling on the internet I’d come across the Jenny Chant appeal – so I made a start on a 2 metre pink scarf.

 

I learned 2 important things from this charity knitting

 

1)                  I probably should do tension squares more often, especially if substituting yarn

2)                  If you are knitting for charity and money is raised by selling the object then the item should be beautiful and something people actually want to buy…and if its being given for people to wear then it should be something they want to wear.

 

Busy week…

Since I took the needles up again a month ago I have been busy every evening, but haven’t had the time to put anything up here about it… I think I may finally have reached a natural pause, but its late and tomorrow I have a day off, but have to clean the house – so maybe tomorrow, and the next day and the next…I have quite a lot of finished items…and “most” of them involve something that is “new to me”.

Happy to be bored: Fairy Gothmother Lite

I am currently knitting something that is delightfully boring. Its mainly garter stitch with one row being a drop stitch – you could probably get the same result by knitting every 4th row with a larger needle. It is not very interesting to knit and actually a nice change after all the things I’ve been tackling this last month, which really got me out of both my rut and my comfort zone.

My son has a Fairy Gothmother who gives the most fantastic presents to her goth son. She also has a birthday at the beginning of April and I am working on something special. And yes OK I am working to a deadline but as I said above its quite a boring knit and not something to tax the brain – I also happen to be about 60% through it already.

Its USP is the yarn. It is made out of 3 skeins of 100% silk and 2 skeins of mohair and it feels lovely…it won’t look quite as dramatic as the one I have in my head as the lilac/purple mohair I bought felt horrible and fake, whereas this Rowan Kidsilk is kitten soft. I couldn’t find silk in black at a price I was willing to pay, so instead of a black and purple goth style wrap I have a fairy ballerina style silver and pink wrap. Silver silk I could get and I had a spare ball of pink Kidsilk Night available (and a cheap source for more).

Anyway I am totally bored and looking forward to a challenge now, having had several days rest, so am hurrying throught the next 40% to tackle something a bit more taxing…I also have a backlog of Finished Objects to put up here so I may do that when I get bored of the knitting dream I am currently wrapped up in.

FO : Salty Seadog bobble hat, sans bobble

Pattern: Patons hat pattern

Yarn: Stylecraft Acrylic, red approx 100g

Needles: 3.24mm and 4mm

Time: An afternoon

New: Nothing new learned, except that I should do tension squares

This is the hat that I knitted for the British and International Sailors Society – at the moment however it’s waiting to be parcelled up and sent, but I don’t have an address.

FO: Wilf’s Frogged Seafoam Scarf

Pattern: One Skein  Wonders

Yarn:Rowan Kidsilk Haze brown/grey – 50g

Needles 4mm

Time: several evenings

New: mohair, frogging

Knitted for  a friend in New Zealand on the basis something lightweight would be cheap to post. Also good pattern for someone out of practice –  apart from the increasing at the each end (to create an eyelet pattern) it is straight garter stitch…easypeasy !

I’m not new to mohair, but am new to soft mohair. 1980′s mohair was a bit harsh and artificial to the touch whereas this, at least for the first half of the ball was lovely and soft. Towards the end though where the “fuzz” had been squashed by winding it did get  coarse in texture.

The main new thing I learned from this was how to “frog”…to think I’ve spent my life calling it unravelling, it’s amazing what you can learn from the internet!

This 1 skein project said knit until you run out of yarn. I did. It looked a bit short and really needed an extra ball for a good fit. But then I think it would lose something aesthetically – I didn’t like the idea of a long triangular tale down the back…so frogged the whole thing

As a result of recently discovered perfectionism – will no longer knit anything that isn’t beautiful – Wilf is without a birthday present – and since her birthday was the 10th March I suspect knitting something new is out of the question.

Lesson Learned: Plan more in advance when making things for deadlines !

FO: This year I be mostly wearing hats

I have made a lot of hats this month as March seems to be when most of Spider’s friends have birthdays. The first one was made out of guilt when realizing that I perhaps the birthday present I was about to give was inadequate compare to what Spider had just received.

I spent a hurried week making this.

Previously written about in March…

Of course as soon as I’d finished this it was straight into finishing off the dinosaurs and the previously mentioned tiger hat (for Spider)- knitted in acrylic this time in case he lost it and because I wanted more “give” in the hat as the largest size given was for a 2 year old.

But having knitted one hat for one friend, of course I felt honour bound to knit the next friend a hat too…taking inspiration from GlittyKnittyKitty.

Pattern: Dead Fish – Knitty
Yarn: Assorted oddments of left over acrylic approx 100g
Needles : 4.5mm dpn
Time: 3 evenings and a morning
New: knitting with double points !

It was perhaps a bit of an ambitious project for someone who had never knitted with more than 2 needles before, especially in view of the fact that I had a deadline of less than a week. But once I’d managed to tame the octopus it wasn’t too bad…unfortunately taming the octopus took 2 evenings !

Most of the yarn was left over from the 2 dinosaur puppets and the tiger hat – but I also had a 25g of yellow bought by mistake, or it may have been bought to finish off the teddy bear which is the last of the “monsters under the bed”.

Problem is of course that Spider now wants one of these hats too…planning on a Nemo version as I have a lot of orange and black left over…but not yet…there are too many other deadlines at the moment.

Yay ! I’ve just done an I-cord

Yay ! I’ve just done an I-cord

My current WIP, which I can’t put up as it’s a present for someone who knows this blog exists (not many people do), has several variations on an I-cord. I’ve never done one before so to do 3 different sorts in the space of one item was a bit daunting – but I love it. Especially the I-cord bind off, I think that is so cool and gives such a lovely finish!

The I-cord happiness vibes keep me going on what really is quite a horrible knit. It’s the yarn mainly, it is so splitty and also there is no give in the cotton so at times with the i-cord it can get a bit tight and difficult to knit.

FO: Mother’s Day Flowers

Pattern:From Ravellery

Yarn: Dishcloth cotton Ecru

Needles: 4.5mm

Time: Morning

New: Relief Patterns

Don’t know what the official name is but this is a bit like braille. A pattern is created by doing a different stitch on a stocking stitch background…I’d spotted a map of New Zealand as a dishcloth previously which I wanted to have a go at, and had been toying with the idea of knitting a flower with wire but lacked the pattern or the wire…I did however have the dishcloth cotton…and only a morning to do something.

Never tried dishcloth cotton before and my Mum prefers useful presents to “dust gathers”. She seemed pleased but I think she preferred the rest of her present, vouchers for the 1911 census!

Book: Knitted Icons

The boys (Husband and Spider) took me out to Stratford for Mother’s Day. Primarily to satisfy my curiosity about a library that opens on Sunday – we made sure that we used it; this sort of thing needs to be encouraged!

Got lead astray in Waterstones and told the boys that they were buying me this, Knitted Icons for Mother’s Day – I’ve hardly seen it since as Husband keeps looking through it and going “hey, look what you can make”

FO: Tea Swap Tea Set

Pattern: Fiesta Tea Set (interweave)

Yarn: Sirdar Cotton

Needles: 2.75 and 3. 25 dpn

Time: a week of hell

New: circular knitting, more dpn practice, I-cords and variations on I-cords, using hairspray!

I signed up for a tea swap about a month ago because I’m a tea addict. Totally ignoring the fact that I am not exactly crafty and part of the requirements of the swap were that you made something with a tea or coffee theme.

Mostly I bake. I waffle on about cooking on a separate blog Appetite for Cake. Not being convinced that cakes would travel well I looked around for something I could knit which wasn’t a tea cosy and found this.

It probably would have been a nice knit had I chosen better yarn – this stuff split like you wouldn’t believe, most of the time spent making up was spent weaving in split ends that were sticking out all over the place.

Used hairspray to stiffen it slightly…

What can you use it for? Well it could be a dust gatherer, or you could use it as containers on a dressing table…probably the best use though is as a toy for small children.

I had been planning to use the left over cotton as the start of a hoodie for Spider (Waves from March issue of The Knitter) but not keen on doing a whole garment in such a splitty yarn.

Book: Creepy Cute

We have just had a few days holiday in York. Not a Yarn shop to be seen, although there is rumoured to be one in the Shambles, but I found that far too confusing… there are plenty of bookshops, some chain, some not so chain

In the Little Apple Bookshop I bought this, ignoring the fact that I can’t actually crochet…I think it might be a good incentive to learn…I don’t really do “cute” but I do like this

Eeek! I have acquired stash…

It’s true I now have a selection of yarns with no planned project for them and no chance of them being used in the immediate future as I have a queue already and several WIP’s…I am in danger of breaching my stash resolution from earlier

Firstly and nicest of all is some Wendy Pure, a tape yarn made from Bamboo. This came from Emma in Aberdeen, my lovely tea swap partner. It is a lovely selection of blues and purples – goes quite well with the Mirasol which I accidentally bought in John Lewis and haven’t plucked up the courage to commit it to a project.

I also have the frogged Rowan Kidsilk Haze and 2 balls of lilac Jaeger mohair plus a free ball of Nord Kiddiprint from Janette’s Rare Yarns…oh plus 2 balls of eyelash picked up cheap from Dunelm

OK it’s not a lot as stashes go, but stashes have a habit of growing…especially when you take into account oddments such as the Sirdar Luxury Cotton from the teaset – this was not nice to work with.

I have also acquired one or two books along the way through Amazon’s “used” service – although one of these Domiknitrix: Jennifer Stafford was cancelled by the seller for “other” reasons just before posting – I think they realised that selling a book for 99p when you only get £2.75 for postage wasn’t a good deal when you are shipping from the states.

Can one be as much fun as two ?

Having purchased Creepy Cute whilst on holiday (holiday madness ?) I though I’d better learn how to crochet and have taken out from the library Learn to Crochet:Sally Harding.

The book is as helpful as it can be, but the problem is I just don’t understand diagrams – guess its a lawyer thing, we’re just better with words…

Casting on ie making a chain is ok – I understand that, I can do the first row, whether in a round or actual rows…its after that that things start to get a bit hazy and confused – ok part of this was because I kept forgetting to do “turning chains” – I also started to lose track of the number of stitches in a row, and when doing a round couldn’t work out where I’d started off from…

I am hoping that part of my problem is down to the yarn – first time I tried I used some of that awful sirdar cotton that I have left over – this lunchtimes effort has been with dishcloth cotton, which I am praying is causing me problems because its too thick for the needle (4mm) – its also splitting quite a lot…it could of course just be sheer incompetence on my part !

Its quite a short book, only 79 pages and I have it for 3 weeks – so I guess I perservere and see where I get to…if all else fails I guess I shall have to see if I can persuade Mum to give a tutorial, hopefully RSI is no bar to teaching someone !

Missed Opportunities and the kindness of strangers

The other day I came across 3 balls of Twilley’s Freedom Spirit (99p each) in the odd balls basket of Jackson’s in Reading – although they felt nice and were in 3 very nice colourways I left them there – being a good girl and living up to my no stash resolution. I had no immediate plans for them and therefore there they should stay.

Couldn’t get them out of my head though, especially when I found out that this stuff didn’t just feel nice but actually felt nice as in they were good for felting projects – felting being something on the current “tick list”.

Of course when I went back the next day they had been snaffled by some other lucky punter – all 3 of them, I’d have been happy if they had left me one, as one would have been enough to make the mobius bowl from last months Knitter Magazine – oh well !

I was not completely out of luck though. I had been making a soft cotton hat using the remains of the Sirdar cotton. The intention was to use the red and blues as striped and then use the green and yellow to make the flower – but when I got knitting I found that the 2 blue stripes looked so good together that I couldn’t bear to contaminate them with the red…yes I knew I was being silly, I knew I’d never reach the end of the hat before I ran out of yarn, but I just couldn’t help myself.

Anyway fortunately a wonder person called Jane on Ravelery has come to my aid and there is hopefully winging its way to me through the postal service, a ball of the French Navy cotton which should be enough to do the crown.

FO: Fairy Gothmother Lite (Mulberry) and Wingnut’s Tea Cosy

Pattern : Mulberry from Collinette Arboretum

Yarn : Rowan Kidsilk Night (Ballerina), Debbie Bliss DK Silk (silver 02)

Needles: 4mm

Time Taken : 3 weeks on and off

New : knitting with silk, blocking – yep, never blocked before in 25 odd years.

I have finished the FGM Mulberry. I am not going to put a picture up as I was not very happy with the end result – I think part of the problem is that I don’t like knitting in pink and the sooner I accept this fact and stop buying the stuff the happier I will be!

I don’t mind pink however when it’s in something like this…

Details

Pattern : Skull tea cosy from Halloween Mania

Yarn : ever present DK black acrylic and some pink

Needles: 5.5mm

Time Taken : 2 hours end to end

New : er, well it’s a tea cosy, never made a tea cosy before… oh and knitted with 2 strands at a time

The teacosy was an absolute doddle, but unfortunately lots and lots of ends to deal with due to the 2 stranded knitting. The Mulberry again was easy – biggest problem was finding room to block it as the house was full of various ages of “boy”.

The skull tea cosy was going to be for Wingnut, a climbing amazon who thinks I don’t get out enough on to rock (true)…but it was given away as an Easter present following a flying visit to some friends in the lake district on friday night – if I get the needles out tomorrow I should be able to knit a replacement before she comes to visit…only have found a different pattern and more in line with the pirate motif that has suddenly invaded my life…

FO: 302 Kinky Knickers

[there is a photo for this, just need to introduce camera to computer)

Pattern : 302 from Knitty

Yarn : Strawberry liquorice bootlaces

Needles: chopsticks

Time Taken : 30 mins

New : knitting with sweets, knitting with chopsticks

Because I was disappointed with the Mulberry I made these as a fun present for the FGM – they made her laugh and to be honest I think she preferred them.

Bit of a pain to knit, as its been pointed out on Ravelery the “yarn” does have a tendency to break if you are not careful – also if you can only get short lengths then you have to tie them together which makes for a bit of a bulky knit in places.  I have plenty of yarn left over (if kids don’t eat it) so may have another go and experiment with ways of splicing the strands together.

Husband was the one to deliver the present to FGM who he regards as his “adopted sister” – he was not to sure about telling a sibling that she had to “keep her knickers moist, otherwise they would break…” !

Perseverance

I kept with the crochet and I thought I was finally getting the hang of it. Am much happier when doing rounds, which is fortunate as its mainly crocheting rounds for the Creepy Cute stuff – my main reason for learning to crochet.

I very quickly though got a bit bored with going round and round, as after all this object was never actually going to be anything, it was just a sampler – so I started riffing and seeing what sort of effect I could achieve, sort of crochet doodling… and this was the result…

Must admit that what it reminded me most of, prior to the riffing around, was a Judges wig – these are usually made out of horsehair, but are usually a greyish white and have the same kind of texture as this dishcloth cotton – somehow however I think that an Amigurumi Judge would have a fairly limited market, restricted to the stranger members of the legal profession and recently divorced people who want to practice a bit of voodoo!

I was feeling quite pleased with myself and elated. I’d always assumed that crochet was a fairly rigid format – guess its because most of the patterns I’d seen were based round geometric shapes – yet it was clear that you could go completely off pattern and the stitches didn’t mind if you didn’t come back to them – unlike knitting where one stitch is so intimately connected to the ones above and below and to the side…

Anyway when I showed Mum she was interested to see what I had been up to, but burst out laughing when she saw me actually crocheting “You’re knitting, that’s not how you do it…” There then followed a quick demonstration of how to hold the work, the yarn and the needle followed by demonstration of how you work a double and a treble…. Of course I can’t for the life of me remember what these were, fortunately my sister in law has recommended another book with much clearer diagrams – so let’s hope a diagram dunce like me can get to grips with it.

I have however realised that what I have always admired about crochet, the crispness of the stitches and the “straightness” of line actually comes from the fact that most crochet I’d seen was worked in cotton – so if I can’t get the hang of this 1 needled magik, perhaps I could try reworking the Creepy Cutes so that they are knitted – but suspect this would be admitting defeat!

Horrible Hairy Handknit

 I have made a bit of a cock up. Then I  made it worse by carrying on regardless rather than admitting defeat. Firstly I didn’t order enough wool, I misread the quantity mistaking the 100% wool for 100g (duh !). Then, when it arrived it was the wrong colour – I mean seriously the wrong colour. What I should have done was just keep the 5 balls on hand in case I wanted to do some felting as this felts beautifully, but no  I went ahead and ordered another 4 balls.

My son will hate me – doesn’t matter that the end result is meant to look like a dinosaur, all he will remember is a horrid hairy home made jumper in a rather nasty shade of pea soup that his Mum made him wear !!!

 Anyway I have made a start on the back of Steggie…it doesn’t look quite as bad in day light…guess I’ll just have to see how things go.

Bank Holiday Quick Knit Fix

Over the weekend we had a flying visit to the Lake District, partly driven by the fact they top dressed the fields outside on Thursday night and it smelt something awful, partly because we hadn’t seen these friends for about 2 years.

Anyway I took the Creepy Cute book with me some white cotton and a crochet hook. I had a horrible trip up the M6 fighting the cotton and the hook all the way – by the time we got to Kirby Lonsdale I had crocheted a golf ball sized head and was crying out for the more civilised 2 needled sport.

The Craft Cottage in Kirby Lonsdale came to my rescue supplying me with not only a ball of Noro Silk Garden, but a pattern and a very cheap pair of 5mm – I was a much happier and nicer person after that – the 5mm are very short, which I like, most of my needles are looooooooooong (30cm usually) and are cumbersome to use…but if the 5mm don’t become a permanent addition to kit then I may give them to my goddaughter who I bought the Usbourne How to Knit book one Christmas but failed to provide wool or needles (thoughtless godmother !).

Anyway on the return trip down the M6 I made this [details] in between navigating (went off route early on)

Pattern Hareton

Needles: 5mm

Yarn Noro Silk Garden (no 248 I think)

Time: 2 hours

New: First time with Noro, I’m hooked…

This is a present for a friend, I don’t want to give it up….guess its easy enough to make another…

FO: Totally Indulgent Scarf in a Bag Part 2

Some weeks ago I was looking for oddments of brown wool and came across a half price knitting kit ( a Patons scarf in a bag), cheap as the beads were missing as was the “handmade with love” label…I think I’ve mentioned before that I got sucked into it by the lovely copper colour of the cotton and it was only later that I discovered that I’d basically scored a virtually free pair of needles and pattern paying just slightly more than the retail cost of the cotton…which not only made a scarf but contributed to the dinosaur pattern that I was looking for the brown yarn oddments for.

I made the original scarf at the beginning of March, no pics as I’d lost my camera – this is a reprise made of the same yarn but this time a nice bright spring like green, which I’d already bought before the intended recipient revealed that her current favourite colours are red and purple ! The pattern is very straight forward being every other row purl and the knit rows either an increase or a decrease row lacey type pattern.

Pattern: Patons Skinny knit scarf

Yarn: Patons Cotton

Needles: 4mm (a lovely metallic red !)

New: Nothing this time, but the first time round, possibly knitting with beads ?

WIP: Kittens and embroidery, knitting with cobwebs and fairy dust

Although most of my clothing is black and practical, despite the fact that I can stand on my own feet, will muck in quite happily with the DIY and don’t stand by doors waiting for a gentleman to open it for me, sometimes I want to be a princess, I want to wear sparkly stuff and waft around in a cloud of fairy dust (I draw the line at pink though) – sometimes I want velvet and silk rather than goretex and polartec !

The state of my wardrobe though means that I can’t really justify splashing out on fripperies when really I need a couple of decent pairs of work trousers and some tops that aren’t splashed with bleach…so I am knitting something for me, one £4.50 skein at a time…its softer than kittens, lighter than feathers…the colour is both practical and impractical at the same time being white which will go with most things, but runs the risk of getting grubbier quicker ! Oh, and there is a slight sparkle to it !

FO: Yo Ho Ahoy and other nautical expressions

 Its time to get some of my finished works out the door. I have that feeling that I have too many WIPs but in reality there are only 3, its just it feels more because there are quite a few finished and nearly finished things sitting in the basket by the fire.

A few days ago I ordered some Lett Lopi from Stash Fine Yarns of Chester (I love the service it is lightening fast). The intention was to knit something and then shrink it deliberately in the washing machine. I’ve mentioned this previously; see the “horrible hairy hand knit post below.

A wonderful coincidence of a birthday, finding a fantastic pattern that would be perfect for that birthday and placing an order for the Lopi resulted in this:

I’m so pleased with the result that I’m itching to do another. It probably needs a bit more felting but I don’t have enough control over my washing machine to put it through again and as it’s a present I don’t want to risk ruining it. 

On the next one I think I would use 4 small balls of the blue so that I’m not carrying quite so much yarn across the back as it pulls the stitches out of shape – normally for intarsia I would consider this a real no-no, but with felting it doesn’t show quite so much.

Disaster !

I have finally finished the leftover stripe hat and it’s far too big for a 7 year old…I have 6 days or so to come up with a replacement…less really as I wanted to hand this and her Mum’s present over this weekend…

Knitting…

Has been happening here, I’ve just not been feeling well enough to write about it…there are a few WIPs and quite a few FO’s…there are also rather too many things where the knitting bit has finished and I’m just waiting to sew up…oh and there are a few cock up’s where I am trying to work out what I should do for the best, frog, sew it up differently or try and shrink it in the wash.

When I last posted here I was all set to do a “season’s outfits” for small plastic dolls as a replacement birthday present for my goddaughter, having once again got head size wrong and ended up making a hat which was too big for a 7 year old – unfortunately it was also too big for a 38 year old as goddaughter’s mum loved the hat and would have liked it as her own if it had been slightly smaller.

Anyway after posting I started making dolls clothes as fast as my needles could do it…fortunately I had only made 1 dress before we took my goddaughter for a day out (may bank holiday) when, sitting watching the rain fall and eating the traditional english picnic (in the car) we had the following conversation

“so what dolls do you have ?”

“I don’t like dolls…”

You have no idea how happy I was to hear that, having 2 days before after finishing off that 1 dress deciding to knit her a felted handbag instead as I had realised that knitting an unspecified doll a whole wardrobe was going to take for ever  – the knitting would have been fine, but there was far too much making up involved !

Anyway, handbag, which will appear up here shortly with the other one I did for Mrs Lacer (Lacer’s Life) was a “palpable hit” – how do I know ? Because the handmade birthday card I received the other week had a perfect picture of it with a poem about the “Handbag of Glory” (similar to Edward Monkton’s stuff Penguin of Death etc).

Scarves, scarves, scarves…

Over the bank holiday weekend I was a little “one track” and was concentrating mainly on finishing off the Jenny Chant Scarf which has been lurking at the bottom of my “work basket” – I basically had to ban myself from thinking about any of the things I’d rather be knitting (or thinking about knitting following a birthday visit to IKnit, London) and just channel all my energies into this one scarf.

Now it’s not the scarf’s fault, it’s me.  Admittedly I hate knitting large amounts of rib especially with 3.75mm needles as it grows so slowly but the real problem is my aversion to pink…at least that’s what I thought, but when I did finally stop knitting (It wasn’t 2 metres long but when I weighed it in the kitchen it weighed 150g which was the main criteria for the scarf, 3 balls of 50g) I thought well lets try and get all this out the way in one go and made a start on the second scarf (I’d bought 3 balls of 100g), only this time with horizontal stripes.

This second scarf isn’t too bad and I can only put it down to the fact that I changed the order of the stripes – this scarf, once you get over the pinkness, the ribness and the 3.75mmness isn’t quite such a nightmare to knit – I’ve had to put it on hold though as I only have 1 pair of 3.75mm and they were needed for something else, which is slightly more urgent as children grow quickly and you can’t take ages when making something you want them to have more than a months worth of wear out of.

The bank holiday weekend was also the first posting date of a “Travelling Scarf” group which I had joined on Ravelry so I was firstly busy chasing around the countryside trying to find a postbox that would give my scarf a fighting chance of getting where it needed to be on tuesday morning and then secondly playing around with various ideas for my contribution to the scarf I had received that morning.

The idea of a travelling scarf is that each of you knits a section of scarf and then posts it to one of the other members of the group (same one each time), you then knit a section of scarf for all the scarves you get sent until you receive your scarf back again.

There are no other real rules other than that, although some people ask for particular colours or types of yarn or other criteria. Mine is a word association theme, the idea is that the person knits whatever comes into their heads on seeing the last section of scarf, does not have to be a word such as this one, you could interpret it by colour or by stitch or whatever…you can also lie about what comes into your head !

I was lucky in my first contribution as Karyann sent yarn along with her scarf so all I had to do was think what stitch I wanted to do.

Karyann’s starter is on the left here, my section of “DNA” is on the right, knitted on 4mm which seemed to match the tension of the starter square, sort of, possibly should have used 3.75mm but as mentioned before I only have 1 set.

The final scarf was a last minute present for a friend of my (the Fish Hat in March was for her son). Now the problem with knitting for people in May is that you can’t really give them winter woollies and when I think of this friend I think of chocolate brown alpaca, soft and lovely and lots of cables – not practical as a may birthday present – so instead I’ve gone for something colourful and light which can be used in the evening to brighten a black dress (a sort of shawlette) or used as a scarf in September when it starts getting chilly again.

Pattern: Whisp from Knitty

Needles: 5mm

Yarn: Laines du Nord Kiddy Print

New: Fishnet Lace ( a new stitch to me)

I ran out of yarn towards the end so it is not as large as the original and I decided against adding the buttons – it seems to have been well received…

June’s knitting will mainly be trying to finish off a cotton hoodie for Spider before he grows too big for it, this is a very slow knit as it involves  colours and is on 3.75mm, but apart from getting the order of the colours wrong I am quite pleased with how this one is working out.

Bored

I currently have 1, 2 3…oooh at least 6 things on the needles at the moment and I don’t want to do any of them. I’ve spent the evening working on something new, not knitting for my Mum’s birthday, and I can’t face doing anymore of that tonight.  I don’t however want to do any of the stuff I’ve started.

I think I may have to give myself a strong talking to and finish some of these things off, the problem is none of them have deadlines and I work better with a deadline – I blame university !

Being good

I have spent most of the last 3 days concentrating on making Mum’s birthday present and I think I’m on target for having it finished by her actual birthday, at least I will now I’ve got the bits I need to finish it off, having dragged my family remorselessly around various shops in Leamington Spa looking for it.

One of the side benefits of  yesterdays shopping trip was that I finally discovered the whereabouts of  “Web of Wool”, who kindly pointed me in the direction of the shop that I actually needed. As a “thank you” I bought a pair of short 3.75mm. I decided that it was pointless trying to continue with just 1 pair when I have so many things on the go. It also got me wondering as to why I have struggled on for over 20 years with such long needles when I actually prefer knitting with short ones.

I also purchased some sock yarn. Its plain. It’s black. OK it’s slightly silky but I wanted to have a go at making socks for socks sake without being in awe of the self striping properties of the yarn. You see I really really don’t understand this handknitted sock obsession – I have always suspected that getting a pair of handknitted socks as a christmas present would be my idea of a present from hell…but since these pages are about changing habits and attitudes of a life time I think I should at least give socks a try.

But time for some discipline. I am not allowed to start the socks until I have reduced the WIPs to a more manageable level so I’m back on the scarves. I have another metre to go on Jenny Chant II and I have already finished my section of the latest travelling scarf.  Tillymint sent some stretchy shiny purple yarn with her section so all I had to do was think of a stitch, which wasn’t hard as the yarn was calling to me that it wanted to pretend to be webbing. I will do a seperate post in about 2 months time with all the travelling scarfs, I don’t want to spoil anyones fun by putting them up here now.

Once the JC scarf is finished I have some hats to sort out. The biggest dillema is what to do with “Rosie” which is the cotton hat that came out far too large. Actually that seems to be a common problem for me as the charity sailors hat came out far too large too.

FO: Purple Camouflage Hat

I started knitting again last February when a brief trip round John Lewis resulted in me finding myself standing in the high street with a ball of some lovely soft mirasol in “electric purple” and a brown/grey ball of kidsilk haze – 3 months later and the kidsilk had been knitted into a shawl and then frogged, yet I was still waiting for inspiration for the mirasol.

The mirasol was destined to be a chemo hat for a lovely work colleague who used to leave purple inspiration on my desk when she thought I looked blue. Well the mirasol has finally turned itself into a hat,but I am not sure about it. I’d like to think its because I chose the wrong pattern, but the truth is I’ve started and frogged several patterns before I chose this one, and I think that it may be that I don’t like variegated yarns.

I love the yarns when you see them in the shop as a skien, all those lovely combinations of colours calling to you from the shelves, but often they just don’t seem to knit up in a way that does justice to the yarn, and I’ve tried knitting this up in a variety of widths but its just not doing it for me at all…perhaps this yarn wanted to be a pair of socks and not a hat after all.

Anyway, here is the finished object and a rare picture of me – please note that this is not an intentional copying of the style of the magnificent knittivists over at Glittyknittykitty - I had problems finding something I could take a pic of the hat on which didn’t also involve revealing that I haven’t vacuumed for about 2 weeks – the sunglasses belong to one of my stepsons and is a vain attempt at obscuring what I look like. I ran out of yarn so the flap at the bottom is not quite as long as I would have liked. The button is one left over from a big chunky cardigan that I made for a friend some 13 years ago and I haven’t found a home for it until now…I think perhaps the button is the nicest bit…I may just donate this hat to some good cause or other as I have had a better idea for my Purple Princess.

Pattern: Pi Topper Chemo Cap

Yarn: Mirasol Yarn Chirapa

Needles: 4.5mm

New: knitting a hat in the round, mirasol, variegated yarns

If anyone wants the hat then please drop me a line before Friday when I shall be posting a number of the charity knits off. I’m getting ruthless with the house and the clutter as I’ve had a brilliant idea for making sure that I can keep all my equipment in order and prevent it getting mixed up with all the boy toys that fill the house.

A cunning plan to get my brother out from under the bed

My actual brother is alive and well and living in Berkshire and, as far as I can recall can’t fit under his bed as it’s a divan. The brother I am referring to is a Brother PS-31 sewing machine last used with intent (if I remember rightly) in 2001.

Despite having knocked the house down some 18 months ago and rebuilt it with a 50% increase in space there still does not appear to be sufficient room for the 3 of us (plus weekend inhabitants). This is all down to inadequate use of the space available and not having finished off the house yet.

At present Husband and I share a wardrobe, at some point there will be a built in wardrobe. In theory sharing a wardrobe shouldn’t be a problem because although Husband has a lot of clothes I have very few. It doesn’t work however because although I have close to no clothes, Husband really does have A LOT and the wardrobe is really very very small.

As a result, apart from about 7 hangers in the wardrobe most of my clothes are under the bed in boxes. Also under the bed are 2 boxes of year/yarn ends, my sewing machine and a jumbled crate of sewing bits.

Why I want to get the sewing machine out and in use has a lot to do with my lack of clothing. Now I know that a lot of women claim that they have “nothing to wear” but in my case it’s true because I hate shopping; I am a horrible shape; I have an internal northerner who on seeing the price on an article of clothing goes “how much ?”; I have no confidence in my ability to by clothes that suit me; Oh and I am reluctant to buy clothes anyway because they all seem to be badly made in the first place – have lost count of the number of pair of trousers whose hem fall down within the first week.

I did periodically buy from charity shops but now everyone is buying from there the choice is going down and the price is going up. So I have decided to give making my own clothes ago as at least this way I stand a chance of them fitting properly, I might find something I like, I don’t have to go through the trauma of shopping and if they fall apart I only have myself to blame.

Sure you can buy clothes cheaper than it costs to buy the material to make them, but then the material is usually poor quality anyway and, as mentioned above they tend to fall apart (whether its supermarket, Next M&S whatever none of them seem to last anymore) – so the way I see it I have nothing to lose. Admittedly my sewing experience is limited to a ball gown, several pairs of curtains/cushions and a roman blind – very proud of the roman blind as I didn’t follow instructions but worked out how to do it myself – but I have never considered lack of experience as a bar – the only way you ever master something is by trying it in the first place.

So this morning, making the most of Husband’s absence (he’s gone to Le Mans) I am rearranging the house, primarily by commandeering the wardrobe in the stepsons’ bedroom for my clothing, after all Teenager keeps very few clothes here and those he does keep seem to be all over the floor !

Today the house, tomorrow the world… Mwahahahaha !

Trying something new

My Mum’s reaction to her birthday present was “fantastic, if you can do this then you can finish my japanese lady off” – turns out she was half way through something before the RSI kicked in big time and made it too painful to finish off. Not sure this is quite my thing really but I’m always happy to help…

My Mum’s birthday party had a nice surprise for me too, but that can wait for another night.

Presents for me

My Mum’s birthday last week was the first time for ages that I’d had an opportunity of seeing my Brother and  his lovely Islay (sister in law) and since we’d last met both Husband and I had had birthdays. So the weekend was a great opportunity to swap gifts and catch up on gossip.

I was the fortunate recipient of a whole new set of bamboo knitting needles, and what’s more they are short ones – yay ! I can’t believe I have struggled on for about 24 years now with such long needles – although I am not knocking them, they do come in very useful for some of the adult jumpers I occasionally knit, but most of my knitting in the last few years has been for smaller people !

Yesterday I was also the lucky recipient of an unexpected act of kindness from Mrs Lacer (Lacer’s Life) but I have already written about that on Appetite for Cake so check out write up by Mrs Lacer here - also her picture is better than mine.

WIP: Such a slacker

I haven’t been posting much on either blog of late, partly due to internet connection problems and partly because I used to write most of them during my lunch hour at work and instead I go out for a walk in a futile attempt to shift the blubber around my midriff  (muffin tops ? hell I’ve got a whole brioche sticking out the top of my trousers !).

Anyway I’ve  been using the time in the evenings at home that I used to waste noodling around on the internet to try and finish some of the WIP’s (trying so hard to be disciplined and not start anything new). So I have 2 Jenny Chant scarves now finished, (ends weaved in etc) in vertical and horizontal scarves respectively.

I also have made inroads into the cotton hoodie that I am knitting for Spider. It’s the Waves hoodie by Sasha Kagan from The Knitter magazine. I changed it to shades of blue plus lilac as I didn’ like the colours used on the one shown in the magazine. I will admit that the lilac doesn’t work where it is and if I were to do it again – which I won’t as it’s a very annoying jumper to knit – I would change the order.

Anyway, this is what the pattern looks like

Arse

Apologies to my Mum for the title of this post but it is an accurate reflection of my mood and the fact that I am kicking myself at the moment.

Started the front of the Waves hoodie last night. Am about 20 rows into the chart when I look over at the sleeve of the hoodie which is lying on the sofa following some photographing. I suddenly realise with horror that I have the order of my colours wrong. I unravell the front all the way back to the moss stitch border, roll the yarn up and put it all away for the evening – can’t face doing anymore.

As I put the sleeve back in the bag also I realise that I’d been looking at it upside down. Yep, I’ve just frogged 20 rows of perfectly good knitting for nothing.

I hate myself right now – looking for something simple to waste tomorrow evening on as I can’t face reknitting the front just yet – perhaps it’s time to sort out Rosy…

What to do about Rosie ?

Rosie (Rowan Magazone no 25)  is the hat I made for my god daughter. The hat for a 7 year old which was far too big even for Husband. It looks like thisI think that if I can get it to the right size then it may actually be quite a cute hat, something a 7 year old girl would quite like, in fact her Mum (age 38) is quite taken with it if it wasn’t for the size – I think its the  power of the flower.Rosie has been sitting in my workbasket for about 2 months now whilst I’ve tried to decide what to do with her. I possibly unwisely decided to unravel her and reknit – this has so far resulted in a birds nest of multi coloured cotton and after yesterdays unravelling incident I can’t quite face reknitting her – what I need is something simple to calm my slightly frazzled nerves – Rosie is not yet a nice simple knit but she will be if I can ever make sense of this mess of cotton.

Socks

I’m sorry, but I just don’t get it, why ? And its not because I can’t use circular needles or dpn, I can…it’s just why ?

Too hot to knit

I’m knitting, but it’s far too hot. I’ve mothballed the alpaca scarf and the 2 hoodie’s for Spider, can’t face any of these until the heat dies down…so I’m trying something new and to be honest it hurts !

I was in Rugby today buying a present for Spider, the pre-school has an end of year meeting with parents prior to heading to reception in September, and this is, sad to say the first time in 2 years that I’ve had an in depth conversation with anyone about how my boy is doing, and I’m pleased to say that he’s doing well, he is “on target” they won’t say more than that but they did indicate that he’s a bright boy with an amazing vocabulary -so yes, he’s earned the playmobil roman catapult.

Anyway on the way back to the car I spotted a sewing shop. We stopped and I splashed out on 2 meters of red cotton with big white spots – think Minnie Mouse – my sewing machine however is still dust covered as I also bought a reel of 28 gauge red wire.

An hour of torture and blisters later I have a very very small square of wire knitting which I have squidged into the shape of a heart…I am not convinced it is worth the effort…we’ll see what the other one looks like and whether with a bit of work they look like earrings.

A coincidence…

I stopped off between meetings today to deliver some courgette plants to my sister in law/brother – as usual we did not talk just reacted to children telling us things we “never knew” – the email conversation later was about knitting with wire – I had admired with a look a bracelet she was wearing…later she had checked out Being frank and noticed I’d been knitting with wire, as had she (not yet confirmed whether it was that bracelet)…but aside from jewellery, Islay enquired was there any point in knitting with wire?

Well I guess it depends on how inventive you are – some of the jewellery designs I’ve seen have been really cool but I probably wouldn’t do it because it involves too much investment in beads and fixings and I’m not sure I want to go there.

I have just invested in a knitted wire book as it was going cheap on Amazon, will list it here when I finish the second heart earring but it is mainly jewellery…I am also knitting at the moment a shirt made with a yarn devised from wire…which is much much more flexible but I am just not sure…

The question Islay raised is “is there much use for knitting with wire (in view of the fact it hurts) other than jewellery ?

Who’s afraid of Big Brother (PS31)

My sewing machine has sat in the dinning room for over 3 weeks now, a brooding presence in the corner, silently accusing me of fear and failure. Well this weekend I conquered the fear, I found the instructions, threaded it, wound the bobbin on and all the other things you are supposed to do before you start a sewing project – even tested the tension.

I plucked up my courage and took sissors to the material, I cut and tacked. I pressed all my seams and neatend them – I’ve even tackled putting a zip in, having found a whole batch of assorted zips I’d picked up from somewhere along the line. Quite brave really – shame its all wasted effort as I’ve already ruined it all by cutting the skirt too short…

I am not deterred though, whilst I was picking up some interfacing from Dunelm for the waistband I also picked up 2 more lengths of cloth to have a play with – and even if I have messed up the “Minnie Mouse Skirt” (red with big white dots), it only cost £8 for 2 metres…

I hadn’t planned to sew this weekend. I am trying to finish off some of the part finished knitting projects. If I make a real effort for the rest of the week I may be able to finish off at least 4 of them as they don’t really need much to complete. I have

2 red heart earrings (knitted wire) – need to be placed on fittings

Cat Teacosy – needs sewing up plus some wadding

Alpaca Scarf – needs ends sewing in and blocking

Green Bootees  – need buttons, which have been in my handbag for weeks

Steggie – the horrid hairy handknit, just needs the hood knitting

Dolls dress – sewing up, buttons

Going to try and finish all these this week and post the latest version of the travelling scarf

Self Control (WIPs)

I have been ignoring the John Lewis clearance sale, in fact I have been ignoring it for the last 2 weeks. This second week has been much easier as I’ve just had to spend over £300 on the car (service, windscreen, new MAF air sensor). A prudent knitter would buy the yarn when its cheap and stash it until she’s ready to use it but I am useless, as soon as I buy some new yarn I want to see how it knits up and unfortunately I’m incapable of just stopping with a tension square, which is of course how I ended up having so much on the go.

Anyway this week I have been working hard as I promised:

Minnie Mouse Cartoon Skirt – zip in, seams done, need to gather and attach waistband and hem – might take zip out and redo..

Alpaca Scarf – blocking, decided not to crochet round the edge as I’m not good enough

Wire earrings – been looking for the beads etc

Dinosaur Zip up aka the horrible hairy handknit – virtually finished, just need to sew zip in

Teacosy – read make up insts, looking for wadding

Travelling Scarf – latest installment posted.

I’ve also been through stash and bundled up the leftovers to go to a charity in Sheffield and various charity knits ready to post

My halo is glowing…fish tank still needs cleaning though !

ps Not been completley honest about the amount I have on the go, there is still the last of the UFO’s from under the bed, the teddy bear, a test knitted icon (marilyn monroe) and “seatangles” which is a strange top knitted with a yarn based on stainless steel ! I think that’s it, honest…

A lost bear (FO)

Once upon a time a little boy was invited to a teddy bears adventure party. As the party was in the afternoon his Mummy took him into central Birmingham to watch a scary film about dinosaurs in 3D

As the film might be scary Mummy suggested he might wish to take his bear with him. He might also like to have his bear with him for the party in the afternoon. The boy agreed and the bear was duly placed in the car and carefully strapped in.

The film was fun but scary and the boy was glad that he had his trusty Even bear to cuddle. He held tight to the bear through the film and was still holding tightly as Mummy and boy went on to Think Tank, Birmingham’s science museum.

When they returned to the car, the boy turned to his Mummy and said “Mummy, where’s Even bear?”  Yes at some point whilst wondering around pressing buttons and pulling levers, the boy had put Even bear down and forgotten to pick him up again. Fortunately on returning to the museum Even bear was located quickly, patiently waiting in the same place for his boy to return.

It was agreed by Mummy and the boy that Even bear had had a nasty shock and needed a nice present to cheer him up. The boy wanted Mummy to teach him to knit so that he could make a scarf but instead Mummy agreed to knit one that afternoon and they made a quick detour to Dunelm for some boy sized needles and some wool.

Whilst the boy charged around the nature reserve with his friends making hides for hedgehogs and other games, Mummy and Even bear (who had had quite enough excitement for one day) followed him, Mummy knitting as she went.

That night in bed the bear that the boy cuddled up to was sporting a lovely new red shiny scarf.   The End.

Yarn – patons orient (red)

Needles: 4mm (child size)

Pattern: Knit, 10 stitches, continue until desired size

New: nothing

LYS: I KNIT

I know that this isn’t my local, but I have a fairly flexible definition of local as being somewhere you can shop easily without having to go out of your way to reach it!

A couple of months ago on the way back from a meeting in London I made a detour round the back of Waterloo Station to Lower March Road and the knitting sanctuary that is IKnit. In my pocket I had £25 birthday money (yes 38yo still have birthday money) specifically given for splurging on whatever I pleased in the knitting line.

There were many things that I liked about this shop but what most impressed me was their “service”.  Due to a slight mix up at the till, one of my purchases did not get put in the bag but was left on the counter. Unfortunately I didn’t discover this until I was about to catch my train at Marylebone. When I phoned up to explain the problem, they couldn’t have been nicer and put the missing item straight in the post to me. Then the other day, again between meetings I nipped in to the shop  to buy and to get some advice on something before buying. Whilst paying for my purchases I asked if I could have my change in 10p’s for the toilets at Waterloo, on hearing of my “need” they did better than provide me with change and  without hesitation they offered me the use of their toilet !

The essentials: IKnit stock a wide range of yarns to suit all purses and budget. The staff are very helpful and knowledgeable about their stock. They are happy to provide assistance and advice if asked but realise the importance of letting customers take their time in deciding what to buy. They can be found at 106 Lower Marsh, Waterloo, London, SE1 7AB.

photo of purchases to follow when I find my camera !

FO: Alpaca Travelling Scarf

I am still  periodically knitting these travelling scarves. I may no,t as originally planned, feature them all on here as I keep forgetting to take photographs before I post them.  This on the other hand is a genuine travelling scarf in that it was pretty much all knitted whilst driving around the south coast a few weeks ago.

The yarn is 100% alpaca from Toft Alpacas. They ship it a grand distance of 15 miles away to Banbury to be spun and then it is shipped back to Dunchurch (near Rugby) to be sold. This is about as local and as low a carbon footprint as you can get!

I fell in love with the chocolate coloured yarn sometime ago and it took me a long time to find a pattern that suited it…anyway I am very happy with the result.

I love the fact that it is a vertical stitch on one side and horizontal on the other. I also love the magical way that the pattern develops. I started off disbelieving that you could get vertical colours from the stitches as they were set out in the pattern and was left believing in witchcraft!

Yarn Toft Alpaca DK (100% alpaca) in chocolate and cream

Needles: 5mm

Pattern: Ripe (from the Anticraft)

New: nothing

LYS: One that shall remain nameless

Sometimes the service that you get from a shop is not all it could be. One shop which is local to me has provided a service that has been far from shall we say “prompt”.

The shop itself is well stocked with a wide range of yarns in a wide range or prices. Likewise the knitting “gubbins” suit both luxury and budget buyers and there is a good selection of knitting bits and bobs.  When you are in the shop they are very helpful, there if you need them but keep their distance when you browse.

They also provide a mail order service, postage is free I believe over a certain weight. Now because parking is not always cheap or easy in this particular town (and I’m rarely in a position to go there anyway during work hours) I decided to utilise the mail order service. Also something I needed was not in stock but could be ordered. So at the end of June I placed an order.  After 2 weeks I had heard nothing so I emailed them asking if payment had been OK and whether the delay was due to waiting on the out of stock item. Reply? I had none, nothing, absolute silence.

When my bank statement came through and confirmed the payment had gone through I tried to call them.  I tried several times but kept getting the answer machine but couldn’t leave a message as the machine was full. I began to get concerned that they might have gone out of business, but no, my Mum confirmed that they were still trading. I called again. This time I was able to leave a message and asked them to call me about my missing order. That was Friday. If I hear nothing by Thursday then I may email from my work address – with the automatic signature in place. If that doesn’t get results then I will just have to go into the shop and ask for a refund.

Despite being a believer in supporting your local shops, I don’t think I will be using them again!

FO: Steggie

About 2 weeks ago I finally finished Steggie. This has not been a happy knit as I chose the wrong yarn, I also bought too much of it, but that hasn’t been a problem because whereas I’m not happy with it as a jumper as a yarn for felting it is truly fantastic.

When I finally finished I realised that although its fine in the arms and the chest, my boy suffers from the same problem I do, namely a long long back. The jumper just doesn’t fit it, or rather it fits now but won’t do by the time the winter comes…not that this is a problem really as there is very little sun around at the moment.

I will be making this again but probably in red and turn it into a dragon – dragons are almost as popular in this house as dinosaurs.

I haven’t bothered putting a zip in yet. He’s wearing it as just a shrug on at the moment. It will acquire a zip before it gets passed on to someone smaller.Needles: 5.5mm

Yarn Lett Lopi

Pattern: Steggie

New: possibly the raglan sleeves, think I did them about 20 years ago, but didn’t enjoy the experience so not done them since.

Notes for next time: Planning on knitting it all as one piece as much as possible to avoid a lot of the seams. Better choice of yarn. Difficulty tracking down a zip means I might put button holes in the next one.

A stitch marker in time

In the past I have been scornful of stitch markers, “they’re for wimps” not for “serious experienced knitters like me” I would laugh back at the pattern instructions. But I was deluding myself. Serious experienced knitters recognise when a bit of help from a silly little thing like a stitch marker could save them several wasted hours going back and reknitting.

It was easy to delude myself as I wasn’t doing the sort of patterns that you need to keep track of such as cables or lace. Intasia, at least the big chart stuff tends to keep track of itself as all you have to do is count some rows and compare it to the number of stitches in a particular colour on a chart – spotting mistakes is quite easy.

Also instructions that say “place marker” to aid decreasing or increasing usually found me to lazy to go and find a safety pin or whatever and I would just rely on counting.

What has brought a change of heart in me is firstly knitting an occasional cable repeat in a wrap (Lilly Chin reversible wrap) and discovering that Rowan Kidsilk Haze is a pain to frog as the rows stick together. Secondly I’m knitting a lace based jumper for myself and finding it hard to keep track of the stitches. I had been counting from the edge, but the edges have started decreasing for the armholes and I keep forgetting how many stitches I’ve decreased by !

To begin with I’ve been using waste yarn to mark stitches with, its cheap and I don’t have to go on a big search to find it, but the jumper I’m knitting is in black and the fibres from the waste yarn (red) show up significantly where they have shed. So I may have a go at making my own little markers as I have some wire left over from some wire knitting and a few beads and things from other projects.

I will no longer scoff at instructions to use stitch markers, I have learned my lesson…the hard way…

Knitting has been happening

As the title says I have been knitting, rather a lot as it happens but with everything else that’s been happening I haven’t had any chance to photograph it and write about it. Busy weekend too as we have relatives over from Oz and I have a house to tidy again and need to visit the post office if nothing else as its another posting day for the travelling scarf…and I need to send Jam to Neath, South Wales (it’s a hobby !).

Still no sign of the missing yarn – if I get chance I will dig out my bank statement and head into Leamington Spa to the shop that has failed to deliver my order.

NQFO: The minnie mouse skirt

I have, on and off for the past month or so, been making a skirt…or busking a skirt would be a better description as I haven’t followed a pattern just gone on “instinct”…

I popped into a shop in Rugby towards the end of July (I think) to see if they had some wire for wire knitting and found myself drawn towards some bright red (thin) cotton with big white polka dots and I just knew that this material was what I needed to kick me into dragging the sewing machine out from under the bed, threading it and then trying to relearn what I used to know. I also, at that time happened to have been reading Yeah, I made it myself: Ethine Farry

The sensible thing would have been to have searched for a pattern to suit what I could see in my head (Minnie Mouse)  or a pattern that would make up a skirt that would suit the material or even to have used one of the ideas in the book. But no, I decided I could find a way of “building” what I could mentally see, and yes, it has been a process of construction, and demolition everytime I’ve gone wrong, followed by a rebuild in a slightly different way.

Here is a selection of my mistakes

• I managed to cock up my measurements and cut the material to different sizes
• It took 3 attempts to put the zipper in, on the 3rd attempt I realised I had a zipper foot for the machine
• I cut the waistband too small and forgot to overlap for the buttons
• my gathers are uneven

It is badly made and wonky but I am feeling quietly pleased with myself now that I have almost finished it – on sunday I am off round to my mum’s to stand on her coffee table so that she can pin the hem up for me so that its almost even.

I have shown myself that I can do it and with a bit of practice might actually make something I’d dare to wear out. Mum suggests I buy a pattern and try making the same thing several times over – she is probably right, but first I have to find something I like.

In the meantime, I think, that at the age of 38 I may have fallen in love with textiles – not with fashion. Fashion can go hang. Me I think I will be happy if I can make something that doesn’t make me look like a sack tied up with string and is from a fabric that I love.

Anyway I have the bug. Earlier in the week I went back to the same shop in Rugby for a small bit of material to line a bag and came out £11 poorer having got lost in the remnants basket – there was also an incident 3 weeks earlier in Dunelm when I spent £20 on various bits and pieces. I am slowly building up a drawer of material with vague plans as to what they are destined to be…for most of them I will actually try and find a bona fide pattern to fit what I want to try and reduce the chance of cock up, but for some I don’t think the pattern has been invented yet, unfortunately I ran out of light this evening before I could take a photo of my “stash” …my family know what I am planning for one particular piece of cloth and I think they are afraid.

Been a busy week on the knitting front. I hope to put some stuff up later in the week but Husband and I are sharing a laptop as a Spider related accident meant that a cup of milk got spilt all over Husband’s laptop.

I like…

I know this is meant to be a knitting blog but I’m allowed to digress…inspiration has to come from somewhere…

Anyway I was looking for something and as usual found something else, so using the blog to bookmark it so I don’t lose it completley…

This is a cheap skirt if you manage to collect together a load of scrap bits that go together. If I was a bit more awake and savy with the pics function of this blog I would be able to bring the photo into my post – but I’m not, but it is worth checking it out – honest !

Cheap as chips…

Most people I know (girls/women anyway) have a selection of “slobbing around the house clothes”, clothes of a loose fit that are as comfortable as an old slipper that they can just shrug on in the evening or on a Sunday morning when they are not going to see anyone. For most of them it seems to be a pair of jogging bottoms or something similar. As I tend to spend most of my working day in trousers my Sunday morning choice is a long black skirt with an elasticated waist and has been since I was 20 and found the first in a series in a lovely and long since gone shop in Reading called Saffron Moon (yes, it was the sort of shop that sells incense and carved wooden objects). The first one was black Indian cotton with black embroidery which eventually washed to a soft as butter feel and on the grey side of black.

One of the remnants I found last saturday just called out to be transformed into a comfort skirt. The shop it came from is called Mo’s Fabric and Dance and since a lot of its clientele are buying material to make costumes for dancing you will perhaps not be surprised to hear that a lot of the material is sprinkled with sequins.

Back when I had my first house and did things like make my own curtains I ordered a lucky dip of haberdashery bits from a firm called Croft Mill (whose catalogues were a thing of joy – sadly they seem to have stopped doing mail order) EDIT at least I thought they had but on searching for a link they seem to have started again but on a slightly smaller scale. Some of the things in the lucky dip were used a long time ago, but some of them I could never see myself using but for some reason I hung on to despite my clearing out last November of all my bits of material and knitting (I am regretting being so organised now !). Anyway when I saw the brown drapey sequined stuff at Mo’s I just knew that it belonged with the length of 2 inch wide elastic that was lurking upstairs…You need to see the picture below to appreciate the true horror of this elastic and understand why I have never used it before !

The material was £3, the cotton 70p from cardiff market and I would estimate the elastic as probably £1 at that. here is the photo of the material – and I promise I won’t be wearing this out !

FO: Minnie

Finally, with some help from my guru finished my dotty skirt. As soon as I got home I just had to drag my photographer out onto some waste ground(our garden) for some scenic pictures – all the best fashion photography takes place in industrial decay !Pattern: Dirndl, bodged together after reading various websites

Material: red and white polka dots from Mo’s Fabric and Dance

New: Nothing but its been a long time

Time taken: 2 months !

FO: A clutch of handbags

I started knitting again with the intention of trying to move away from the Intarsia/fair isle stuff and to try some new techniques – to try to expand my capabilities. It is with some shame and guilt therefore that I have to confess that I seem to be knitting the same thing over and over again…and in very similar colours.

It’s just I enjoy knitting this pattern and there is a certain childlike fascination with sticking the finished product in the wash and deliberately shrinking it – normally if I did this to something I made I would be shrieking in horror as I removed it from the washing machine instead of the dance of glee and happiness that I actually do!

The first time it was made very deliberately and planned in advance. I followed the instructions pretty much to the letter for Portia at work [here].   The next time was for Mrs Lacer and I played with the colours a bit and the method of construction.

The next 3 were slightly more hurried affairs where I was running out of time for a birthday present. Firstly for Cookie my Goddaughter who informed me just before her birthday that she didn’t like dolls – so I made her this instead.

The last 2 were made during August for some very good friends. H’s was very similar to Mrs Lacer only due to shortage of time I only put a skull on one side of the bag and then knitted a shiny red lining out of the Patons Orient I’d used for Even bear’s scarf.  Lovely Lullabelle received one with a flower and a fabric lining…and actually I think she is more in love with the lining material!

Anyway I think I am all pirate tote-d out now. Time to try something different, something new. I may do some more felting at some point but not to this pattern. I’d also like to stop knitting skulls but that may not happen for awhile as some of the stuff I’ve made recently has been admired and requests have been made!

FO: Fluffy

This one has been sitting waiting to be photographed for awhile but I keep frogging the hat to go with it and trust me this yarn is horrible to unravel.

Fraser bear is sporting a very simple scarf for a 7 year old girl made out of patons whisper. I actually started thinking about Christmas at the start of the summer holidays (as opposed to the start of the Christmas holidays)

Yarn: patons whisper (just over 50g)

Needles: 4mm

Pattern: knit until reach desired size

New: nothing

Tangerine torture and batman

Sometimes we make promises to people and regret them later. I auctioned myself for water aid earlier in the year or rather my services. I promised to knit whatever the winning bidder wanted. Not quite so crazy a promise as you might think as the caveat was that they pay for yarn – yarn is not cheap so I figured that no one would have the money to pay for decent yarn on top of whatever they bid for my services.  I reckoned without someone who had 2 x 10 balls of rowan wool in their loft.

I will tell you more later in the week about what I am actually doing and why it is perhaps not quite so much fun as it could be.

This evening however I am skiving off. I had a lucky find in a charity shop and after 2.5 days of 4ply I welcomed a change. My charity find is also 4 ply but there is a lot of it and the pattern is fun fun fun. But I can’t say much more as its a present for someone who will love the end result despite the fact that the 100% pure rowan wool came from the British Heart Foundation.

Charity shop treasure hunt

Having recently purchased a replacement car for the work commute we are on rather a tight budget now. We are also on holiday in the lake district, an area famed, much like wales for rain (we are getting a lot) and sheep.

But instead of searching out rare and unusual local yarns I am trawling the local charity shops for yarn. There hasn’t been a lot but i have managed to track down a few prize items and avoid the acrylic. So far I have spent £3 total and found (so the scales in the kitchen tell me) 150g Rowan 4ply in black, 25g 2ply god knows what in a wet sky blue colour, 50g aran in white, 50g double knit in red – all of which I am certain are 100% wool.

A thing of beauty

The person who bid and won my services in the Water Aid auction asked if I would knit the cardigan shown on the cover of this 1942 Woman and Home magazine. I’m hoping that the cardigan will turn out ok but the magazine itself is definitely a thing of beauty.

It is full of wonderful adverts such as “Persil Washes Gently ‘someone’s missus takes care of his shirts’” and “Don’t waste heat, keep your oven grease free – Kleenoff cleans cookers”, “How fuel can be saved…use Parazone to whiten your linens and cottons” and “Bairns Wear knitting wools – I heard Mummy saying how difficult it is to get Bairns Wear for knitting out woollies, so we will have to be careful – they’ve got to last a long time”

There are patterns for renervating a winter coat, making a skirt out of an old coat and a baby coat out of an old jacket.

A strange article on the danger of kissing… a pattern for a shopping bag “This Bag will save the wrapping paper – put your shopping in it instead of letting the shop wrap your groceries up in paper” (very topical)  – oh and Menopax for women of middle age “In Grandma’s day women had to put up with many things that today would not be tolerated…”

When I get back home I shall photocopy the cardigan pattern and return it as its far too delicate a magazine to put up with the usual abuse my patterns go through.

The cardigan itself is lovely but not something I would chose to knit as it is 100% rib (k2, p2) which I really disike and done on 3.25 and 2.25mm needles (I rarely use something so thin) – oh and the original yarn is 3ply so I’ve had to put a lot of work into working out how to get the right tension… and I’m having to knit it in stages as of course when you are knitting something to order it becomes much more important to get a correct fit…its getting rid of a lot of my usual lazy habits

Anyway I am now a sleeve and left front to the good and on monday it’s off to Hatfield with a batch of fitting instructions and on its return I suspect there will be a lot of frogging and reknitting…

Torture – but worth it for the joy of fondling this gem of history… I really miss my mum’s Pins and Needles magazines she had about 5 years worth dating from the late 60′s and early 60′s plus another batch from the mid 80′s – I used to spend hours reading my way through them…

FO: Ripley the Elf Boy

I fell in love with Ripley as soon as I saw it over on Ysolda, I knew that I had to knit it at some point between now and Christmas after I’d finished most of what is already on the needles.  I hadn’t anticipated making it so soon but its been very very wet here and we have spent the last 2 days of our holiday inside watching the rain fall on the garden.

Saturday morning I sloped off on my own to Kirby Lonsdale to do another charity shop trawl, but Kirby it would appear is too posh to have charity or secondhand shops so I ended up in the Craft Cottage again (and once again got led astray by a ball of noro ) who supplied me with a no 6mm circular and some aran.

This is a lovely pattern, its very er “architectural” and a joy to knit although the decreasing at the crown takes for ever. The Craft Cottage didn’t have the 6mm dpn recommended but fortunately you only use them for the band which is knitted back and forth (and I have a whole set of needles with me this holiday) and when it gets difficult on the crown – but I used the 4.5mm dpns I had with me for the last 6 rows.

I didn’t swatch as its not as if I could change to another circular needle or use different yarn, on this wet bank holiday weekend in the middle of nowhere I just have to make do with what I’ve got.

It’s for a friend. I hope it will fit. I’ve knitted the medium which appears to be a good fit for Spider who agreed to model for the photo as long as he didn’t have to wear it – “I look like an Elf Mummy, people laugh at people who look like an elf”. (its more purple than the picture shows it).

Still needs a bit of finishing as I don’t have a tapestry needle with me to tidy up the ends…anyway, back to the 4ply I guess…and the cleaning as its “going home time today”

Pattern Ripley (Ysolda Teague)

Yarn: King Cole Aran (pure Merino) in aubergine

Needles: 6mm circ and 4.5mm dpn

New:using a circular needle and the “pleats” used to gather up the back of the hat oh and this is my first Ysolda pattern.

Bad day made good

I have a number of draft post on knitting but not in the mood this evening. It’s been a difficult day and even though I think things have worked out for the best I doubt Spider would understand – but remind me next time, never promise things to children.

We were due to go to Brum today to the Imax to see one of the 3D dinosaur films they have, they do 3. Anyway for some reason I decided to log onto the website and check timing and which one was on, only to discover that it was not the underwater one but the only other one we have seen. Spider was keen to see it again whatever but unsurprisingly in view of how much it costs I was firm in my refusal… cue sulks all day.

But I maintain I was right as not only was there trouble in Birmingham today (no idea which bit) but we had a somewhat cold but good day watching the Vulcan just outside Leicester – which Spider loves, but because he was in a bad mood and tired all day he refused to join the fun – he’s so stubborn that boy (if my Mum is reading this then she is saying “He’s so like his mother at that age”).

But the day has finished well, I am watching Elizabethville which is a lovely feel good movie and wearing my latest skirt, which needs a hem, but its pretty and makes me feel good.

I am liking my sewing machine. It is making me happy, not as happy as knitting needles do, but I am having fun remembering what I’ve done in the past…I’m never going to be good, I’ve started too late in life (have I mentioned that my Mum used to make all my clothes when we were in the south pacific ?) but I love the speed in which you can put something you have designed into practice – sooooo much faster than knitting !

Since the age of 13 as far as I can recall I have made

1 x grey/red cotton dirndl skirt*

1 ball gown*

1 pair of lilac curtains

2 x cushion covers

1 x roman blind

1 x handkerchief point skirt

1 x polka dot skirt (dirndl)

1 x brown “velour” tube skirt

* indicates all the times I have made something using a pattern, what it doesn’t show is the things I have started out making using a pattern and haven’t finished. If I’m using a pattern I never seem to finish it, as it’s “meant” to look in a certain way. If I don’t use a pattern then I keep going working out what I’m meant to do until it looks like its meant to, and I will undo and redo again and again until it does… I follow knitting patterns, I am incapable of following a formal sewing pattern. I will experiment with sewing, but with knitting I follow the rules…

Progress…of a sort

We are trying to rationalise the house, to make it “work”, to make it so that you don’t have to spend 45 minutes trying to find something that you found easily the day before…this has mainly entailed taking the “office” to pieces and moving it’s contents into Teenager’s room for sorting – as usual we ran out of time and have ended up with an empty office and a spare room full of stuff – which wouldn’t have been a problem as Teenager doesn’t often sleep here but unfortunately Spider has popped into our bed at 4am in the morning the last 2 nights and wriggled around so much that Husband left to find somewhere he could have a less disturbed nights sleep only to remember that the spare bed (Teenager’s bed) is covered with the contents of the office.

I have been doing my bit. As well as finding a home for several bags of boys clothes and rather a lot of Duplo I finally managed to find a home for the Purple  Chemo Hat and Ripley finally headed north to it’s new home, a friend who possibly needed a bit of cheering up at the end of August but possibly doesn’t anymore …

I’ve almost finished the Bat Shawl (the black 4ply from the charity shop) – but have had to knit back as I got my right and wrong sides mixed up and didn’t realise it until 4 rows later (a row now consists of about 200 stitches so it’s taken time to correct my cock up).  The Tangerine torture is back from its recipient, the sleeve needs another inch but otherwise is fine, the left front  needs another inch, but will need to be frogged back to the beginning as I agreed with the auction winner that perhaps it needed the same needles all the way up rather than the first 4 inches being a finer rib as recommended in the pattern (ick…).

I’ve also made a start on my 3rd skirt, which is a Clothkit, ordered from them at the beginning of August when they were offering 25% everything bought that weekend – the Rob Ryan Long Skirt that I’d ordered however has turned out to be very popular and I had to wait whilst they reprinted – I was wondering whether it was worth making such a summery lightweight skirt in autumn, but the weather this weekend has been better than most of the rest of the summer.

FO: September Safari

At some point there will be a photo of the skirt that I made at the beginning of September. It has been waiting since then for me to take it round to my Mum’s where I will be begging for help with hemming it, and it has been waiting for me to photograph it – but with the nights starting to get shorter I’m finding it difficult to take a decent pic -may have to break out the SLR and do it properly.

The details

Thread – bought in Cardiff market 95p

Material a sort of velvet jersey with sequins in a lovely chocolate brown colour (£3)

Waist: Elasticated, Leopard print, about 2 inches wide, purchased in a job lot from Croft Mill in 1995 (£1)

This is so cheap, so comfortable and looks fantastic in a weird Bet Lynch sort of way. Very easy to make it involved 1 seam and then sewing the waist to the elastic. Unfortunately I then had the bright idea of trying to neaten things off with bias binding wich I sewed around the seam where the waist joined the elastic, forgetting that if you sew what is basically a ring of non elastic material around the top of a skirt then you won’t be able to get it over your hips because IT DOESN’T STRETCH !!! Boy do I feel stupid or what !!!!

So I had to clip all the way around the circle to make it slightly less inelastic  – still need to tidy it up, but have been waiting to hem it before finishing it off – not stopped me wearing it, and although it was made for slobbing round the house in, it’s actually pretty cool and I may wear it out if Husband ever takes me out to dinner somewhere interesting…. photo to follow shortly.

Hello, my name is currantbun and I am a…

Yarn addict ? No actually. I am being very good. I can honestly say that I have very little in the way of “stash” and the majority of what I do have stored up has all been bought for specific projects, a large number of which are under way (I have 11 things “on the needles” at the moment, some of which only need some small finishing touches). I’ve always been reasonably good in fact. The stash that I gave away last November was mainly remains of balls, odds and ends, leftovers.

No, my problem it would appear is fabric. I seem to be buying it at a faster rate than I can actually use it.

First there was this

Not quite sure how you’d describe this, except that it’s not black…which I guess for me is quite a departure…  But then when I saw it drying after washing before use…I had second thoughts. It’s a bit summery and I’d just spent the afternoon I bought it kicking through leaves in Leamington…so I cut out the Rob Ryan skirt instead…but that is on hold whilst I try and sort out some darts front and back as I am erm, curvy

Then last week whilst walking through John Lewis, thinking about “Talk Like a Pirate Day” I heard something calling out to me and £10 later I had 2 metres (150cm wide) of this

Which will be making a skirt for me and by request from Spider when he saw it (“what are you making me Mummy”) for a “something”.

Cutting out a muslin for the Jolly Roger skirt I realised that my fabric scissors were “shot” (and also that an A line skirt with a drawstring waist is not a good shape for me) so I bought some new ones at Mo’s in Rugby who also managed to relieve me of £9.98 for this drop dead gorgeous Alexander Henry fabric.

I have a sneaking suspicion that I don’t sew, I just collect fabric…

I am bored…

Been finishing things…would prefer to be starting things. I don’t have stash cos I have no self control and I just start things spontaneously and have no staying power to finish things off… anyway I have almost finished the tea cosy I started in february – it would have been finished a long time ago if I had some wadding on hand.

If I can find my teeny tiny buttons I would finish off the booties – which I no longer have anyone to give to as the recipient is now close to about 9 months old.  The bat shawl I finally finished last night but have to knit the cast off row off and do it less tight so that it will block properly.

I have wire earings to finish off but don’t have the parts yet – I have a half made skirt which I am too scared to finish as I need to put darts in…I have just bought a pattern to do a hoodie for Spider with the skull and crossbones material, only its far too difficult – I showed Mum and she just said “yes, Burda patterns are quite difficult to follow”. I have plans to use the rest of it on a drawstring A line skirt but the muslin version I did looked foul so I need to find a new pattern…

I have a jumper to finish off (for me) I have a scarf (Lily Chin reversible cable, so soft so lovely t) to finish off.

I need to get some organisation in life and start finishing things

But most of all I need to tidy the house, because I can’t think with all this junk lying around…

Apologies, am on the edge of a meltdown because I haven’t done anything housework related for awhile and the house is really looking a mess…I think I need to get rid of my family for a bit so I can clear the decks.

I’m not really bored, I’ve just got far too many things on work related, house related, craft, everything really that I don’t know where to start

Dead Cat

There are cat body parts all over my dining room table. Before you call the RSPCA I should point out that they belong to the teacosy I have been not finishing since Christmas. I went to Mo’s fabric in Rugby again and to stop me buying any more fabric (I could sooo buy the whole shop) I bought lots of bits to finish off all the things I’ve been not finishing off because I hate finishing things…I love starting things. Starting things leaves you feeling full of optimism, finishing things makes me feel miserable because all that “new promise” suddenly seems badly misplaced.

Anyway the cat isn’t bad…he’s got a kind of mischievous grin to him due to wonky embroidery on the face. I haven’t yet finished him though as I got bored and went and made carbonnara and muffins at the same time, which sounds a bit super mum with all that multi tasking but truthfully I think the muffins may be truly awful…testing on Spider tomorrow. Posting on Appetite after as I’ve been maxing out on bananas…but still have my “plum” and “damson” posts to finish off.

A husband’s worst nightmare ?

I married Husband because he is honest, sometimes gut wrenchingly so, but I wouldn’t have it any other way, I prefer people to be honest with me. If I ask for someone’s opinion I genuinely want it, I don’t want them to tell me what they think I want to hear.

So you will sympathise with Husband when I tell you that we don’t have a mirror in this house. I mean we do have some mirrors, head and shoulders only, most of which are still waiting to be attached to walls, (see use of mirror below perched on toilet seat in order to take photograph)  but we don’t have a full length mirror. So what do I do if I want to know how something looks ? Yep, I ask Husband.

This is quiet cruel of me. His natural instinct is to tell the truth, but his sense of self preservation makes him wary of saying something that might mean he gets the silent treatment for a week. I try to be gentle on him, I never ask “does my bum look big in this ?” as it’s a given in this house. I am well endowed in the posterior department. I try for clothes that minimize the impact and ask questions like “does this flatter my shape”  or  “is this slimming” or “smaller ?”.

So please, empathise with the poor guy on the occasion his wife asked “how do I look ?” modelling something she had just run up on the sewing machine.

I recently purchase “Sew What ! Skirts” a book that advocates making your own patterns for some basic types of skirts based on your own vital statistics. The first pattern they suggest is an A line skirt with a drawstring waist which “to make it easier we have removed the darts”. Hmmmm, I have recently discovered that someone who is well endowed in the rear (and since childbirth) tummy department really, really needs to include darts in their clothes if they want them to fit.

So, not wanting to risk my specially purchased fabric and a bit nervous about my pattern making skills I made a “muslin” which is a dressmaking term apparently for a sample or test piece ( I also wanted to make sure that this skirt didn’t make me look like a sack tied in the middle with string, which most things do). So I sacrificed an old sheet (24 years old).

After following the instructions to the letter, plus a couple of hours messing around with scrap material as I learnt how the buttonhole feature of my sewing machine worked I had a finished article, which quite frankly looked like a bottomless drawstring bag ! Time to try it on and check it out in the mirror…ah…oh Husband !

Now, what is the poor guy to say about this ?

He stood there for a good minute or so, struggling with words to try and say what he thought but in words that made it sound not quite so bad.

It is truly hideous. It emphasises the bulges nicely. But I have learned an important lessons (other than include darts in everything). Because the material has to go along over the “shelf” of bottom and tummy I need to add an extra inch or so to get the length I need – I hate skirts that finish above the knee !

Husband is inclined to think that it might not be quite so bad if I used a heavy cloth as it might “drag” the hem down a bit. I also think I maybe don’t cut it quite so generously and make it a bit more “fitted”… alternatively a much more fitted pattern is required…oh and possibly a dark material, something in black perhaps…

FO: Snowflake the teacosie cat

Pattern: From a Sirdar booklet on makes for bazaars

Yarn: Sirdar Snowflake Snuggly chunky

Needles: 4mm I think

New:Never used this yarn before, probably never will again. It’s really horrible to knit with and if you drop a stitch you are sunk ! On the plus side it will probably make a nice beard for a santa Claus, the white will anyway and I’m already on a promise to Spider to make that.

Not that I will be making him anything for a long time as whilst I was having a short nap this afternoon (no energy due to the cold virus) the little Herbert took my dressmaking scissors and tried them out on a mini tape measure shaped like a ladybird that someone on Ravelry had sent me as a present in the last stages of the travelling scarf.

Feeling smug with myself this afternoon, not only do I have a clean house (smelling fainly of bleach) but I have finally finished something from the WIP pile.

Oops

I made a start on the Shipwrecked shawl from Spring 2009 Knitty. Displacement knitting as there were other things I should be getting on with like the tangerine wateraid cardigan for Julia.

Anyway I was motoring through it as it’s quite a fast and addictive knit when suddenly, on row 23 of the Madeira section of the shawl I realised I’d missed out row 19 which unfortunately is quite a striking part of the pattern (you do a yo k2 together all the way round which gives you a circle of small holes all the way round).

To make things worse I was in a hurry, about to go to a party with Spider so I pulled the needle out and decided to unravelled it that way instead of carefully knitting back 5 or so rows. Being a bit too enthusiastic I dropped rather a lot of stitches, made a right dogs breakfast of it and couldn’t find my place again.

Due to impatience I’ve ended up having to go back to row 1 of the pattern and wasted about 4 days in the process (2 days work, 2 days sorting out). So deciding that it was probably retribution from the knitting gods I’ve dug out the tangerine nightmare and have spent the evening trying to knock that into some shape to appease the gods.

I do have some finished knitting to write about but I need some good light to take a picture – and besides it’s more topical towards the end of the week.

Yay

My husband “ordered” me to go to John Lewis. But more of that later.

Yesterday I joined the library or rather I  joined another library. I am already a fully paid up and enthusiastic member of Warwickshire library I just don’t get to use it very often due to my commuting. So when the libraries announced that they were going to band together so that you could use one authorities card in other libraries I was straight down to Reading Central the first opportunity I got to find out whether they were a partner in this scheme.

The answer was “no” not yet. Not been implemented yet. But they were able to offer me a non resident membership instead (which they couldn’t last time I tried to join back in 2002) and if I go back with documentation proving both name and address I get to take out 20 books instead of 2…

I took out In Stitches:Amy Butler in the hope it might inspire me for Christmas. Having persuaded everyone I know to join me in a handmade Christmas I suddenly realised that there is no-way I can knit for everyone and I can’t rely on food gifts either as that will be a lot of last minute work due to “shelf life” of cooked presents, I need to expand my handmade repertoire.

The problem is that my sewing experience is “limited” and you only get better by “doing” and at the moment I am stalled on a clothkits skirt that needs darts…I may be taking it round to Mum at the weekend for a tutorial. (I also have Sew:Cath Kidston on reserve)

What I can do however is make curtains…which brings me back to John Lewis and my mad husband.

My husband called just after lunch yesterday and asked me to go to John Lewis to buy some bulbs. Having spent the last year cursing the electrician for doing a duff job on fitting the kitchen spotlights (half of them don’t work and you can never predict which ones will come on) Husband came to the conclusion that it might not be the fittings but the bulbs and searching the internet found that the cheapest ones were at John Lewis who have branches on Reading and High Wycombe and “can you stop off at one of these and buy 8 please”

So there I was let loose in John Lewis in High Wycombe at 6.30pm yesterday – fortunately for our bank balance they have a limited haberdashery there (and no wool) as its aimed more at soft furnishings and interiors – so I contented myself with a good nose around and buying a yard stick and a playmobil tomb robber.

Spotted some fabulous dinosaur curtain material at £6.90 per metre but fortunately didn’t have the window dimensions for Spider’s room with me. Unfortunately the bulb was the wrong size and I had to take it back after work…and this time I did know how much material I need to buy.

Unproductive scuppered mojo

I have not been having a very good month. Apart from one item, which if you are very good I will show you  tomorrow (actually good doesn’t come into it, all I need is decent light for a photograph), everything I have touched this month has gone wrong.

First there was the skirts or rather lack of them. I am trying to produce at least one skirt a month (skirts are relatively easy and I might actually wear a home made one). I started well, although Minnie Mouse actually took two months to do and then the leopard print elastic one was done at the beginning of september. I then started the clothkits skirt, took fright when I cut it out a bit small and then had to put darts in, so that went on hold whilst I attempted  a drawstring A line which looked like a bag – so here am I with only 2 days of October left.

I’ve been making a long cable scarf for a friend in NZ, that’s on the back burner as I had to knit back after spotting one of my cables had gone the wrong way – and remembered that its summer in NZ at the moment so it would make a pretty pointless christmas present. On the shipwreck scarf I’m still unravelling it following missing out a row.

And then there’s this scarf I’m knitting out of alpaca which I’ve had to unravel about 5 times as it just wasn’t looking right…It was only last night that I realised its cos I’d copied the pattern down wrong…

Oh and its my Dad’s birthday shortly. Having messed up his present I thought of an alternative, bought a few extra things needed to make it, and then chickened out of making it due to shortness of time and lack of confidence. So I am now back making the original idea which fortunately is going pretty well now, and being knitted means that I can take it with me tomorrow when I’m out and about hunting dinosaurs with Spider and his cousins.

Then in the evening tomorrow I might have a moment to carve a jack o lantern (ok I’ll admit it I’m scared of shar knives) and maybe make a very very quick skirt for a party – thank god I did manage to make a cake this evening and not mess it up.

I know what the problem is here – I’m trying to do everything at once and doing it badly. I have however already analysed the issue and have a rescue plan in place, on saturday early before cooking a birthday dinner over at my parents I am picking up an old computer table which is going to become my “work table”, a pin board and a notebook – it probably won’t work but for the moment dreaming that I may one day become organised, is making me happy…as is knitting with alpaca…

FO: Wa na na na na na na na

It’s official. Im a klutz. I should be ordered to stay away from all craft making stuff and drummed out of the make and do club.

I had not thought I could get anything else wrong. But no, I had not the sense to steer clear from the sewing machine despite the fact I was obviously suffering from bad sewing karma. Having issued myself a challenge to sew a skirt a month, my heck I was going to meet that challenge, despite having had a very tiring day yesterday with my SiL, my nice and nephew and Spider…and on getting home another traumatic hour treating Spider for nits (Husband has shaved his own hair off as his way of dealing with the problem.

I planned to do a very silly Halloween handkerchief skirt (Sew What Skirts) which I figured I could whip up in 2 hours flat…everything that could go wrong did go wrong

Things I have learnt:  If you are going to cut a hole in the centre of a square of material, make sure you have measured your hips correctly…the positives from this situation is that at least my hips are not actually the 48 inches I thought they were yesterday, oh and Spider has  scored a cape for next year if he wants to dress up…

Fortunately some things have gone right this month, chief amongst them being this christmas present knitted for a friend who doesn’t read Being Frank (but does read Appetite) so I can tell you that the yarn is pure wool and cost £1.50 for 400g from a charity shop

Pattern: Wa na na na Bat Shawl

Needles: 3.35mm (you need to use a circular as there are a lot of stitches)

Yarn: 4ply Rowan, pure wool, black (claims the label) probably vintage

New: lace knitting from a chart

I am very pleased with this… and would quite like one myself in the new year probably and maybe not even in black. Quite a few people who have knitted this have added an extra row of bats at the top and I would have gone down this route too if I hadn’t run out of wool. I had to cast off in black acrylic as I ran out just after the last pattern row. I don’t think you can tell and besides it gives the cast off a nice stretchy feel.

FO: Blue Eyed Boy

In the town my Dad was born in they describe someone as having “blue and white eyeballs” if they are a supporter, a true supporter of the local football team. And believe me, my Dad has blue and white eyeballs…he also has blue eyes…and possibly a tiny red rose in his heart (!).

Its his birthday round about this time of year, and really the only present he wants is for his favourite football team to actually win every game for the rest of the season – something that is not in my gift. So instead I gave him a scarf which as he pointed out is not quite the right shade of blue, but it is as soft as butter, made of alpaca and will be deeply comforting when his team are as usual come the end of season, flirting with the relegation zone !

The yarn I originally bought for me when spending my birthday money in Iknit earlier in the year, but I can’t honestly think what to do with it. I had 3 skeins. This took two so maybe in January I make myself a Ripley with the remaining ball…although I think the colour will be better on Dad, I don’t wear a lot of blue – lets face it I don’t wear a lot of anything except black. Maybe that should be my new year resolution, introduce more colour into my life.

The details are

Needles: 5.5mm (tension not important)

Yarn: Artesano Aran (alpaca and wool 50:50)

Pattern: Palindrome

New: I have never spent so much money per square inch of knitted product before – this was not a cheap scarf ! Oh and never cabled so much before and for so long…

Reduce, reuse, recycle…refashion

I had a child free evening. It was parent’s evening at the school and  my lovely Mum invited Spider to have a sleep over (Spider is doing fine, thank you for asking). We tried to be romantic, but it’s a bit difficult when you know that dinner is actually leftovers…

After we’d stopped being romantic I remembered I had plans…

As mentioned in recent posts attempts at doing something else other than knitting were not going to well so before risking my lovingly chosen material on something that in all probability I would mess up, I have been experimenting with reclaimed fabric. In this instance its a blue canvas material which in a previous life was a bathroom blind…and apart from the fact its faded at one end is exactly the same as the material I’d just bought.

So I’ve washed the blind and ironed it and cut out all the pieces I need to make a bag from Bags, Bags, Bags : Dorothy Wood making up will have to wait though as I can’t find grosgrain ribbon anywhere in Leamington Spa – besides I wanted to get back to being romantic with my Husband, it’s not often we get an evening together alone !

Hopefully I will finish it tomorrow…I haven’t messed up yet, but there is still time…

FO: Little Green Bag

I pulled out of the family trip to hunt for Lewis Hamilton at Brooklands today pleading tiredness. And it is true I am so tired by the weekend that I could happily sleep for 48 hours – it’s the commuting that takes it out of me.  I managed about half and hour before I felt compelled to get up and do the ironing…there’s 2 weeks worth…

I finished just in time for silence at 11am so decided I had earned the right to 30 minutes sewing, trying to finish off my roller blind bag and here it is

It is very much a learning experience bag. If I do any more I will remember to

• line the ribbons up at the seam edge so that they meet, before I sew the side seam and the bottom seam
• only attach the top ribbon with one line of stitching so that the top line of stitching on the ribbon is the row of stitches that attached the lining to the rest of the bag (otherwise you get 2 lines of stitching next to each other
• be more careful when cutting out to ensure that the panels are the right length
• read the instructions more carefully
• Take more care and time over things

The bag as I mentioned before is made out of an old roller blind. The interfacing is some I had left over from a previous project. The 2 ribbons and the handles were new but the cheapest that I could find on line, having failed to source the right handles or grosgrain ribbon of the right dimensions in either Reading, Leamington Spa or Rugby.

You can’t quite tell from the picture but there is a row of 4 pockets on the outside of the bag.

I am feeling quite pleased with myself…not sure if I’m going to do it again as a christmas present though, trying to attach the base of the bag was a real pain.

Right gotta go, the downstairs of the house needs cleaning and the family will be back in 4 hours…

Not a good day…

I tend to say things on this blog that I don’t on Appetite because not many people stop by here who aren’t friends or family. Anyway, I have had a not very good day in Milton Keynes with the males in the family…Teenager has been stropping because his Dad decided we weren’t going to buy a Wii and then decided that no, an Ipod Touch was not happening either…had Teenager’s interest in such a thing been mainly music then it might have been a possibility, but no, he clearly only wants it to play games…so it’s not happening.

To a certain extent also he is suffering from the fact that shortly after buying his older brother an MP3 play in 2004 (Hong Kong, our honeymoon, not cheap) he managed to let it go through the washing machine – also the Teenager has managed to break rather a lot of phones and my canon dig camera 300D.

Spider was also playing up as he is already wound up about christmas… the next 40 days or so is not going to be pleasant as he keeps saying “I want” and I keep saying “no”

But the worst thing it that the sodding nits are back…only I must be doing something right as a mother as it’s not Spider that has them this time it’s me and possibly Husband…I am not happy.

Oh, and I wanted to do a bit of cross stitch this evening but have misplaced my hoop – what I want to play around with requires a smaller hoop anyway so I may be spending money in John Lewis in Reading tomorrow, JL in Milton Keynes didn’t sell them at all !

Off to bed in a grump – also managed to mess up my evening G&T

*This post just hilights how consumerist things are, and I am sad that the present side of things has been discovered by Spider so far in advance of what christmas is meant to be about which is celebrating being with family (and God if you beleive, but then winter solstice was celebrated by the pagans before that…)

Busy Busy Busy

I have had quite a productive weekend but I can’t post anything here at the moment because some of it is Christmas stuff but the main reason is that the camera has a flat battery and I have misplaced the charger (so what’s new).

I have tried to be good and introduce a bit of self discipline. Despite having a lot to do in just over a month now I am trying not to start anything new and finish what is currently on the go on the grounds that I’d rather have 10 finished presents than 30 in various states of unfinishedness.

I also had a day off from the family. After last weeks horrible trip to Milton Keynes I decided I wanted a bit of “girl time”, I wanted to spend time in a testosterone free zone – so I took my Mum to a craft fair down the road in the Warwickshire Exhibition Centre… we spent money…we ate bacon butties…we left the boys and the men to find their own entertainment.

My day off

Normally when I have an unexpected day of freedom I end up tidying the house, because sad to report it does make me happy to have some sort of order in my life.  Last monday was to be different. OK I did anticipate perhaps a bit of tidying as this was the state of my “work table”Not good. All down to trying to do too much at once due to a sense of panic that I am not going to get everything done by Christmas – so time to take stock, organise, prioritise and do some of the stuff that cannot be done at work or travelling by train.

So I took a day off on monday to tidy a small corner of the house and to start finishing things off and planning christmas, from scratch this year as I’ve lost my “5currantbun’s Handy Christmas Planning” book (mainly the christmas card list), except I didn’t do any of this.

Instead I sat on the sofa with a poorly boy who didn’t want to do anything much except cuddle and watch some DVD’s. It was a highly enjoyable day as Spider is very good company, even when he’s ill, probably more so when he’s ill as he has more of a tendency to do as he’s told then, so I get less cross…I also did a lot of knitting, unfortunately not Christmas knitting, as I’d just remembered that it was Flapjack Queen’s birthday…immenently !

Anyway, kind Husband took pity on me on Saturday and took the boys Christmas shopping to Leicester and left me with orders to “do what you want to do”  and no, that was not the cleaning (I have that to do now when I finish wasting time on the net). So I have a tidy desk, I’ve finished a few things, planned a few things, have a new card list and the first batch of cards in the post.

More importantly I am feeling, calm, serene and dare I say it, a bit more organised…I am also feeling poorly due to cuddling on sofa for 12 hours with a boy with a runny nose.

FO: Christmas Decoration Scarf

I am actually quite proud of this. Inspiration for this came from someone elses scarf which is actually lots and lots of different pompoms joined together. This gave me the idea of using up lots of bits of wool and creating a paperchain. Of course when you float around the net you discover that its already been done so I did end up following a pattern.  But the combination of colours is my choice, partly dictated by what I had in my (small) stash and partly by the chocolate brown coat of Flapjack Queen.

Pattern: From someone elses blog will add the link later I’m feeling lazy

Needles: 4 mm

Yarn:  Leftover Toft Farm Alpaca DK (brown),  1 ball of red 100% wool, DK from charity shop, orange leftover acrylic DK and 1 ball of 4ply golden yellow Rowan wool bought specially for the scarf as it seemed too short and the yellow went well.

New: nothing, but it did remind me how much I really really hate sewing things up. If you hat making up too then this really isn’t the project for you.

I was lucky enough to be there the first time she wore it (not surprising since I’d just given it to her) as we walked to do the school pickup and was so pleased by how much she liked it and the compliments she got on it…a cynic would say that perhaps that’s why I gave it to her on the way to collect the children, but honest it was the first chance all week I’d had to give her the scarf as I’d only finished it the night before !

FO: Tri Peaks Challenge Hat

A long time ago, when Husband and I were younger and before Spider, we used to climb mountains together. Some of our friends still do (last one I climbed totally was Tryfen at 3 months pregnant, have managed half of a mountain on 2 occasions since, one of which we had to abandon as we went massively off route and climbed the wrong mountain…).

This hat is for the wonderful Hairy Scarey Uncle Andy, who has spent the last few years getting his mountain leader qualifications as he’d rather be up mountains for a job.  I’m toying with the slightly silly idea of attaching flags to each peak and a small roped up climber….but then again perhaps not !

The important stuff

Pattern: one of the fabulous  Woolly Wormhead’s free patterns

Yarn: Patons Inca (from Jackson’s 3 balls in the sale)

Needle: 5mm circ

New: crochet bind off which creates the peaks and the seams

Earning my spurs

Today I became a fully paid up member of the court of make and do, all hail prit stick, bacofoil and sticky back plastic.

The letter said “Your child Spider has been allocated the role of an angel in the school’s upcoming Christmas performance. Please ensure that they have a costume available at school no later than 9th December”. My first thought was “wow, that’s a major bit of miscasting”, my second thought was “what the heck does a boy angel wear”.

Tonight I set to, in true Blue Peter fashion. OK so Mum had already done the difficult part, she’s cut holes in a pillowcase and hemmed the edges to stop it fraying and then cut 2 wings out of some white semi polystyrene flexible packaging membrane and then sent it home with Spider with instructions to us to “stiffen the wings somehow”.

The unstiff wings sat there on the table for over a week waiting for someone to give them a bit of body, and tonight with less than 12 hours to go I finally tackled them…except I took a detour first, being as I am the queen of procrastination, and fashioned a halo out of white card and baco foil, but then when I could avoid it no longer I turned my mind to how to stiffen the wings and the solution came by accident when looking in the wrapping paper drawer for the sellotape. You see out house is, to put it mildly, still a little bit disorganised, so I was not at all surprised to find in with the wrapping paper some garden wire, used for tying up plants and attaching to walls for plants to climb up.

So I have created a wire framework and stuck it in between the 4 membrane wings and then stuck the whole lot together with sellotape and very tacky glue, which claims to dry clear, if not Spider is going to look like a butterfly with lots of swirls and dots on his wings.

The real difficult bit has yet to come. Now we have to attach the wings to the pillowcase. Fortunately Husband used to be married to someone who was no stranger to sticky back plastic etc and he brought to the marriage a whole host of strange things that she left behind, including some sticky backed velcro strips…but I might leave that for Mum to attach as Spider has long since gone to bed and I can’t work out where to stick the strips…

oops !

Last night Spider burbled something about broken wings. Made enquiries this morning, yes the velcro on the wings had come undone and yes it would be really great if I could take them home with me and mend them over the weekend in time for Monday’s performance.

I was not prepared for quite the scene of devastation that met my eyes when I collected my boy from his grandma. As a result of the wings no longer being attached to the costume the wire had popped out and torn the membrane…or it may have been caused by them just being stuffed back into the bag they came from. Whatever the cause the wings are a right off. Also the halo is all broken, twisted and bent and the baco foil is coming off

So starting from scratch this time and going for something stronger, thicker card for the wings and halo covered with lashings of baco foil. Mum has been a star and unearthed some more velcro, some fresher velcro which might actually stay attached to the wings/costume.

Anyway, looking forward to Tuesday and seeing my boy take his place with the rest of the host.

FO: The man who has everything

Someone I have known almost forever has a special birthday coming up. Of course for special birthdays you want special presents, usually this involves several of you joining together… in case this has involved writing a cheque and leaving it to him to put the money towards something he really wants.

However, I don’t feel right about giving someone a cheque for their birthday, it is immensely practical but it does seem a bit impersonal so I have made a “case” for the cheque to go in…it may of course be a good idea for his wife to pre warn him that it may not be a good idea to open it in front of his children unless he fancies explaining what its purpose is.

Also I should point out that it is not meant for wearing. I’ve used Noro Kureyon as it was the only suitable yarn I had at the time, but this is not exactly a soft and gentle yarn and the item in question is designed for a very delicate part of the anatomy !

Pattern: Seamless Willie Warmer

Needles: 4.4mm dpn

Yarn: Noro Kureyon

New: oh, c’mon, need you ask ? Do you really think I make a habit of knitting such things !

In case you are wondering I am intending on sticking the cheque inside the, er “spout”…no matter what size I knitted it I bet he’d claim it was too small, because all males would !

Getting it wrong

Had a lovely day in Birmingham today with my Mum, a gentle day with very little buying in fact. We went in the hope of a german christmas experience (my parents spent their first years of marriage over there) but mainly got crowds and the smell of food frying…we still managed to have a good day.

I came home worn out though and collapsed into a warm bath with an early christmas present from Mum of a Lush bath bomb and found myself crawling into bed at 5.30pm where I lay comatose until the boys got back an hour later.

After being revived with tea and pizza I tried to crack on with the remaining presents that still need finishing and ended up making a real botch of my brother’s present, so much so I’m going to have to start again. It’s a very very small thing but has a very complicated pattern. Anyway decided to switch crafts and finally make a start on something for Husband but that went wrong too…am so glad that I didn’t attempt any of the cooking !

In fact you may have noticed Appetite has been very quiet of late – partly because I’ve had a cold, partly because food presents have to be left until closer to Christmas but mainly because I am afraid of what I have to do, or have told myself I have to do….but that is for another day, probably after Christmas when the gifts have been given !

Feeling Despondent

So here we are, 5 days until Christmas and to be honest I’m not doing too well. I’ve sent some knitted pieces of silliness off to various nice people that I’ve never actually met but as far as gifts to my nearest and dearest are concerned I am not only behind schedule but I’m getting it wrong… very wrong.

Most of my sister in law’s present is OK but foolishly I tried a bit of sewing which took 4 times longer than it should have done and quite frankly it is not very good. Was meant to be delivering the presents tomorrow but I might leave it until next week and see if my sewing “Guru” (aka Mum) can help me sort it out…I also can’t get my neice’s scarf to uncurl so that I can sew it up, will have to block it properly and that’s going to take time to dry.

My other sister in law’s shawl has hit a big snag and Husbands present is currently a ball of wool

So instead here are some bad photos of things that did actually work…

Husband, looking over my shoulder has just poked me on the arm and told me to cheer up, it doesn’t matter, and by the way James May is on telly…

FO: Colour in Winter

This scarf has a special meaning. It is made with Noro and what was meant to be italian wool for a friend of Spider’s who is half italian half Japanese.  I have seen some very nice Noro striped scarves which get some interesting effects by using 2 different colours of Noro in alternative stripes .

Pattern: Noro Striped Scarf (Jared Flood)

Yarn: Mainly Noro Kureyon

Needles: 5mm

New: Nothing, sticking to stuff I know mainly at the moment

Why Homemade ?

You may wonder why I decided to do a homemade christmas when I have done nothing but bellyache about it for the last few months. Well it was actually fun. A lot of it did go right and turn out surprisingly well, I just haven’t been able to write about it until now as it would spoil the surprise, and some will have to wait until Wednesday after the last batch gets delivered.  The problem, the big problem was I didn’t decide to do it until November and then was basically fighting the clock the whole way and making mistakes as I was rushed.

So, the main reason for handmade/homemade was that we are still broke. It’s better than last year, the debt has been halved we now owe about £10k on cards and the rest of the bank loan – we didn’t like living on credit but there is not a lot you can do when rebuilding your house goes over budget and your husband is made redundant (for 15 months)…next christmas we are having a “we beat the credit crunch” party as we will finally be solvent.

So handmade it was for finance reasons but also I feel things have gone too consumerist. We buy presents for people because we feel we must spend on them. I don’t want that. Husband and his brother have a nice habit of not buying presents for each other every year, presents are only given if the perfect thing is spotted for the other, something that may not be expensive but is right (for example an old Hednesford Hills Mineral water bottle for the one who lives in Cannock). So it was handmade christmas. The most precious thing I have is my time and I have spent it on my loved ones…whether they wanted me to or not !

So this year we are broke. Next year Husband and I will exchange presents. This year he got a box of teabags and this…

He looked at it for a moment. He looked hard. He looked harder and said “it’s a Dudley Bug”…it is meant to be a Trilobite, a type of fossil (for my fossil !) because my husband is a frustrated geologist at heart…and bless him he did wear it out on Christmas day.

I overbought on the yarn, so Christmas eve I cast on Coronet for my brother in law and tried to finish it Christmas Day…but Boxing Day found me knitting furiously with Husband sitting in the car revving the engine.  I finished it on the way to Staffordshire…It was only when Brother in law tried it on and turned the brim up that I realised I knitted it inside out so I snatched it back, unravelled it back to the cabled brim and whilst they went for a walk before dinner I knitted it back the right way.

I don’t know if Brother in law liked it but his better half tried it on and her smile brightened when I said. Shall I make one for you ?…now that made me feel so so happy

Planning…

Yesterday I did some tidying. An attempt to start the new year in a better organised state than last year. The main thing I tidied up was my WIP’s basket, mainly so it would fit under the bed…although I have been too tired today to think about new year (much as I love the idea of new starts and drawing a line under the old year), I did get some time during December to think about my knitting.

My main aim this year is to have more self control and to finish what I have already started. Prime candidate for this is therefore the orange cardigan that I have  been paid to knit (money to Water Aid) its been on hold for the last month as I am experiencing some problems with the eveness of the stitches.

The second plan is to get more colour into my life. My wardrobe is mainly black. The only time it’s not black is when it’s grey… but that is going to take time to sort out as not only do I have a black sweater to finish and a grey(ish) wrap but just before Christmas I splashed out on a ball of Alpaca to make a hat…and yes, it’s black.

The third aim is the same as last year, to keep trying new things…if nothing else I want to manage a pair of socks before next December.

Nothing but Wips

The house is in chaos, it’s deliberate. As I mentioned before we are trying to get some organisation into our lives this year except in order to do so we have to take bits of the house to pieces…it’s a brief period of pain but so much better when you get through it…a bit like having a tooth removed I guess.

I’m taking the same approach to my works in progress before they turn into longterm UFO’s (unfinished objects). You see most of these things hiding in the basket under my bed just need a bit of tweaking, a bit of finishing off and its the knitting I enjoy, I have no enthusiasm for finishing off.

I have turned it into a game. The rules are that I cannot start anything new unless I finish 2 WIP’s off but it can’t be any random 2 objects it has to be 2 WIPs that form part of a pair.  I have about 10 outstanding things and they quite nicely divide up into 5 big things and 5 little fripperies.  I have allocated each pair a day for being worked on and weekends are “free” in that I either work on whatever one of the 5 sets that I feel enthusiastic about or I tackle some sewing.

Monday was Julia’s sweater. This has stalled because my stitches are uneven and wobbly so I decided to so some experiments with different needles and also tried washing and blocking a sample piece

picture to follow

The good news is that it sorted out the uneven stitching the bad news is that the sweater is not meant to have its ribbed ridges pulled flat…

I also spent some time searching for some buttons for a pair of bootees I knitted last February – guess I need to find a new recipient for them as the planned owner is now a year old !

Tuesday: Experimented with shadow knitting. Making an illusion scarf for a friend’s birthday. This included a cold 30 minutes in the car waiting for Husband to finish work (my fear of icy roads meant we car shared that day). In the evening I tackled the Bear (left over from 2008, originally started in 2005 by Mum) who is finished but all his clothes need sewing up. ..took me an hour to iron all the bits flat.

Wednesday A day at home working but kept getting kicked out of the works website (so many people on it today working remotely) in the intervals whilst waiting to log back in I took the opportunity to unravel my sister in laws shawl. I should point out that was not my original intention. I had planned to try and work out why I kept messing up the pattern but I realised whilst reading the pattern that I actually needed another 3 balls not the 1 ball I thought I needed and besides, none of the online shops seem to stock that shade – oh and it turns out her favourite colour is blue. The frippery for today is a wire rose – couldn’t do anything with that as it needs some leaves and I have no green wire.

Tomorrow is allocated to a cabled scarf (in the shape of DNA) and a pair of earrings – which need me to purchase the fittings and some beads (icy roads predicted, so perhaps not). Friday is a cotton hoodie for Spider, guess I should measure him first, if he’s grown too much I may have to frog that right back too – I stalled on that after undoing a sleeve which I thought I’d got the colour order wrong on, only to discover after I’d done it that I’d been holding it upside down. The hoodie’s partner is a doll from the Knitted Icon’s book, not sure what its going to become, maybe Marilyn Monroe, maybe Abraham Lincoln.

In addition to the above I have a sweater and a shawl for me which also need some work…completing them though is part of the reward for finishing some of the other stuff

In case you are wondering, I am intending to put some of my attempts at homemade presents up on here but unfortunately I forgot to take photographs of most of them so I’m waiting for people to send me some photographs to share with you.

Bored already

I have discovered the definition of tedious. It’s making a DNA cabled scarf out of 4ply. I’d say I have about 60cm made so far and at least another 140cm needed. Today I worked out where I’d got to in the pattern (row 21 of either the 3rd or 4th repeat) I am now on row 26.

Admittedly I haven’t done much of it today despite having taken a day off (school was closed and yesterdays working from home didn’t work too well due to system problems) but really I don’t want to ! Julia’s jumper may be quite repetitive but at least you can get on and knit, this scarf is just tedious AND you have to concentrate.

Todays “frippery” is a pair of earrings and I can’t do anything about that until I can get to some shops as I need the “findings” and some beads.

Oh well at least I’ve worked out where I’d stopped and what I have to do next…bored though.

Progress…kind of…

The weather has meant lots of time for knitting and less time spent travelling. Have made real inroads into those WIPs…I have also shared in one boys single handed aim to rewrite history so that the romans (playmobil only) were the “goodest guys in history”…

Anyway, of the big items I have managed to get myself out of a rut on all of them, admittedly have frogged one of them (with intentions to redo with a better yarn) and have fallen back in love with Spider’s hoodie so much so that if it wasn’t for the game I suspect I’d be concentrating on this one and the others would fall by the wayside…it’s yummy, or as yummy as something made from cotton can be !

The game has forced me to sew up lots of small things. The booties now just wait for a small loop of elastic and the icon doll has become a pile of body parts rather than small curled bits of knitting. The biggest improvement has been in the “Gentleman Bear”. He went from being a bare bear to being “granddad Bear” as you can see from the picture below the waistcoat, slightly too small trousers and rumpled, tie-less shirt makes him look as if he wouldn’t be out of place leaning on a spade in an allotment and sucking on a pipe. definitely a granddad in the Clive Dunn style

Since this morning I’ve attached braces and given him a bowtie – Husband says he now looks “slightly dangerous” in that “Man about town/on the pull” sort of way…just wait til I finish his jacket with his snazzy yellow handkerchief !

I hope to spend most of this week playing the game and hopefully finishing some of the pairs. In the meantime I finally have some Finished stuff to blog about as some of my friends and relatives have been sending me photographs.

FO: Through the Keyhole and not so square hat

I have  finished some of the WIPs I was whittering about last week, so if I wanted to, under the rules of the game , I could start something new (I finished both of Tuesday’s items) but instead I shall use the time to work on Julia’s sweater with the option of something new (and small) if I need variety.

Today’s post is about some Christmas knitting and features some better quality photographs than usual as they were taken by Islay my sister in law.

I was a bit worried by the idea of giving handknits as christmas presents to Children. I figured that it would lead to a lot of upset children, so any child who received something made from me also had the back up of something else – usually a WHSmith Voucher. I did take the precaution with Skye and Aran (niece and nephew) of getting Islay to get an idea of what they’d like “so if someone was to knit you a scarf or a hat, what would you like it to look like ?”. The answer was “a scarf like this but bigger” (I was provided with something to copy) and a “square hat with tassles”.

Both presents were recieved with surprising good manners but the vouchers were the real hit.

Skye’s template was a toddler fleecy keyhole scarf in light blue with rounded ends.  I made it out of dark blue in the end and then got cold feet, it was also quite a harsh wool, so I added a light blue softer inside and seamed it like a cushion before tuning it the right way with blanket stitch around the “keyhole”. Also, because it looked quite plain (and it was remembrance day when I knitted it) I added a poppy, which I was also a bit worried about as it wasn’t in the original spec and she is a bit of a tomboy – the ends are rounded by increases/decreases.Pattern: My own, basically a strip of stocking stitch with rounded ends and a keyhole

Needles: 4mm

Yarn: a “superwash” sock yarn(used double) from Lidl (which is not superwash)and a 100% merino DK plus scraps red and black. Unfortunately because of the sock yarn not doing what its meant to the scarf is handwash only

New: Keyhole

The request from Aran for a Square hat with tassles caused a lot of problems at first as I was thinking of something more 3D but Islay eventually explained, “no square, like the one on Being Frank header at the moment” Ah, no problem. Spider’s tiger hat is actually a rounded hat with ears but square upright is easy.

I used a basic rib at the bottom taking stitch measurements for 4yo sizing from another hat and then added a basic square bit of stst . The front piece is a bit wider than the back as I wanted the front to sort of “wrap” round the head. Tassles were added using a half pompom technique by wrapping the yarn round a ruler.

Pattern: My own

Yarn: Patons Diploma Gold (Royal Blue) just over 2 balls – machine washable 40c

Needles: 4mm

New: would you believe the tassel ?

Tomorrow I hope to put something up about the lovely handmade presents I received in return.

FOs: Under the spell of Stitchcraft

I get a lot of my “craft” books from the local libraries, a lot of them go back unused, just looked through and thrown aside but I’ve had a couple of books out since before Christmas on repeat renew as I’ve been working from them to provide presents.

My favourite of the two I have out is Celtic Cross Stitch: Anne Orr & Lesley Clarke unsurprising really as I’ve always had a weakness for celtic style designs, the cross stitch bit is not quite as big a surprise as it would have been this time last year as after my dabbling in it for Mum’s birthday I’ve got quite keen on it…the stupid part was thinking “ooh, I know, it’ll take too long to knit all my christmas presents so why don’t I do some cross stitch for speed”…and then being slightly too ambitious with the chosen items…as a result my brother’s present is still outstanding almost a month after christmas.

I made bookmarks mainly because most of the men in our family read, and actually use bookmarks and (from experience) men tend to prefer  practical presents. I couldn’t find anywhere that sold aida band though (a pre edged band of aida so less risk of fraying) so I bought a kit with similar colours and used that (before I misplaced the silks that is) for this Eagle bookmark for my dad (Dad is into books about romans at the moment and the eagle looked “imperial-ish”)The stitching was fine but the outlining of all the bits was a real pain in the posterior – and it is the outlining once again which is holding up my brothers present, all the stitching is done apart from the outlining. My brother’s present is actually the design of the bookmark I bought but I’ve had to improvise the aida band out of the materials I have to hand. I had planned to put a picture of it up here and do all my cross stitch presents in one go but I’ve just discovered I haven’t photographed it yet.

Neither did I photograph what in the end was probably the best bit of stitching I did last year, a small piece for my brother’s birthday card, it was a green squared design with an interlinked cross in the middle. The other card I made was for a secret santa. It was a celtic knot and is badly photographed hereThe final 2 bits of stitching have still to be sent out, one of which I am working on at the moment and I’m getting a big kick out of the colour combinations on this one…so I guess there will be another cross stitch post for these and my brother’s present.

A big “thank you” to Mum who has donated all her silks and cross stitch bits and pieces, it does come with a proviso though and it is a really big proviso as she has finally found the japanese lady cross stitch kit and it is really rather big and possibly out of the competence of a beginner such as me !

Joy

On monday night there was a little piece of perfection on my needles, it was lovely and small and the stitches were lovely and even and smooth and perfect…such a welcome relief after the bumpy unevenness of Julia’s cardigan. Oh I am calm about the cardigan now, I’m sure it will turn out better than I’ve feared, once its been washed, but it was so nice to have even stitching without having to wash something first.

Why was it so even ? Because it was knit in the round. Having been reading up about it, it seems that its not unusual for a knitters purl tension to be different to her knit tension which means there can be a tendency for stocking stitch to be slightly uneven because of the mixture of knit and purl, something that is exaserbated with the cardigan as it is 100% rib. When you knit in the round you of course only ever knit if you are doing stocking stitch, you never purl !

I have been good and stuck to my self imposed rules. I ended up doing 3 days on Julia’s cardigan. The bootees await a bit of elastic, the earrings can now be put together as I’ve bought the missing fixings, the basic icon doll is made up but probably won’t become an actual icon as I’ve accidently sewed a leg where an arm should be and vice versa…they look very similar when they are stuffed and waiting to be sewed…

Ed’s scarf and the Long Time bear are complete and await their new home.  The DNA scarf is over halfway now, and admittedly was taken to London on the train on friday when I should have been knitting the hoodie because it was easier as a travel project. I spent most of friday night and some of saturday knitting the hoodie and I am now up to the armholes on the front.

I’m giving myself another week to try and get as much done as possible on these and then I will need to take a break as I have signed up for a couple of swaps which need some attention and thought… and if I learned anything over christmas its that if you try and do too much then it all ends up looking a bit wonky !

Acquisitions

I have been a bad girl…not only have I neglected the Wips this week but I’ve been shopping…

You see I  signed up for a swap, 2 in fact if you count the scarf. I don’t do swaps very often…much as I enjoy getting post and trying to find something that might make my fellow swapee smile or make them happy I do find deadlines quite stressful trying to fit the making in round work and home life and the travelling and something usually has to give…but then sacrificing the housework is not too much of a hardship !

I am not breaking the rules of my self imposed game though as the get out clause was “apart from things required for swaps, I won’t start anything new unless I’ve finished a pair of wips”. The other get out clause on the shopping ban was that I wouldn’t buy anything new except that required for swaps and I may have ever so slightly breached that…

On the swap front I am frantically trying to get my parcel together for Domesticali’s “7 days of specialness” a little unsecret swap designed to brighten up the dull grey days of february. My partner for this is Diane of the Pebble Dash Blog and being vastly impressed and a bit scared by her crafty skills I’m sticking to the stuff I know (so no fabric will be abused by me and my sewing machine in the course of this swap !) and feel safe with…!

The other swap is a whole scarf exchange through the travelling scarf group on Ravelry…incidently apparently our travelling scarves were featured in Yarn Forward this month…that one is a secret swap so apart from saying I’ve been swatching I can’t say anymore.

But to get back to the sinning, the bad act took place in John Lewis (as usual). I’d gone in to acquire some yarn for swaps and then as I got to the check out I got led astray by some 4ply Rowan Tweed at £1.99 per ball – I have 15 balls of it and no idea what to use it for (at the moment)…oh yes, and its black…but it does have colourful flecks in it…

I have been a bad bad girl. I must spend more time on the WIPs to make up for it !

Why being frank ?

I was asked the other day “why is your blog called ‘Being Frank’ when your wordpress url is ‘nuzzle’ ?” Good question.

The answer partly involves children’s television, my next door neighbour, the most wonderful experience in the world (depending on your point of view) and the most wonderful yarn imaginable….

My son is almost 5 years old. He wakes early at the weekend and wants company. I am very grouchy in the morning so as a compromise we spend saturday and sunday mornings together watching television in companionable silence (until he gets bored, but by then I’m several cups of tea to the good and can fake “perky”). His poison of choice is CBBeebies who for quite awhile featured a couple of Alpacas called “Nuzzle and Scratch”. Spider was quite keen on these 2 and would drop everything to watch them – these days are long gone, he considers himself far too sophisticated these days and has taken me through the BBC website telling me what he’s grown out of “I’m too old for talking trains Mummy” (but still won’t miss chuggington).

I have a thing about Alpacas…especially knitting with their fur…fortunately we live down the road from an Alpaca farm so I can get my fix quite regularly. They have also started selling yarn which is as far as “air miles” are concerned are definitely worth it for me, it’s collected in Rugby and spun in Banbury before being sold in Rugby…my other obsession Noro is Japanese…

“So that explains Nuzzle, but who or what is Frank ?”

Frank is a small person whose birth I was very fortunate to be present at and I have to say that childbirth is definitely the most amazing experience you can go through as long as you are not the one giving birth !!! Spider’s birth probably was amazing but it was a rather fraught experience which I have chosen to forget the details of…the boy (Spider) himself is of course a miracle (and a monster despite the angelic smile and winning ways).

Frank is the blue eyed boy not quite next door who was born 2 doors away in an upstairs bedroom at 2 minutes to midnight with me the one on the phone to the midwife watching him simply pop out (Spider= 11 hours active labour, 2 days of non active labour, plus some other unpleasant details). Being Frank, when I started this blog was a nice thing to be because life is pretty simple for a new born…whereas a frazzled full time commuting lawyer with a 3 year old was not quite such a nice thing to be.

…and of course I liked the play on words, I do tend to be a bit more pointed on here than on Appetite…and its a slight nod in the direction of Elizabeth Zimmerman and “The Opinionated Knitter”…was surprised the other day to discover she was a brit.

Anyway, this is what the best dressed small boy (Frank) in the village is wearing at the moment(yarn Debbie Bliss Cashmerino DK (john lewis odment), pattern Toddle (wee Sophisticate) – I left out the keyhole though as I was worried about risk of strangling)

Four year olds however have ideas about what they want to wear and what colours and the results are not always something to feel proud to have made…nope turns out I was so unimpressed with the last scarf for Spider that I didn’t even photograph it (it was orange and blue).

FO: Now you see it, now you don’t

I have claimed to have finished two of the WIP’s that were left over from 2009 but neglected to provide evidence (sorry I’m speaking like a lawyer today, it was a hard day at work).

(note this post was longer, but my laptop closed down half way through before I had saved the draft and I’m not in the mood to write it all again)

The bear will have a special post later in the year when we have managed to take the photographs – he’s down for a special fashion shoot when the weather improves. In the meantime let me introduce you to a stripey scarf…or is it ?

My friend Ed used to be a vampire…actually he used to be a LARPer which I think is how he and Husband came to be friends…the main thing about Ed though is he has just had a birthday and its been cold…ideal conditions for knitting a scarf I think !Yarn: 1 x sirdar clix in purple, 1 x Patons smoothie black

Needles: 4mm

Pattern: Shadow of the Bat

New: Illusion knitting

The look of this scarf changes depending on how you look at it, from one direction it’s just stripes but if you get the light right then its a chain of bats…I also like the fact the 2 yarns make an interesting ridge type effect.

Seven Days of Specialness

Had a few problems posting as did my fellow swapee so we have agreed to start shortly when both parcels have reached their destination… I am so looking forward to the knock of the postman. I find February the hardest month it is such relenting greyness.

However, if you look hard enough you can find reasons to be cheerful…I used to think that spring started with the appearance at the end of April of bluebells, I’d spot my first bluebell wood of the year and do the dance of happiness…then when I moved to Cardiff I discovered the joy of Daffodils, for me spring started on the 1st March, a mad blast of screaming yellow and bright bright green against bluest of blue skies…Cardiff Blue.

A few years ago when I was waiting and waiting and waiting for life to begin, a new little wonderful life to begin, I discovered snowdrops, a reason for hope in greyest, coldest, miserablest dull dull dull February…and now I celebrate snowdrops and start to smile when I see them forcing themselves out of a cold hard ground.

I know that they are out down south, but we’re still waiting up here…so until it warms up  a bit more here in the midlands  I shall look forward to the postman’s knock.

(Spider narrowly avoided being called snowdrop by virtue of arriving into our lives as a boy, such is the passion with which I embraced the snowdrop in the days before his birth !!!)

A chilli start :Day 1

Today I was meant to be at a planning hearing but due to a combination of circumstances including finding out at the last moment that I had the location wrong (having previously checked with a lovely local the closest car park…and yarn shop) I ended up working from home.

I was feeling pretty low to tell you the truth, it had just started to snow and then “knock knock”. The postman ! (Post lady actually) and it is here, my special delivery specialness parcel from Divine Diana (PebbleDash)…and here they are, a colourful array of specialness…photo taken on the window cill to make the most of the light…each parcel beautifully wrapped in tissue paper, waxed paper and a lovely silver sealI feel a very lucky girl…I love chocolate…especially dark chocolate…especially when its a brand I’ve been meaning to try…and even more when I know I won’t have to share it with anyone…

The rest of the day was a bit mixed, someone we asked some time ago to fix a tile on the roof suddenly turned up out of the blue which was an “up” but the “down” was that someone confirmed that Henry the worlds softest tom cat might have ended up under the wheels of a car…it is sad news but I prefer to know what happened.

I’m a Firestarter : Day 2

This morning I did the dance of happiness (if you don’t know the dance of happiness then watch a 4 or 5 year old when you give them a present, when they haven’t got the words to express their ecstasy they wiggle up and down on the spot…or perhaps its just Spider?).

When I was stalking researching my swap partner before christmas I was so jealous of a present that she made for a neighbour that I vowed that I would make my own…fortunately she gave a quick tutorial on her aromatic firelighters…unfortunately I can’t find my stash of pinecones (which I do collect for the purpose of lighting fires)….fortunately I don’t have to find them now as I have my own batch and in some of my favourite smells as well…

Photographs  (and tutorial) can be found over at Pebble Dash it was too dark this morning and then again this evening to take pics…

Can’t wait to fire up the wood burner…

FO river or wave

I made this !and then I gave it away…it was hard because I actually quite liked this…I am so glad though that its new owner likes it… unblocked it is like the sea, an angry sea with waves crashing on the shore (its a blue grey in colour) but blocked it is as calm and unending as a river…

Pattern: Ariel

Needles: 4mm

Yarn: Rowan RYC wool silk DY

New: Nothing really, except its the first time blocking has made a striking difference

This is one of the 2 new things I made to give away, within the rules of the game…I have since then been shamelessly breaking the rules with 2 small birthday presents for Spider…I had to as I spent the whole weekend away in York with the Water Aid sweater and I really really needed  a break !

FO: Here’s something I made earlier

I’ve really enjoyed the “Seven Days of Specialness” swap. My partner was truly fabulous and gave me some lovely lovely things, which I will post about later when I get the chance to take some more pictures…unfortunately time and light have not been with me so here’s something I made previously and once again, gave away…I don’t as yet have a picture of what I was sent in return but its keeping me very warm in this sudden snow fall that has engulfed the midlands today…

pattern: Peaks Island Hood (its a very very long scarf with an extra “hood”

Yarn: Rowan pure Aran (100% wool) (2.5 skeins)

Needles: 6 mm

I was a very good girl for once, I swatched and I measured and I swatched and swatched again. It also took me a long time to get going as the “shell” pattern is very difficult to get right, fortunately there are lots of helpful people on Ravelry who have already made it and can explain what the pattern means !

The moss stitch (seed stitch) is quite challenging because there is so much of it – if you lose concentration you can suddenly find out you’ve started ribbing instead of doing moss stitch.

I am planning to do this again before the end of the year…my knitting year runs to the chinese new year as its now just under a year since I started knitting again…

Hopefully the scarf is doing a good job in its new home in Scotland to keep its new owner warm.

Forgot to mention, the yarn is a very peculiar colour. It is called “pepper” and does in some lights look beige, but in the shop it looked dark grey and outside in daylight it appears light grey with a hint of lilac…

Day 3-5: Assortment of goodies

I am in awe of Diana’s notebooks, many of which are made from reclaimed/recycled materials. I was very excited on day 4 to find one made specially for me and with a fern on it which reminded me of my honeymoon (NZ) -I’ve had to fight Spider for it as he seems to believe that all paper that comes into this house is destined for him.Pictured here also are some local cornish made soap and some fabulous Burt’s Bees lip balm (absolutely essential with all this cold weather we’ve been having).

On day 5 I received 3 little packets collected whilst beach combing…I’ve always loved sea washed glass. Perfect choice !Must keep these away from Spider, he loves it when we go collecting things from the seaside…and sometimes his collections get washing machined as I haven’t yet got into the automatic habit of checking his pockets for little boy collections. These are going somewhere safe though, cos these are for me !

Snow Days

I am not very good at “playing” with Spider. He is a different sort of child to how I was at his age. He is very much a rufty tufty boy who likes company, he likes playing with people whereas I usually had my head in a book, liked being on my own and lived very much in an imaginary world making stories about dolls or cuddly toys.

If I’m in the room then Spider wants me to play with him…if there is no one in the room then he will lose himself in his own imaginary playmobile world.

I am trying to make more of an effort to do things with him and on Friday I took a snow day off work as it was also half term. We read Hiccup Horrendous Haddock books together, he directed me on how to play with playmobil and we did try to do some things together…his best friend/girlfriend the Flapjack princess has a birthday this week so we made golden syrup muffins (for us)…we played with kitchen science and made bath bombs which look a bit like marshmallows and need a tad more oil so that they are less crumblyoh and we made a pair of Grumpasaurus...the green one was originally for Spider but he insisted that FP should have one in pink and I was to give the green one to her little brother, oh and make some more for me mummy in orange and blue…”Fortunately for him I am trying to concentrate on things for him over the next 3 weeks as I’m hoping to have a lot of things ready for his birthday – I’ve sort of neglected him over christmas, he’s been rather upset that I’m making all these things as presents yet none of them have been for him…I have however been storing up all his hints and likes and I think he’ll be a very happy 5 year old shortly !

Day 7: Warm hands, warm heart…

Where is day 6 you ask ? Well day 6 is lovely gorgeous and fabulous and will have to wait. Although today has been a good day for photographs it would appear that someone has walked off with Day 6 and stashed it somewhere safe…I shall try and think like a 5 year old and work out where it’s gone !

Day 7 arrived by post round about the time it started getting cold again and has already been to put use…thinking about it, these lovely wrist warmers are perhaps the first time every someone who is not related to me either by blood or marriage has knitted for me…and I’m very very happy about them – they fit perfectly with my new years resolution of more colour, less black.  Diana actually knitted 2 sets for me, only 1 of each is shown here because, guess what, “someone” has wandered off with them…because they felt “fleecy”

I love the way the colours glow in the sunshine.

I’m bored, so so bored

I have been spending most of my knitting moments with the orange cardigan. I knitted all the time we were in York, I knitted it all the following week…I then had a serious bit of a wobble and knitted a hat for a teddy bear ( meant to be for a 5 year old) a grumpasaurus and made a start on my first sock…

As I may have mentioned my knitting year runs from the middle of February (chinese new year). My new years resolution is to get more colour in my life but as far as knitting goes I wanted to try and understand the fascination with socks by actually knitting some, I also hope to give crochet another go.  Carrying on from last year is the resolution not to have quite so many things on the go but before I can make good on that one I have to try and finish some of last years projects off…so it was back to the orange 4 ply on the 3.25mm…I am on the back…it goes on for ever…

World Book Day, I’ve got nothing to wear

I am not sure whether yesterday was world book day or whether it was today. The school celebrated it yesterday and allowed the children to come dressed as a “character”. Spider likes having stories read to him but is also very into his none fiction so it was no surprise that when asked he opted to be a Roman “what sort of Roman ?” “A legionary”

Hmmm, legionary is not as easy as wrapping him up in a sheet and claiming he’s wearing a toga, but then its a bit cold for a toga and at least if he’s wearing armour he can wear proper clothes underneath…except that on tuesday night Husband turned round and insisted that if he was going as a Roman legionary it should look authentic…

So he went as Harry, because it’s much easier to stick 5 dinosaurs in a bucket then it is to get nifty with cardboard you don’t have (recycled) and a load of gaffer tape strips…and I’d been lawyer on tour so wasn’t in the mood to get arts and crafty.

As for me, well I’m going on a date and I’ve been invited to a wedding and guess what “I’ve got nothing to wear !”. No, come back it’s true ! Yes I know all women claim they have nothing to wear but everyone who knows me will tell you its true. My friend KTCupcake once threatened to do a Trinny and Suzanna on me, until it was pointed out that if we did throw away all the clothes that didn’t suit me there would be nothing left as I had so few clothes to begin with !

So how to get better clothes without the trauma of shopping ?  Oh and in case you are wondering about the date, it is with Husband, its just we so rarely get an evening out alone is definately a “date” and not simply going out for the evening (Thank you, thank you Mum !!!)

I have been toying with the idea of doing a sew along using this book here except my sewing is very rudimentary and well they are starting with a skirt that’s slightly more fitted than I’m ready for yet (I’m still feeling fat) so I thought I know, I’ll try a circle skirt instead from Sew What Skirts except the only bit of cloth I have enough of is black with white dots and sends your eyes screwy… so maybe I could use that as a lining and make a bustle skirt (the pattern was in an issue of Sew Hip a few months ago)…

Wish me luck…won’t have it done in time for the date but the wedding is not until September

Chicken Soup for Breakfast

So there we were, Friday night at Warwick Arts Centre on out Hot Date, just us 2 and of course a theatre hall full of other people enjoying the spectacle that is the Kodo drummers…and it was good. Husband and I enjoying ourselves, together…

And then during the second number an extraordinary thing happened, I started crying and couldn’t stop and I don’t know whether it was because I was in awe of the speed and amazing skill of these japanese drummers or whether squinting against the light in contact lenses was making my eyes water or whether it was just a feeling of emotional release after a very stressful day at work [like a lot of public sector organisations we will experience change soon, it's just a matter of when and how drastic and earlier that day I'd just discovered that head office had employed a non lawyer recently in a position called "change manager"] but there I was in absolute floods…and then suddenly I stopped crying, with as little warning as when I started.

The interval came. I had a G&T, after all it was friday night and this was a date…and then I went very very cold, and then very very hot, my head throbbed, I had pains all through my body and I had to get out. I stumbled to the ladies, looked in the mirror and my face was graveyard white…something was going very wrong with my body… and that was it for the evening. Husband took me home and put me to bed…and that’s where I stayed for most of the weekend…sleeping.

Periodically I’d get up and do something but then find I had to go back to rest pretty quickly…even knitting tired me out…eating made me queasy and I hardly had anything until sunday when I figured that if I could get anything down I should try something more than just cereal.

Been at work today, wouldn’t you know it I feel well now that the weekend is over…but I’m now up against a deadline of a 5th birthday, with cake still to make.

No idea what was wrong but it’s gone, a sort of 36 hour ‘flu…

Wooosh !

Did you hear that ? “Wooosh” there it goes again. That is the sound of deadlines flying over my head and me failing to hit them…

Having spent christmas concentrating on making things as presents for people  I thought I’d spend some of the little spare time I have making presents for Spider who was neglected over christmas…I’d carefully noted down everything he’d been dropping hints about and at the end of January set about trying to make sure I did everything he’d asked for…

Things started off well. I spent ages trying to find a white wool that felted and in the end went down the “wash it flitz it” route in order to meet the “can you knit me a pirate hat mummy ?” request. Only the shop didn’t have any black so in a rush I bought some Rowan Aran and with 10 days to go I was able to put the finished item in the wash to felt it – only it didn’t. It didn’t at 40 deg, it didn’t at 90 deg for 2 hours…it was then I discovered that actually Rowan do make some superwash yarns and yep, the Aran was one of them Bit of an expensive mistake…

By last weekend I had most of the bits for a pterodactyl waiting to be made up and the bits for 1 grumpasaurus plus the material for a marble bag. Then I came down with a 36 hour ‘flu. I recovered from that and started making up the pterodactyl to discover that the never ending bag of toy stuffing I bought 10 years ago was actually ending…that was tuesday night.

Wednesday I had a meeting in London, so I could at least top up on the toy stuffing by visiting Craft making nirvana otherwise known as John Lewis on Oxford street, but no they had no stuffing – fortunately when I got home I remembered over buying some wadding when I made that cat teacosy so I canabalised that and started stuffing the pterydactyl and the grumpasaurs…

Thursday at work we received a pre-action letter for a judicial review (for those who don’t work for public sector organisations, trust me this is a serious  matter leading to lots of hard work for lawyers) and after that life started going downhill and on thursday evening I realised that I could meet my deadlines and do a really bad job or I could apologise to Spider and let him have things as and when I finished them looking at least reasonable and likely to last the day…so I opted for the latter route and am hoping to give him his remaining birthday presents round about this time next month…

His cake went well though…and his party was over and above fabulous…

ps apologies to my sister in law, I didn’t forget your birthday, I have remembered it, I just haven’t had a chance to pass a post office as I’ve been caught up in the whole missing deadlines thing…besides don’t think my present will compare with Heston’s pea and ham soup !

Last Night

Last night I was mostly knitting a sock. Well I said I’d try sock knitting this year and I’d like to be able to say that I was inspired by this think of beauty (well for a sock it’s quite beautiful) but the honest truth is that I did dip my toe into the sock pool last month as an antidote to too much orange 4ply (I bought the 2.5m dpns during the York weekend)…

And I must admit that my sock is a thing of beauty (no pics yet, you’ll understand why in a minute). It is soft and squishy and lovely even stitching (except for the errors in pattern) but…

But I am not sure I will ever wear it…in fact at the moment I cannot wear it as I can’t even get a toe into it as I was in too much of a hurry to teach myself the super stretchy bind off and just did my usual bind off and of course it is too tight. I may knit it back a few rows and do the correct bind off and then again I might not, and I might not bother making the second sock either.

You see, although it was fun to make, I’m not sure handmade socks fit into my way of life. I fear that they will need hand washing. I don’t do a lot of hand washing. I hate doing the laundry as it is and I worry that they won’t stand up to, well the life of a sock…I really don’t want to have to live through the heartbreak of something I’ve knitted wearing through and unravelling…yes I know you can fix holes, but we all know I’d leave the darning until it was too late.

So that leaves socks for presents, and that gives me the same problem as I don’t think anyone I know would appreciate a handknit sock, they would fear as I do that it would need to be handwashed, they’d worry about the wearability and I would worry that they would just see as the “socks for christmas” stereotype and inwardly groan when they unwrap it…

But it is quite pretty (its straight black) and I can understand how sock knitting can be addictive, but I am not a knitter for the sake of knitting, I’ve always appreciated the practical element of knitting, that you are creating something that can be both beautiful and practical at the same time…

But I will reserve my Judgment – after all there is little you can do with 1 sock, especially when its one you can’t actually get onto your foot !

How to make a marble bag

There are photos to this, I will add them later

1. Iron your material Frantically search the house from top to bottom eventually find your iron at the bottom of the linen basket under some towels. Iron your material and then cut 2 squares approx 17.5cm x 25cm  (after repeating previous frantic search for iron with search for scissors instead).

2. Whilst iron is out iron strip of interfacing (length and height of strip depends on how big you want your letters) onto the back of some contrasting material.

3 Draw your required letters onto interfacing.

4 Redraw letters onto interfacing having realised they need to be mirror image as it’s the contrast colour that will be uppermost

5 Attempt to thread sewing machine. Realise that the thread you bought is still at the bottom of the paper bag that you chucked in the bin after removing the wool you used earlier in the week. Thank the gods that you are a very lax housewife and the bag is in the wastepaper basket in the living room that hasn’t been emptied for 3 weeks

6 Successfully thread sewing machine. Unthread sewing machine on realising you have forgotten to wind the bobbin. Take usual childish pleasure in seeing the bobbin fill up with thread. Rethread sewing machine and insert bobbin.

7 30 minute interval here whilst you untangle the thread that has got wrapped around the bobbin when you tried to draw the bobbin thread up to meet the needle (curse yourself in several languages for not having had the machine service as you promised yourself last time you used it and suffered the same fate)

8 Sew the 2 long sides of the bag together and the short side leaving a 5 cm gap at the top of each long side as this will need folding over to create the cord sleeve.

9 Realise you should have sewed the letters onto the front of the bag first as its going to be slightly more difficult to manoeuvre now it’s been joined together.

10 Opt for fabric glue instead – slight delay caused by frantic searching etc etc finding item in highly improbable place. Further delay as mouth of glue as usual congested with set glue…glue letters and seal with iron. Sewing round letters to ensure they stay on/look decorative entirely optional and dependent on state of temper and rapidly diminishing enthusiasm

11 Turn over top 2.5cm of the bag so that the original top edge of the bag is now inside. Sew all the way round that top edge except for 1cm either side of one of the long sides so that you have a casing strip with an opening to insert cord.

12 Realise you actually have no suitable cord so set to with crochet hook making long chain of stitches. Fasten off and insert cord into casing. Join two ends of cord with a knot…

13 If you can still be bothered, fill bag with marbles and hang on small persons door handle for them to discover when they wake up next morning

14 Complain long and loudly all the next week about marbles being left all over the floor…

#sir’s comment this evening was “Mummy, can you line it in blue”…some people are never satisfied…and some people are such mugs that they will alter it…

Waiting for Knitty

There is a new Knitty due any day now and I am in need of something to read and something to get my enthusiasm going. Since I started knitting again (Feb 09) I have, as yet only completed 1 scarf for me but made lots of things for other people… I have on the needles at the moment

* almost complete hoodie for Spider

* Julia’s orange cardigan

* The Lily reverse cable shawl (for me)

* 1/2 pair of socks

* a black jumper in bamboo (for me)

I also have quite a bit of “finishing” to do, sewing things up, finishing of some of the wire knitting.

Sometimes its easier though to read about knitting than to actually do it

Getting it wrong

I had hoped to have been able to post another FO before the end of the week but due to my own ineptitude it is not to be.

I have had, possibly about a month of just not getting things quite right. First of all there was the non felting wool debacle. Then there was me running out of horrible green furry wool when I only had a leg of a pterodactyl to knit.

Well since then I have failed to bind off a sock correctly and run out of cotton on Spider’s hoodie with, can you believe it half a row and a bind off to do ! And finally there was an instance of colour blindness.

I’ve had a black sweater almost finished for 6 months now, just need to knit half a front, but because I’d decided to lengthen the back I knew that I’d probably need an extra ball to finish the sweater off and I’d been dithering between frogging the back and reknitting it shorter or buying an extra ball and frogging the front (so that the new ball was below eyeline for colour matching reasons) and reknitting.

At some point over the last month I’d finally remembered to pick an extra ball up in John Lewis and on tuesday night I happily frogged the front and knit up the first 6 rows in this new yarn only to discover when waiting for a colleague at a train station, sitting in good light that I’d actually picked up a ball of navy blue and not black.

I was not, as you can imagine, a happy bunny…however I am hoping that I am through my run of bad luck as

1) on getting home I discovered that in yesterday’s post, the cotton to finish the hoodie had arrived

2) Thanks to a clear explanation from an independent expert sock consultant I have now managed to do a stretchy bind off on the sock (now teaching myself magic loop cast on)

3) The pterodactyl is finished and I’ve almost sorted out his floppy neck problem (hmm didn’t mention that) with some extra stuffing

However I played it safe last night and just sat there doing k2 p2 rib on Julia’s sweater and a shawl (started last april)

So maybe I will post some pictures at the weekend

We have the technology

 I have been feeling mildly down in the dumps since Christmas. In fact I have been feeling fat, frumpy and 40…which is unfortunate because I’m not even 39 yet !

This feeling sort of explains why I haven’t posted on Appetite for Cake for almost 2 months – you see, I have lost interest in food and its nigh on impossible to write about food when you don’t find it interesting.

Anyway I have never seen the point in just moaning about things (it just bores the pants off your friends and makes them cross the road to avoid you) unless at some point you intend to take action and I am taking action.

I need to do a wardrobe renovation. But a fat girl in new clothes is still a fat girl (albeit hopefully a fabulous fat girl rather than a frump) so I will also be taking exercise (I have lost about a stone since Christmas from reducing alcohol intake).

First though I need to do some basic research and foundation work. So I have booked an appointment to have my colours read and following extensive nagging from Husband I’m going to get my bust properly measured confession: For at least 2 almost 3 years after Spider was born I was still using my maternity bras.

I’ve also thrown away most of my make up because apparently it does actually go off if you don’t use it within a reasonable space of time.

I am rebuilding myself a bit at a time, going for slow and gradual improvement and will reward exercise and weight loss with money spent on me.

FO:Even Grumpier

I have finally finished something. In fact I’ve had quite a productive day. Unfortunately the thing I’ve finished can’t be photographed as my model is being a bit of a diva and has walked off in a grump…I don’t blame him really as the hood of the hoodie has gone really quite weird and it needs frogging and reknitting, only at the moment I’m not sure how to fix the problem as this is the first hoodie I’ve ever done. Fortunately the hood bit is in one colour only and straight stocking stitch.

So instead, in view of the general grumpy mood in the household I give you some more grumpasaurs…these ones live here and are in Spider’s favourite colours

Apart from these guys and the hoodie I have a scarf blocking and some train time coming up so by the end of the week I should have all the remaining WIPs pretty much nailed apart from Julia’s orange Water Aid jumper (which has had some intensive knitting this weekend, so maybe the light at the end of that particular tunnel is coming).

To celebrate I have several things ready to go and all in lovely bright colours – its time to finally banish this long cold winter in a riot or multicoloured rainbows…incidently its going to snow on tuesday.

Is it really spring?

Tuesday morning saw me standing  in an icy wind on the Edgeware Road and simultaneously wishing I’d brought a scarf with me whilst admiring the burnt orange creation wrapped around the neck of the woman in front of me wondering “did she make it herself and is that alpaca ?”

 Yeah, I know I should get out more but then I didn’t have anything more pleasant to distract myself with, you see I was on my way to our Legal Services Workshop which was due to conclude the following day with a 90 minute session from Human Resources on “taking advantage of change” – I work in the public sector, I know what “change” currently means in the public sector! All we did find out is that yes there will be cuts over and above simply having your pay frozen forever, but as yet they haven’t determine the who how what or why. What we actually got was a bit of fluffystuff about how different people react to change and a bit of Myers-Briggs analysis.

 So what was achieved over the last 2 days? Well I met up with some colleagues from other regions, learnt a bit about injunctions and ended up committing myself to making 2 more of the pirate tote bags for colleagues who on seeing me knitting during lunch hour commented on how much they’d liked the one I made for Porsche…the problem is I feel guilty in knitting for only 2 members of our business support when there are at least another 5 members of the team. The bag I made previously was actually a surprise birthday present – now I’m worried that I might hurt people’s feelings if I leave them out…perhaps I could make a big batch of egg cosies or something?

 (I know this is not really in line with my promise to myself to concentrate a bit more on knitting me things)

Oh, and I’ve finished the second sock, which mostly looks better than the first sock.

It turned out that I did have a scarf with me after all, as I’ve been carrying a long alpaca scarf around with me trying to get a day with good light to photograph it – but that can wait for another day

FO: A reluctant hoodie

Note to self: In future remember children don’t stop growing just because you find something more interesting to knit !

I started a hoodie for Spider last year round about this time of year in fact, I knitted it a size larger so that he’d get lots of wear out of this so that I wouldn’t feel quite so bad when the time came to pass it on to someone else. Unfortunately I then fell out of love with it the day that I finished the second sleeve, thought I’d got the colour sequence wrong and immediately frogged it…only to then realise I’d been holding it upside down. As a result it was left for rather a long time.

Spider was enthusiastic last year – this year I’ve had to bribe him (threaten actually) in order to get him to wear it just for modelling purposes and quite honestly I don’t blame him as the hood just doesn’t work. It didn’t work when it was smaller, it doesn’t work now that I’ve added 10 rows to make it fit in height as well as width.

Pattern: Waves Hoodie by Sasha Kagan

Needles: 3.75

Yarn: Patons Linen Touch (dark blue, light blue, aqua and lilac)

New: Fair Isle style colour work, I don’t normally carry my colours across

I like the pattern, it was quite easy to knit although quite fiddly. In the past I’d probably have had lots of little balls of each colour and just twisted each thread as I changed colour but on this occasion I followed the instructions in the pattern and carried the yarn across 3 stitches. It made the back look much neater and wasn’t quite so complicated.

What I got wrong Oh this is a long list. The first mistake was leaving it so long. As you can see my boy has grown and it is now a bit short in length. However cotton is meant to be grow a bit with washing and wearing so I have my fingers crossed. I also think the lilac was a mistake as it doesn’t stand out well against the light blue. Finally I’ve well and truly messed up the hood although I don’t know if that was totally me, the way the pattern is written means that you will end up with quite a big baggy hood at the back.

The yarn was “interesting” to knit with. Very similar to knitting with dishcloth cotton and I might use the leftovers for silly stocking fillers

I have plans to do another version of this (without all the colour changes)  and Spider has already chosen some cotton (in blue and orange) but I’m not going to  make a start on it until I have the time for a clear run at it plus some fiddling time to make the hood work. That won’t be until end of may at least as I need to mess around with swatches as despite the tension on the ball band being the same this new stuff is knitting up completely differently.

In case you are wondering why Spider gets to appear on here and pictures of me are always obscured, it’s because he is so much cuter than I am !

Thank You !

It was a grey day, worse it was a grey wet and cold day. The journey home felt longer than ever and it had been “one of those days” at work. I reached home feeling cold, despondent, blue and well, definitely down. But there on the bookcase waiting for me was an envelope with a cornwall postmark.

The lovely Diana from Pebbledash had sent me a flower, on a card. A lovely colourful flower to cut through the grey dullness of a winter that has gone on too long. It was a simple card just to say “thank you” for being her swap partner in February.

I get inordinately touched when someone says “thank you”. In my profession people don’t tend to say thank you very much…people tend to wish they didn’t have to come to us when they have a problem…but because people don’t say thank you to me very often I can sometimes me a bit slow to remember to say “thank you” myself and there are a number of people I’ve been meaning to thank myself and have been a bit forgetful of late.

So thank you to Ali for organising the swap. Thank you to Diana for some wonderful packages and for being such a lovely partner (the wrist warmers have had quite a lot of use during this sudden cold spell being both colourful and warm).

I mentioned previously that Diana was the first person who was not related to me who had ever knitted for me. Well until last Christmas I could honestly say that no one had knitted for me since I left home and then at Christmas I received 2 lovely knitted presents.

The first was a well chosen little luxury from my sister in law Islay. I mentioned  last year how much I liked this even though it was destined as a present in New Zealand so she made me this

I had in fact bought myself a further ball of Noro but Spider had appropriated it when I’d asked him to chose the yarn for a new hat and he’d ended up with thisSo we’ve both had Happy Warm Heads this winter – Thank you, thank you Islay.

But the biggest thank you goes to my Mum. My Mum who has given up knitting due to RSI. She spent the autumn secretly knitting a present for me, hiding it away whenever I came to call and giving absolutely no hint that she’d taken up her needles againThank you also Mum for the jumper you knitted for Spider. I apologise for my son’s bad manners but as you probably gathered from the previous post he is being a bit of a moody teenager at the moment…wish he had the teenage habit of sleeping in at the weekend !

I apologise also for bad photos but there is not a lot of light and too much rain in our corner of warwickshire at the moment.

FO: Not so brainless socks

I did it ! I did it, I did it ! With some help from another blogger and passionate sock knitter...so that’s the sock resolution met, now for crochet and just generally increasing the colour content of my knitting – as you can see these socks are a definite fail on the “more colour” front.

The details

Pattern: Brainless by Yarnissima

Needles: 2.5 dpns

Yarn: Regia silk (colour) 4ply

New: oh where do I start !  I made socks, so that’s a first, I made toe up socks, I attempted magic loop (for one) and I managed a stretchy cast off (twice).

The second sock is distinctly better than the first in technique but not such good quality in the yarn as this is its 3rd time at being knit up. The yarn was bought from a local shop last June back when I first decided that I would give sock knitting a go. I deliberately bought black as I didn’t want to get distracted from the experience/pleasure of the childish joy of watching the colours change and besides if they were black there was always the outside chance at the time that they would get worn…what’s that you say, knitting in black is a very good way of hiding errors ? yeah, you’re right was trying not to mention that, but there are a lot of errors so it’s a very good thing these socks are black.

So anyway, the yarn sat there for awhile until september when I decided to knit it up into a shawl for my staffordshire sister in law (as opposed to my other sister in law who can knit herself and therefore doesn’t get handknits forced upon her !), except I hit a serious error, frogged it and reknitted and then realised I’d need a lot more than 2 balls…after lots of internet searching I discovered that the only place selling that shade of black now was the local shop…which I no longer go to having waited 6 months for a yarn delivery or refund…so frogged again

I cast on for these socks shortly after our weekend in York, but used a cable cast on having forgotten to print off the instructions for a magic loop. The second one I did attempt magic loop but it’s seriously dodgy. The first sock is knit to the size as per instruction, the second one has an extra set of cable having realised that the first one was  a bit to snug.

Cabling throughout is a bit dodgy as the socks were a travel knit so lots of picking up putting down and forgetting the number of rounds I’d done. Both socks have an extra set of cabling up the side but still feel a bit short and sock one has slightly briefer cuff as I had to undo my original bind off and bind off again using the stretchy bind off as I couldn’t get it over my foot !

Been testing them over the last few days. They are very very soft and, whilst sat on the sofa,are very comfortable. They wash ok, and with a bit more washing the cuff should hopefully not look quite so untidy. There is an unfortunate ladder up sock one due to me using a stitch marker, sock 2 doesn’t have this fault as I counted stitches to remember the start of round instead.

I wore them out today (in boots) all the way round Avoncroft museum of buildings. I could “feel” the stitches underfoot, so not so smooth as my usual socks, they didn’t make my feet sweat but they did stretch with wear and started to feel baggy by the end of the day.

I am as yet undecided about socks…will see how they cope with washing and the fact that I walk round barefoot a lot…

A shocking lack of support

This is a slightly more personal post than usual. I mentioned a week or so ago that I was going to attempt a bit of a make over of me, because, and lets not mince words here, I’m scruffy. But as part of this make over involves losing at least a stone in weight (already lost one since just before christmas) it doesn’t make economic sense to buy a whole set of new clothes. This is why I decided to do some basic groundwork first in order to make the most of what I already have.

The colour analysis has had to go on hold as we spent rather longer in IKEA on Good Friday than planned and also the car has just had a major service so money is a little tight this month. I would have held off on the Bra fitting too but Husband took me shopping today and refused to take me home again until I’d been measured. So I was, and then had to spend 40 minutes in Waterstones with the calming influence of books to try and reduce the hysteria.

I have spent most of my be-bosomed life thinking I was a 34c. It was not until I was pregnant with Spider that it was pointed out that I actually have a 35 inch chest and therefore fall between 36 and 34. I was measured twice in those 9 months, once at M&S (not impressed) and once in Debenhams (coventry) who actually took the time to explain where a bra is meant to fit and how to put a bra on (lean forward into it). When I was measured for the second time I was looking for a strapless bra to go under my wedding dress (discovering we were going to have a baby meant we had to bring the wedding forward by 6 months) and being rather pregnant at the time I wasn’t surprised to walk out of the shop with a 36F – and after I’d finished breast feeding when I’d finally thrown out my nursing bras (ok he was coming up to 3 by the time I actually got around to buying new bras) I ended up in a 36c

So, there was I this afternoon in Debenhams, Coventry, feeling happy that I perhaps wasn’t too far off the right bra, the assistant having just agreed with me that yes I was a 35 so could wear a 34 or a 36…and then she brought some in for me to try… they were 34FF !!!!

Anyway, after I got over the shock and had been comforted by Husband (“look at how much money you’ve saved, Jordan had to pay a fortune to get that size of cup !”) I came out with 4 bras and a free pair of undies…If I do manage to shift that extra weight over the next 12 month then when I go back and get measured I think I may opt for the 36 instead of the 34 as it is quite difficult to get nice bras in the larger cup sizes.

I will admit that it does make a real difference. My clothes are still shabby but do at least “hang” slightly better. I have made a start on getting rid of some of them, all the bleach splatted things have gone as have all the trousers with holes/broken zips and some of my knickers…I have realised though that I seem to have rather a lot of grey t-shirts…only 1 of which I remember buying.

Where did the time go ?

I was shocked at the end of March to discover that one of my friends had had a baby. I mean I knew she was pregnant but she wasn’t due until April which was ages away, 6 months at least,  so no need to buy a card or knit or anything right ? Wrong, those 6 months had flown by and April was only 2 days away…

Last year when I was first contemplating making socks I bought a book Cute Knits for Baby Feet. I thought I’d give it  a go but start small – and last year there was still the outside chance that not only would some of these fit Spider as “house socks” but he might actually wear them.

These caught my eyeI must admit I did have some misgivings even when I started, not about my abilities, I mean I should have done because these were only the second pair of socks I’d ever done and it’s not a straightforward pattern.  As I continued these misgivings grew…I should point out that I was making 0-3 months.

Now it’s not the size that I have a problem with, baby feet are this small. The white ones in the next picture are ones that used to fit SpiderLength wise its fine – it will fit a 0-3 month old foot. The first problem is that it is too long in the leg. Leg length in a baby sock is no bad thing, the best socks I ever came across were from Gap and they were long because you are meant to turn the cuff down and it has the effect of keeping the sock on the foot (unless the little darlings work out how to take it off). But you can’t turn a colourwork sock over because  of the carried yarn – it won’t, no matter how tidy your stitches, look right.  The pattern says knit 24 rounds for all sizes, so I reckon it will be ok with the larger sizes – I just don’t have enough sock experience to reduce the number of rounds without messing up the pattern.

But then we come to the second problem. Now I might not understand socks but I do understand colourwork and I do know about children’s feet. Small babies feet do not do what you want them to do they wriggle all over the place, and it would be very difficult to put this sock on a small foot without getting the toes caught up in the carried over threads.

So I’ve stopped at one sock. I think it will look cute as a card topper – unfortunately I can’t quite fit the first card topper into the sock…

I will hopefully get this in the post by Saturday – only 2 weeks later which is quite good for me…it would have been today, honest if I hadn’t received yet another letter from the next door neighbour’s solicitor…which kinda ruined the day, so we put it behind us until monday and went out and enjoyed the sunny day.

What shall we do today ?

This morning Spider and I were very very good and tidied up his half brother’s room.  Slight ulterior motive on my part as it’s where I keep my sewing machine, and part of my fear of my machine is related to the fact that I usually can’t find it as my work table is overflowing with junk – so I tidied my area and the “make and do drawers” and took a bin liner to the rest of the room.

As a reward to us both I took him to the cinema to see “How to Train Your Dragon” – this house is rather fond of the Hiccup books by Cressida Cowell and were looking forward to the film’s released until we realised that they’d completely abandoned the original plot…which we all thought was a travesty (at least Spider would have if he knew that word…although he does have a wide vocabulary)…we also have David Tennant (and my) versions clearly in our minds (DT does audiobooks, I read it for bedtime sometimes and do the “voices”).

I am glad that we went, as if you accept the film for what it is and forget about the books, then it is actually a very good film, and Leamington was only showing it in 3d which kinda blew us both away… in fact today was a really really good day in terms of being a parent we were really making a connection for once !

We took a slight detour to the library to return an overdue library book. I took several out, I was actually looking for sewing books as I’m feeling guilty at having a “fabric stash” (Stash to me is odments, leftovers – 3 metres is something that needs to be used) but they seemed to have hidden all the sewing books, never mind about the ones for beginners and I ended up getting 3 knitting books and  one about  creative crafts for children called “what shall we do today” which is a fabulous little book and there is loads and loads of good stuff in there that I want to do with Spider and what’s more he actually wants to do them too – now that’s a breakthrough !

FO: The dna of friendship

Once upon a time there were 2 little girls, a brown haired girl and a blonde haired girl – they were the best of friends. Once upon a time there were 2 more little girls, also 1 blonde 1 brown haired, they too were the best of friends.  Each pair sat together, played games together and shared secrets.

One day the 2 blonde haired girls decided they wanted to be friends and sat together in class without a word to the other 2. The 2 brown haired girls were in shock, where had their playmates gone, why weren’t they talking to them anymore. Sadly, the brown haired girls sat together during class, during play at lunch…and then slowly they started to realise that they were actually having more fun together than they had before, and they became friends and stayed friends…for years…despite the separation of different schools, different universities and eventually different countries held together by a sense of humour and a love of pizza…

“Dr Wilf” is now in New Zealand teaching at a university there…communication between us is brief these days as we both have full time jobs and families and houses that need DIY but we do still email from time to time.

I started a scarf  for Wilf just before christmas but gave up when I remembered that she’d be more likely to be having a barbeque on christmas day than playing in the snow…good thing too as it took longer than expected to finish and I missed her birthday by over a month (almost 2 by the time I posted it).

pattern : DNA/Double Helix Scarf

yarn: Toft Alpaca 4ply (cream) (from seconds basket)

Needles: 3.25 mm (I think

New: cabling without a cable needle

It took a lot longer than I’d anticipated as the yarn was very thin, and quite splitty (well it was a seconds) a pain to knit with but being alpaca felt lovely . Most people who have knitted this pattern tend to reduce the size of the border by either doing less seed stitch/moss stitch or not bothering with the side cable. If I did it again I think I probably would too, I’d also use DK rather than 4ply.

On the original pattern the neck section is knit plain, no cable and is slightly narrower, but I didn’t like the look of that so I just kept to the pattern and kept going until I ran out of wool (being a second it wasn’t as if I could get another ball to match)…it blocked a lot longer once I’d finished so it is now about 175cm in length, so should keep her warm.

I did make several mistakes in the pattern which you probably wouldn’t notice unless you had a Phd in genetics…as Dr Wilf does !

Pigeon or statue

Some days just tire you out, but you can’t switch your head off, you can’t keep the day out. Some days knitting doesn’t do it for you, the gentle repetitiveness of following a pattern can’t keep the days thoughts away from your head…you can’t switch off.

Too restless to knit you try reading but no one’s saying anything, you are already up to date with all the on line suspects and you’ve read every book in the house

Alcohol beckons. But you know you can’t because you’ve got to repeat the day again tomorrow.

Some days you are just the statute – deal with it and move on – things will get better… and whatever you don’t touch your knitting, you’ll just get it wrong and that’ll make everything worse as its just another mess to sort out

FO: Pterry…from a little egg

Thisis Pterry the Pteradon – not the most flattering of photographs, but the battery went flat shortly after the picture and since then he has been flattened and now looks slightly less podgy as a result of sleeping in a 5yo bed for a week.

This is pester power in action “make me this mummy” – so I did. When it was finished Spider was not interested, it’s been a week and  I haven’t seen him play with it, but I know he cuddles it at night as I’ve seen him cuddle it – the  power of fleece !

Details can be found on Alan Dart’s website - pattern is easy but making it in Snowflake is very tedious (and it wasn’t for the fact Spider likes “fleecy” I’d have used a standard DK) and our Pteradon is much paler than the original (as they don’t do the original colours now)

I shall probably be much less receptive to requests to knit from now on…although the latest requests (Spider caught me surfing the net) do look quite cute…I don’t really like making toys, but my boy knows how to press the right buttons when it comes to persuading “older ladies” (I am “not quite 40 next month”)  to do things for him…

Oh, only real change to the pattern is I did blue eyes…because apparently “pink is for girls” !

Knitting holiday ?

The other day I finished something I started 364 days before – it took so long because I lost interest, k2 p2 rib is not my favourite combination, and that is probably why I find myself this weekend unable to knit. All that I have outstanding at the moment is Julia’s water aid jumper, which I know I must do, but its k2,p2 and I think its going to turnout as an “UGH”… the other thing is a black jumper for me. Yes a black jumper exactly at the time when I am beginning to doubt whether, after almost 21 years of wearing nothing but black, it actually suits me !

So I’ve been spending time sorting the various bits of yarn under the bed, but I’m just not feeling inspired…the in tray has a few small sewing projects to finish off and my brother’s christmas present which stares accusingly up at me everytime I pass it…but none of them, despite the guilt is calling to me…

Talking about guilt, I have all that material which I keep buying…

So a knitting break I think and a challenge to myself…I am going to use up at least one of those 7 lengths of material (currently gathering dust) in “something” before my birthday…except now the weather has improved and we have cleared the back garden, I have a yearning to be outside in the evening instead of inside swearing at the sewing machine.

Yes I know, the only way I’m going to improve is to actually do something…imagine that this post is me standing on the edge of the swimming pool gingerly sticking my toe in the water – maybe next time I visit my own blog I will have submerged myself – preferably by a swallow dive and not a belly flop !

ps oh, and will start my brother’s christmas present again – I haven’t finished it because it really is quite bad and I think I can do better

That’s quite enough for one night…

Drafted last night but battery died before posting

Work was particularly stressful today. I came home and collapsed on the sofa until Husband revived me with the assistance of a Spanish omlette (and no wine, I’m being good !). Finally as the clock crept past 10pm I dragged my backside upstairs and finally finally drafted a pattern.

I’d lost my nerve after the nasty incident of the skirt that looked like a sack of potatoes.

Anyway, after about 15 minutes tops – and most of that was spent with sticky tape making the paper longer – I’d completed the first 10 steps of a circular skirt pattern (can’t remember where I downloaded it from but it says “Sew It Up, published by Kyle Cathie Ltd”)…didn’t have the energy to make a second, so I shall use the same bit of paper for the front and the back.

Too tired though to re-iron the fabric or to try and work out the best use of the material – I had for once been organised and pre-washed my fabric – it shrank considerably though both in length and width so will have to rethink my planned layout – I staggered to bed…

Edited to add: Another tough day today…but one should face one’s fear in tiny steps, so it’s probably a good thing !

Too much for another night ?

So I couldn’t leave it alone could I ? Having had a good evening yesterday, instead of going to bed after posting yesterdays post (yes at 8.30pm, I am that tired) I couldn’t rest…and I was feeling smug with myself for yesterdays pattern drafting, so of course I got the material out, I got the iron out and I got the scissors…

Now the material is cheap, and very red and there is a lot of it. A lot for someone who usually buys no more than 2 metres. I have  5 metres of red IKEA cotton and I couldn’t handle it, it was worse than trying to put a kingsize duvet in its cover…so I decided to cut it down to the size needed to do the front (cut on the fold).

So my skirt is 70cm long plus hem allowance – so I cut 150cm, put the rest away, folded the cut material in half and ironed it. Then I took my pattern up and my pins…and it was then I realised that I’d forgotten to take into account the circle cut out at the waist, so of course when it lined up against the fabric I was almost 10cm short…

You’d think I’d have learned by now not to do things when I’m tired ?

So I loped 10cm off the bottom of the pattern – I’d have been more upset if I’d done this with a bought pattern and just cut the skirt out 10 cm shorter than it would have been. On the plus side I now managed to get both the front and the 2 back pieces out of 1 piece of material (it was 137cm wide – originally 140cm).

I know the chances are that I’m not going to wear the skirt if it’s that short, cos I hate skirt that are above my knees. But I had been wondering how I could make it slightly more exciting than a plain red skirt (I draw the line at applique-ing a poodle on it,  circle skirts also being known as poodle skirts in the ’50s) so I guess I have to attach a bottom layer now in something else…or a very big frill…or a pom pom fringe !

Clickety click, Clickerty click

It took me a week before I could pick up my needles again. It’s been a very stressful week at work, which I can’t talk about here as a lot of it will continue for some months to come but I think the worst may be over. I’ve tried to do some sewing but since that doesn’t come naturally to me it needs more thought than I’m capable of after work.

The problem I think is that I have plans to knit certain things but none of them interest me so I can’t face starting anything, I don’t like anything I’ve got left to knit (Julia and the black jumper which I fear won’t suit me) so I tried a different method and went for spontaneity rather than organised.

I browsed through the stash under the bed until I got an idea for something and then searched for a pattern that fitted the idea. As a result I have started on christmas knitting already and it is making me feel much more relaxed…or of course that might be down to the friday night wine !

(it’s purple and its fluffy and it’s for one of Spider’s many many girlfriends…)

The tyranny of the school uniform

Most sunday evenings just before bedtime (my bedtime) or early on a Wednesday morning you can find me kneeling on the floor in front of a bath towel, iron in hand as I quickly run an iron over whatever bits of school uniform I can find in the “ironing basket” (aka “things to be ironed at some point” basket).

Now I don’t iron, not as a rule. I’ve taken time over the years to acquire clothes that can be worn without ironing. I even managed to select a husband who early on said “don’t bother ironing my clothes, most of them don’t need doing and if they do I’ll do it”. You could date my aversion to ironing possibly to weekly ironing when a teenager of about 30 handkerchiefs but more likely its due to the ironing I did for an ex boyfriend at the start of this century, (he even insisted on his non iron shirts having the once over !), you see whilst I was at home ironing his shirts he was allegedly working late…except his definition of working late involved meeting one of his female work colleagues in various London bars.

So if I don’t iron why am I ironing school uniform ? Surely most school uniform today is casual enough not to be ironed ? Can’t you get away with a slightly creased and crumpled look ? Yes, I could if it wasn’t for the guilt. You see I am a bit of an absent Mum most of the time due to the job being in Reading and me spending so much time travelling. Husband and my Parents take on a lot of the parental responsibilities so I try to do my bit by making sure Spider has a packed lunch everyday and looks vaguely presentable (and pressed).

The problem however, as all Mum’s of small boys know is the rate that they get through their uniform – the sweatshirt is often covered with unidentified stain and splodges of paint or mud, and the trousers ? Well they probably could do more than 1 day if it wasn’t for the fact that most small boys have yet to master the importance of the “shake” – and the thought of my boy going to school smelling vaguely of wee is not one I wish to contemplate.

So that’s why late at night you will find me worshiping at the altar of “Tefal, Ultra glide” praying to the gods of steam heat…except I won’t, not today not tonight, because half way through last week I was visited by the ironing fairies and since they brought their friends the housework elves with them I have a day off today, I even have a day off from being Mummy as all the boys (stepchildren are staying over this weekend) are off to Silverstone today…

So what to do ? Is this the day I finally finish my brother’s christmas present ? I am spoilt for choice… maybe I should make a present for the ironing fairies as per the “Elves and Shoemaker” story…but then they might not come again and I really really feel loved after they’ve been (Thanks Mum !)

Clearing the in-tray

***BIG SPOILER ALERT IF YOU ARE OVER 40, MALE, RELATED TO ME AND STILL HAVEN’T RECEIVED YOUR CHRISTMAS PRESENT !!!

On my “craft table” next to the sewing machine I have an in-tray where abandoned projects come to die.

There are several ways that something can end up in here the easiest way is to be broken, to have something that has to be done which I haven’t got around to doing yet, like say mending, sewing a button on, alternatively I may have run out of essential supplies and am waiting for the bits to finish things off (I have a bad habit of starting things before I have all the materials to hand) and the final way is for something to have gone badly and horribly wrong – this last category is mainly comprised of projects involving craft techniques that I have no previous knowledge of, experience and as quickly becomes apparent, no talent for !

Yesterday on my day off I decided to clear the in-tray. This decision admittedly was mainly prompted by a friend of mine answering the phone with the words “Hello, so you are still alive !” I haven’t seen KTCupcake since Christmas, mainly because her present has been in the in-tray waiting to be finished.

First up, a spot of mending. This lovely bag was a present for Spider from his Auntie Islay. It split down the seams and simply required to be seamed on the sewing machine…I now need to find a complete one so I can work out how the handle works…

Then a needlecase from Sew: Cath Kidson for “Long Lost Cousin Cath” in Australia, made to accompany the pin cushion I’d made to remind her of a trip we made together  (the hedgehog is relevant to Ross on Wye where Husband’s ancestors used to live) – Cath teaches Domestic Science for a living…I lacked confidence to finish things off

Then I went through all the bits of knitting that needed their ends weaving in, some of that is blocking now…am wondering if I should save this “last minute” christmas present for Mum until next christmas…

Last year I tried wire knitting and made a pair of red hearts, they have been sitting in the in-tray for about 9 months waiting to be turned into earrings. Yesterday they fulfilled their destiny and I discovered that jewellery making is not for me…I am far too clumsy to do things with beads to relax !

These are destined for KT Cupcake as a birthday present together with this, but my slightly less industrial version (also made yesterday)

It is my godaughter Cookie’s birthday at the end of the week, so she and her brothers (and parents) will finally get their christmas and birthday presents then – Cookie’s new bag just needs sewing up and filling with 8 year old goodies.  KTcupcakes christmas present was almost finished but I’ve forgotten how to do stab stitch binding (it’s a voucher for a home cooked take away – made in small book form)

I’ve also finished off the back of the Water Aid Jumper…

Confession Time – the in-tray at the start of this post is actually the “after” photograph. The one thing that didn’t get finished is that cross stitch bookmark you can see. I’ve decided that its beyond saving, I really can do better than that (it looks really bad up close)…so I’m setting a deadline, my brother will get his present by the end of may – honest !

Now, I think I need a rest – unfortunately I think from the look of the weather this morning it may be a day for staying in and doing “make and do”…and I’ve got nothing to do now !

My knitathon (not timed, not sponsored)

Husband has left me…only temporarily, he’ll be back on monday, but there are just some things a girl can’t compete with and he’s headed to Belgium for some Father and son bonding with eldest stepson whose just turned 21. They are off watching cars go round and round ad nauseum again…

So it’s just me and Spider.  I have the election night, tomorrow’s G&T today and lots and lots of time to knit…I’m curled up here with my laptop and the cat listening to the pad pad pad of small feet upstairs as Spider scutters between his room and mine…I suspect he’s decided he’s sleeping in my room tonight (“Don’t worry Mummy, I’ll look after you and make sure you’re not lonely”) and is redistrubuting some of his bedtime friends in my bed.

So with 4 evenings with no one but the cat to talk to after 7pm in the evening I am turning to knitting to keep me away from the rest of the Gin bottle and the Penn State sour cream pretzels in the cupboard. I am determined to finish Julia’s cardigan so that I can start afresh on something that makes my heart sing…

FO: Pink String Bag

Pattern: Aline

Needles: 6mm(circs)

Yarn: Craft Cotton outside, Wendy Pure (bamboo tape) inside

This pattern is meant to be made out of rafia which would make it a lot firmer but I found it difficult to track down, at least at a price I was prepared to pay and in a reasonable quantity, so I used dish cloth cotton and stiffened the base of the bag with firm interfacing. I’ve also made the handle a lot longer so that I could sew it under the bag as well.

Necessity…or making up for lack of kit

I have finished Julia’s cardigan – when I say finished I mean I’ve finished knitting the dratted thing. I still have to block, sew up the cardigan and then learn how to crochet so that I can cover 12 “self cover buttons” before next Wednesday…I feel that the crochet may be unlikely so have not splashed out on buttons just in case I ended up wandering around John Lewis on Tuesday lunchtime looking for something that will “do” 

I don’t feel particularly proud of the fact that it has taken me 10 months to do something that should have taken me two. But in my defence there has been a lot of knitting involved, mainly because I kept frogging it and reknitting it to try and get the stitches to look even…I even tried knitting it flat on circs, just in case that made a difference (it didn’t). It wasn’t until I finally knitted a swatch and did some test knitting and blocking that I realised that the problem was the yarn itself, it had a natural kink in it which made my stitches look lumpy.

Now I am not known for my finishing ability. Laziness lets me down, my seams are not as good as they can be and if I’m honest until about 6 months ago “blocking” was something you did in the theatre when working out a scene in rehersals…I rarely even bothered to press a seam before sewing up. But I can’t send this cardigan out looking so obviously home made. The problem with this cardigan is that the instructions clearly say “don’t block”. The USP of this cardigan is that the ridges of rib (it looks a bit like a folded up fan or a concertina) expand to fit most bodies.

If I block this cardigan then it’s not going to be stretchy and although the knitting will look lovely and even, the cardigan is going to be big and baggy and not fit.

 So what I needed was some way of giving it a bit of gentle stretch, enough to unkink it slightly but not enough to stretch it…this was going to involve a lot of pins…so yesterday evening I carried out some experiments with blocking wires…not that I have blocking wires, what I actually have is some plastic coated fine garden wires and some 2-pinned pins (think large staples)…I also have a scarf (purple haze) a shawl (the Lilly Chinn) needing a bit of washing/blocking and a spare left front (knitted originally for fitting purposes and never unravelled…for reasons that are too dull to explain).

So all 3 items were left to soak in a bath of tepid water for 2 hours with some handwash detergent – one of them was filthy, judging on the sediment left behind (probably the cardigan as the wool had been in the loft for over 10 years) – I then blotted them all dry on towels. Purple haze has been pinned as normal, Lilly chinn has been threaded with blocking wires and the spare left front to Julia’s cardigan has been tightly blocked lengthways at the bottom, tightly pinned with a widthways stretch at the top and left to its own devices in the middle…

At some point this evening I will pluck up the courage to check the spare bedroom to see whether it’s worked – if not then I’m running out of ideas…frogging the lot and pre-stretching the wool to get the kink out before I knit it is not an option, not if I want to deliver it next wednesday.

[note - the yarn was new and unused and was a Rowan discontinued line called Donegal Lights - I haven't been able to find any finished items on Ravelry so I have no idea if this is a common problem or not]

FO: Purple Haze

We had a little visitor. He arrived in our bed at about 12.30am claiming “scary dream” so we let him in with his cuddly blanket and his dressing gown and he lay there until about 2am when Husband finally got fed up of his wriggling and carried him back to his own bed.

We were both awake at this stage. Husband dropped off soon after removing our interloper but I couldn’t turn my head off…shortly afterwards it was irrelevant whether I could stop my brain whirring as I was then kept awake by Husband’s snoring and then a headache. I got up and found a little red and yellow pill (cold and flu remedy but also deals with aches and pains). I’ve taken it for the headache, it’ll probably keep me awake even longer though as it has caffeine in it.

So here am I, awake in the middle of the night – can’t knit as that will definitely keep me awake and I’ll have to frog what I do in the morning as it’s bound to be full of mistakes…so here is something I made previously.

Pattern: Steam scarf

Yarn: Jaegar Mohair Silk

needles: 4mm

new: Nothing really. I have just spent over a year doing essentially the same pattern for the lily chin scarf as its a k2p2 rib with the occasional cable done over 16 stitches instead of 24.

As mentioned previously I blocked this scarf after soaking it. I soaked it to try and make the wool feel softer as despite being percentage wise more a natural fibre than plastic fantastic it felt rather harsh, I also wanted to try and control some of the fluff as it’s a very hairy scarf and to make it slightly longer which it now is but I probably overblocked it widthwise as the cables aren’t as pronounced.

First christmas present for this year, not sure which of Spider’s many girlfriends it is going to yet…maybe I shall keep it as payment for a night without sleep.

It is now 4am. Night world

FO: Lilly, or the unbearable longness of knitting

On April the 15th 2009 I started knitting something for me, on the 11th April 2010 I finally finished it. It didn’t have to take so long, there are people on Ravelry who have made some truly fabulous versions, in a fraction of the time and theirs are much longer than mine, but lets face it, beautiful though she is, Lilly is not the most interesting of knits.

Lilly consists of about 6ft of k2p2 rib with the occasional cable. It’s uninteresting knitting but it’s not mindless knitting and if you have used Kidsilk Haze of similar then it’s a real pain to knit back to correct your mistake – someone in the blogosphere once described knitting with kidsilk haze as like knitting with hairy dental floss…

Anyway this is my Lilly

Pattern: 02#Reversible Cabled Rib Shawl by Lily Chin

Yarn: Kidsilk Night in Starlite (5 balls)

Needles: 4.5mm

New: When I started I was new to knitting with dental floss, other than that this was probably my first time using stitch markers.

I am pleased to report that Lilly is both beautiful and functional as I used her last weekend on my birthday when it was too hot for a jacket but still a bit chilly (if you are a whimp like me) – wouldn’t recommend wearing it over black as it sheds fluff like nobodies business !

Verdict: Despite the fact there are some huge holes around my cables and that it is now probably too warm to wear it, I love it !

House Cleaning

Today is meant to be the wettest day of the bank holiday so we have decided as a family to spend it indoors trying to create some order out of chaos…yes, it’s time to clean the house, declutter and finally find permanent homes for all the objects that have taken up residence on the stairs (which everyone seems to ignore rather than taking them upstairs where they are meant to be !).

Oh and ironing…which I’m leaving ’til last so that I can move seamlessly on from the ironing to some sewing (I need to iron the fabric)  which will be my reward for the housework…if we have any energy left. Things here have got  a bit out of hand…

So have a nice weekend everyone I’m off for my appointment with Mr Muscles…

Something old out of something new

I cleaned. I cleaned on Friday. I cleaned on Saturday. I cleaned on Sunday. Not quite as impressive as it sounds as I kept getting distracted and ended up doing other things (taking library books back, making a herb garden) but I did do enough to earn an evening of sewing…after I’d tidied my work table again after surplus clutter from other rooms ended up there…

Sometime ago I started making a skirt but cut it out too short, so having resolved to add a “ruffle” to it using some polka dot material (which I have a lot of, but can only use in small amounts cos it sends your eyes dotty !) –  following a suggestion from both my Mum and Carie at the Knitted bear – I set too with renewed enthusiasm.

I stay stitched the waist, sewed 3 seams (and turned the seam under to neaten it), pressed it vigorously, found a zip to fit… and whilst basking in the glow of smugness caused by having such lovely neat seams

(well neat for a beginner) decided to try half made skirt on for fit…

UGH ! Wrong choice of material again. Circle skirts may be flattering to girls with large tums and bums, but only if you chose a material that flows like a river and doesn’t bunch up around the waist…

Monday, feeling depressed at another bodge up (but then hey, that’s what muslins are for isn’t it ? so that you don’t mess up your good fabric) we took Spider to Wroxeter to watch the Ermine Street Guard strut their stuff…and what was that under their armour ? Wow, tunics, red tunics and what colour is the circle skirt ? Yep red. Now where did I put my scissors ? I know a small person who would love to have a tunic to go with his sword and shield…

At this point if I were a more serious/organised blogger I would have a picture of  Spider pretending to be a roman soldier in the “Children’s Drill Session” but that’s on Husband’s camera and he’s popped out for the evening – so instead, here is a picture of Julia blocking…you didn’t really think I’d finished it to deadline, No ? Well glad I didn’t disappoint.

I had to clean the house in order to have somewhere to lay her out…not having Teenager around this  weekend helped as I  used his bed to pin it all out in one go…now all I need is the courage to finish her off and deliver her…must make sure I’ve removed all the pins from the Teenager’s bed before next weekend…

Make Over Me

Last night the boys (Husband, Teenager, Spider) left me alone in the house with Matt Roberts and went bat hunting on what is known in our village as “the yellow land” (land donated to the parish council and now used as a sort of wildlife reserve). Mr Roberts gave me a damn good seeing too and after he had finished with  me I took my hot and sweaty self into my third shower of the day.

Now before you all gasp in horror and say “poor Husband, how could she do this to him and in their own house” I should point out that although Matt is a fit personal trainer type I did not actually have the pleasure of his company, merely his book Fat Loss programme. This book is the only thing that seems to make an impact on my lard ass, I have followed it on several occasions over the last 10 years and I do manage to stick to it for the whole 8 weeks.

Usually I spend a week gently easing myself into it…this time I just jumped straight in and as a result I’ve been in agony for the 4 days I’ve been doing it…I know it will get better, but since Day 4 is a rest day it’s a perfect excuse for staying inside today and knitting (“cleaning, sorry couldn’t possibly I’m in pain…pretend to be a Damsel in distress ? Only if I can do it lying down Spider, my legs ache…).

I don’t follow the diet plan, I just cut out all fattening food, eat regularly and no alcohol for 8 weeks. I find drinking enough water difficult (I don’t like cold water) and somedays I have to vary the exercise to fit what I’m doing – take yesterday for example, I spent several hours running after a “Roman Knight” around Kenilworth castle and ended up with blisters so I just did the resistance training and stretches figuring that the events of the day probably added up to at least 25 minutes cardio.

In case you are wondering what a post on diet and exercise is doing on what is predominantly a knitting/craft type blog I should perhaps explain that I have turned myself into a “project”. I have given myself a year (read “impending 40th birthday) to get my weight back down to something I can live with  and to transform myself into something less scruffy. I have ignored myself for 5 years now. There is not enough time in the day to do everything and if you want to spend time with loved ones and hold down a fulltime job (plus 4 hours commuting everyday) then something has to give. In my case its been personal appearance plus a devil may care attitude towards cleaning…last weeks marathon cleaning was preparation for hiring a cleaner, trying to get the house into the sort of state that a cleaner would be willing to tackle.

Getting a cleaner is due to the fact that Husband has a new job which will mean that he too will be commuting down the M40 daily (and spending less time in the house) . New job means slightly more money, we also happen to be much much less in debt than we were 18 months ago so we can take the brakes off a bit and treat ourselves to something meaningful…and Spider should get more time with both of us without me getting grumpy because I can’t see the floor !

ps there will shortly be a new page on the blog dealing with the progress of the makeover so it won’t intrude on usual knitterly progress again !

Homemade: Gorgeous things to make with love

I am in retreat.No in fact I am actually hiding. I am hiding upstairs under the duvet with a cup of tea and a new book. Let the boys wreak what havoc they may downstairs, I don’t care. I am lost in a handmade dream where everything I lay a needle on turns out neat and pressed and totally gorgeous !

I don’t own a lot of craft books (knitting doesn’t count, knitting is a way of life) I do get a lot out of the library though and look at the pictures and dream and rarely raise a glue stick in active pursuit… this changed a few weeks ago when I borrowed What Shall We Do Today: Catherine Woram. I love this book. There are so many things in it that I could see myself doing with Spider. Unfortunately Spider didn’t share my vision and the book went back to the library without a project attempted, not even the supremely easy and always fun paper windmill !

I have been in mourning for the book. I miss it. So when a rainstorm this afternoon had us running for shelter in Leamington Spa I made sure we aimed for Waterstones but I was to be disappointed. Lovely books they had a plenty but no What Shall We Do Today but they did have a slightly more grown up version called Homemade: Ros Badger and Elspeth Thompson which I may grow to love almost as much as WSWDT – the introduction says that it encourages you to use things you find already in the house, which is a good start as a lot of books seem to require extensive shopping before you can even cut something out. The book covers a wide range of things from knitting and crochet, gardening and cooking, embroidery and banging holes in things with a nail…

I think I read somewhere that there are over 50 projects – so in theory I could try something new every week…starting with a mexican tin lantern…but not yet as I’ve just emptied the recycling box in the kitchen.  In the meantime it has gone quiet downstairs which is a bad sign, as is my empty teacup. Time to rejoin the mayhem.

FO: General purpose armour

Please excuse the background in these photographs, with Spider you have to grab your pictures where and when you can even when the locations are less than photogenic…

Pattern: Chainmail

Yarn Patons

Needles: 10mm

New: Er, knitting on 10mm ? Never used needles that big before…

ps the Merc in the picture above is not mine, I drive a Fiesta, Spider was just lurking by it hoping for a better “steed” home

Gloom

My little point and shoot digital camera has broken which is annoying as I have several things that I need photos of before they get given away tomorrow.

We are having a small family get together as one member of the family has an upcoming birthday…more amazingly though I have finally finished my brother’s christmas present. I’m feeling a bit smug because although it’s 6 months late it is actually much much better than the original present (made from a kit)…except I have 2 rough edges to sort out before I see him at lunchtime tomorrow…I need to find away of disguising that I bodged putting a back on it.

Fortunately I do have an SLR so photos can happen at some point tomorrow if I can remember where I put it when I cleaned last week

FO: Aboro-celt Lizard

Sometimes things take longer than expected…but usually its the preparing yourself to take action that takes the time and things never seem quiet so bad once you start. Take my brother’s christmas present for example, its taken me 5 months to admit to myself that I needed to start again but once started things went quiet well.

It’s a design from another book of celtic cross stitch from Leamington Spa library, which I would tell you the name of if the book wasn’t upstairs and I wasn’t collapsed on the sofa downstairs (12 days down 44 to go)…the general opinion at the weekend was that it was reminiscent of aboriginal dot paintings, which was OK cos Big Brother quite likes that, in fact probably more than he likes celtic stuff so things seem to have worked out ok in the end.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for my photography skills. I have found the SLR unfortunately I have forgotten how to use it (too many buttons and dials) as I’ve been using the little nikon point and shoot for so long…so if my brother happens to read this in the not too distant future and fancies providing me with a better photograph it would be much appreciated !

Technology doesn’t like this family at the moment, the laptops are acting up and the car is followed by a strange smell. Its typical though the fates give you a good card (new job for Husband) with one hand and deal you a bad one before you’ve had time to celebrate the good card !

Taming the octopus

I had a meeting in London today. The journey back was better than the journey in, mainly because I had a seat on the way back.

To save the organisation I work for money I took the first train to London after the “rush hour” but of course being the first cheap train of the day it was rammed. I didn’t fancy the idea of standing for an hour and 20 minutes so I just plonked myself down on the floor.  I was an object of some curiosity, not because I was knitting but because you don’t get many 30 something women in suits sitting on the floor of the Banbury to Marylebone.

On the way back I was an object not just of curiosity but of open mouthed fascination when a group of 20 or so pre-schoolers got on at High Wycombe…I’d like to think that it was because I was using dpns and just looked like a cats cradle of pointy sticks and blue wool rather than the fact that I was knitting…I’d hope that I wasn’t the first person they’d ever seen knitting…

Silence Again

Knitting has been happening, things have been being finished. Yes Julia will be sewn up by the end of June, unfortunately I have a little bit of a technical hitch…quite a serious one.

The Julia cardigan comes from a magazine. A magazine published in 1942. It has been challenging due to the substitution of yarn. It has been challenging because the yarn has a strong natural kink to it. It has been challenging because my sewing up is not exactly the neatest in the world (naturally slapdash probably describes it accurately) but most of all it has been challenging because part of the instructions say “the final buttonhole is knitted on the neckband” and guess what, I come to sew up the cardigan and knit the neckband, and horror ! There are no instructions for the neckband… and with a magazine published over 70 years ago you can’t write to the editor asking for them to send you the missing section of the pattern !

So I’m in a slow process of trying things to see if they work…I’ll keep you posted.

I’m also desperately knitting away at a jumper for me that I started just under a year ago, unfortunately I keep making catastrophic mistakes and having to go back to the start again – admittedly this was due to the fact I was somewhat distracted by being at a festival at the time (no, not Glasto, this one was last weekend) – I’ve also just finished my first pair of gloves and have a stack of small things that need washing and finishing off.

Because of this, my technology problems with camera and laptop and the fact that I am reorganising the house before the “cleaner” interviews us on friday to see if she is prepared to take us on (I’m moving the sewing machine  and the in-tray out of the spare room – don’t know where it’s going to live yet) – there are unlikely to be any posts here until next weekend.

The other thing that’s been happening here is some wool buying. I heard a rumour that the John Lewis sale started on the 24th, if it did then it didn’t happen in Reading. Fortunately Jacksons in Reading did have a sale on and I scored 12 balls of  sirdar Flirt (bamboo/wool mix) in red. Yesterday Mrs Lacer tweeted me to say she’s scored some Noro on sale in John Lewis, Kingston (I know, Noro ! on sale ! How will my credit card cope…) – until I get my hands on some I shall remain deeply jealous !  I’ve also acquired several balls of sock yarn whilst trogging around the country (The Knitting Parlour, Malvern, Wool in Broadway etc etc) but these may become gloves as I think I may be about to become obsessed…

Right I’m off strawberry picking now with Spider, the Flapjack Queen and her little Oatlets…we have a yen to make jam…see you next weekend

Cravings

I want to make this. I really really want to make it…but I can’t.

I mean don’t get me wrong, technically I can, or I think I can. I’ve read through the pattern and there is nothing I can’t handle. Practically I can as well. I have the pattern. I have the yarn…in fact here look at this lovely pile of  red happiness waiting to be turned into the first of my rainbow of jumpers

(I treated myself at IKnit last time I had to go to London for a meeting (well it was just after my birthday))

I even have the needles – at least I think I have, I won’t know for certain until I check my tension and at the moment I won’t even let myself swatch.

But you see I can’t knit this because Julia is still not finished and until I have her out of this house, morally I cannot start on something new…but it is so so hard and lately I’ve been having cravings. Can you believe this ? I have a yen to make a sock. A sock ! I ask you why do I want to make a sock, I have drawers full of the things already (not knitted). I do not need a pair of socks.

Gloves now. Gloves I can understand wanting to knit gloves. I have just knit my first pair and I loved the whole process and having something of a glove fettish I can easily imagine myself getting obsessed by gloves in the same way other people love socks…but no, I am possessed by a mad desire to cast on a sock.

And, Julia not being suitable for taking camping did admittedly get abandoned this weekend in favour for something a little more portable…but not before I’d put 2 hours work into the neckband so I don’t feel quite so morally embarrassed, and  I haven’t cast on Manu yet…but I have started a sock…but I stopped knitting it the moment we got back  and I promise (cross my heart) that I won’t touch it again until Julia is in an envelope and on her way to Hatfield…which had better be before Thursday as I have a course in Birmingham and two train journeys to pass the time away on…

Nearly Finished !

The end is in sight. I have finally sorted out the neck band on Julia’s cardigan. I have a pocket to make, 2 seams to join (the long ones !) and 12 button holes to tidy up – then it’s off to my Mum for the once over to see what else I need to do to make it look good (there are a few places where a second line of stitching would improve things)  and then it will be out of the house and off to Hatfield…I may put buttons on it, I may leave it to Julia herself – buttons can really change an item and if you get it wrong can mess things up completely.

It’s a good thing that I’ve almost finished because having congratulated myself at avoiding the John Lewis sale without buying anything it would appear that I couldn’t resist the House of Fraser. I was on a course in Birmingham today…the only non prosecutor on a course for prosecution lawyers…feeling a bit dumb in comparison I sought solace in the only place that sells yarn in the centre of Brum…one should never go into a yarn shop feeling low, especially when they have a sale on.

On the plus side, with a bit of effort on my part I should have a new merino jumper for less than £20 and Spider’s girlfriend will eventually have a cotton hoodie for £10 – both named brand yarns !

Right I’m off to do the 2 long seams before the wine kicks in (reading Elizabeth David, a glass of wine and an omelette – can’t exercise tonight as I did something to my hip whilst running)…

ps I only really went into HoF for the lining for a small bag, this was more than a success and I think the Mummy of the recipient will appreciate it more than the recipient because I know she likes Amy Butler (although its quite a plain Amy Butler)… however not only am I very slow to finish things I’m also useless when it comes to posting things !

Whisper it…

I think I may have finished the Julia cardigan…just needs buttons and posting

Tonight I’m drinking a toast in white wine (sod the diet thing) and swatching with my red Wensleydale sheep shop DK…

Happy. Happy. Happy

ps lots of pictures coming next week, I have a lot of things finished that have been stacking up due to lack of photographic capability

pps just realised I have a jumper to finish by the 15th July if I want to avoid the “this has been on the needles for a year”

Thank You !

Dear Welsh Goddess

I know you read my blog, just am not sure if it’s this one you read or Appetite for Cake. I just wanted to say “thank you”. Thank you for thinking of me when you were on holiday. Thank you for taking the time to put something in the post to make me smile.

I know that life for you in local government is probably as “interesting” as it is for me at the moment in a publicly funded Quango and that makes it just a little bit extra special to know that you have thought about how to make me smile despite your own troubles

The bookmark arrived yesterday at what was the end of a particularly bad day, having been informed that the cuts will probably involve a reduction in headcount of about 30%, and although your lovely present wasn’t completely responsible for putting a smile back on my face, it did help (as did 2 cadbury’s caramel eggs, half a bottle of wine and a natter with a passing friend and Husband).

 I understand that “we are all in it together”  (I’m keeping count of the number of times this statement is made by the government) – and if people occasionally take the time to be nice to other people (as you have) then well, admittedly it doesn’t make it better or take the pain away, but like a Mummy’s kiss, it makes us feel less miserable about the whole unpleasant business !

 To accentuate the positive – redundancy (if it comes to that) will give me more time to knit – just perhaps not the spare money to spend on wool !

 Lots of Love

5CB

 Ps keep an eye on the post !

Festival of Colour

This year I’d planned to start knitting myself a whole series of more colourful sweaters/cardigans etc When most of your clothes are black then even one top in any colour is an improvement… unfortunately we are now in July and not one has been made thanks to being bogged down with the Julia cardigan.

However Julia had become too big to be travel knitting and as a result I did get quite a lot of opportunity to play with colour on small knits..a lot of which have been an exercise of using up left overs…but mainly just mad, joyful, childish glee of what pretty things you can make when you play around with colour combinations.

But first…most of a sock…this rainbow of mexicana colours is filling my soul…

I have also become addicted to this pattern. It started with a bag for Spider last half term. Spider is reluctant to do things unless there is a reason for doing it…he will do handwriting practice but as yet no one has given him a good reason why he should.

This bag filled with a selection of little gifts resulted in daily handwriting sessions all through half term (Subsequent to this, explaining that if he couldn’t write then Father Christmas wouldn’t know what to bring him for Christmas has resulted in an almost daily letter to Santa as he refines his “needs” !)

But one playing with colour combinations has lead to another

And another

And another (would have prefered white stripes to grey,but I have no white left – this one was knit in the round and practices the “jogless stripe” technique)

(and then you have all the fun of yet more choices of what to line it with – please note that only the first one was lined with a pair of old (but very well washed) boxer shorts !  subsequent versions were not done in quite so much of a hurry either and the stitching is a little better in the making up)

So I now have a pile of little bags – plus 2 more in the making…but I only have 1 little boy.

Life is a bit cr*ppy at the moment (apologies to my Mum but there is no other way of describing it) – I don’t know anyone who is smiling and laughing, we are all a bit down.  However making other people smile tends to make me smile, and “if you love something set it free” (so I’m told), so I have, I have sent these little bags out into the world to try and spread a bit of happiness and put smiles on some faces…

Bad Example

This morning my breakfast was 3 Reeces Peanut cups. Fortunately it is a school day so Spider didn’t catch me eating them as he was already at school and I had breakfast in the car on the way to work…lunch was a chocolate cookie from a colleague who had a birthday.

Unfortunately stress about work has coincided with a running injury – so am on a break from the Matt Robins programme…fortunately school finishes next week so I may be able to fit in some cycling to work…

It would be a shame to abandon the programme now having got down to 11 stone but I need something to prop me up at the moment – even the skies are gloomy.

Maybe this weekend I have another go at the clothkits skirt I abandoned this time last year in the hope that I have lost enough inches that it will actually fit…maybe I should make it now before I undo all this good work…!

You can teach an old dog to use pointy sticks…

I have just been reading At Knits End by the Yarnharlot. In it she talks about meeting someone who had been knitting for over 60 years and how she thought she’d learn a lot from this experienced knitter. Only it turned out that the very experienced knitter was very good at a very limited range of things.

This was me 12 months ago. I had been knitting for over 25 years but I’d been mainly tackling colourwork sweaters for various sizes of people. The internet has opened my eyes to the wonders of what is out there and discovering there is so much more to learn.

So in the spirit of one of those “How much of  gourmet are you lists” I give you the Knitting Skills List which comes courtesty of Nana Mary who posted it on Ravelery and on her website – in bold are things I’ve tried, italics are things I have no intention of ever doing…

Afghan/BlanketAfghan

I-cord

Garter stitch

Knitting with metal wire

Shawl

Stockinette stitch

Socks: top-down

Socks: toe-up

Knitting with camel yarn

Mittens: Cuff-up

Mittens: Tip-down

Hat

Knitting with silk

Moebius band knitting

Participating in a KAL

Sweater

Drop stitch patterns

Knitting with recycled/secondhand yarn

Slip stitch patterns

Knitting with banana fiber yarn

Domino knitting (modular knitting)

Twisted stitch patterns

Knitting with bamboo yarn

Two end knitting

Charity knitting

Knitting with soy yarn

Cardigan

Toy/doll clothing

Knitting with circular needles

Knitting with your own handspun yarn

Slippers

Graffiti knitting (knitting items on, or to be left on the street)

Continental Knitting

Designing knitted garments

Cable stitch patterns

Lace patterns

Publishing a knitting book

Scarf

American/English knitting

Knitting to make money

Button holes

Knitting with alpaca

Fair Isle knitting

Norwegian knitting

Dying with plant colors

Knitting items for a wedding

Household items (dishcloths, washcloths, tea cozies)

Knitting socks (or other small tubular items) on two circulars

Olympic knitting (albeit unsuccessful)

Knitting with someone else’s handspun yarn

Knitting with DPNs

Holiday related knitting

Teaching a male how to knit

Bobbles

Knitting for a living

Knitting with cotton

Knitting smocking

Dying yarn

Steek

Knitting art

Fulling/felting

Knitting with wool

Textured knitting

Kitchener BO – not very well

Purses/bags

Knitting with beads

Swatching

Long Tail CO

Entrelac

Knitting and purling backwards

Machine knitting

Knitting with self-patterning/self-striping/variegating yarn

Stuffed toys

Baby items

Knitting with cashmere

Darning

Jewelry

Knitting with synthetic yarn

Writing a pattern

Gloves

Intarsia

Knitting with linen

Knitting for preemies

Tubular CO

Freeform knitting

Short rows

Cuffs/fingerless mitts/arm warmers

Pillows

Knitting a pattern from an online knitting magazine

Rug

Knitting on a loom

Thrummed knitting

Knitting a gift

Knitting for pets

Shrug/bolero/poncho

Knitting with dog/cat hair

Hair accessories

Knitting in public

Still a lot to do…

FO: Monkey magic…

I think I may finally have “exorcised” this pattern from my head…for now at least, there may be a reprise come Halloween or Christmas depending on how much time I have and whether I feel like another handmade christmas…These latest two are for my niece and nephew and finally hit the post this morning filled with lots of silly little things to perhaps pass the time whilst in the car headed towards their holiday.

I’m quite proud of the monkey (not my pattern) and the variation on the ladybirds log that became the pocket on the yellow and brown bag above. The sail boat was meant to have been crewed by an elephant and whereas the (currently blind and eyeless elephant) might not have forgotten what his task was to be I have managed to forget where I’ve put him…

Most of these bags have been made out of acrylic leftovers. The acrylic gives the bags quite a soft fuzzy look. The two blue ones in the last post where made out of cotton which gives them a crisper slightly more “adult” feel.

I still love the pattern but I haven’t been keen on the handstitching required for sewing in the linings – guess more sewing is required in order to improve the neatness of my awful sewing.

I’m in love

My love for alpaca has often been expressed on these pages, from the “nuzzle” in the URL as homage to “Nuzzle and Scratch” to its constant appearance in woolly objects, despite the fact that it does tend to knit up a bit tickly – Alpaca is just such a pleasure to knit with (soft and smooth) and to wear (soft and warm…oh and tickly).

But love was wearing a bit thing after 2 marathon sessions. The first being 5 feet of cabled alpaca which was both 4ply and splittyThe next battering of my devotion came after knitting up 2 balls of “lace weight” alpaca for my Mum who’d started a lacy scarf but it became too painful (RSI) to finish – the pattern (free from Toft Alpacas) was easy to remember but easy to mess upAfter this one I was quite happy to go cold turkey for awhile on the Aplaca, but I haven’t quit, I’m going to have another go slightly closer to christmas, I have a big ball of Aran and some large needles !

In the meantime I have found a vegetarian alternative on which to lavish my devotion and praise, Bamboo…its soft, it drapes like silk, it comes in a gorgeous arrange of colours and it has such a glamorous sheen…and, something I really needed after the uneven stitching in Julia’s Cardigan (Rowan Donegal Lights) it knitted up really really well, so even, so neat.  I am so smitten with Bamboo that I have 35 balls of the stuff (plus a skein of sugar cane yarn in glorious pastel ice cream colours).

The problem is that I seem to have an inability to actually finish anything in it…is it because I love it so much that I just want to keep knitting and never stop ? Whatever the reason 11 balls of black are supposed to be a lace style top for me where I have knit the front of the thing 3 times now but keep messing it up (I’m now using a notebook to keep track of increases/decreases and the chart) and 8 balls of it became most of a jumper knit in the round until I tried it on and realised that bright green possibly wasn’t my colourAlternatively it could have been that the pink stripe didn’t work, whatever it looked awful so I frogged it back… it’s waiting for me to find a pattern that suits it and the black is languishing as a UFO because fickle fickle me has found a new love.This is my swatch for Manu made with Wensleydale Longwool. It’s lucky that I am in love with its softness, smoothness, its natural sheen (its like the offspring of an Alpaca and a grove of Bamboo !) because despite being DK, to get the tension right for Manu I am knitting it on 3.25mm, I almost ended up with 3mm but decided to wash the swatch first and then measure.

I’m hoping that my obsession about this yarn is enough to sustain me because Manu is going to be a bit of a slog to knit. There is lots and lots of stocking stitch – it’s knit flat but the front and back are done together (200 stitches per row) – and then after about 3 balls of 100g balls of stocking stitch you reach the interesting knitting at the yoke and sleeves.

This is not an easy love affair…I’ve bought a ball of aran in the Wensleydale, just in case I need to rekindle the romance later on !

An official UFO

I don’t have any UFO’s or should I perhaps say “didn’t”. I dealt with all my UFO’s by the cunning strategy of unravelling them and giving all my yarn away in 2008 when I decided to give up knitting – some of these were vintage knits that had been on the go since 1989…

Despite the fact that I have been a little tardy in finishing things off sometimes, I have managed, since I restarted knitting, to cast off within a year of casting on…until the 15^th July that is which is the anniversary (according to Ravelry) of starting the Cockleshell Lace top from The Knitter issue 3…

I started off very well, I motored through the back, despite a very complex lace pattern made more confusing by the required increasing/decreasing that shapes the bottom of the back, I raced through both sleeves, despite the fact they were 75% stocking stitch. It was a joy, a pleasure, OK so the yarn is black which makes it difficult to see what you are doing sometimes but a pair of bright red needles and good overhead light sorted that – also I was knitting with Debbie Bliss Prima which is bamboo (see previous post about my love affair) so I was sitting there most nights just feeling in awe of the lovely even defined stitches and their gentle sheen…

And then I started the front.

Now I got off to a good start, I dealt with the increases and decreases ok until the armhole…it’s then things started to go wrong. Firstly I didn’t have enough of the Prima to finish it, I’d bought it in the John Lewis sale and that branch of JL no longer seemed to do the Prima in black…I  also screwed up the pattern , one of my lace motifs was off – so I knit back and corrected that whilst I looked for more yarn. I knit forward and made the same mistake, I corrected it and knit forward…I found a replacement ball…

“Hmmm, if I knit with this new yarn, which is not of the same dye lot then it will be right at the front, at eyelevel and therefore any difference in dye colour will be obvious” I frogged the entire front and cast on with the new yarn…

The new yarn was not just a different dyelot but a completely different colour. I had managed to pick up navy blue in the shop instead of black…I frogged what I had done and searched the internet until I found some black Prima.

I cast on, I managed 2 repeats of the pattern then I realised my motifs were wonky again. I frogged. I cast on again…by now it’s mid June and I’m on a weekend camping down in Wiltshire. I spent an entire afternoon knitting and frogging the same section again and again until in desperation I got out a scrap of paper and a pen and wrote out where I should increase/decrease.

When I got home the jumper ended up in the work basket as I had other more pressing matters…and there it stayed, even though I knew its first anniversary was approaching. I just couldn’t face picking it up because I knew I wouldn’t remember where I had got to and would end up making a mistake.

The other day I finally plucked up courage and picked up the red needles, and there in with the pattern was my scrap of paper – and guess what it was spot on accurate as to where I was in the pattern and what I had to do next…I still messed up the pattern again within 10 rows…!

This time I’m keeping going as I want to wear it on holiday and I daren’t put it down now in case I never pick it up again.

When I started it last year I decided to add a pattern repeat to deal with the fact I have a long back – I have never ever been happy with any of the jumpers I have made as far as back length is concerned – this time I would lengthen the pattern so that it would be perfect…of course 12 months on I know that Bamboo has a tendency to stretch with wear so I would have been better knitting it to pattern and letting time do its thing…

Anyway this is why the next FO to appear on these pages is likely to be black rather than the bright red Manu I would rather be knitting despite the acres and acres of stocking stitch…did I mention the fact I have a badly twisted stitch at the beginning…

A day of ends…

and beginnings or rather restarts.

I have spent this weekend finishing things off, you know the sort of things I mean, the things that are finished but just need finishing, ends weaved in, buttons put on, 2 sides grafting together… I have also finished the UFO.

So on the list to be photographed are

1 pair of socks (Monkeys)

1 pair of fingerless gloves (Ysolda pattern)

1 cockleshell jumper – Ok that may take a bit of time as strictly speaking its only finished in the “no more knitting sense” the 4 parts are sitting in a bowl in the kitchen soaking prior to blocking and then sewing up, but since I had got to the stage where I thought this was an endless jumper I think being in bits is an acceptable “finished”

Julia’s cardigan is in the process of having buttons sewn on it and 1 seam resewn (My Mum quality controlled it and recommended some remedial work)

The restart is a clothkit skirt the one that last year I cut out too small – well having lost 2.5 inches from my waist and 4 inches from my hips it now fits and has been ironed and a plan of action drawn up – just not executed due to uncertainty about the darts and the fact that by the time I realised I needed to wield the scissors I was already 1 G&T to the good before sunday lunch…

The only WIP I have now is Manu…can I face frogging it back to correct some misknit stitches..

Feeling Bruised

Today has not been a good day. I can’t talk about it as it involves the neighbour dispute. I did something which I thought the neighbour would accept because I was doing what her solicitor told me needed to happen…my mistake, turns out she didn’t agree with what her solicitor told me to do.

Feeling very annoyed…am also very much enjoying the belgium anesthetic that my husband brought back from Spa…I may regret this in the morning.

I hate lawyers…what was it I did for a living…sorry, too much anesthetic…

Oh and today we had another briefing about jobs, job losses, assessment for jobs etc etc…trying to think of a plan B and wondering if the world needs another yarn shop…there is an empty shop in Harbury (just down the road) and a good internet presence can make the difference between low footfall and high rents in a major town !

I like…

…hollyhocks in the central reservation…

…seeing a 10foot plastic tree heading north as an ocean going yacht heads south…whilst both being as landlocked as it can be…

…I like seeing…a goose in the fast lane…OK admittedly that was 10 years ago and on the M3…

…I like…things out of context…

You gotta see the bright side about commuting…

Trespass

It would appear that my knitting time is about to be interrupted for the forseeable future as I am advised by recorded letter (which somehow has ended up through the door without being signed for by anyone) that unless I accept my neighbours point of view within the next 14 days then court proceedings will be issued against me.

I love people with legal expense insurance they never give up and they never accept that the person they are pursuing may actually have an arguable case. Unfortunately it also means that I’m going to have to bite the bullet and get a surveyors report on the boundary which will not be cheap.

We are drinking more belgium beer here tonight and eating lemon mangie pie…

On the plus side at least if they do issue proceedings I can show that I told my neighbout 2.5 years ago before she instructed lawyers that the way to settle this would be to jointly instruct a surveyor and agree to be bound by their decision… I’m still going to be out of pocket on the surveyors report because although they are currently claiming £6k its really a small claims matter, so no entitlement to cost.

Apologies if the above sounds like gobbledygook but you all know I’m a lawyer that knits rather than a knitter who messes around with planning law so I guess you are not surprised by this post? Not sure where the Mummy bit fits in, sure Spider could tell you…

Laundry

The problem with holidays is that although you may leave your house in a presentable state it becomes chaos the moment you return…especially if its raining outside and you have 4 loads of washing to do…

We have been off on holiday and now I need a holiday to recover from that. Special thank you to Husband who did all the driving, apart from 150 minutes where I was meant to be driving but in fact spent it stuck in a traffic jam on queueing to pay at the toll booth…I am obviously destined to spend most of my life parked in the middle lane of one motorway or another !

Some knitting was done, lots of books were read (Hurrah !), I offered to spend time with Spider and play but he was more interested in being with his brother the Teenager and reading his Lego catalogue (which is in french so I suspect he was looking at the pictures and dreaming about christmas…).

I had a shower

This morning I took a shower with my clothes on – I guess it was intentional. We were waiting to go out. Husband insisted Spider have a shower. Spider was equally insistent that he wasn’t having one…it was a scene much like two boulders rolling along the same narrow valley, no where for either of them to go, no way to go past and no way of rolling back the way you’d come.

I picked Spider up and put him in the shower and then turned the shower on…well he had challenged me that there was no way I could get him to have a shower…

What’s that ? You can tell all 3 of us are obviously related…

Clearing a space in my mind

Before we went on holiday I had several posts planned about various things that have been happening recently plus some actual finished items -but they didn’t even get as far as drafts because just as the drama with the neighbour sprung into life things started going a bit wrong on a project at work, at the same time as I was initiating a rare bit of civil litigation (possession proceedings at work).

So although we had a good time away I wasn’t totally relaxed as I knew I would be coming back to a full inbox, the possibility of proceedings on the front door mat and 2 stressful situations (a project on the ropes and issuing proceedings to remove people from Agency property).

This week has been very tough, wall to wall meetings and coming home too tired to do anything, even knit – which is stupid really as knitting would help me deal with the stress… plus I’ve been feeling totally overwhelmed by the housework, paperwork and the laundry (thank you fairies for giving me breathing space on thursday)…oh and my laptop turned itself into a brick swallowing 5 years of photographs of Spider and all my family history research…

I need space to think. To get the order of things right so that I can start to solve problems proactively rather than firefighting the whole time… I cleaned the top part of the house…now my bedroom is clean and tidy and ordered I am calm, I am knitting…I feel as though balance has returned to the universe…

Ps Islay, tell Skye that Auntie Currantbuns is happy again and a knitted  monkey should be with you by Friday and I may drop it off personally.

Tinking

As in “to tink” which has been defined by someone in the knitting world as painstakingly knitting back stitch by stitch until you reach the mistake (it’s knit backwards).

The same person (Yarn Harlot ?) also noted the phenomenon whereby you knit for ages and ages and your knitting doesn’t seem to grow at all staying at about 2 inches in length and then suddenly you get your tape measure out and you realise you’ve knitted about 3 inches too much.

My love for Manu has been tested over the last 3 days, the stocking stitch seemed endless, its amazing how much knitting is involved in  19 inches x 208 stitches in fine wool and 3.25mm needles… once again I was cursing the long back genes inherited from my Dad’s side of the family and then I hit a knot in the wool. In fact it wasn’t strictly a knot more of a horrible snarl where the yarn had split over about 20cm.

Manu is knitted mostly in one piece, left front, back and right front as one endless piece of back and forth knitting and I was in the middle of the back, not really the place for joining in new yarn after breaking off the damaged bit, so I tinked, I tinked back 104 odd stitches, cut the yarn, attached the new and then thought “well whilst I’d stopped I may as well measure it” and yay ! I was just over the 19 inch mark, time to stop and start the rest another day as this is where the pattern gets “interesting” aka challenging…

So I’m off to bed. I know not to risk the gods wrath by pressing on thinking that luck is with me.

I can tell its raining because…

They opened the car parks today for the Reading Festival…it seems to get earlier every year. When I was growing up round Reading the Festival was such a little thing (relatively speaking) you’d hardly know it was on if it wasn’t for the slight increase in people with long hair and Iron Maiden (!) T-shirts in the town centre.

These days you can tell the Festival is drawing near for weeks in advance as all the Port-a-loos turn up in the fields by the river and seem to stay there for several weeks afterwards.

The heavens opened in Reading this afternoon, about the same time as the car parks opened. I trudged past all these happy campers after work, one after the other they marched up the towpath in their brand new wellies, various degrees of waterproofs carrying cheap new tents (hope they are waterproof) and trolleys of beer…I watched them as a crossed the weir, pausing to admire the torrent of water coming through the weir gates.

To be Frank, and please feel free to call me an old fogey, but I don’t care how good the music is, you wouldn’t catch me camping in an area known to flood this weekend…

FO: Sugar sweet

A simple pattern but looks very nice…made out of  sugar cane…

unfortunately I didn’t get a decent photograph before it upped and left me for south wales…

Knitting for boys

If I had even a little finger’s worth of artistic talent  then this would be the name of the book that I would write. It is my belief that the world needs more books of knitting patterns totally and  utterly and only devoted to boys.

I will concede here that if you buy a book of knitting patterns for babies or toddlers then the distribution between not only patterns for boys and girls but cute patterns for girls and boys is reasonably fair and even. But, get beyond the age of 3 and any book of knitting patterns for children is heavily weighted in favour of girls and all the stuff that your heart cries out to knit are very much girl orientated patterns.  The boy patterns are either very very dull or  “novelty” and there are about 3 of them to the 10 or so for girls.

At this point no doubt someone will point me in the direction of a variety of books written by men, for example Knits Men Want where they explain that actually men have  limited tastes in knitwear, want very practical knits in a small range of colours and claim that there is actually no call for a wide variety in knitting patterns for men. Men know what they like and want.

I will again accept that point. I have been shopping with enough males to know that, yes, there are men out there who very much know what they like and the colours they like and the qualities they want in their clothes.  BUT I also have 2 stepsons who know what they like and let me tell you their clothing covers a wide spectrum of colours and styles, they are peacocks, dandys, their clothing wants and needs cannot be contained by this universe alone – indeed they have been known to commission knitwear from their Mum  who also knits and is a friend on Ravelry (for the record it was a hat, in orange green and cream and was a cross between a peruvian cap and a bobble hat, the other one commissioned a scarf in rastafarian colours).

So here am I a Mum of a 5 year old boy who demonstrates her love for her friends and family by showering them with knitted goodies (whether they want them or not) and I cannot find anything for Spider (except for hats and there is a limit to how many hats one boy needs even if he does have a track record of losing them quickly) the boy who lights my world and universe other than very very practical knitwear.

Some might say what does it matter ? You know that as soon as you finish it he will, being the little contrary madam (!) that he is, refuse to wear it – but still I can dream that I can wrap my boy up in knitted love.

A spider in the bath

My boy and I are having a gentle day together. I asked him what we  should do and he said “watch star wars and play star wars lego” and I am more than happy to agree.

He is sat on the floor goggle eyed and I am sitting on the sofa knitting. I am having a day of not doing, I don’t care that the house is a tip and the washing needs doing. I need some time out, I need not to “do”.

It’s not because I have had a stressful month at work and this month has truly been stressful, it’s not the fact that yesterday I cycled along the canal from Napton to Rugby (about 13 miles) and then followed that with a 5 mile walk, no, it’s down to my own stupidity.

Last year for my birthday the boys bought me GPS, not the sort that you stick in the car (although my map reading skills are non-existent) but the handheld sort that you use when tramping round the countryside looking for small plastic containers. I took up Geocaching as I thought it would be a fun thing to do as a family, as it happens the Teenager hates it and the others are indifferent. So periodically I get a child free day to go on a geocache “mission” with Wingnut (a friend we met through Climbing).

Yesterday we managed 23 along the towpath and on a 5 mile circular walk round Ufton/Southam etc thaen about 4 cache from the end I had a bit of a traumatic experience. We were investigating a dead tree when we realised it had a wasp nest in it. We backed off rapidly, unfortunately we were followed by a couple of wasps which when I decided to try again on the other side of the tree, went for me and stung the top of my head. The wasp then, finding herself mixed up in my long hair, panicked and stung me several more times before I did the only thing I could do and squashed it with my hand getting a sting on my fingers at the same time !

Being in the middle of nowhere there was nothing else I  could do except bear the pain and carry on caching…wasp stings really really hurt by the way…

This morning there is a spider in the bath.  Husband is scared of spiders, having seen one bite his Mum when he was little. It will at some point today be my job to remove it as my boy has just advised me “I’m scared of Spiders Mummy”.

This morning Husband said “you do realise that after yesterday our son is going to have an irrational fear of wasps”. Quite frankly I think a fear of wasps may be very rational – I still think the men in this house are wimps for being scared of spiders as most spiders in this country don’t cause pain when they bite whereas wasp stings always hurt.

Later I will deal with the spider – for now I’m knitting and watching Darth Vader.

Mad, mad wedding plans

Not my wedding. Husband and I did that almost 6 years ago and although it was rather rushed and frantic (we had a month to plan it) it was leisurly compared with what I’m currently planning.

We have been invited to a wedding. Often I find myself in a situation where at weddings I only know the bride and groom and the people I’m related to (Husband and the boys) for once I don’t know the bride or groom or any of the other guests despite being related to them.  I have never met anyone on Husband’s mother’s side…that is about to change and I will be meeting them all in one go.

I have nothing to wear of course. The clothes that I do have no longer fit and there were very few of them to start with.  Also, being the beginning of the month I have no money but what I do have is £20 of M&S vouchers, lots of wool and a sewing machine. Obviously this is a mad plan. I only have 7 days. Fortunately I am not starting from scratch.

My knee jerk reaction when faced with a “posh do” is to go for something red but Manu is a long way from being finished. Fortunately I have a black lace top (made from bamboo fibre) which just needs a sleeve sewn in which I am planning on teaming with a clothkits skirt (black being my other knee jerk response and yes I think you can wear black to a wedding) I bought last year, cut out and then abandoned when I realised I’d cut it too small. Twelve months on and I’m much thinner so this afternoon I made a start on finishing it off.

The lining needed ironing (and whilst the iron was out I ironed in name labels on school uniform and did 3 baskets of ironing – so much for doing nothing). I have been popping up stairs all day doing a “step” in the instructions and then leaving it an hour before going back and doing more. This is so that I don’t mess things up as usual by rushing it – this way I have time to think about each step before I do it…also I’m not feeling quite right as the left side of my face has started to swell up.

I’m hoping the M&S voucher will take care of the shoes issue which gives me the rest of the week to rustle up some sort of a bag with some free bamboo handles that came with a magazine – failing that I have a fiorelli handbag that has seen better days but would serve in an emergency.

So that just leaves me with putting my family history notes in some sort of order as a wedding present – yes the family history notes that are on my dead laptop.

How long have I known about this wedding ? Er, about 6 months…!

Wasp update

I am having another gentle day at home.  Half way through sunday my face started to swell up – on the right hand side, not the left as I said yesterday (it may have something to do with looking in the mirror or the fact I can’t tell left from right that I got it wrong yesterday !).

Not sure why the skin under my right eye is blowing up making it difficult to see as the closest sting was in my hairline – guess its something to do with lymph nodes as the glands in my neck have come up as well.

Unfortunately I am also very very tired, can’t even knit. May need a plan B for the weekend.

Love at a distance

On the way to work I pass an interior design shop. Some of their designs for wallpaper and fabric are fabulous. I cannot always tell whether its wallpaper or fabric

I have been distracted all week by something with parrots on it – I think it has something to do with Zaga zoo (Quentin Blake) - oh I do so hope its fabric…and more importantly in my price range.

I have just bought The Bag Making Bible by Lisa Lam and I have plans…

A day off

Tomorrow I am having an impromptu day off. I would like to have spent it at the archives in Walsall researching bits of the family tree or finishing off Manu (another 4 hours and it will be all done bar a wash and block) or even  making a start on the Bag bible – I have done no more than flick through its pages…

But no, came home to another letter from the woman next doors solicitors which slightly ironically threatened me with court proceedings if I didn’t agree to go to mediation – why is it ironic ? Because virtually every letter I have written since December 2007  on the boundary has suggested mediation or a jointly instructed surveyor !

So tomorrow I’m gathering the papers together and handing it to a firm of solicitors because I can no longer deal with this and having redundancy hanging over my head…on top of everything else my wisdom teeth appear to be coming through.

I need something easy to knit, something I don’t have to think about…for those with access to Ravelry check out collinette’s Mulberry, beautiful but none taxing…my heart yearns for Manu but I have reached the “interesting” bit and I don’t want to mess it up…

Next week some things that I have actually finished…failing that there is a fabulous recipe for chutney on Appetite for Cake and my neighbour (Mrs 54 the Flapjack Queen) has just given me a jar of home made marrow and ginger jam ( yes the real reason I’m not going to work tomorrow !)

(Hello to the Knitted Bear by the way – fingers crossed that things start happening soon)

Feeling Karma

This week has been quite busy and stressful but now it is over and I feel happier now than I have for months…

I have paid off the bank loan. I have instructed solicitors on the boundary dispute and I have all the legal agreements that have been clogging up the inbox for the last 2 months signed

I have kittens. I have a boy on a promise for a trip to lego land and I have Manu to finish… I also have a husband in bed with flu

Monday it all starts again

FO: Mexican Malvern Monkey Magic

Did I tell you I tried making another sock ? I’m sure I did, well I went on and made a second one to go with it and now I’m on a 5th sock (a third pair)…it’s not an addiction, I can handle it, I can stop anytime I want…actually for the time being I have as my grafting sucks…

And because my grafting sucks you only get to see one sock (I promise you there are two)…oh and also by not showing you them both together it means you can’t see where I slightly miscalculated the pattern or perhaps my tension changed, not sure what but after the heel the striping went slighty out of sync…

Pattern: Monkey

Needles: 2.5mm, probably should have gone to 2.25mm

Yarn: Rico Design Superba Santa Fe

New: Self striping sock yarn, lacy socks

The yarn was chosen by my boy when we visited the Knitting Parlour in Great Malvern, they  came to see what was taking me so long and forced me to finally make a decision (and I hate to leave a shop, if I have spent ages in there, without buying something).

I love the colour combinations in this sock, especially when you get the irish orange green and white together and then again slightly further down you get the pink blue and yellow all together.

I am not sure that striping yarn works for this pattern, I think possibly either a variegated or a solid colour would show the pattern off best.  Also its knitted up a bit baggy, think possibly my tension was slightly off but also from comments on Ravelry I think possibly it is a slightly “loose” in nature…

Anyway I am quite chuffed with my socks and have worn them quite a bit – more than my previous pair but then I have a lot of black socks…they are not quite as comfortable at the toes as my black brainless ones but that is because as I said above, I screwed up the grafting…

Escaping from cabin fever

My boy and I had the need to get out of the house today. After all we had been confined since Friday afternoon (he had a cold and I ended up in bed with extreme “fatigue” on saturday – glandular fever left me with a dodgy immune system I think, which is the only explanation I have for the severe tiredness episodes that overtake me when I’ve been trying to do everything at once).

In addition for the need to put distance between myself and the house (the house reminds me of the neighbour and that makes me unhappy at the moment) I was feeling guilty for cancelling the Lego land trip (I couldn’t face it with a boy who was not feeling 100%) so promised him a trip to Toys R Us, if he would behave himself whilst I dropped in to a wool shop.

There is a Coventry yarn shop which is closing down at the end of the month and had announced it would only be open at the weekends from now on (next weekend they have a 25% off closing sale) and I had a need for a circular 3.25mm needle for the yoke of Manu. So knowing that it would be open from 12pm today we set off – we got there at 1.30pm to discover the shutters down and the shop definitely shut (am not surprised, the shop keeper has come in for some very heavy criticism on Ravelry recently and I suspect that she had had a bad time on saturday and decided not to open)…

So my day was frustrated but my boy had a happy time in Toys R us – which makes me happy so it wasn’t a wasted day.

This evening though I am discovering the hard way that trying to knit a circular sleeve to a front and back doesn’t work with straight needles, so several dropped stitches later I’m giving up with Manu for now and wondering whether it is more effort to wind a skein of yarn into a ball, teach myself how to graft properly or instead start something new…and if so what…

Worshipping at the temple of the plastic brick

The artist formerly known as Spider (on this blog anyway) has been on a promise for most of the summer that he will be taken to Lego Land Windsor. Summer for me continues into September because lets face it the weather tends to be better than than the official summer. Autumn starts on the 1st October in my world which means that this weekend was the last possible chance of keeping our promise.

The problem is that I hate theme parks, (I’m not even that fussed over the “ride” part of fun fairs), I hate the crowds, I hate the queueing, I hate the car parking, I hate the rides and most of all I hate the fact that you can’t turn round without someone trying to fleece you for an additional cost for something or other.

That on top of the fact that I am not well at the moment means that I am probably not the best person to take Spider to Lego Land but both Husband and Teenager opted out of the trip – however my love for my son outweighs my fear and loathing of theme parks – besides he and I are the only people in the house capable of getting up before 8am at the weekend.

So we went (90 minutes drive). We got there at 10am. They charged for the car parking (grrrr). I was dragged into every shop on the site and subjected to strong hints about being a good boy and christmas etc etc…and we, get this had fun…mostly… we both loved the viking water ride, we loved the Jolly Rocker and both agreed we didn’t enjoy rollercoaster, both agreed we didn’t enjoy queuing (pirate boat log flume type of thing went wrong just as we got to the head of the queue), we giggled at the Pirate Show and have introduced a new phrase to our vocabulary (“it’s just a load of poop deck”) and wished the train ride was longer…and we marvelled at Mini Land especially the star wars figures hiding in the NASA section…

And then it started to go wrong. You see September isn’t really summer and I started to get very cold (the day before I’d spent 90 minutes freezing on Oxford station waiting for a train) despite fleece, gloves, scarf and hat, I got very cold indeed and started to feel very tired, the bone deep weariness I associate with glandular fever and me having pushed things too far – so I bailed, after only 4 hours (works out at about £1o an hour, paid adult ticket Spider got in free with voucher) but I knew that if we didn’t go now I’d never manage the drive home.

I feel very guilty. Spider had a good time, and he didn’t seem to mind going with only half the park visited. We decided to call it a “reccy” and we would try again in the spring (Tesco vouchers probably)…

So we went home and I went to bed for 2 hours…and then woke up to discover I’d probably lost my knitting (knit pro circular needle tips and 60cm cable) around the time I handed my bag over to go in a locker at the rollercoaster and they’d shoved it in on its side…

All in all a mixed day of delights and disappointments – fortunately my brother had warned me about the cost of food so at least I’d taken a picnic and wasn’t fuming about being overcharged for lunch…but the truth is, I think Spider would have been just as happy in the lego shop in milton keynes !

A break from routine

Hello blog, long time no talk…well life here has been pretty busy, normally I operate at work with 20 open emails but for the last month there have been 90…now down to 60 so I felt justified in taking a break to go to a planning lawyers meeting in Birmingham.

Work is pretty grim at the moment, we are all waiting for 20th October after which we should start to get an idea as to whether we have jobs or not. Added to which the woman next door has finally issued proceedings against us…oh and don’t get me started on child benefit…it appears to have skipped most people’s memory that next year the chancellor will be dropping the level at which the 40% tax rate starts by £2500 so more people will get caught by this uneven cut when it finally kicks-in in 2013.

On the good news front for me, a meeting in Birmingham means a train journey and a chance to knit – on the journey in I may have finally master ed grafting stitches together…yay ! Yeah I know not exactly much compensation for the knowledge that you will be paying tax at 40% on £3000 of your income whilst at the same time losing £1000 a year in child benefit not to mention no pay rise for another 2 years (in addition to this year) – IF of course I have a job after christmas !!!

The revolution starts here ?

Driving to work this morning I caught the end of “Today” Radio 4 where Mark Steel was being interviewed comparing the British attitude to cuts to the French…Mark  Steel was advocating that perhaps the British ought to take notice of the french attitude and not be quite so accepting of the argument that “we are all in it together” (as an aside I believe there is an interesting quote in the Guardian today about the public being lectured by someone with a  £4 million trust fund that we should tighten our belts because we are all in it together…!)

This as no one can have failed to notice is “C” day, the day when the government announces its looked into public spending and that in their opinion these cuts need to be made.

Now over the last few weeks I’ve accepted that yes we do all need to pull together to get this country out of the mess its in.  I have accepted that I am powerless, I work for a public body, which does need to find efficiencies and accepted that if I am an efficiency then “so be it” – because I know there is nothing I can do that can change my fate in that respect…

That was my belief until this week and I still stand by some of the statements I may have made on this blog over the past year but I would like to add a caveat.  Yes, I will accept it if I am made redundant. Yes I would be prepared to pay more tax. Yes I would accept the loss of child benefit because I recognise that I probably don’t need it as much as some people…

The caveat is based on a simple premise. Democracy. I believe in democracy. I believe in the greatest good for the greatest people and for that reason I beleive in compromise (which makes me a bad civil litigator but a good in-house lawyer)…and the caveat is this, I will accept what is happening if there is a guarantee that the cuts are actually fair on all, that we ARE all in it TOGETHER…

and on the basis of what I’ve been hearing over the last few weeks you know, I don’t think we are all in it together. What’s more I do think that it is an attack on the welfare state and I do think that its throw back to the 80′s and the importance of “the market” and if we have learned anything from the past 5 years then surely it is that to let the “market” rule is a big mistake.

This is not the post I wanted to make tonight because I am actually smiling for the first time in ages (Mrs Lacer you are wonderful !)but that will have to wait for another day when I can provide photographs…in the meantime comrades if you are with me lets storm the barricades.

Smiles by Post

Last week was pretty stressful, Thursday as mentioned probably worst of all so it was all the nicer for a surprise package turning up in the post. Mrs Lacer sent me this little chap (and a bar of chocolate) to help me keep my spirits up whilst we waited to hear about the cuts.

He reminds me of a christmas card I received once from Norway, definitely a woodland sprite, and perfect for my soon to be redecorated bedroom where he will have pride of place – thank you Mrs L, he’s perfect.

FO: Cockleshells, clothkits and Rob Ryan

Sometime ago I set out to make myself a wedding outfit in a week but due to work pressures and not having a working camera it’s taken my a bit of time to catalogue the results.

I managed most of my “mission” just didn’t have time to make a bag and the £19.50 shoe,  from M&S gave me blisters but I managed the jumper and the skirt with half a day to spare…the problem was that the skirt was a bit baggy at the top but fortunately the jumper also was too large – a combination of the bamboo stretching in the wash and having lost weight between starting it and finishing it 12 months later – so the baggy top hid the baggy top of the skirt !

 

Maria, Me and someone elses son...

Unfortunately this it the only shot of the Jumper as by the evening do I’d got so fed up of it falling off my shoulders that I switched it for a black T-shirt…

Spiderman showing everyone how to dance

 

Skirt Clothkit Rob Ryan long skirt

Jumper Cockleshell Jumper from The Knitter no 3

Yarn Debbie Bliss Prima in black

Needles: 4mm

FO: Julia, the water aid cardigan

Despite the time it took to knit and reknit I didn’t get round to taking a good photo of Julia’s cardigan…I had been waiting until the buttons were on but had problems finding buttons that actually went. In the end I just sewed on some  that I had lying around so that Julia could at least try it on for fit and then put her own buttons on it when she found some she liked.

Pattern: an original 1942 pattern from Women and Home (or some such title)

Needles : 3mm and 3.25mm

Yarn: Rowan Donegal lights 4ply in burnt orange

New: Trying to rescale and knit from an original 60 year old pattern !

Next time I auction myself for charity I make sure the description doesn’t let me in for anything quite so big !

FO: Simple socks

Pattern:   Simple sock recipe by the Yarn Harlot

Yarn: Regia Kafe Fasset

Needles: 2.5mm

New: nothing new exactly but I did manage to master grafting at last

I fell for the colours. The sock was an experiment to see if I could get a perfect fit. It is not bad except that I forgot to make notes and one of them fits my narrow heel better than the other.

Not a lot else to say, just felt I needed to put something up to show that I’m knitting even though I haven’t quite finished Manu.

Got quite a few small things on the go at the moment, mainly promises to keep. Yesterday I found myself offering to knit a pair of fingerless mittens after mine were admired – the heating wasn’t working you see and I keep the mitts in my drawer in case it gets too cold to type.

Reduce, reuse, recycle

I had plans for today. I had this vision, a dream if you will that for once I could be a proper “mummy”. I dreamt that my boy and I would make cakes, play with play doh and pens and maybe take a trip to the Herbert Museum in Coventry…but of course this is just rose tinted dreaming.

The reality is that my son climbed into bed with us at 2am and spent the rest of the night wriggling and jiggling before starting a conversation loudly with me at 7am – result ? Both Husband and I are wondering around like zombies, fortunately only one of us had to go to work and fortunately it wasn’t me.

So I’m having a gentle day, gently interactive. I’ve played with lego, we’ve had sword fights up the stairs and played cops and robbers…there’s also been long interludes where he watches star wars lego movies on youtube and I get to knit.

Now normally when I get bored of a knitted article I pass it on in the charity shop. I can’t bear the thought of destroying something I’ve knitted, and aside from that I don’t have much luck at unravelling something once it’s been sewn together. But this gentleman has turned out to be too itchy to wear so I’m frogging it – not an easy task with 2 kittens in the house.

Unfortunately I’m not being very imaginative in what it’s knitted back up into. The green yarn used for Steggie appears quite often on these pages as the Pirate Tote mainly because I over ordered it but also because it felts beautifully (albeit somewhat hairy)… and since the Pirate Tote bag is the one that people keep asking me to make for them it was inevitable that I would reuse it to make my last “promised” item, before deciding if I can face a bout of Christmas knitting…and I’m in 2 minds about that at the moment.

Will have some photos to show at the end of the weekend as have just made another set of goody bags, but I think after this lot I may put both the pirate tote and goody bag patterns away – as after all doing the same thing over and over despite the fact it puts smiles on people’s faces is not stretching me as a knitter.

Catch ups and cock ups…

It’s been a gentle day here…we’ve had a few late nights so the extra hour was welcomed…unfortunately by the end of the day the fact that our bodies are still on summertime even if our heads are on GMT, starts to take its toll.

Mainly today I have been finishing off the Hallowe’en goody bags for Flapjack Princess and her brothers – no pics as I ran out of daylight and now the bags are with their new owners, no doubt full of loot…

My boy has spent the day on the Playmobil website having discovered “games”… ordinarily I would object to this but I took a gamble and it has paid off. Today is the day I can officially say that my boy can read – since last Friday he has been actively spelling words out when he comes across them in day to day life, so today I just let him loose on my laptop and made myself “not quite available” so that he had to read things for himself…and he did !

Manu is finished except for the pockets and I’m now swatching for something else…it looks fabulous except for one thing.  The problem with a yoke cardigan is that you can’t take the sleeves off and remake them when you discover that the cuff of the left sleeve has more rows of garter stitch than the right…!

Feeling a bit silly and a bit disheartened tonight…it’s annoying but not really a problem as I tend to have my sleeves pushed up most of the time anyway.

Got a sock on the go, half a pirate tote and bits of a lego man… contemplating a hat for a friend and have those fingerless mittens to do this week…still haven’t decided about christmas knitting…

The day I jumped off a bridge (and NaKniSweMo 2010)

I have been floating around blog land for just over 2 years now and I always find myself in awe in November when  scores of bloggers (and now twitters) try and write a novel from start to finish in a month.

This year I have been tempted to join them, in a strange sort of way, by taking part in NakniSweMo 2010 which is the knitting equivalent and involves making a jumper in a month…now this is achievable, I could turn out s jumper a month on a regular basis if it wasn’t for the fact that I frequently get sidetracked by promises, birthday presents and the need to have something portable  to knit…and although I think it’s achievable  there is no way you would get me signing up for one of those KALs that try and do a sweater a month, that is far too regimented.

I am knitting Coraline by Ysolda Teague, which has a lot in common with Manu but I’m using a thicker yarn (and it’s bamboo which hopefully will stretch after knitting.

I am, thanks to a day in bed (“I’m ill, I don’t want to do anything, anywhere with anybody) ahead of schedule. I’ve been knitting (and swatching) for 6 days now and I am over 40% of the way to a full sweater. However after a day in bed with only Radio 4 for company I was as you can imagine happy for a day in the country with my friend Wingnut geocaching.

Now the day out was sold to me as “I really need you to take photographs”. It turned out that for her 1900 cache she wanted to do one which involved abseiling off a disused railway bridge in the wilds of Leicestershire. Wingnut I should point out was one of Husbands occasional climbing partners back before we were married.

So Wingnut set up a top rope (2 points of contact, nice and safe and secure), abbed down, got the cache, signed the cache and then turned to me and said “right, you are putting it back”…I haven’t done ANY climbing since 6 months before I became a Mum…I can’t even remember how to put a harness on…but I did it, I jumped off the top of a (small) railway bridge and you know it was nice to get a wobbly scared feeling in the pit of my stomach which had nothing to do with work, government cuts or the fact that in the eyes of Warwick County Court I am a Defendant in a trespass case…

It’s very easy to take a leap in the dark when you know there is someone out there to catch you.

More haste, Less speed

There I was motoring through Coraline…completed most of the body, time to do the sleeves as they join at the yoke so no need to sew them in. 

So the instructions said “Knit a 3 stitch icord and then pick up stitches along the back of the icord and join in the round. Knit 114 rows”

 Icord completed, stitches picked up and there I am 70 rows into the 114 rows when I decide to check the pattern to see when the sleeve increases need to be made as the sleeve was looking a little narrow. Fine for my forearm but my upper arm is a little bulkier (flab not muscle unfortunately)…it was at this point that I discovered I’d completely missed out the instructions for the first 5 rounds where you slowly increase your 48 stitches to 72.

So do I frog it all back to the beginning and start again or do I continue as I am ?

Continuing as I am is not an option as it would throw the maths out at the top of the arm. I need to have 72 stitches at the top of the arm as apart from the fact it won’t fit, there is a complex smocking pattern all over the yoke which is no doubt based on having the right number of stitches.

Frogging back to the start would be the sensible option. Wouldn’t take that long and won’t really put be behind schedule as I’m only 9 days in and I have almost 50% completed already…BUT and this is a big but, I think I may not have enough yarn and having bought this in the sale a long time ago not only might the colour have been discontinued but there is no way I will get the same dye lot…

The sleeve itself although narrow does fit my wrist/arm comfortably so if I do my increases slowly over the next 44 rows then I will save myself some yarn and have enough stitches at the top…

 This is a bit of a milestone for me, this is me actually modifying a pattern rather than knitting it as stated (other than the mods I make from ignoring a genuine screw up or from lengthening the body)…

 Admittedly the increases are more noticeable on the upper arm than they would have been down at the wrist but I’m hoping the first wash will sort that out…

2 Hours of Freedom

This afternoon my son and heir was at a party, the first party he has been to where I didn’t stay. This party was very definitely one of those “Mummies are not invited” as it involved a big double decker bus.

So 2 hours on a saturday to myself. What to do ?

Do make a start on wallpapering the bedroom ? Or whatabout hiding under the duvet with Husband (yes that is a euphemism)?  I could check out the location of a puzzle geocache whose co-ords I think I’ve worked out ?

Well I can tell you what I didn’t do. I didn’t do the thing I’d finally settled on which was to finish off the red circle skirt I’d started back when the weather was warmer.

Why ?

Because 2 hours earlier Mum phoned up to say that a neighbour had just popped round to share the news that Toys R Us have a 3 for 2 offer on lego this weekend…

I know who calls the shots in this house …even when he’s not here…besides I’m unlikely to wear the skirt before next May anyway…in the meantime I’ve bought a pair of trousers from Sainsbury’s for £10…I’ll be wamer that way

Day of Judgment

On Monday I had a very minor panic attack brought on by it taking longer to defrost the car than anticipated and the fear that I would be late dropping my son off at school. Silly really the school is only 5 minutes away (car used because I then drive on to work) and being late for school is no big deal, late arrivals have to go in via the school office…but there I was scraping away at the ice feeling short of breath with my heart pounding and my brain spiralling out of control. It is the little things that push us over the edge.

Next Monday isn’t really a day of Judgment but it is the start of finding out whether I have a job or not as we have a telecom with the director of legal and having spent the week trying not to listen to the people in the private office behind me phoning up various staff members confirming that they have or haven’t been successful in their applications, the question of “what I do, what can I do” is of course very much on my mind.

A colleague in another office and I joke about setting up a yarn shop but that’s all it is, a joke, she lives in darkest Dorking and I am in the wilds of Warwickshire, besides I suspect we have missed the boat, as unlike a few years ago it feels like there is now a shop in every decent sized town…suspect I’d have to combine my interests if I wanted to make money and have a Yarn Book Café selling fabulous cakes.

So what can I do ? Well I could go back to the high street if I brushed up my knowledge of the CPR – I used to be quite a successful (if unhappy) personal injury lawyer and I can now add boundary disputes to debt recovery and contract litigation ! But not being a lawyer ?

I don’t think I can remember not wanting to be a lawyer. I can remember when I was 15 it being only one option the others being archaeologist or journalist…but those slowly fell away when I realised I don’t like digging and I really hate writing coherent arguments to a deadline…

I fell out of love with the idea of a legal career at university but that feeling didn’t last for long and after a couple of years I was trying to find out how I could find the money to do the Legal Practice Course…and having invested so much time and money getting to where I am I am reluctant to give it up entirely, but looking at the market out there it doesn’t seem that there are many jobs for someone with 10 years PQE and no “following”.

The blogosphere is full of people who have made a success out of their hobby (and some written books about it) but I’m not good enough for that (or patient or enough of a perfectionist)…and lets face it, it is a hard slog, it takes a long time to start making money and I have a mortgage to pay.

I try and be positive. Redundancy is not a set back, it’s a chance to try something different, a chance to get out of a rut (this is not the first time I’ve been here, at least this time I won’t take it personally, but then the other 2 times it was a job I was glad to leave !) but at the moment I am all out of ideas.

95%, oh and swatches lie

I have been wearing Manu a bit this week, no photos yet as I’m snagging.  It needs buttons that’s a minor point. I have the garter stitch cuff to sort out and there is a point where sewing the ends in has squashed the stitches a bit, again minor as is the fact that the pockets need sewing a bit more at the seams.

No the big problem is that swatches lie and it didn’t shrink in the wash as much as I hoped it would, as a result its a bit long in the back and the sleeves and the pockets are puffier than they should be BUT it did shrink as it should and a bit more horizontally and as a result it’s a bit tight round the bust !

In the meantime I have almost finished Coraline.  I am about 95% done. Last night I was 17 rows from the end. This morning at about 9.30 I realised that I had 9 more rows to go plus an i-cord bindoff and sewn button loops with only 50cm of Prima left…ooops.

Currently considering my options and wondering where I left the swatch…I have also found another couple of metres lurking in the knitting bag.

Oh and praying that this cardigan behaves the same way as the cockleshell jumper as otherwise I will be looking for a 10 year old girl who wants a lime green cardigan because this is a seriously small cardigan at the moment.

Lurking, Comments and the Blog Roll

I love or I loved reading. I even used to read whilst walking to school, the speed at which I eat is down to the fact that my parents wouldn’t let me read at the table so I used to bolt my food down so that I could get back to my book.  It makes me very happy that my boy seems to love books too (and is starting to read them).

The problem is that since I have been a Mum I don’t read and it’s not due to lack of time but more that I can no longer carry a story in my head because there’s now far too much to remember.  For most of the last 6 years the only books I have read have been cookery books – I’ve always read them cover to cover  like you would a novel anyway.

But when I lost interest in food I also lost interest in reading recipe books. I thought I’d stopped reading altogether (which is why I agreed to join a book club – but more of that another time) but I was wrong.

I have realised that instead of reading books I’ve started reading blogs. Blogs are books in small chunks. I read a lot of different blogs only most blog owners don’t realise I’m there. It’s not that I’m intentionally lurking, it’s just I find it hard to comment on blogs that are not wordpress, other people’s blog providers don’t seem to like me commenting and a lot of them seem to want you to sign up with them, which frankly is far too much hassle as I have enough problems remembering log ins and passwords…if its something I really want to say then I might email the comment but I don’t do that often because I don’t want the blogger to feel they have to respond – you can ignore comments but is it just me who thinks it’s rude to ignore an email ?

I also, when I find a blog that I like ,go right back through the archive and read the whole blog from beginning to end…by and large these are ones that end up as links to this blog. However I realised I’ve not been very good in actually keeping the blogroll up to date so I had a bit of a revision session.

Let me introduce you to my links.

The first blog I ever read from beginning to end was Lacer’s Life. I can’t remember how I got there but at the time it had an unbearably sweet header (a small boys hand and foot playing with teletubby toys) and something about Mrs Lacer’s style made me linger and it is still one of the first ones I check.

A Lady in Training I discovered via someone elses blog roll when I was looking for knitting links – Vonnie was also the organiser of the first swap I ever participated in(it was about tea, who could turn such a swap down) which in turn introduced me to the lovely Emma of Made by Paddy (who unfortunately doesn’t post much but her twitterstream makes up for that).

The next swap I participated in was the seven days of specialness run by  Domesticali (Ali I came across through a search on Didcot (I have a “thing” about the power station)) and found I just kept coming back. Through Ali’s blog I found Diana at Pebbledash (my swap partner in the 7 days swap), Jo whose current blog is Today We Made (I learnt quite a lot about my sewing machine from Jo’s blog) and Mooncalf Makes…

A search for a yarn shops in Warwickshire instead brought me the Knitted Bear, the tales of a travelling knitting lawyer…!

I am also a bit of a fan girl where the Yarn Harlot, Ysolda and Jared Flood are concerned and I have read all 3 of these from beginning to end.

And finally there is Glittyknittykitty which I have read about 3 times and keep going back to when I feel a bit low.

There are a few more but it’s taken longer than I expected to add all the links.

Feeling sorry for…

…the little boy/snowman in the sellotape advert…

I should probably say something here about my anniversary, the lovely weekend we had in Bristol and my anniversary card courtesy of Mrs Lacer…but my camera isn’t working, it’s late and besides I have a day off tomorrow (a “stolen day”)…

Black Russians

Husband is a champion maker of Black Russians. Normally I am not a big fan of cola, but it’s been a week of hard graft and running around so tonight I have my feet up and a very large representative of my husbands craft (think pint glass).

The dishwasher conked out about 2 weeks ago and despite a heroic attempt at resuscitation by Husband time of death was called on the patient after 5 days. A replacement was found…eventually…which ticked every box (quiet, low water consumption, low energy and most importantly since we have economy 7, a timer) and following in depth discussions as to whether we had the money to replace it v. the fact that we both have full time jobs involving hideous amounts of commuting added to we actually both like being married to each other, both hate washing up and would actually like to remain married to each other… we pressed the button and ordered a new dishwasher.

Naturally this meant one of us had to take a day off to await delivery.  Unfortunately (for both of us) this happened to be me.  Unfortunately also I have been a bit depressed recently (due to cold weather), have just spent 3 days of pain and distress due to a bean stew (will explain another day about book club) and had bought paint and wallpaper about 2 months ago with the intention of redecorating the bedroom…

So…on friday morning I started redecorating the bedroom, which because I took the curtainrail down meant we spent the night on the sofa bed downstairs on friday and resulted in us dragging our poor son round IKEA and Dunelm today looking for curtains and curtain rails.

As of this evening I have new purple curtains and a half decorated bedroom plus the start of a built in wardrobe.

The house is in chaos, it’s going to be worse tomorrow, but we may actually have finally turned the corner and have made a start on making this house actually “work”…after all we knocked it down in the first place to turn it into something that fitted us as a family and it will be 3 years in February since we moved back in and we still have too much stuff and no where to put anything.

I suspect my next post will have to be about our anniversary pilgrimage to Northampton and the Rennie Macintosh house there since that is really what has prompted the redecoration/storage need.

A stolen day

Strictly speaking a stolen day is something spontaneous and unexpected where you end up not doing what you had planned to do (in a good way), preferably it includes no one knowing where you are or what you are doing, for example the time I got to explore the cow parade in Leicester Square when it turned out that the start time of a court case had moved to the afternoon and no one had thought to tell me before I got on the train.

So I guess our midweek trip to Northampton didn’t count as both Husband and I booked a day off for it – but it had the same sense of adventure.

We shared our anniversary celebration with Spider with a weekend in Bristol to see the SS Great Britain but the trip to Northampton was just for us, just we two indulging in our passion for Art Nouveau and Art Deco and Rennie Mackintosh.

78 Derngate is the only house in England designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.  The house is early 19th century but when purchased in 1916  by a Northamptonshire Model Maker Basset-Lowke it underwent a transformation – a total transformation from top to bottom. Even the garden received some Rennie Mackintosh magic.

Unfortunately we have no photographs as in the interests of preserving the recreated house flash photography isn’t permitted…I would urge you though to click on the link and take the virtual tour

The website gives the history of the house and how many years later a trust was set up to restore the house to its former CRM glory. It’s been open since about 2003 which is round about the time I met Husband and despite both being crackers about Rennie Macikntosh and living just down the road from Northampton we have spectacularly failed to visit until now.

It is not cheap to get in but this is a charitable trust, it’s not part of national trust or english heritage (but EH members get a discount – yay!) but it is well worth the entrance fee. We also combined our day out with an Orange Wednesday pizza at Pizza Express so it was very good value for us.

We came back glowing with happiness and full of ideas of how we could get some Rennie Mackintosh glamour into our house…which is why the bedroom is in the process of being painted purple…although we seem to have gone for “turkish brothel” interior design rather than art deco. But then I just want touches of CRM I don’t want a whole house like Derngate, that really would be too much of a good thing.

Cabin Fever

Apologies in advance for any typos. I have just had a very large G&T. I had to,it’s been a very trying few days.

Like the rest of the country we have snow. Snow that meant our “family” weekend was well and truly scuppered. On Saturday the snow prevented my brother and his family from travelling up the M40 as Warwickshire got a huge snow hit from 9am onwards – had a nice tea with my parents though…  – Sunday was meant to be a trip to Brum to see my brother in law and partner, shopping at the German Christmas market and then watching Si do his stuff as sound engineer to St Agnes Fountain at Birmingham Town Hall.

Unfortunately Spider had the lurgy. He’s kept himself going all week because he wanted to go to the school disco on friday – except that was cancelled…because of the snow, so he came down with a very chesty cough.

We didn’t realise how bad he was because being such a bouncy boy he doesn’t do the lying on the sofa feeling sorry for yourself for long, so we took him to Birmingham but everytime his chest met the cold air he coughed…and coughed and coughed… until in waterstones he coughed so much he threw up

So Spider and I bailed out. We caught a train home (and a lovely man from Cross Country trains told us we could go first class if there were no seats in standard because we were prepared to catch the next train !) and then got ripped off by a taxi charging us £24 to do 8 miles – which I couldn’t argue with because of the snow.

…and we’ve been here ever since, stuck here in the house, on the sofa watching CBBC…and now he’s bouncier than ever and I’m desperate for adult conversation…

The other thing is that I’m now making presents when I said I wasn’t going to this year as most of my shopping was meant to be done on Sunday and it wasn’t…I also failed to buy buttons

Tomorrow there may be photos, of things that didn’t need buttons…as its snowing again…so I’m probably working from home… forgot to mention I’ve been ill the last 3 days, and now I’m better my parents have come down with the lurgy…so I may even be taking a day off.

FO: Free Owlet

My son is getting married…apparently…at some point in the future…and I will be staying at home to look after his children. He and Flapjack Princess have it all worked out. They will live in the house next door, the one between Currant Bun Towers and Flapjack Heaven…don’t think they consulted Mr and Mrs W though who currently live in the house !

So thought I’d start the way I intend to continue and have knitted my future daughter in law a jumper for christmas…except I actually think this is a quite a nice jumper but then it is another Kate Davies design(like Manu) so how can it not be…

Pattern: Owlet, the child version of the owl jumper

Needles: 6mm circular

Yarn: I have no idea what this was. A work colleague donated a bag of wool to me, most of which was this pink chunky acrylic. Until I saw Owlet I had no idea what to do with 400g of thick pink wool (this house is male dominated remember). The yarn looks better as a jumper than it does as a ball and knits up very very soft.

New: Knitting for my daughter in law…oh and I’ve never mixed embroidery and knitting before but I didn’t have 28 matching buttons in the house (there are 14 owls all who need eyes) and I haven’t been out for awhile.

Of ‘elf and safety

We’ve just had an argument with Spider. I’m sure that is not unusual tonight. I’m sure there are parents up and down the land having similar sharp words with their hyped up children…

He was asked 3 times before dinner to tidy up the toys in the living room – after all we don’t want Father Christmas to trip and injure himself do we ? H e didn’t. I got cross. I phoned the big man himself up and told him to take the presents off the sleigh. This did prompt a promise to tidy up after he’d finished eating. Father Christmas agreed not to take the toys off and he would send one of his helpers down the chimney first to check on ‘Elf and safety.

There was a further exchange of words before dinner was finished which momentarily left me wondering whether it would scar my little boy for life if he woke up tomorrow morning and found that his stocking was empty (note to self, if you threaten a consequence make sure it’s one you are prepared to follow up with if necessary)…fortunately an apology was forthcoming.

Anyway after this I think I don’t want to do anymore, I just want to put my feet up, listen to Carols from Kings and ignore the fact I have a knitted lego man to finish off…I shall just have to hide from the neighbours for 2 days until I’ve finished it. Fortunately other people are very forgiving about my inability to shop and we are celebrating Christmas again in the New Year.

FO: Sparkling Ishbel

This is something I started making when I realised we would have visitors on Boxing Day and that I’d failed to buy a present in Birmingham. This is also testament to being ill at the start of the week, not realising how ill I would really be at the end of the week ( I am really ill now and have a christmas dinner to cook today )

My sister in laws favourite colour is blue – I held every blue yarn up to Husband and asked what would she like, he chose the christmas yarn “because she is sparkly” – the yarn dictated the pattern. Apolgies for picture quality I haven’t left the house in a week !

Pattern: Ishbel by Ysolda Yeague

Yarn: Regia  x-ma

Needles 4mm

New: nothing – start of an Ysolda homage maybe…

Turning to the Dark Side

I am supposed to be finishing off some small projects, promises I’ve made and not yet kept ( a bag for Ms Z, mittens for E and a hat for Tom the Cabin boy who has joined the merchant navy as an officer and leaves us in January)but I can’t concentrate, there is a siren voice calling me from under the bed…It’s my Brother…My Brother PS31…

To Be Frank…I can’t sew. Oh I know the basics. Did you see Kirstie’s Handmade Christmas where she boasted about having been one of the girls who learnt textiles at school and her patchwork tutor pointed out that quite a lot of us were girls who were taught textiles at school…what she didn’t say was that, this doesn’t necessarily mean we know how to sew.

The basics for me, as I’ve mentioned before include 2 cushions, a ball gown, a roman blind and a pair of curtains – oh and several skirts but none of them really fit – and that’s the point really. If you are going to sew your own clothes then they need to be better than what you buy in the shops in that they actually FIT your shape.

So that is my aim for next year to teach myself to sew… one of the side benefits is that it will give me something I can share with my Mum. We always shared the fact we could knit, but now I feel it’s  a bit of a cruel act, me talking about my knitting, when Mum, who taught me to knit can’t really participate (although she did make Spider a lovely jumper just before christmas – she can do chunky knits without too much pain)…

In the meantime a bit of stitchery (2012 I’ll try proper embroidery and possibly crochet!!) – by and large cross stitch doesn’t excite me because a lot of the patterns are a bit twee so my cross stitch excursions are few and far between – this one was for Spider’s teacher…

Reading the instructions

My husband bought me an iron…not for christmas I should add, he just turned up on Boxing Day after picking his boys up brandishing a new iron. He’d decided we needed a new one after the old one leaked stuff on his shirt…odd it never does that with me.

So for once I decided to read the instructions – this caused the ironing to take twice as long as usual as I read the ironing labels on each item and ironed appropriately rather than pressing the lot on high under a damp tea towel. I guess the secret is to organise your ironing by “type” rather than by person as I normally do, or if I’m feeling overfaced and want to reduce the bulk ironing all the jeans first.

The more interesting set of instructions I read today belonged to the sewing machine – I have read them before…once. I was trying to settle an argument with Husband as to whether my sewing machine had a light or not…he suggested the bulb had blown…Annoyingly he turned out to be right, the light bulb was hidden in the internal workings.

I suspect what it actually needs is a proper service but being impatient (sewing machine repair shops don’t tend to be open on bank holidays, don’t know why) I decided to try a bit of DIY from the back pages of the instruction manual…I found all sorts of buttons and switches on the underside I hadn’t known about including taking the bobbin compartment to bits. Also, apparently I should be oiling my machine weekly, daily if it gets a lot of use – how about once in 15 years ?

So it’s been cleaned with a combination of nail varnish remover (to get rid of sticky stuff marks) and window cleaner, brushed and oiled…I even changed my needle (should be changed after each “project”, who’d have thought !).

So any mistakes after this are my fault – can’t get away with blaming the machine.

I’ve also been playing on and off with stitches  – but that’s a bit dull unless you are making something…not sure what to start on – more of that another day.

That’s about as far as I got today as I was playing “carrot and stick” – namely doing something I don’t like (the ironing, cleaning the living room) before rewarding myself with something I do like.

Bye bye 2010

You are going old year and I am glad for you to go, you have been one year of gloom and misery since the snow of January until the drear grey merk that we have had today.

We tried to end the year on a high note with a walk on the Malvern Hills ( a nod to my childhood) but instead we had a gentle walk around Worcester due to Spider’s very impressive projectile vomit whilst on the M5.

He’s fine now.He was fine and bouncing happily off walls within about 30 minutes of being sick – as is always the way.

It’s been a year of ups and downs. Spider has been one of the many ups as he goes from strength to strength at school (yay, he reads, he really really reads !). Work has had it’s downs, it’s further downs and now hopefully we are on the up – I mourn the passing of a lot of colleagues who are likely to take early retirement but they are probably better off where they are going than living with on going uncertainty.

We have had some good ups family wise – meeting parts of Husband’s family he hasn’t seen for years.

and knitting ? Well knitting has improved – I start next year a better knitter than I ended last year but I need a fresh challenge…we are also, after a week of bad things happening with the car, broke again !

So bye bye and good riddance 2010 and Hello 2011, Hello 40 and Hello the rest of life

Signs of Procrastination otherwise known as “Lesson 2″

Those who know me will recognise delaying tactics when they read them so it’s pointless denying it and calling this entry anything else…

I have decided to concentrate this year on learning to sew using The Encyclopedia of Sewing Techniques by Jan Eaton (a charity shop find) and a recent purchase which I’ve not yet plucked up the courage to start The Bag Making Bible by Lisa Lam which I had on pre-order, 0h and Homemade for a bit of variety away from the sewing.

My self-imposed Lesson 1 was the DIY maintenance on the sewing machine. Lesson 2 involved creating a list of recommended tools from the 3 books, collecting together all these items from the various rooms of the house they’d ended up in and collating them in my lovely new sewing box (present from my Mum along with some goodies – she’d treated herself to a subscription to Sew this year and I benefitted  from the gift).

No picture I’m afraid, and no picture of any of the knitting I’ve finished off recently as we’ve had 3 days of grey ‘orrible merk again but the Box is my colours of black white and red (and cat hair, like everything else in this house).

And then, feeling guilty about not actually doing anything (creative I mean, I’ve been tidying the house on and off)  I spent the afternoon practising handsewing reminding myself about Basting, Uneven Basting Stitch, Running Stitch, Half Backstitch, Whip Stitch, Backstitch, Overcasting, Prick Stitch, Blanket Stitch, a Bar Tack and Tailors Tacks – also tried and made a mess of Diagonal Basting Stitch…

By that time I was bored and will try and find something that uses hemming, slipstitch, tailors buttonhole stitch, blind stitch, herringbone and felling stitch.

The next 13 pages are “seams” some of which will probably get used in The Versatile Book Bag…alternatively I could procrastinate some more and sort my fabric stash out as Lesson 3.

Lesson 3: scared to cut

Bank Holiday Monday. A good night’s sleep and I’m up, energised and ready to go…the boys (son, husband, cats (all 3), stepson) sleep on… I drink tea, I drink more tea and fantasize about what I will do today what wonderful things I will create with my sewing machine.

Except to create you need materials…mine live in my stepson’s room – as do most of my clothes…my stepson sleeps…and sleeps…and sleeps…and eventually awakes at 12pm complaining that he is tired and that he didn’t get to sleep until 4am…hmmm could that be anything to do with going to bed at 3.50am ?

So yes lesson 3 was examining my “not worthy of the name” stash and trying to find something I could use to make a bag…and deciding that I didn’t want to use any of it.

You see I don’t have a stash. I have some material, all of which has been bought with a plan in mind, none of which have been used due to my inability to cut things out and a fear of messing something expensive up (not that any of it is expensive, just that they are all invested with ambition).

Added to this is my aim this year to not bring anything new into the house until I have found a home for everything that is already here (ok so my trip to John Lewis, high Wycombe on the way home this evening may take some explaining unless I use it all quickly…) means that it may be difficult to find something to make a bag out of…a bag that I don’t particularly want…

This is the catch. I need to make the bag because it is something easy to learn from. But, I have problems psychologically making something just for the sheer hell of it…there has to be an aim, it has to be made for a reason  (sorry, it’s this pragmatic sensible streak I cannot escape from ) and quite frankly I do not have a need for this bag, and I think I need to make a mock up first (because of my inability to cut things out). Smaller versions I can see being used as “wrapping paper”…I already have a vague plan for next christmas involving bath bombs, slippers, night masks etc etc.

So I have even less need of a mock up bag of a bag I don’t need in the first place and no material I feel happy sacrificing to make it. Not of the things I call stash, not even the material I have salvaged from old clothes is suitable…however, most of my bed linen is over 20 years old…and I am just in the process of decorating the bedroom…and I’m almost 40 and I’ve never had co ordinating bed linen…so, maybe I could make something which is not intended to have a life outside of my dining room ?

Which is a long way of saying that Lesson 3 was getting to know my stash (there are about 4-5 pages describing fabric in the encyclopedia) but that I wasn’t procrastinating – although if I don’t have a mock up bag to show you by sunday then yes I am a 100% carat scaredy cat.

Sunday

Today I have:

1. Finished off a hat for a friend joining the merchant navy – half was knit last night whilst babysitting for neighbours until late which is why doing anything today has been a struggle

3. Finished off the last of the pirate tote bags promised to work colleague – note the lining involved getting the sewing machine out.

4. Tidied the dining room so I could get the sewing machine out.

5. Bagged some books up for disposing in 4 different locations

6. Done the ironing – again so the dining room was clear so that I could get the sewing machine out

7. Cut up a sheet as dusters and tester material for patterns – the sheet was about 20 years old and was still going strong until Spider went to bed with a pot of silly putty/slime… we had to cut it out of his hair, had hoped it would wash out of the sheet – I was wrong !

8. Cleaned the kitchen

9. Cooked a roast (which is why I cleaned the kitchen…)

10. Tried to make a bag – I  had the material, a space to sew and a machine – it’s just I’ve managed to misplace the book…

I know, I know, road to hell is paved with good intentions etc etc. Well it is only 7.30pm so there is still time – in the meantime I refer you to no 3 above…I’ve done “a” seam, ok it was still only a small one but I’m sure it counts, doesn’t it ?

Vintage: Patchwork

I grew up in the south pacific – blue sky, azure waters, sandy beaches and sun…most of the time.  What is sometimes forgotten about tropical paradises though is that the sun doesn’t always shine. Small sun drenched islands have their seasons too…the hot season, the rainy season…the cool season…

The other thing about  islands is that everything has to be imported, if you haven’t already brought it with you…and back then everything was sent by sea. When our tea chests turned up from England they included my Mum’s sewing machine but not heavy woolen blankets. So when the weather turned cooler my Mum turned to her machine in order to create some slightly heavier sheets/blankets for the beds.

This, and another one the same size kept my brother and I warm on cooler evenings – they also kept us entertained as every single patch was a left over from clothes my Mum had made for us (even children’s clothes had to be imported, so you tended to make your own) or was reclaimed material from clothes we’d brought our with us and worn out.

Although there is no wadding/quilting in between the patchwork and the backing material these quilts were still very warm and the day I took this picture I forgot to remove the quilt from the bed. Husband had his worst night sleep in over a year that night as he found himself overheating !

Almost a bag…

Apart from the handles that is. The bag in question is a “muslin” of the Easy as Pie Tote bag by Lisa Lam made in just over an hour.

Mrs Lacer suggested I made the bag anyway, even though I didn’t need it and put it in the “present” drawer in preparation for next Christmas – and if I make a proper version of this I probably will, but this bag was very much a “get something, anything made” just to break the “fear” and to practice cutting out. You see everytime I make something at the moment I make a mess of the cutting out so I just needed something to break my duck.

You’ll have to trust me I’m afraid, as not only is it too dark to take pictures but my camera is currently lost in the mess that is my bedroom mid decorating…and I have quite a few pictures on the memory card of other things I’ve finished recently

FO: Easy as Pie Bag

Last Sunday night I made most of a bag. I am sad to say that it’s taken me most of this week to make the bag straps which is all that I had left to do (thought about them monday, cut them out Tuesday, ironed them Wednesday, ignored them thursday, went out for dinner friday etc etc).

Saturday night I sat  down at the machine and forced myself to spend the 10 minutes it took to seam them  and attach them to the bag…strange isn’t it the way you can put off doing something which takes less time than cleaning your teeth properly ?

Feeling happy with myself for doing it despite the fact the topstiching wobbles all over the place and the boxed stitching isn’t square…feeling relieved actually as I’ve finally  started using my craft books instead of just looking at the pictures

Pattern: Easy as Pie Bag from the Bag Bible by Lisa Lam

Material: An old Bed sheet and the remains of a roller blind ! As mentioned before I wanted this one just as a “rough” sample – partly to break me of the fear of my machine, partly because I want something to measure myself against to see how far I can improve in a year.

Thread: Because I want to clearly see how bad I am I have used orange polyester which I have a lot of (I may explain why one day).

New: Boxed stitching to attach the straps, closed bag straps…

Encyclopedia: This is practicing a standard straight seam

Time Taken: 2 weeks of moaning about it, actual time to make the bag just over an hour.

Photo to follow after about 11am on sunday its almost midnight here, far too dark for pics !

Vintage: Everyone should have a box

(in advance, apologies for the photos, the light is not being kind to me in these dull dreary post christmas days)

Can you guess what these are ? These are history, these are 3 generations of button boxes, mine, my Mum’s and my Grandma’s (from the point of view of “things handed down from mother to daughter it would have been more poetic to have my Nana’s button box but my Mum is one of 4 sisters and besides Nana’s button box is very slightly famous).

When I was small it was a pretty safe bet that there was a button box in most houses, in the ’70′s more people sewed. My Mum’s box back then was clear, I think it was a tub that once held cotton buds or it may have been a large jar of glace cherries. But it was large, and clear and full of wonders – I could spend hours sorting the buttons, making patterns, telling stories, simply playing with the buttons and most of them had memories, like the patchwork I showed the other week I could name most of the clothes that the buttons came off.

That box has long since gone and I got a bit of a shock when I saw the contents of Mum’s boxIt’s been organised ! Part of me, the part that is mentally still 6 or 7 is appalled, where is the fun in a button box that is all in little bags and no happy chaos ! But the other part of me, the part that is learning to sew squeezed in between working, running the house and making sure there is food in the house, the bit of me that values anything that saves time applauds Mum for being sensible and making sure she can find things in a hurry.

When I was 18 my Mum packed me off to university with an emergency sewing kit, the contents are long since gone but I still have the box and now it has buttons in itSadly, the contents of the box are not as much fun as mum’s (despite the organisation) – mine doesn’t quite have the memories and is made up of the odd button that comes with new clothes and a few cards of buttons I’ve purchased over the years because they look nice such as the Paddington Bear ones, some rainbow ones I bought at a craft fair and a set of 6 handmade buttons  we bought last year when we went to the Framework Knitters Museum.

Finally Grandma’s button box. This box came as a surprise to me as I didn’t even know she sewed. Nana ? Nana definitely sewed, at one point in her life she did it for a living she was what she described as a “Tailoress” and her button box was overflowing and often used in games with her many grandchildren and great grandchildren (she had 14 grandchildren).

At Nana’s funeral my cousin Julie told a story about a game called “Tommy Button” played with the button box which apparently features now in a book as a game for children with learning difficulties because Julie shared the game with a friend who shared it with a friend etc etc

Anyway, back to Grandma’s button boxWhat a fabulous chaos of buttons, what memories – there are a lot that remind me of coats she used to have, some have clearly come off chairs and sofas and there are a number of self cover buttons (which I am getting into at the moment) and there is one, just one APR button which unfortunately didn’t photograph well – I wonder who that belonged to ?

Unfortunately however despite having 3 boxes to go through I couldn’t find enough buttons of the same type that would fit and look good on either my Manu or Coraline cardigans so I had to go shopping…and got lost in the wonder of buttons…I fear I could get obsessed !

Confessions: Material

Most of the last month has  been spent sorting the house and getting rid of things prompted mainly by the redecoration that’s going on in our bedroom. Decorating during the week is proving difficult due to the fact both Husband and I are worn out after our work commutes.

Part of the tidying has involved working out exactly what material and other accessories I have,writing them down in a book and trying to match them up with things I want to make. Sounds  a bit organised for me really but I want to try and use what I have this year rather than buying anything more so that come christmas I have a pile of handmade presents for various people and can draw a line under the debt.

Anyway in sorting (ironing !) my materials I have realised that a lot of it is either plain or classic prints like dots or stripes…and rather a lot of skull and cross bones.

So here is my confession, I don’t really like prints. More specifically I have realised I dislike a large percentage of Amy Butler (the only one I have ever bought is blue with blue dots) and Cath Kidson prints which I guess puts me out of step with Johhn Lewis and possibly a lot of the sewing magazines out there.

I do like Alexander Henry prints though…but once bought I have no idea what to do with them !

So is it a genuine dislike of prints or is it just fear ?

 

Leading your children astray…

The older generation leaves it’s fingerprints on the younger generation…sometimes you can spot it. In myself I know and recognise the way I clear my throat is the same noise my Dad makes, my frown comes from my Mum and there are other things…these other things if we spoke about them can probably be traced to generations further back, and because records aren’t kept we can never really know why we do things or behave in a certain way.

In my Husband’s family there are hints from things I’ve heard that maybe the car obsession dates from the early 1900′s and also the love of motorcycles, likewise a certain shortness of temper when people don’t think before they act.

In my son I recognise my bad habits and hazard a guess that some of them come from my parents, some expressions you don’t expect from a 6 year old such as “For crying out loud” and “Oh for god’s sake ” !

But other things I am happy to have given to my son, to have shared…and who knows how far it will go…a certain liking for silly jokes.

Reading Spider’s homework this evening, he is meant to write a story about what he would do if he met an elephant…”I don’t know what I would do if I met an elephant as I don’t know a lot about elephants. I do know some elephant jokes though. I only know 2… How do you fit 4 elephants in a mini ? 2 in the back, 2 in the front…Why do Elephants paint their toe nails red ?…so they can hide in cherry trees…”

I know where those jokes have come from, one from Husband, one from me…both standard responses  during certain silly family discussions…

Spider is definately OUR son…even if he isn’t too fond of Bangers and Mash !

Some people have mice

Some people have mice who nibble away at the contents of the kitchen cupboards and steal bits of wool and fluffy stuff to line their nests. Some people suffer from moths…mainly a problem for knitters when the moths discover the wool stash. Me, me well I have kittens, OK so they are cats now but they think they are kittens.

My fluffy monsters have discovered the box under the bed where I keep my wool. More than that they appear to have discovered how to take the lids off boxes, made easier by the fact the box is overfull and the lid is straining to stay on. Several times I’ve woken up or come home to a bedroom floor littered with odd balls or have had to rewind a ball that has been unravelled and tangled round the bed legs.

But for no longer. Tomorrow order will be imposed on the house when the wardrobes are delivered. Unfortunately until then chaos reigns and I can’t find anything so I’ve gone to bed with my laptop and the last of my 2010 knitting.

Tomorrow I may have some photos and an update on the sewing which has been a bit hit and miss because I haven’t been able to reach the sewing machine for a week because of the chaos and the fact there is a small boys bike in the kitchen.

FO: Easy as Pi(rat)e Tote Bag

This was written 2 weeks ago but delayed posting it until I found the card reader…

It’s now 4.30pm and still no sign of the wardrobes. Nothing has been achieved in the house by anyone (can’t find knitting pattern, can’t reach sewing machine and don’t see the point of housework when the house is in chaos).

So here’s something I made last week.

It was meant to be the Flat bottomed versatile book bag from the Bag Bible but I ran out of time…we were meant to be at my parents for 10.30am and this bag was for carrying the wine we’d bought as a Thank You present for some neighbours of Mum and Dad who had generously given Spider a big boys bike.

However as we live in a terrace I felt guilty firing up the sewing machine before 9am and I was going very slowly to avoid making a mistake. S0 I decided to skip the steps that flatten the bottom and just go for the normal tote.

Bag is made out of an unfinished skirt…I cut it too short and was going to add a trim in a contrast colour following a suggestion from the Knitted Bear but then I went and lost the pattern and decided the cotton was too stiff for a circle skirt and bunched too much at the hips.

The bottom of the bag is made from a remnant I found in the sale at  local fabric shop…

An anniversary of a sort of

Well we are still in a state of chaos here. We have wardrobes which were finally delivered at 7pm sunday evening giving Husband just enough time to put them up and then put the bed back together before bed time – had to wait until the next day to screw them to the wall as using power tools at gone 9pm in the evening is just as anti-social as using a sewing machine before 9am in the morning (only that post is still in draft so you don’t know how considerate I was on saturday…)

I can only knit when I have the PC up and running as I’ve lost the paper pattern for my socks, the ironing is piling up because the furniture is all in the wrong place and I can’t plug the iron in a “safe” place (in other words a place where you are not at risk of piles of books and other stuff falling on you) and I can’t even find the sewing machine let alone the little gadget that will let me up load photos to the computer.

So here we are then in a worse mess then we were when we decided to create order, in limbo, waiting for the weekend when we have the time and energy to finish the painting off.

So this anniversary then ? Well it appears to be the 1st February, January having disappeared amongst the snow, the chaos and chest colds and the 1st February means that I have been a qualified lawyer for yet another year – wait a moment wasn’t I 29 when I qualified ? My god that means, yes I’ve been on the roll for 10 years now, 9.5 of those years with the same employer.

I almost feel like an adult…almost…

Knitting ’til your fingers bleed

I started a pair of socks with the start of the new month but quickly abandoned them because knitting a pair of grey socks in grey drearsome February turned out to be a really bad idea. Instead I grabbed some cotton in blue and another ball in orange and started knitting a hoodie for Spider.

Knitting mainly during Rugby matches but in between helping with wardrobes, ironing, tidying the kitchen etc I managed to complete 2 sleeves by 11am this morning but I also managed to clock up 10 very raw feeling fingers which I’ve put down to the yarn.  So when Husband suggested a trip to Oxford I was more than happy to put the needles down and stick walking shoes on and blow the cobwebs away looking at the snowdrops in the Botanic Gardens.

We all had a lovely day. But circumstances have led to me retreating to bed with chocolate cake, red wine and knitting…if I had a hot water bottle I’d have that too. Feeling lousy.

On top of everything else a friend texted to say Gary Moore has passed away…which makes me sad, so have added my CD of “Still Got the Blues” for you to the mix – put down the pain inducing cotton and gone back to the grey socks as it didn’t feel right to be knitting in colour

…and besides I do appear to have sustained my first knitting injury, just glad I haven’t attempted an adult sweater in the stuff.

I made something !

I made something with my sewing machine. In fact I’ve made quite a few things recently (socks, another bag, a heart shaped something or other, another heart shaped thing with lavender) but you will just have to take my word for it until I sort out my inability to upload photographs to the blog at the moment.

The last installment of my Learning-to-Sew adventure found me bemused by all the different sorts of seams and after practising a straight forward seam on the Easy as Pie bag (a picture of which languishes on my camera along with all the others), heading off in search of a project to practice “cross seams” which is where 2 seams meet and are joined together.

It was here I hit a snag. Projects with examples of techniques I want to practice tend to have lots of other things in them (like sleeves or buttonholes) which scare the bejesus out of me. So I’ve altered my plan of campaign.

I will continue to work through the encyclopedia but practice the technique in isolation. In the meantime I’m working through all the beginner projects in my small collection of sewing magazines. This ties in nicely with my attempt to declutter as once I’ve done everything in the magazine I want to do I will get rid of the magazine.

Most of the small easy projects in UK sewing magazines tend to be skirts or dresses for girls. So if I do a good job of it the little girl 2 doors down will get a new addition to her wardrobe…it I make a mess of it I’ll donate it to my Mum to be cut up for quilting.

Project 1 has been a girl’s skirt from the October 09 issue of Sew Hip…despite the fact that this skirt is about as easy as you can get I have to confess that it ended up taking me a whole month due to losing the sewing machine during the decorating and not owning any pink sewing cotton.

Apart from the fact it’s pink I’m quite pleased with it and wish that I was 8 years old (and had made it in red) so that I could wear it.

FO: Cover Girl Skirt

“So about that skirt ?”

“what this skirt ?”

Pattern: Sew Hip October 2009 – it’s the skirt shown on the cover

Material: Cotton (pink with white dots and the hem is white with red dots)

This is probably the easiest skirt in existence and in truth you probably don’t need a pattern just the waist, and “knee to waist” measurements of the person you are making it for But if you do want a pattern then Oliver and S have a similar free one on their website [here] – which I will probably make later in the week “just because”.

Searching the internet I notice that there are some adult versions out there of the same skirt. Now I am in 2 minds about the subject of elasticated waist skirts for big girls. In “Yeah I made it myself” Eithene Farry states that although this sort of skirt is easy to make only little girls (ie below age 10) can carry it off.  To a certain extent I agree with her BUT I can’t ignore the fact that the 3 best skirts I have ever owned, as in ones that I have worn to death have been elasticated waist skirts.

However I think it is correct to say that a cotton skirt with gathered elastic is best left to those still at junior school. .. or those whose clothing size is “whippet thin/slender”. Those of us with more er, “ample” figures who require something more fitted, just look like we are wearing a large scale gym bag round our middles.

All 3 of my skirts were made of more “forgiving” fabric ( a black knit skirt, a red jersey skirt with a gored construction and the stretch brown sequined skirt with the leopard print elastic ) and all 3 had wide elastic ungathered waists…

I do not however have any interesting and forgiving material in my small stash at the moment (although I have metres and metres of 5cm elastic but that’s another story)..and since I lack confidence I shall stick to children’s clothes for the next 3 months.

An evening off

A big thank you to my fabulous parents for offering Spider a sleep over so that his parents could enjoy an Orange Wednesday at the cinema to check out the Kings Speech

It was a wonderful night our, a lovely film and a teenage tea of Pizza…oh and red wine !

I should write more, but then there are lots of reviews out there. All I can say is that it’s a great film. You should go see it if you haven’t already.

A late valentines

I have always loved valentine’s day but in other ways I loathe it.

When I was younger I hated it because of the way it made those who didn’t get a valentine feel…absolutely wretched. I felt that way earlier in the week on someone else’s behalf…actually it was more guilt.

The handing out of invitations to Spider and Flapjack Princess’ joint birthday party fell on valentines day. Whilst Spider and FJP ran around trying to locate the correct person to give an envelope too, I was stood in the class line next to this slightly older child (they are in a mixed year class) with a mop of yellow hair and the most startling blue eyes.  And I saw those eyes turn from hopeful to disappointed in the space of 5 minutes…and I felt awful and it reminded me of how I felt year after year on valentine’s day.

I told myself that you can’t invite everyone. There is a health and safety limit of 20 children and for that matter why should I feel guilty, Spider’s only been to 1 party since this time last year…but I was still haunted by those eyes because I knew how he felt.

Later I asked Spider who he was, “him, oh he’s new. He only joined our class afer christmas”. Made me feel a little better, but mainly because it excused me from the fact I didn’t know his name.

So Valentines Day. How can I like it when I know how miserable it can make people ? Well I don’t like the commercialism of it, the plastic tackyness. What I like is all the different ways people find to express how they feel. Growing up I  waited all year for the valentines in the Guardian, read every single small print one and tried to imagine what happened next.

Always been a bit disappointed in the valentines I did get…very predictable. Apart from the time we celebrated with egg and chips and champagne. Oh and there was the man who bought me a frying pan…but then I ended up marrying him !

Husband, after the first time made it clear that he didn’t celebrate this day. Why should he express his love on just one day a year ? I can go with that. I still celebrated…had to, I got roped it to making a card for Spider to send to FJP and of course Spider had to have something from meand it’s different for me…it’s not knitted…but it’s not my idea (Handmade)

Had I had more time I would have liked to have tried some of this guerilla valentines

On tuesday Husband and Spider bought me red tulips

Lesson 4.5: Rotary cutters are sharp

I flipped out this morning. Actually I flipped out yesterday it’s just it continued into today.  Got fed up of living in chaos and insisted that we took some time out to tidy up.

It took all of yesterday to get Spider’s toys and boy clutter(rocks, sticks, unidentified things collected from strange places that boys find) under control and this morning whilst clearing the kitchen and dinning room I finally reached my sewing machine again…but then looked at it longingly for 90 minutes whilst I finished the mountain of ironing that had built up.

Whilst clearing I discovered Husband’s cutting mat. Husband used to be seriously into photography, serious in a way that involved  cutting, mounting and framing his pictures…and since I had been given a rotary cutter for christmas (thanks Mum !) I though it was time I brought the 2 together.

It was a timely meeting as I have promised to make 20 small cotton bags by next saturday for the Party… unfortunately despite being very very careful whilst cutting out the sample I then went and dropped the unsheathed rotary cutter whilst putting it away and it landed on my finger.

There was quite a lot of blood for such a small cut but being sharp the cutter cut quite deep.

Normal services will be resumed soon – at the moment I’m sulking and feeling sorry for myself.

 

Lesson 4: Seams

It would appear that although I investigated the chapter on seams and went looking for some practical exercises I didn’t write about it so here is the missing installment of my adventure in learning to sew ( travelling without a map).

Seams. If you can seam you can sew right ? After all at it’s most basic sewing is attaching one piece of material to another and what is seaming but attaching one piece of material to another ?

I’ve always been a  bit chuffed over my seaming.  I can’t cut things out neatly, I have problems measuring things properly and squaring material up, I can’t line up patterns in material but my seams look good. Everytime I make something and realise it looks nothing like it should do  I comfort myself with the thought that “well Pen, at least your seam is neat”.

Sew + Press + Snip = Neat seam,  Sew+ Press + Snip + Finish + Press + Snip = Neater Seam, in fact such a neat seam that if it was a boy you could take it home and introduce it to your mother !

It seems though that I have been congratulating myself without reason. OK I have mastered a basic seam “Flat Seam” and “Edge Stitching” (a seam finish) but this just a tile in the mosaic. The Encyclopedia has 12 pages devoted to seams and another 2 pages of finishing techniques…that’s 22 different types of seam  plus 8 ways of Finishing. Holy Cow I’ve been thinking I’m a master seamer when really I’m not even a novice let alone an apprentice !

So Flat Seam. Flat seam I can do, have done recently in the Easy as Pie bag and the dotty pink skirt…tried to photograph it this morning but the skies are so grey that the camera refused to focus on the skirt…got a lovely shot of my neighbours bins through the window though !

French seam…boy do I wish I’d discovered this one before, the french seam is sexy…I just love the finish it gives…but this one needs photos so I’m praying for sunshine tomorrow.

FO: A “green” party bag (french seams)

Before we go any further I would just like to assure you that I’m not going to take you through all 22 seams (in detail) or write instructions on how to do them…after all I am the least qualified person in the world to give a tutorial on sewing.  But I have gone a little crazy about french seams…I love them…they are so “neat” in more ways than one.

My lovely neighbour the Flapjack Queen thought I had gone a bit crazy when I volunteered to do party bags for the annual Spider/FJP joint birthday party.  “But you hate party bags…you think they are a plastic incarnation of evil”

This is true. Last year we made a stand against the party bag sending the children off with cake and a balloon animal each…but part of me worried that this and my failure to get thank you letters out may have crippled Spider’s social life. So this year I provided party bags…done my way.

I made 15 little bags…normally this would be considered an activity bordering on the masochistic (or insane) but I wanted sewing practice and because I wanted them to look neat inside and out I made them with a french seam (normally when I want the inside of a bag to look as good as the outside I do a lining – but 30 little bags really would be  a labour of love…and I’m not that loving !)

French seams are “enclosed seams” in other words the raw edges of the fabric are enclosed within the seam – a tutorial can be found here. The trick is getting the secondline of stitches close enough to the first line so that it doesn’t look like you have included a second cord tunnel down the side but not so close that the raw edges stick out through the second seam.

The bags themselves are smaller versions of marble bags – surprisingly the most searched for terms on this blog are “How to make a marble bag”  – I once did a spoof tutorial which I appear not to have added the photos too. The party bags have french seams along the bottom and side seams to neaten the inside.

Once made I threaded them with coloured ribbon. Inside we put cake (of course) hair slides for the girls, stars wars trading cards for the boys, balloon left over from christmas and a sweet each.

These bags were cute. These bags were desirable. I know this because despite the fact that as usual all the other parents thought Flapjack Queen had organised the party (this year it was pretty much all me) there was at least 1 little girl who threw a hissy fit when she thought she’d lost her party bag as she left…at least I’d like to think it was the cuteness of the bag that caused the tantrum…but then the hair slides were Hello Kitty (purchased with Boots points) and the Kitty does have a powerful sway over little girls !

FO: “Not” an Oliver+ S Lazy Days skirt

When I first read the Lazy Days Skirt pattern on the  Oliver +S website I just knew I had to make it…not because it’s free, although that is quite a powerful motivator but because I just loved the construction of it. It takes all the scary bits out of the construction, all the bits that if you forget to do them makes the skirt look “home made” rather than “handmade” and just does away with them.

Number 1: You don’t have to finish your seams off.  The skirt is made from a full width of material and then gathered. The only seam is made by joining the selvages together so the seams are “pre-finished”

Number 2: You don’t have to hem the skirt. The ribbon on the bottom of the skirt is fastened to the underside of the skirt along one side of the ribbon and then the ribbon is “flipped” over to the right side of the skirt and attached, thus encasing the raw unfinished bottom edge.

Number 3: It is an elasticated waist. Gathered so it’s hard to tell if your waist seam is crooked.

So it came as a bit of a surprise to me when I finished my version of
the skirt that apart from number 3 I had failed to incorporate in the skirt any of the features that made me love the pattern.

When it came to chosing the material I chose this raw silk effect that I’d found last year in the remnant basket at Mo’s. It was cheap because it had a huge stain down one side. I’d cut this off and used some of it to make little “dolly bags” as christmas presents but was left with a piece 44 inches by just under 1 metre. So of course my seam was not selvage to selvage but selvage to jaggedy edge…so I did a french seam (yes I am obsessed).

Then after sewing the elastic casing for the waist I went to my stash for a ribbon and didn’t like any of the material/ribbon combos so ended up with a length of lace which didn’t really lend itself to the encased hem technique.

So here it is…Not the Lazy Days Skirt

 

Walking in Warwickshire – Treasures in Kenilworth

Having come to the conclusion on Friday night that Husband and I were in danger of turning into our sofas (aka becoming lard buckets) we decided that this year we should make an effort to get out and see more of this county where we had both, independently chosen to live in (Husband is from Staffordshire, I am from everywhere – at least that’s how it feels sometimes !).

We decided that whatever the weather as long as it wasn’t actively raining when we got up, that we would go for a walk. As an incentive we decided to use one of the 2 Treasure Map walks that Big Brother, Islay and family had give us at Christmas…it wasn’t raining on saturday…so off to Kenilworth we went

This Treasure Map present turned out to be a bloomin good choice of present. It kept us happily entertained for about 5 hours. It doesn’t take 5 hours to do but the route is well chosen and kept taking us to parts of the town we didn’t know about…so we kept taking detours. Had it been better weather we’d probably (being English Heritage ticket holders) have detoured round the castle as well.

Leaving it until now to do turned out to be a good idea too as not only is the weather marginally better than Christmas but since Christmas Spider’s reading ability has just taken off, so he was very happy being in charge of the map and reading out the clues and directions…I was allowed to be in charge of the pencil.

Now as well as having a fantastic deli, an award winning fish and chip shop, a wool shop (it has 2 wool shops it  seems but the smaller one has a public auction sign on it for 16th March) and an independent bookshop Kenilworth is blessed with about 10 charity shops and as a family we love mooching around old books.

In one of these shops I struck gold. I think I’ve mentioned before my Mum’s collection of Pins and Needles magazine (long gone and now sadly missed). I loved this magazine it had such a fabulous mix of textile arts (knitting, machine knitting, dressmaking, embroidery) plus the occasional recipe, hints and tips, no human interest or celebrity  stories (hurrah) unless they were related to craft (and then rarely).

Anyway there, hidden under a pile of knitting patterns in the Kenilworth Cats Protection League was  one, just one copy of Pins and Needles from February 1977…sod the map I had the prize…and just in time as the shop was closing.

In fact the whole of Kenilworth seemed to close at 5pm so we headed back to the car, via Waitrose which we discovered hidden in a backstreet where I discovered treasure number 2 as I treated myself to magazine called Making which may on first reading turn out to be the 21st century version of Pins and Needles…except I’m not sure I want to spent £4.99 to buy it on a regular basis…I also managed to persuade Spider that the Doctor Who comic was better value than the Ben 10(plastic trash) one…he wasn’t quite convinced but since I refused to lend him the money Ben 10 stayed on the shelf.

Sunday has dawned grey and miserable…drinking tea and resting my tired feet…looking at the housework…for every day of pleasure there is a day of duty…

An auspicious day

Today was not an auspicious day (although it was slightly better than yesterday as there was no “half a mouse” at the bottom of the stairs) I started it by sitting in the car for 3 hours and travelling through 7 counties in order to get to Epping. But the weather, the weather was fabulous, I could almost believe that spring is here…the weather did remind me of a very good day in my life.

Haircuts, especially drastic ones,  have always been my way of drawing a line under a situation. Usually one I wish to forget. January 2002 found me  standing at the top of Guildford High Street with a cold wind blowing through newly bobbed hair and rain gently falling on my cheeks. Alone again, but happy and free. I made a list of things I wanted to do because I wanted to do them: go back to the south pacific, learn scuba diving, spanish, to Salsa, go to south america and hopefully lots of other things some of which wouldn’t begin with “s”.

The next day I read an article in a sunday paper about how it had never been cheaper to go to Japan.  Japan ! A place I had been mildly obsessed with for years (I blame childhood reading of Miss Happiness and Miss Flower), kimonos, gravel gardens, cherry blossom, tea, food food food.

Fast forward 2 months and the airline ticket has been bought, yen obtained, accommodation booked and plans made. There are still  several weeks to go and I’m in Reading high street on a fine march day (like today in fact) the sky is blue, sun shining but a cold wind, all is green and bursting out yellow and I am in search of decent footwear. My plan was to do a lot of walking if I could to save money and avoid the problematic issue of buying public transport tickets.

In an outdoor gear shop in Reading, a man called Jonno spent an hour selling me footwear and I let him…because it was nice to be so outrageously flirted with (I was recently single and still feeling bruised…despite being free). In the course of the hour he showed me how to lace boots up properly, the importance of good socks, Italian Lasts v German Lasts (german are wider), how a footbed can help with fit…but mostly he talked about the outdoors and about climbing “see these, feel these, these are climbers hands”

Dazed and happy, despite having been relieved of the best part of £100 I stumbled out of the shop with decent footwear and went back to the office where in between phonecalls and letters I sneaked onto the internet to google climbing…and discovered UKC.com and their forums.

Over the course of a few months I discovered some wonderful people many whom (Wingnut, Captain Paranoia, Gingerkate, JayH, Sutty) are still friends today and eventually I bumped into Husband.

Three years to the day that I stumbled into that outdoor shop in Reading and bought my hiking boots, in fact almost to the minute, (12.45pm) Spider entered my life.

The boots may have been expensive but I still have them today and they have never given me blisters. If I hadn’t bought them on the day I did I doubt whether mine and Husband’s path’s would have crossed (despite having lived in the same town some 6 years earlier) and there certainly would not have been Spider.

Never did learn Spanish though…

Retiring

This is likely to be a quiet week, if not a quiet month.  Aside from the f act we have our boundary dispute mediation on Thursday I am knitting away like fury as a number of work colleagues have taken VERS which either stands for voluntary early redundancy or voluntary early retirement.

Whatever you call it, their absences will be missed and I think work will be a poorer place for them going.  You can’t have so many experienced people going in one fell swoop without there being a knock on effect.

As good bye presents for my friends and colleagues I’m knitting Ishbel shawls which are usually very very quick but unfortunately being distracted over other things I am making so many mistakes I’m thinking of giving up and just buying boxes of chocolate.

Anyway, see you all this time next week when I will either be happy and finally after 3 years able to garden or very very depressed and facing some serious  financial decisions.

Only the lawyers win…

Well it’s over…pretty much. I can’t talk about it yet as there are some things to do before the matter is finally settled.

The truth is no one wins in a boundary dispute except the lawyers and when you have a mediated settlement then it is a compromise and each party gets the best result they can hope to get without going to court. There are no winners, there are no losers…and the lawyers ALWAYS get paid.

Half the time that’s what it comes down to, costs. In county court litigation except small claims you can’t afford to have points of principle because there is always the risk of having to pay the other sides costs if you lose. Pretty much you end up doing a financial calculation on how much it will cost you to keep arguing.

Husband is unhappy. He thinks we lost. No, if we had lost we would have had to pay her legal costs.

Admittedly it doesn’t make a lot of difference to our neighbour. You see most legal expense insurers won’t cover a boundary dispute. Unfortunately she had LEI from one of the organisations that do cover it…ours wouldn’t…so we haven’t paid her legal costs (we will be paying ours for the rest of the next 12 months). But she isn’t out of pocket.

She has lost in another way though… it may take her awhile to realise it…and it’s not the sort of thing you can litigate over or put a monetary value on….and no, I don’t intend to explain it here…and no it’s not a threat or anything like that…but there is an equilibrium to life and if you upset it then life always finds a way to readdress the balance.

FO: Fish Scale socks

Back back back in the early months of 2009 when I took up my needles again I came across a pair of socks so beautiful that it made me want to learn to knit socks…but I feared that I would give up whilst learning before I got good enough to knit these…

Behold…

They were finished in January but this week has been the first good week for photographs this year and even then outside.

The socks turned out to be easier than expected and I had no choice, the yarn told me that they wanted to be these socks and they do look like fishscales with all those greens and blues…the socks were not without problems though as in the run up to christmas I put them to one side and when I came back not only had I forgotten where I was but the kitten had bit the yarn in half.

The first sock therefore has been knitted 1.5 times but on the restart the pair were knitted in just over 10 days

pattern: Pomatomus

needles: 2.5mm

yarn: Regia 4ply kafe Fassett

new: nothing now…bit of pooling on the sock where I had to rejoin the yarn due to kitty nibbling

Am happy with my spring like feet…although they have knitted up baggier than I like but I’ve taken the lesson on board and the February socks have been altered to fit better.

Fear of Failure

I had planned another finished object post but the weather this weekend has been back to dull and gloomy so no photographs were taken. I have another finished object blocking on the bedroom floor – I had to do the ironing, tidy the bedroom and vacuum before I was able to block !

Checking Ravelry later I realised I have a lot of virtually finished things which await blocking or buttons or silly little tasks like that  before they have their photos taken. I decided that it was time I stopped procrastinating and just got on with things.  So I’ve just spent an hour or so collecting everything together including organising the mess that is my sewing/knitting tools collection.

All of the things that need doing are easy, won’t take long at all. So why haven’t I done it ? As far as I can tell it’s down to a sense of guilt. I keep telling myself that I need to finish my god-daughter’s christmas present (now you know why I feel guilty) before I finish anything else off…and this is where the problem is…because I don’t know how to do it ?

The present is a knitted bag. It needs lining (simple). It needs a catch (simple and I have already bought one). Here’s the (other) catch, it’s a very floppy bag and I think it needs stiffening but I can’t decide how to do it. The easy route would be to iron interfacing onto the lining but I think even heavy interfacing isn’t going to be stiff enough.

I have some pelmet interfacing. It’s like cardboard and it’s thick…you can’t iron it on. What I think i need to do is create 5 pockets, slip a rectangular piece of interfacing into each pocket and then find a way to join all 5 pockets together to create a kinda 3-D lining of the bag.

It makes sense in my head. It reminds me a lot of making 3-D shapes in maths at primary school…but so far I’ve lacked the courage to actually try it. I guess I need to stop putting my toe in the water and just jump in the deep end…but not tonight….I chickened out after taking the measurements and drawing lines on the interfacing…they looked so wonky.

I don’t know why I’m worrying so much. The god-daughter probably won’t care and will be more interested in the Claire’s Accessory’s gift card inside the bag…

FO: Freedom Ishbel

I work with a lot of wonderful people. Several of whom finished work today because they’d taken VERS (Voluntary Early Retirement/Redundancy). One of whom is a truly lovely lady who has spent the last few years telling me off for wearing so much black and leaving little gifts of purple on my desk.

She is also the person whose brush with breast cancer brought me back to knitting as I thought she might like a hat…a purple hat !

She found out just after Christmas that her application for VERS had been successful and just as I was about to get the needles out to knit her a goodbye present she said “Have you seen my new coat ? ” “No” “I must bring it in to show you, it’s red and happy and cheerful and I’m going to wear black accessories with it…”   Me: “Oh…”

So I spent the next month trying to knit something in black to go with her lovely new coat and you know what ?  I just couldn’t do it because black is so NOT what I want to knit for her. I wanted something that was bright and bubbly and truly amazing, something that screamed “Life, I love Life…” because she has definately got life by the S&C’s and is squeezing every last drop of joy out of it and sharing that joy with everyone around her…so I did this instead…

Pattern: Ishbel by Ysolda Teague

Needles: 3.75mm

Yarn: Wensleydale Longwool Sheepshop DK in hot pink

New:…I only made 1 mistake this time…

I will miss her but Regi is happy to go…sadly a lot of people are happy to be leaving because it’s no longer the place it used to be and I really hope that we can get that spirit, that happiness, that feeling of doing something worthwhile, back.

Confused

So there I am, sitting in an open plan office at sometime after lunch and the phone goes…2 rings which means it’s an outside call…it’s not my Mum and not recruitment consultants who for some reason have started calling again (do they know something I don’t ?)…it’s someone doing research for the Law Society and would I mind answering questions.

Well it’s a slow afternoon so I say yes.

Well things were going OK, the man on the other end of the line was beginning to get the idea that if you ask an in house governmentesque lawyer questions about marketing most of the answers will be “don’t know, have never thought about it”. Anyway, we get to the last few questions, the monitoring section of the interview and I find myself stumped by the question “how would you describe your sexual orientation”.

Now I am starting to get a bit annoyed generally with this section of questionnaires – it started when I had to fill out one relating to questions to my 6 year old son, then the recent census when the section for marital status was longer than most of the other questions and I have a vague feeling that again when answering questions on line about Spider I was suppose to explain his marital status ( at 6 years old !).

So back to the market research…

I’m there in an open plan office. In a room full of lawyers. Working for an organisation that is very very into the concept of diversity…and my mind goes blank for the usual terms to describe ones sexual orientation. How do I describe what I am in a way that will not offend anyone else in the room. What is the current PC term for me ?

“er, I’m married”

“that could mean anything”

“I’m married and it’s not a civil partnership”

“oh right ok I know”

Later I realised I should probably have said “I have a 6 year old son and I am married to the father of my child”

By the way he said right I suspect he ticked lesbian

Now I don’t really care one way or the other but I would really really really like a box on monitoring forms that said “none of your damn business” because I somehow doubt that it’s really assisting the Law Society in getting a grip on how lawyers use the internet to market themselves to know their sexual orientation !

Away with the Fairies at the bottom of the garden

It may seem that I’ve been missing in action this last week, the truth is I’ve had my head down knitting the last of the retirement presents and knitting a fairy…and for such a small thing this fairy has taken a hell of a lot of knitting.

To try and meet my deadlines I’ve taken to going to work by train again discovering in the process that me and lace knitting on a train don’t get on I spent more time knitting backwards than I did forwards.

Then what happens ? The sun starts to shine…the sun I’ve been longing for all  winter comes out right when I have more deadlines than I know what to do with…and I can’t ignore the sun. We don’t see it much , in fact last year I don’t remember seeing it at all.

So the last weekend and today I made the most of the fact that I can now garden (boundary dispute being resolved) and have spent the daylight hours cutting, digging, mowing and shifting rubbish to the tip…you would have thought that having had 3 years to think about it my head would be chock full of garden plans but to be honest aside from clearing the building rubble I haven’t got a clue !

No doubt come monday there will be another email from my solicitor. You see last week after we tidied up The Witch of Itch complained to her solicitors that she thought our works (removing builder rubble) encroached on her land… like to see her complain about me mowing the lawn…that woman really knows how to squeeze all the joy and happiness out of life

I may have been spending money in John Lewis and Mo’s in Rugby to cheer myself up…if it rains at easter I sew, it it doesn’t I garden.

A ritual

I don’t remember many childhood Easters at home Usually we travelled to either Nottingham or Blackburn to see my Nana or Grandma…I have more memories of Blackburn at Easter perhaps because it was often the warmer place to be when Easter was early.

Good Friday was often the travel day, we’d leave early, really early, in the dark. By 7am it was time to stop for a break. This was when Mum would provide buttered homemade hot cross buns which would be eaten in a layby the sun would be starting to shine with that early morning golden sunshine, there would be a light mist rising off the grass and it would be cold.

The buns were always accompanied by what I remember to be a mug of tea from a flask, only it can’t have been as tea doesn’t travel well in a thermos so it must have been coffee. We’d hold the mug as long as possible to keep our hands warm…

This morning at 7am the house is quiet and I am eating buttered hot cross buns (made by Mum) and drinking tea and thinking how strange it is to have bluebells out at easter instead of daffodils.

My angel

We’ve been on holiday…apart from food/fuel it’s been a freebie as the hotel was thanks to tesco vouchers and we are members of English Heritage which dealt with most of the entrance fees to the places we visited.

The original intention was to go to Rome to celebrate my birthday but the boundary dispute put paid to that (legal fees and building work requirements) so we got our fix of romans and archeology in Newcastle instead.

 

FO: Secret Society Socks

Apologies for the lack of posts of late, have been having technical difficulties which hopefully will now be sorted out. Also my photographic issues may be over as lovely Husband gave me a new point and shoot digital for my birthday so no more struggling to get the SLR to focus in poor light.

Anyway, Note to Self…never, I mean never never ever again permit yourself to knit something in grey wool during the month of February. There is nothing more gloomy than knitting away when skies are grey when the wool on your needles is as dark as the sky.

Pattern: Masonic Lodge Socks

Yarn: Regia 4ply

Needles: 2.5mm dpns

New my first time altering a sock pattern to fit. I fiddled around with the patterns so that I could take some of the stitches out. This pattern is really for larger more masculine feet than my dainty tootsies so I changed the rib pattern at the rear of the sock.

The pattern is mainly rib with a hidden cable that really springs into life when you put them on.  The socks are still a bit big but the socks have rapidly become my favourite gardening socks…not good in hiking boots(still walking warwickshire)  though as they are too loose and cause chafing of boots.

I didn’t buy this yarn with the intention of making grey socks. It was originally intended for Ishbel and the Ishbel hat but when I pulled the yarn out to use I realised that after 3 in a row I couldn’t face another Ishbel. This pattern seemed to want to be grey and turned out to be a lot easier and quicker than I thought it would be.

Nice People, doing nice things…in a hard way

I have a friend. I’ve never met her but she is nice (she likes tea, and the Shipping Forecast) . She has a big heart and she loves a challenge.

On saturday she is going for a run…and will keep running for quite awhile… She’s pushing her envelope a bit but she will do it because she’s a determined wee thing…and besides she’s running with a purpose.

Emma is in Aberdeen. On Saturday she is running the Baker Hughes 10k for MND Scotland…she’s already fire walked for them which is why I know she will finish the course

If you fancy sponsoring her then she can be found here  or if you look on the side bar she can also be found at Made by Paddy.

We love here here…she’s sending Spider some cornflowers to plant…which will make the bees happy

Emma spreads happiness…what’s not to like

Poverty

 I am poor. I am poor financially(unemployment, boundary dispute etc etc) and I am time poor (full time job, at least 12 hours a week commuting, housework etc).

As a result of the former most of my family and friends are getting used to receiving handmade presents or because of the latter, late presents and often of course both !

Added to the fact that I prefer to hand things to people than put things in the post this has resulted in me avoiding some of my friends until I have completed things.

 I have recently finished making the last of last years Christmas presents…just in time as my Mum pointed out yesterday, to start making presents for this  year (1st June).

Also, this was meant to be a year of knitting things for me…so far I appear to have made 2 pairs of socks…it is actually 3.5 pairs of socks but pair 3 needs a bit of “rectification”.

There may be a number of FO posts in the next week or so and slightly less rambling from me…

FO: The on time purse

This is my attempt at a present for my goddaughter Cookie. I had been avoiding her since Christmas as the bag I made her was causing creative headaches. Then 2 days before her birthday her Mum KTCupcakes phoned up and said “do you and Spider fancy coming to a party. Oh and can you make a cake. Harry Potter theme would be appreciated”  (Eeek !).

The cake itself caused a major headache, went drastically wrong (when I do a decorated cake I usually spend several weeks thinking about how it’s put together) but the day was fortunately saved by my wonderful Mum (made a  substitute cake, took the icing off the cake, reused it and made a witches hat and a broomstick to go with it)

Whilst making the cake I also had the problem of not having a present organised. Fortunately I had spent several evening studying this pattern and had a purse frame (free with a knitting magazine) and also had no choice. I had a party to go to and as godmother I couldn’t turn up without a present.

It is a really easy pattern to use. The most difficult bit is adding the glue round the frame and admittedly I did have a bit of a problem with excess glue on the lining.

So I turned up with cake. With a birthday present and christmas present for Cookie…Result : One happy 9 year old who didn’t seem to realise I’d made the bag or the purse…but as is always the way was more happy to receive the Monsoon and Claire’s voucher.

FO: knitted rose

About 2 years ago I decided I wanted to try knitting with wire. It’s not something I’m going to make a habit of, not bcause it hurts your fingers but because a) wire is more expensive than wool and b) I have no idea what to do with the things I end up making…

This has been sitting in 3 pieces in my in-tray for over a year waiting to be made up but having no idea what to do with it afterwards it took a WIP clear up regime to actually finish it off…and it was a year between making the rose and making the leaf due to the cost of the wire

The red wire is leftover from the earrings I made 2 years ago and the gold is left over from the wire basket I made last year. The pattern is from a book Wire Knits.

From WIP and UFO to FO

My biggest UFO is my garden. My garden is a disgrace. I know this as one of the neighbours told me this in a note through the letterbox in response to the polite note (it was 7am in the morning I wasn’t going to go round there to complain) I left on her windscreen asking her not to park on the right of way.

Since then I have ignored the garden…because it annoys her and I have a stubborn streak which when really pushed makes me stick 2 fingers up at the world…when pushed I am the sort of person who will go left because I’ve been told to go right

However the state of my garden is upsetting to me. Fortunately I have a front garden and 2 back gardens (it’s divided by a right of way) and the rear back garden can only be seen by the neighbours from their upstairs windows.  I started my garden make over  where it’s more likely to make me happy and less likely to please the neighbours.

So I started my garden renovations by taking a pick axe to the decking and within 10 minutes had measured my length on the floor after a bit of decking I was pushing against with the pick axe suddenly “gave”…resulting in a bruised and cut shin, the biggest bruise on my thigh I’ve ever had and a swollen and misshapen ring finger leading to me being unable to wear my wedding ring for a week – something that feels really strange as it’s the longest I’ve been without my wedding ring since Spider was born.

The other result was that I have been unable to knit. I have been unable to knit all week. I have been unable to knit this whole week that I have been on my own whilst my husband is at the Le Mans 24 hours watching cars go round and round for decades on end…

There are 2 possible outcomes to this. The first that I may have spent the last 7 days drinking myself into oblivion. The second that I may have finally got my backside into gear and finished off some of the things languishing in my “in tray”…

At this point I should really show you some photos to prove that I chose the latter route rather than the former but it’s been like a winters day here today – great for the garden but not good for taking photos….still haven’t put buttons on either coraline or manu but if I can finish the fairy this week I may be able to cast on a new jumper.

And the garden ? Well I’ve repotted all the plants by the back door, redistributed about a third of the mound of soil where my lawn used to be and made a start on taking the asbestos to the tip… oh and I covered my front garden in wild flower seeds.

Morning

Most mornings I wake up at 6am if I want to or not. This is as a result of over 19 years of a 6am alarm call. Once I’m awake I’m awake. If I’m lucky I get to doze, especially if it’s the weekend…but then there is you.

During the week you won’t get up. Every morning I have to wake you but at the weekend you have this amazing ability to wake up at an earlier hour than you do during the week. But at the weekend whilst I’m lying there pretending the sun isn’t shining and the birds aren’t chirping I hear the door handle turn…it turns ever so quietly and slowly by a hand that is pretending it isn’t there…

The door opens slowly over the carpet. I hear the careful breath as you check to your left to see if the “troll” is awake and ready to growl “go back to sleep, it’s too early” but no, the sleeping figure there snores deeply. You take a step, pause, check to see if a lazy eye has opened to check your progress…all is safe…

I hear you drop to the floor…the sound of your belly squirming across the floor to the window and then along to the far side of the bed…creeping along the edge where you pause…another in take of breath…you look down considering the slumbering shape on the pillow…

Sometimes I lift the duvet immediately…other times I leave you standing there looking, “Mummy ?” you say “Mummy?” I ignore you and let you stand there looking and waiting…and then you remember…you remember what I have told you about “how to wake a princess” and you land a great big smacker on my forehead, or my nose…or eyes…

Without opening my eyes I shuffle backwards into the bed next to Daddy/troll, lifting the duvet as I go…You crawl in next to me. I adopt what you described when you were younger as the “running position”, my back straight, legs bent into a sitting position…

Sometimes you lie there, your back against my front in a matching “running position”. I put my arms around you and bury my head in your head, against your neck, inhaling the smell of little boy…

Other times you crawl in, adopting a face to face position, lying there looking at me, your eyes twinkling at me, mischievous smile on your lips… and I love you for it. I love you unconditionally…despite lying there hoping that you don’t open your mouth because I know you had garlic for tea the night before and therefore have breath that can fell buffalo at 10,000 paces…

I forgive you for being awake when I don’t want to be awake…and I will miss it so much when you decide that you are too old for this and when your first words in the morning are not “mummy ?” but “aw Mum, go away I’m asleep”…

But for now I have the drowsy morning and you…and a whole day of possibilities.

FO: Learning curve socks (March)

You may have noticed that there have been slightly more socks on here than you would expect from a non-sock knitter.  This is because I’ve had a change of heart. 

Socks it would seem are:
a) a small, cheap portable way of practicing  or learning new skills and techniques
b) the only way I can guarantee that I knit something for me as I have no intention of knitting them for anyone else.

(Also I have a small box of sock yarn under the bed mainly purchased when I’ve spotted it on sale and aside from shawlettes I can’t think of anything else to use it for…)

So I’ve been challenging myself to a little game called “a pair of socks a month”. The rules are that I pull out 100g of yarn and find a pattern that suits the yarn . I then have a calander month to knit the socks (it’s not an original idea)…

The more observant readers will now have worked out that I should have managed to knit 5.5 pairs of socks since January but only 2 pairs have so far materialised…that was March’s fault…and I’ve been too embarrassed to write about them…until now…I think I need to write it all out and purge myself…and then I need to sort the socks out.

So after the greyness of February I decided I needed colour, lots of colour and I cheated and made sure I pulled out a variegated red/yellow/orange mix…I decided on Firestarter purely on the name but quickly changed my mind as I think that would look better with a solid yarn…also the red/yellow/orange mix turned out to have pink/blue/green mixed in with it which I had managed to ignore when I bought the yarn (£1.50 per ball House of Fraser  sale because it had lost it’s ball band)…I believe the term to describe this is “clown vomit”…it truly is hideous

A sensible person would have stopped at this point. If you don’t like the yarn you shouldn’t try knitting with it, it will not improve things, really it won’t !

Being half way through the month already I wanted something plain but challenging. The Toe-up formula has a couple of challenging techniques in it but the lengths and maths are all worked out for you by the spreadsheet…then all you have to do is knit round and around and around…unfortunately the spreadsheet can’t do everything for you…and it can’t compensate for human error and silly people who forget their tape measures…

Bah ! Who needs a tape measure ? If you are knitting for yourself then all you have to do is measure the growing sock against your foot. Right ? Well it would have worked if I hadn’t been on a train for most of the knitting of sock number 2 and discovered that I was too embarrassed to measure sock against foot whilst in public…some things are best kept private…my feet being one of these things…

Anyway…here is the sock in it’s full embarrassing glory. Sock number 1 is the right length but I cast off too early and too tightly…Sock number 2 has a sole that is half the length again of the other one…

Details are:

Yarn: Regia some form of sock yarn in the clown vomit colourway

Needles: 2.5mm dpns

pattern: Toe up sock formula from knitty

New:crochet cast on, wrap and turning on a sock toe and then using the same technique for the heel – all of these mastered, got the T-shirt etc just messed up with the measuring !

I still haven’t made up my mind whether I frog the whole thing and start again with a pattern that might just about work with the yarn…or whether I correct my errors and keep them as gardening socks…

Confession over. Normal service can now resume…so next up the April sock which isn’t a sock…

I love the smell of persil in the morning…

Did you know that the french for parsley is persil ? That and other things  I discovered in my french/english dictionary kept me awake for the 5 or so years they made me study french…I just about got french O level…but then my first time in France I ordered a coffee and they gave me tea (stupid english girl, don’t know what she’s saying, she obviously wants a drink with breakfast, she’s english, it must be tea)…anyway haven’t bothered since…we’re off to france/germany/belgium etc shortly I probably will stick to smiling and pointing…

I digress. The house smells of washing powder. It’s not persil as I’m feeling cheap and buying own brands. But I am smiling as I survey the washing because it’s not the usual school uniform and sheets and usual boring duty stuff.

My house is full of material. Pre-washed material hanging up to dry.

I got in the habit awhile ago of washing all fabric I bought so that when I wanted to sew I was ready to go…only I haven’t been feeling the sewing vibe recently. partly because I accidentally sent the bobbin case to cumbria (long story) but mostly because I lost confidence(again)…so I’m back on the “teach myself” and not minding the c*ck ups.

C*ck up number 1… a fetching little white daisy print on red appears now to be pink daisys…guess that’ll be the “muslin” for the next whatever…good thing it was only £3.50 per metre !

FO: Tiger goodbye eyes (april sock)

This is not the most flattering of pictures  but it is like a lot of the things I have made this year, knit in a hurry, with love and then photographed within 10 minutes of heading to it’s new home.

Julia (not Julia of the on going wateraid knit) was the last of several close colleagues to take early retirement.  Her leaving coincided with me pulling out the Collinette Jitterbug from the sock wool drawer…

It was destined for socks…but I felt bad about knitting something as lovely as this yarn into something that would get hidden in boots…besides it was pure wool and I wasn’t happy about it living up to a life in boots…so it became a scarf

Yarn Colinette Jitterbug 4ply in Lapis

Yarn: can’t remember, about 3mm I thin

pattern: Tigers Eye

New: the feeling of complete wretchedness experienced every time I have say goodbye…

FO: Purple Passion (May)

This is the easiest post at the moment to make…life is rather stressful so not keen on talking about anything more than surface deep…besides have suffered a break to yet another camera so anything after June 9th can’t be photographed.

Knitting  at the moment for friends turning 40 this year. I needed 4ply purple wool in various shades so actually bought some wool which needed me to knit some socks so that I had left overs to knit hair for the fairy

So

I turned 40 in May and there is  a poem about when I am old I will wear purple…well I’m not waiting that long I want to wear it now. Anyway I’m happy with these I like purple.

Pattern Vanilla socks (see knitmore girls podcast)

New:  making a yarn match up. went a bit wrong on the toe but the heel is pretty good match for identical socks

FO: Pictures in stitches

June was spent not knitting mainly due to badly bruised left hand. I finished this quite promptly, it’s just been sitting here for almost a month as I need to find the courage to mount it properly and stick it in a frame. The recipient’s birthday was in June…but he’s used to me and my time keeping.

Pattern :Banksy Change

I must admit I was getting a bit fed up by the end…but it looks quite effective.

Now I fancy a change…

FO: Not quite a pretty petals bag

Sometime ago I decided that as part of  learning to sew I would work my way through all the “Beginners” projects in the various sewing magazines I have lying around the house…

…however I don’t really have the need for a hairband or a fabric necklace or a doorstop…or a fabric envelope…so I’ve been trying the “intermediate” instead.

What I  mostly learned was how to rescue projects when the projects go skewey because the instructions in the magazines are incorrect. Most of the time it doesn’t matter but I am a bit annoyed with this one.

Pattern: Pretty Petals Bag from Sew Hip 24

Material: Cotton print which seems to be based on the Alexander Henry Skulls and Roses pattern but much much cheaper…the original bag is a very girlie pink with flowers and the recipient…isn’t…

Lesson learned from this project was that if when you trace the project from the pattern in the magazine and it looks suspiciously smaller than the picture in the magazine then trust your instinct and don’t accept the statement that 1.5cm seam allowance IS included in the pattern.

Unfortunately I didn’t realise this until after I’d cut the material by which point it was too late…searching the internet I discovered that for once this was not my fault, everyone who has done this pattern complained about the same thing.

The bag was due to delivery in April…fear of installing the zip in the accompanying purse meant it didn’t get completed until this week…and because there is a sewn in ribbon with a loop in the lining of the bag that the purse (which has a lobster clasp on a ribbon sewn into one of the sides) is attached to I couldn’t not make the purse.

Apart from the size and the fact the purse is a little lopsided this one worked out quite well.  I finally feel as if I am getting somewhere with the sewing machine but I need to up my FO count and try to get something sewing finished each week…it is just so easy to go back to my craft comfort zone (knitting) and  pretend I don’t have boxes of material under the bed.

Likes: the lobster clasp fastner holding purse to bag, the blood red lining, the way the interlining makes the handles seem so crisp, the gentle puffiness of the bag.

Dislikes: it’s so small ! Wouldn’t matter if this was for my 9 year old goddaughter Cookie but this is for her 40 year old Mum KTCupcake

Just sew something

At school they taught “textiles”…what this really seemed to mean was that they instilled within each of us the impression that sewing was something that took a long time…it seemed that the setting everything up and then packing everything away took so much time that there was only about 10 minutes sewing time and the simple task of making a tea cosy (quilted !!!) took about 10 weeks.

Later when I tried it away from school I discovered that you could make things  in the space of an hour what had previously taken all term…much later when I had a house full of cats and boys I discovered that something that should take you an hour can take you 6 months !

In this house before I can cut material out I have to clean the kitchen floor…much as I hate getting the mop and bucket out, I refuse to let this get in the way…I WILL SEW !!!

It’s curtains for spider

About 2 years ago I bought some material to make curtains for Spider’s room…it’s still sitting there. If I don’t make the curtains in the next month or so then there will be no point, he will be heading off into being just that little bit too old for cartoon-ish dinosaurs.

I’ve been putting off making the curtains on the grounds I need lining material…this is just my usual procrastination and fear of screwing up…

Anyway I can’t put it off any longer as whilst I was on holiday I ran out of excuses. I wasn’t sure what was going on in the shop but I knew they were selling material. It was a whole shop full of pre-cut lengths of material with price tickets on. I think it was off cuts from clothing manufacturers as whilst mooching around the shop I recognised a stretch orange/terracotta material that about 10 years ago was the material for a bridesmaids dress I bought in Monsoon…

After some uhmming and ahhing I spent about 34 euros on 3 lengths, about 8 metres of material in all which was cheap enough I guess but when I got to the check out they knocked 50% off the ticket price…

So for about £5 total I scored 3 metres of 240cm cotton sheeting in a lime green colour…

…guess I’d better clean that kitchen floor again and get cutting

note: whilst I was on holiday Mum and the Flapjack Queen came round and tidied the downstairs of my house (love you Mum !) including cleaning the floor…we’ve been back 60 hours…it needs doing again !

Gloop

I have a day off today. The idea is (or was) to spend time with my boy and to do things together…I promised myself that I wouldn’t knit or sew or noodle around on the internet during the day, instead it would be 100% 1:1 time between Mother and Son.

Reality as usual was nowhere near the plan…at least not to begin with as Spider didn’t want to spend time with me, he was having much more fun with the TV (My own fault, I let him watch TV whilst eating breakfast so that I can have tea and toast in peace…).

Eventually I crowbarred him away and we settled down to make and do…Spider made a toy gun decorated with glitter and green sequins (!) and I tidied up the make and do box.

and then he went back to the TV… hmmm Mummy and Spider time is not as easy as I thought…

Fortunately, no one can resist the “Power of the Gloop”… have you ever tried this ? This stuff is cool…unfortunately it is very messy (should have done it before I cleaned the kitchen floor not after) and I have no idea what to do with it now…

For GLOOP:

Take 2 cups of corn flour, add a few drops of green food colouring and slowly add 1 cup of water whilst mixing with your hands…

Result: one solid liquid which you can squeeze into a ball and then slowly watch it liquefy in your hands and drip back down into the bowl…

OK I’m probably not giving it a good write up but trust me this stuff is fun, it’s like slime but not so sticky, it’s cool and damp to the touch but not wet and leaves your hands feeling smooth.

We also managed to fit in a hydropower demonstration and some paper aeroplanes plus some dedicated pizza making

(and I sneaked in a clean floor (again), ironing some material (whilst ironing karate suit for this evening) and tracing a dress pattern out from Sew Hip…well Spider wasn’t exactly sticking to the spending time together rules so I figured sneaking in some prep for other things wasn’t exactly cheating).

FO: Repeat waves hoodie this time in “Gulf” colours

I have a hard time when it comes to knitting for Spider. No matter how enthusiastic he may be about something before hand by the time I’ve put time and effort into making it he’s usually gone off the idea.

But not this one. This one I have problems getting off him…his choice of colours (blue and orange, think Gulf petrol stations)…his choice of yarn actually (it was a pain to knit with, made my fingers hurt)…

The only difficulty has been getting a decent picture of him…

despite the fact he wears it quite a lot, I never seem to have a camera with me…and when I do, well he’s not very co-operative about having his picture taken…

An Empty Space

The owner of this blog has been reported Missing In Action…she was last seen about 2 weeks ago as she headed downstairs muttering something about “time to sort out the lego…”

During the day sighs of exasperation were heard as lego was sorted and organised…the last reported words were a desperate plea “I need help” as she enlisted the male members of the household into the rebuilding project…

The men of the household (OK Man) have been drowning in a sea of lego ever since but are believed to be finally reaching the  shallows and can feel the ocean bottom under the waves of plastic bricks..

…of the blog owner there is as yet, no sign

In a recent interview the Man of the household stated that he thought he saw her on friday night disappearing into the garden but had heard no more after a skip was delivered to the front of the house…

If we have any more news we will bring it to you, but viewers, the outlook is bleak…

FO: Woodsmoke and Ripley

Sounds a bit like a firm of solicitors or makers of tabacco…actually it’s the name of two patterns I love  and have just made for 2 lovely people out of  yarns that  I love (well mostly)

Ripley has now headed off to Scotland (again, the first one I made went to Aberdeen) as a present for Travelling Ali. I learned from the last one I made and this time went for a much larger size but the beanie version rather than the one that looks a bit like santa’s christmas elf

Pattern: Ripley (Ysolda Teague)

Yarn: Toft Alpaca Aran (Chocolate)

Needles:

New: Nothing this time except learning from previous mistakes

Woodsmoke is from Brave New Knits which is a collection of patterns contributed by knitters who have also kept influential blogs. Most of the photographs in their were taken by Jared Flood (Brooklyn Tweed) who also is the designer of this scarf.

When I first saw Woodsmoke I fell in love. in fact I fell in love with the whole book, but mostly with Woodsmoke.  But having now knit it I don’t think I will be making one for myself. Don’t get me wrong the final outcome is gorgeous but doing the border almost drove me over the edge into insanity…it is so tedious and there is SO much of it.

Pattern Woodsmoke (Jared Flood, Brave New Knits)

Yarn: Rowan Cashcotton 4ply (citron) and a sock yarn from Lidl

Needles: 3.25mm I think

New: If you knit a pattern you love, then for the first time out make it for yourself in case knitting puts you off knitting it again !

Woodsmoke is headed for another 40 year old friend, this one in Canada…once I have found her address from the chaos that is my home.

Corsets

My Mum can’t understand why I am so reluctant to make myself something. “But you don’t need to learn how to sew, you can sew already, some of your bags are lovely !”

The problem is that I don’t share my Mum’s confidence in me and that is the heart of the  problem. I lack confidence in my abilities.

So I thought I’d go on a course and relearn the basics…but when checking out the price of basic sewing courses or one day “sew a skirt” tutorials I found myself reluctant to part with cash because  I’d much rather spend it on material…which would admittedly just then sit in a corner because I am too scared of cutting into it and making a mess of things…

I needed to do something drastic to break the cycle…I did something drastic…it wasn’t cheap…but it was sooooooooooo good !

You may have gathered from the fact that the first thing I ever really sewed was a ball gown, that I like a challenge. Also the way my mind works is that to get confident in my abilities I have to tackle and master something hard…the flaw in this thinking is that I could make a horrible mess of things and be even less confident than before….but I only thought of that AFTER I’d spent the money

So I booked myself on an introduction to corsetry course from Sew Curvy.  It was run by the lovely lovely Julia who was so kind and approachable and explained everything really clearly and made me feel as if I was capable…even though clearly compared with everyone else I wasn’t…

I was definitely lacking in skills compared to my classmates  but everyone was so nice and easy to talk to that I felt I may have done some learning from simply being with more competent people…

And you know what ? I didn’t make a mess of things. OK so my eyelets are decidedly wonky and I haven’t finished yet, but I’m getting there…and yes it does resemble an underbust corset…if you squint at it from the side…

I would thoroughly recommend this course. It was fantastic. Julia took us slowly step by step through each stage and explained why the techniques were used and what alternative materials worked and what didn’t.

I personally found it quite intensive though as it is 4 sessions of 3 hours spread out over 2 days and since I don’t usually sew for more than 2 hours at a time to concentrate for 6 hours each day was very very tiring. But then I am very much an amateur with stamina issues anyway.

Unfortunately sewing is not just about confidence,  regular practice helps too…

Just Sew Something

The big difference between myself and my other course mates (who were all so much better than me) was that they all seemed to be sewing on a regular basis. Despite being more experienced, most of us were making single layer corsets  (I had brought some fabric for the top layer but I chickened out of doing the extra steps).

There was K-Janome who had spent the last 5 years studying various textile related college courses. K was accompanied that day by her machine Panthanope Jane who was unhappy about being parted from her “sister” a dedicated embroidery machine (I forget her name) Panthanope came with her own travelling trolley with JANOME stenciled on top. L -Janome was also studying textiles and hoped to make a corset as part of her college course.

G-mystery machine, an ex teacher and now brewery owner showed us how much easier and quicker it was to insert eyelets with a fabric punch. G had been sewing regularly since she was a child. S-Toyota also endorsed the fabric punch. She makes her own costumes for historical reenactments. We all fell in love with the purple bats on S’s corset especially when it turned out they glowed in the dark…

K-Brother made soft furnishings but was hoping to make a corset as part of making her own wedding dress. She saved me from making a terrible mess of things by pointing out that I didn’t need to fiddle with my machine to sort out an unexpected tension issue on one seam but that it was due to the table being so bouncy and all I needed to do was go slowly. K-Brother’s creation really popped being orange silk over black base.

F-Hrsquvana had made corsets before and was on the course to attempt a slightly more elaborate longer corset. F is Australian and had brought her machine over with her from Australia.

Finally there was Freya (Bernina) who made a stunning corset overlaid with a white ripple organza. Freya has a blog (and therefore probably won’t mind if I use her name since she has an on line presence) from where I have shamelessly nicked my idea for a challenge.

Last September Freya was discussing the fact that sewing is more popular in the States than it is in the UK and that they have a national sewing month and wouldn’t it be nice to have an International Sewing month.

So in honour of this suggestion I have decided to sew something daily…I’m not capable due to time constraints of making 30 separate things in a month but I am going to try and spend at least 2 hours a day “just sew(ing) something”

Got off to a good start as I had a day off on the 1st September to spend with Spider . I have actually almost finished something (and had fun with my boy)…except I spent from 5pm-9.30 on an emergency rescue mission helping my parents neighbours move house…I am completely shattered today as a result and may fail my challenge only 1 day in…oh well at least I made 1 thing !

So Day 1, sewed, day 2, collapsed on the sofa…

Quitting whilst you are ahead

As a knitter I learned a long time ago that if you find yourself knitting back more than you are knitting forward then it’s time to put the yarn down, take a break and come back to it another day.

This has been an invaluable lesson and transfers well to sewing…but having just lost most of this post I shall exlain why another night

Concealed Zipper

On Sunday night I tried to install a concealed zipper.  My Mum had passed on to me a multi-machine concealed zipper foot…the sort that comes without instructions and you have to work out which bit goes where.

Once I’d dismantled part of my machine and attached the foot, I spent not an inconsiderable amount of time trying to work out which way up the zipper should be to be facing the right way, whilst at the same time having right sides of both layers of material facing each other. Then I pinned…and finally sewed…

It was not an unqualified success…in fact it was no success at all. The first time I sewed I discovered that I’d sewn the material too close to the teeth of the zip and it prevented the zip from zipping up…the second time round I sewed too far away from the teeth leaving wide expanses of tape showing making the zip anything but consealed…

On the third time of sewing I…stopped. I stopped because for once the seam allowance was only 5mm not 15mm and the edge of my material was becoming seriously frayed…time to walk away.

Monday night, having searched both the internet and Reading for a concealed zipper foot for a Brother I decided to give up and use a hook and eye instead. Next time I attempt this I will use not only the proper foot but stronger material, a bigger seam allowance and maybe some interfacing (as suggested in a tutorial I found whilst googling “concealed zipper”).

There is now a big gap at the back of the dress where the zip is meant to be…. So I’m now knitting a cardigan to go with the dress…I should point out that this extra work is not because I messed up installing the zip but because I dithered all summer about how to do it and now the summer is over…and well children grow…and this summer dress will be too small for FP next summer…but it would make a good party dress with a cardigan…

Lesson learned: Just do it !

FO: Tooth Fairy Pillow

When I started this blog I decided to be honest and document tragedy as well as triumph (because otherwise this would be a very quiet blog)…so skip to the end if you want to see photographic evidence of a sewing disaster…

Unfortunately about 6 weeks ago I gave in to temptation and bought Vintage Style for  Kids: Fiona Bell. I was first tempted in Waterstones but decided that no matter how much I needed cheering up £20 was too much for something which was biased so much towards patterns for girls. I later found reviews on Amazon complaining about vague instructions and “not a book for a beginner.

Then it was on offer in SEW magazine…I forgot to take the details down…but that same week checking on Amazon , found it at the same price as the SEW deal…but with free P&P…I weakened, I softened, I gave in and flexed the plastic…

It was then I realised that the girl patterns only went to age 8, whereas my 6 year old model is already wearing clothes for 9 year olds…I needed to move fast so I…well to be honest I put the book down and went to do something else as I was scared of buttonholes.

Then the start of school term made me pick the book up again and I realised that unless I get cracking I won’t have anyone to wear the girls clothes. So I’m working my way through the book, starting from the back.

The first issue I have with the pillow pattern is it’s quite big. I wanted something hand sized not head sized…so I knocked 5cm of each measurement…but then forgot to buy a narrower ribbon.

The second problem was that it recommended making it in your childs favourite material to make it even more special…Spider’s favourite material is anything fleecy and the fleece I have (IKEA blanket at £1) is a pain to sew…

The construction seemed a little complex to me. It would have been ok if I hadn’t been using fleece…so instead of turning 5mm under and top sewing I just did a normal seam with wrong sides together and turned it inside out.

The next step is to stuff it. I didn’t discover I’d overstuffed it until I sewed the ribbon on. The ribbon is sewed around the edge and the corners mitred whilst both edges of the ribbon are sewed down (sewing through 3 layers of fabric)…oh and did I mention the ribbon I’d chosen (bought from a scrapbooking shop) turned out to have a wire through the edge….oops.

So anyway, the cushion is a bit of a cock up and not made according to instructions – it is more of an homage to the pattern in the book.

I suspect this is my fault not the books…but its a good “Ground zero”. This is how bad my sewing can be:According to the book this is meant to be one of the easier patterns. So anyway, I’m working my way through the book and will try this one again when I get to the end. Hopefully not only will my sewing have improved but Spider hopefully won’t lose any more teeth in the meantime !

FO: World cup hats

The rugby world cup started on friday night…it can be easy sometimes to forget when you have just stumbled through an english summer (such as it is) that other parts of the world may be just coming out of winter.

It was a casual conversation with a colleague M about the fact  the earthquake had meant that some of the England games had been relocated from Christchurch to Dunedin which was “so much further south then ?” , “er yes…and much colder” “That’s a point, they were reporting snow in Wellington the other day”.

Not wishing my colleague to catch her death (despite her being an England supporter) I knitted her a hat
(Spider looking far too cute in Robins Egg)

Then was afraid she might not like it so made her another(Husband in Ysolda Teague’s Cairn)

Still a bit concerned she might not like the hats I made a third…all in the space of 2 weeks(Spider in Lina)

I needn’t have worried, she was delighted and ended up taking both Lina and Robin’s Egg and only left Cairn as it had increased in size after being washed…Husband liked it.

(However I may go back to only making things for people who drop strong hints…less chance of having ones feelings hurt)

Oh, and Wales lost to South Africa earlier today…

FO: New term, new bag

At the end of the summer term I decided it was about time that Spider had a gym bag…6 weeks off ? Plenty of time…there was a pattern in Vintage Style for Kids: Fiona Bell for a laundry bag, that would do. I then put the book down and skipped out to enjoy the sunshine…

It was with a sense of shock on the 1st September that I realised the summer was over and school was back the following week.  Who had stolen my summer ?

At that point I picked up VSfK and read the pattern…hmm that was a lot of material…hmm again, that sure was a complicated method of making a sack like bag with a draw string and I’ve got less than a week, I’m busy at the weekend and I’m working every day between now and the start of term…

If I’d followed the pattern then this would have been the first item I made out of VSfK but I chose to make an oversized marble bag instead and use a nametape instead of appliqued letters… I’ll make the bag again properly another time.

It’s nothing special but it’s distinctive…and Spider likes it (would have preferred Star Wars or Dr Who, but this’ll do)

Hitch

At the weekend I moved out…to my parents…but only temporarily…(and Mum and Dad only live 5 minutes round the corner)

You see I had an attack of space invaders…originally it was going to be the Photographer, his friend Dan, 2 dutch photographers and the Teenager. As it was the dutch gentlemen didn’t come but the boys that were there (apart from Spider) range from 5ft 9 – 6ft 5 and the house isn’t that big.

So me, various bags of works in progress, my sewing box and my sewing machine and knitting all moved out to the otherside of the village.

Did I get a lot done ? Er…no…but I have some good excuses…and I did tidy me up which was at least something…

With Mum’s help I finally plucked up the courage to cut out Spider’s curtains but Hitch#1  the needle seemed too far over to the left of the plate and despite concentrated studying of the manual we couldn’t work out why.

So I decided to stick the first of the VSfK patterns together with the aim to cut the girls PJ’s out at the very least. Hitch#2 the reviews on Amazon warned that the patterns had errors and might not be right and were difficult to stick together, so bearing that in mind and the fact I had to increase the lengths slightly (because my 6 year old model wears age 9 clothes and the biggest size was 7-8) I took a tape measure to all the pattern pieces… the PJ bottoms were titchy, they wouldn’t even have fitted a 5 year old…same problem for the boys PJ’s.

That pretty much was it for the weekend. I gave up on making anything and went off with my Mum to have fun shoping at The Bramblepatch (quilt shop near Daventry)…we did…it was not cheap…but oh it was good (Michael Miller £6 per metre…in a boy pattern !!!!)

So now…with the perspective of just under a week I’ve solved Hitch#1 but that was because I hit Hitch#3. Hitch 1 turned out to be that the stitch length dial had been turned to the max (never expected it to be the length dial).

Hitch#2 has been rationalised. Flapjack Princess came round with her Mum yesterday and I took the opportunity to measure her…I think all the other pattern pieces will fit, it’s just the PJ bottoms that are too small…so I’m just going to adapt the bottoms from another pattern.

So what was Hitch#3 ? Well the little divert on the top of the machine that channels the cotton when you need to wind the bobbin on has moved, and then the screw fell into the machine. I just couldn’t work out all the bits I needed to unscrew to take the machine cover off. Fortunately the screw  came out when I turned the machine upside down…However I can’t get the divert back into the machine and screw it in place unless I can get the cover off   I can still sew…but only until I run out of what is currently on the bobbin…

Nothing for it I guess… It’s time to take the machine to see the professionals.

FO: Mini Chic Dress

Today was the day of not making curtains…oh I pinned them and I pressed them, I just didn’t make them as my sewing machine is out of order…just need a working sewing machine and Spider’s curtains are done…

In the meantime I finally put a hook an eye in a dress I’d made from either Sew Hip 24 or 25 for Flapjack Princess…not yet made the “corsage” which is the USP of the dress.

So this is it…photograph of the back included to show why I’m knitting a cardigan…because without the zip there really is a large gapBut most of today I sat on the sofa with Spider and was ill…I was in London last week…and as usual I came down with the lurgy as a result of being on the tube…

When Gary met Gary

Until last monday I had only shared the name of my machine with one person (and it wasn’t my Mum) but last monday I casually mentioned (I still don’t know why) in an email to a sewing  machine repair shop that my Brother (PS31) was called Gary.

Why Gary ? Sorry, can’t tell you that my Mum reads this blog !

Anyway I was surprised and delighted to get a message back from the shop telling me that if I brought it in during opening hours then their Gary would take good care of my Gary…

 I wasn’t so delighted to discover the price for a service and minor repair (and later when I went to the shop I discovered a second hand Brother of similar age and capacity for £3 more than the price of a service)

But I decided to go for it…because it was still cheaper than buying a new replacement or a better quality second hand…except…except there is a hitch…Hitch#4 ?

Gary (the human one) thought that something may have sheared off…which would mean an extra £20 for a replacement plastic cover…at which point the already dodgy  economics of a repair fall apart completely…

So I’m waiting for monday and a call after Gary has taken Gary’s cover off and knows exactly what the problem is…at which point I will know whether I am paying a service price, a service price with a permanent epoxy resin fix or…or I spend several months  pleading to my Mum for a go on her machine whilst I save up for a new one…

Keep your fingers crossed for me !

Ups and Downs

(I posted this last week but for some reason it didn’t show up here)

Last Thursday as I drove into work I felt low…and I didn’t know why.  I was alone in the office which didn’t help, but then it was head down and hard concentration on a particular issue that had been stressing me out (I’m rewriting a training manual for a very niche area of the law) so then I didn’t notice the lack of people or being low…

I did notice the lifting of my mode however the moment I pressed “send” and the hardest chapter went out for consultation…

…but before I could do the happy dance around the office (hell, there have to be some advantages to being on your own) my phone rang…it was the lovely man in Banbury telling me I could have Gary my sewing machine back…

 Joy oh joy, I scarpered off to Banbury and a happy reunion…

Later though back at my parents to collect Spider whilst I outlined to Mum my plans for fun with Gary I suddenly realised that the vision had gone in the lower half of my left eye…boy was I scared…Dad quickly diagnosed a migraine, dosed me up and made me lie down until things were back to normal…

At home I discovered a letter from the solicitors waiting for me, the neighbour was still arguing about the work to the boundary…but wait, what was this, a letter from the building society confirming our fixed rate mortgage was coming to an end and that we would be put on a variable of 2% above Base…perhaps the day was going to end on a high after all…

 This week has continued in much the same vein, I’ve been up one moment and down the next…

I’m hoping next week will be better as now pretty much all of the manual is out for comment

 So now I’m off to make cake and to dream of a back garden for Spider to play in.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend and make the most of this unseasonably warmth

WIP: A place to play

At the end of August I looked out of the window and decided…that I’d had enough…so I ordered a skip.

After about a day and a half of hard graft my garden looked like thisDoesn’t look like much huh ? I probably should have taken a before picture back in June, back before I destroyed the decking that formed the end of the garden…oh well, I promise you I did work hard…wanna see my skip ?2 days before this picture was taken that skip was empty…and it was mostly me (with some kind assistance from Flapjack Queen) who filled it up…

Then at the begining of October Wingnut and Captain Paranoia came to call…and pretty much we had the garden “nailed” by the end of Saturday afternoon…

Having decided that the weather was too good to spend all the time working, we took Sunday off and Wingnut threw me off a bridge (geocaching)…

There’s another weekends work of digging it over, (still recovering last weekend) removing stones (paying Spider £1 a bucket of stones)flattening it etc before I can lay some Turf…Husband has promised to build a new base for the shed, install a back fence and I have plans to turn some of the decking into raised beds…but I think I can now see the light…

Anyway, that is pretty much why there has been no crafting happening on this blog of late

FO: Curtains

Note to self: next time you make curtains, photograph  them before you hang them up… once hanging  there is a lack of light to take a picture…

At least that’s the case if you deliberately use thick lining to stop it being light to quickly in a small boys bedroom… ha,  Spider thought I was being nice and making him a special pair of curtains just for him…no, that’s just the additional advantages, really I just want to keep it dark in his bedroom so that I get a lie in at the weekend.

Apologies for photograph, state of my boys bedroom and the dirty windows

Pattern: Made it up from studying every pair of curtains in the house, talking to my Mum, reading a few books and trying to remember what I did last time…

Material : Can’t remember but it came from John Lewis in the sale for £6 per metre, the lining was bought in a discount shop in Brussels, 3 metres green sheeting for absolute peanuts

New: Nothing really, no new skills just reawakening what I’ve done before…oh and I recycled some curtain weights, and the curtain tape was recycled, not recommended as it was all crinkly and difficult to sew straight.

Didn’t really want the sewing line of the hem to show but I messed up attaching the lining up and it was different lengths on the left hand side to the right…

Spider is happy…and wants me to find a way of hanging his old curtains under his bed so he has a den under his bed…

This is the main item of my sewing everyday in September challenge…unfortunately not having a sewing machine for part of the month killed off the challenge.

I used to…

Wear perfume…

In fact I don’t think I realised I’d stopped, until on Sunday when the car was filled with this strange aroma, in the back of the car was the Teenager…it wasn’t his feet but his girlfriend…it’s not that she was bathed in it, because she wasn’t, she just smelled nice…and I didn’t, I know I didn’t because Spider told me so, she smelled nice, I just didn’t smell of anything…guess that’s a bit better than smelling bad !

So why did I stop ? After all you don’t need skill to put perfume on, it doesn’t take time to apply…and it makes me feel better so why don’t I do it ?

Maybe I need to start…except perfume goes off doesn’t it…and my bottle has been untouched for 5 years…and I can’t even remember what it is…