Doodles

Update

2011-04-28T16:19:00.003+01:00

This is just a short post to explain what's happening, and why I disappeared again!

There have been a lot of stressful things happening, over the last year, and my body is not dealing with them well. Some of them have been lovely things, and some quite distressing - but my condition doesn't distinguish between the two, and flares up regardless. I don't mind so much after nice stress - at least I have something fun to remember - but I do take it amiss when I flare after bad stress. That's just adding insult to injury!

Anyway, when everything stops hurting, and my voice comes back (it's really irritating trying to shout in a whisper...), and my brain is working well for more than a few minutes at a time, I shall be back more regularly. Until then, I leave you with a rare crochet project - something for me to wear:

It's really comfortable. And very pink :)

.....aaaaaand I'm back!

2010-12-08T15:13:00.004Z

In my defence, I said 'after Christmas'. I did not say how long after Christmas...

Two things have prodded me into coming back. One was receiving a couple of comments from new readers (hello, maybe and checat!), and one was looking in my diary and realising that last weekend was my sixth blogiversary. I have many things to tell you... but I'll start with the hats.

My Quaker Meeting threw a party last year for women and children asylum seekers in Sunderland. I made them six hats - and 70 women and 30 children attended!

This year, starting in June, I started crocheting my stash oddments into hats and scarves for this year's party. My intention was to carry on until I had finished up all the odd balls, and stuff left from bigger projects. I knew we would need about 100 items, in various sizes, and I thought, if I was lucky, that I might get to about 20, perhaps 30.

I kept crocheting, and getting Richard, the Beamish Boy, to photograph each one and pile them up in a cupboard.

I finished the last odd ball on November 30. I had also been given some beautiful scarves and a whole range of knitted hats by two lovely friends, so I knew there would be a fair few items.

I got Richard to haul them all out and photograph them. It was the first time I'd seen all my work in one heap (with Merlin conveniently appearing, to give scale!):

It soon became obvious that I had done rather more than 20 or 30. In fact, once Richard had laid it all out meticulously, and we counted up, we discovered it was...98!

And this is what it looked like with my friends' scarves and hats added in – Richard almost had to stand on a chair for this one. I think it added up to 120 altogether:

My stash has gone from three large plastic crates (and a few bags) to one and a half crates!

Eight hats have gone off to the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture in Newcastle, and the rest was collected yesterday by two friends from Durham Meeting. They were amazed at the quantity, even though I'd warned them that it would be two heavy bags – they weigh around 18lb, well over a stone, in total.

When I explained to Judith how I'd made them, and how many I'd made, she made a brilliant comment: 'If you weren't a Quaker, I'd be inclined to think you couldn't be telling the truth...'

It's the truth, Judith. Even I'm staggered by it, and I'm the one who did it!

Well, that's it for this time. I hope to be blogging regularly - I certainly have plenty of news to tell you from this year. See you soon - I promise!

Where did I leave my pep?

2009-12-15T15:07:00.002Z

Sorry, gentle reader - no entry at all last week and not much this week. I'm a bit under the weather again, but I'm sure it will pass. I'll be back after Christmas.

Have a good holiday, whatever you celebrate!

Finished!!!!

2009-11-30T15:32:00.002Z

Yes, Mum's shawl is finally finished. I abandoned my stitch-markers and read my knitting as I went along instead - and whizzed through the last 10 rows. I think there is a moral here: I should pay more attention to what I'm doing, instead of relying on other things - stitch-markers especially - to do my thinking for me!

It's off now to my dear friend Rosie, to be washed and blocked. I'll post a final photo when it returns. (Thanks again, Rosie!)

All my Christmas knitting is now done, but I can't blog about anything else as all the recipients may read the blog! If you haven't finished yours yet, then good luck, and I wish you peace and quiet to get on with it....

Doing the Border Shuffle

2009-11-23T14:36:00.002Z

The border on Mum's Eliina shawl is 32 rows deep. When I knitted mine, I had one small problem, which I fudged, and sailed through the rest. Thanks to Mad October, the same is not true of this one...

It started well. I was up to row 23 by the beginning of October. Then I made the mistake of knitting when tired, and had to frog to row 14.

I compounded this by picking up the newly fixed row 14 and finding another mistake, dropping down a stitch to fix it - and failing to pick it back up again in pattern. That time it got frogged to row 6, and I took the opportunity of it being off the needles to get it photographed:

Merlin decided what it really needed for scale was a large black cat....

Anyway, I got that picked up, went up to row 19 - and messed up again.

Finally, last week, I got it all the way to the start of row 23, perfectly correct. It has only taken me 7 weeks to get back to where I was in the first place.

And now.... I have a rogue extra stitch and can't find it.

sob

That Darn Cat

2009-11-16T14:00:00.002Z

(Anybody else remember that film? I'm sure it's to blame for my lifelong fascination with Siamese...)

A couple of weeks ago, one of my carers took off her fleecy gloves when she came in, and left them on the sofa. When it came time to leave, they were gone. She had to catch a bus, so just told me to hang on to them when I found them - and laughingly suggested that Merlin, with his love for all things woolly, had run off with them.

Half an hour later, Merlin appeared. He was dragging one of the gloves, and growled when we tried to take it from him.

We did eventually find the pair. One was undamaged - but one was missing a finger, as neatly excised as if he had used scissors.

So - anyone got any good glove patterns??

Fluffbuster Scarf

2009-11-09T15:49:00.003Z

Ever wonder what you could do with that odd ball of bizarrely-coloured fluff that you bought on a whim? Wonder no more....

The Fluffbuster Scarf

The amounts are pretty flexible, depending on what length you want - this is more of a recipe than a pattern.

For a 150cm (five feet/60 inches) scarf, you need:

approx 90 metres (100 yards) of ribbon yarn (or any smooth yarn)
one ball of fluff (eyelash yarn)
6mm (US size 10) needles
8mm (US size 11) needles for casting on and off - optional

This scarf is worked lengthways, so you may find it easier to work back and forth on a circular needle than on a straight one.

Divide your yarn (nothing heavier than DK/worsted) into two equal balls.

Look on the ball band to see how many stitches are supposed to be in 10cm/4 inches. With the first ball and the 8mm/11 needles, cast on 10 times as many stitches as this - for example, a tension of 22 stitches per 10cm/4 inches would give a cast-on figure of 220 stitches.

Change to the 6mm/10 needles and work the following stitch pattern until you run out of the first ball of yarn:

Row 1: (K1, yo) to last stitch, K1.
Row 2: (K1, drop YO from previous row) to last stitch, K1.

Now change to the eyelash yarn, and knit every row until it is used up.

Take the second ball of smooth yarn and resume the stitch pattern above until you are nearly out of yarn, then cast off using the 8mm/11 needles.

Weave in ends.

You can make the scarf any length you like, using the proportions above as a guide. The red scarf above, for example, is nearly ten feet long, and the blue one below is seven feet long.

You could also substitute any ball of novelty yarn, or an odd ball of any kind of pretty yarn, for the ball of eyelash yarn.

I would not recommend using a heavier yarn than DK/worsted, as it would be too heavy for the eyelash yarn.

What a month!!

2009-11-02T13:01:00.002Z

Well, October turned out to be the most stressful month I've had for ages. Unfortunately nice stress tires me out as much as nasty stress, so even the good stuff just made me more tired. It has been one of those times when everything that could happen, did happen - and I ended up not getting a proper afternoon rest till almost the end of the month (instead of almost every afternoon), which meant my night-time sleep was disturbed, too.

That meant I began having nightmares. Initially they were things like still being married to my alcoholic ex, but eventually they morphed into the standard scary monster nightmare. (One was that Daleks had invaded Earth - and banned knitting!!!! Terrifying....)

To give you an idea of what I mean, this all happened between October 1 and October 27:

1 theatre trip
1 trip to Quaker Quest - on the same day Richard was out all day,
travelling to Manchester and back to the funeral of one of his uni
housemates. It wasn't a good month for him, either.
4 visits from friends
3 visits from Richard's grandfather, who is very difficult to talk to
1 visit from both his grandparents
1 visit from Mum and my sister
3 visits from new carers
1 5-hour excursion to A&E at the eye hospital - I'm OK, so don't
worry, but apparently I'm starting to get cataracts :(
1 Quaker Meeting here
1 newsletter to write and send round, during which....
Our Broadband started falling over for hours at a time
1 failed delivery of necessary medical stuff
1 delivery of oxygen canisters
1 visit from Social Services
1 visit from a care company team leader
1 visit from the other care company's admin assistant (1.5 hours)
1 service of my oxygen machine
1 visit from the GP
2 visits from the District Nurse
1 blood test
1 flu jab (different day from the blood test)
1 visit from the Access Bus team to make sure my wheelchair will fit
on their minibus (then I can go shopping occasionally!)
....and then the clocks changed and completely mucked up my body clock, as usual....

As you see, it was a fun time :)

I'm not complaining one bit about the nice stuff - ever since I first got ill, I've had the view that nice stuff is worth recuperating from! But every day seemed to bring a fresh reason why I couldn't have a rest, and by the end of last weekend I was feeling quite desperate.

I'm happy to say that I have now had a week asleep, and I feel much better, so I hope to be a much better blogger again now.

Next week, as promised: a new pattern!

Excursions!

2009-10-06T17:09:00.000+01:00

I'm not blogging this week, for a very nice reason. I am recovering from a trip to the theatre last week - my first time out of the house for over a year!

As always, I never do things by halves: this week I am speaking at our Quaker Quest evening on Quaker Worship. I was so pleased to be asked, and I am really looking forward to it. I know I will be shattered afterwards, so I'm announcing now that there will be no blog entry next week either.

Accounts of my expeditions will be forthcoming as soon as I can write them - plus a new pattern :)

A change for the better

2009-09-28T16:45:00.003+01:00

Last week I wrote to all of the publications for which I have designed in the past, and confirmed that I will no longer be designing for print. I stopped submitting stuff a while ago, to see how it went, and now I know I will not be going back.

I have had a blast learning new techniques, and following other people's patterns. I'm getting more and more confident with my lace knitting, and now that I am choosing my own projects, I can knit what I want, when I want to - like my patch of garter stitch scarves a couple of weeks back.

Designing was interesting, and it was always a buzz to see my stuff in print, but working for magazines in that way is quite restrictive. You have to design what will sell in the mainstream, often using fibres and colours that have been chosen for you, and to a deadline. Then there's all the maths in the pattern-writing!

On the other hand, I've enjoyed putting patterns up here, and logging them into Ravelry, where I get instant feedback. I get so excited when someone favourites or queues one of my designs, and if one actually gets made, well - that makes my week!

I couldn't stop designing even if I wanted to. I get all kinds of ideas from the smallest of things. I've tried magazines, and it's been fascinating. But now I think I need a little more flexibility. There are lots of new projects in my head - so watch this space...

Progress!

2009-09-21T18:13:00.002+01:00

This is actually an outdated photo - it shows the shawl as it was at around 30% done. It is now 58% done (row 147 completed, which makes 22,355 stitches in total).

I can't get over how quickly it's growing! As one of my friends said, things always seem to go quicker the second time you knit them, and of course I'm using a slightly bigger needle (5mm instead of 4.5mm).

I am now at the end of the variegated wool, and I have to wait for the plain, toning wool to be dyed. I need another 100g to complete the last few rows of the body, and the lace border.

The colours are actually brighter than they are in this photo. It's also difficult to see the shape, because it was taken mid-row (I'm using circs, working back and forth) - but I had to catch the Beamish Boy as he was passing, and ask him to take the shot before he got involved in something else!

Damned lies and statistics

2009-09-14T14:13:00.003+01:00

Thanks to the shawl knitalong on the UK RAK group on Ravelry, I have started the shawl for Mum's Christmas present! By the time I had done half a dozen of the garter stitch scarves, I was just about ready for a sea of stocking stitch, which is handy, as that's what this shawl pattern starts with.

The beautiful green/blue/deep yellow wool is knitting up beautifully, as I would expect from a Yummy Yarn. If I remember, I must get the Beamish Boy to do a photo...

He's also done me a spiffy spreadsheet which shows, for each row, how many stitches I should have, how many stitches I have done in total so far, and what percentage of the way through the shawl I am. (I can't explain how to do one of these for yourself, because everything I once knew about Excel is now mush at the back of my brain, but the formulae will be quite simple.)

For example, I have just completed row 92. I have indeed got the correct number of stitches - 187 - and this means I have completed 8,934 stitches so far!

Sadly, it also means I have completed only 23%. Hmm. Maybe I was happier not knowing ;)

Slowly back to normal

2009-09-08T02:31:00.002+01:00

After a couple of days in which I could not knit at all - aaagggghhhh! - I have spent the rest of the week recuperating and knitting endless garter stitch scarves.

I had promised some scarves to a charity that a friend works for, and they proved to be the exact thing I wanted to knit. There is something so calming about repetitive garter stitch, and it soothed me back to my usual self. I was just finishing the final one on Sunday when I felt myself start to feel positively about casting on my mother's Christmas shawl (I'm making her the same pattern as I used for my Raspberry Ruffles shawl, but in sea-greens and dull yellows - just beautiful yarn!).

It really gives me a boost to know that my bad turn has meant there will be six warm necks in Newcastle this winter :)

I Don't Like Mondays....

2009-08-31T14:28:00.001+01:00

My laptop has some major problems, plus all my symptoms have flared up. Not a good combination. Back next week, I hope.

Dirndl Bag

2009-08-24T17:42:00.002+01:00

I chose this name because the shape and pattern of the bag remind me of my favourite dirndl skirt, when I was little.

Any cotton or ribbon yarn can be used, as long as the tension on the label is around 20sts to 4 inches/10cm. If you use one of the bulky ribbon yarns, with a tension of 10sts to 4 inches/10cm, then halve the number of stitches and rows to get the same size bag.

I used Pingouin Tricotine in lavender, and Sirdar Milano in navy, but both of these are discontinued.

The finished size is approximately 8 inches/20cm deep by 12 inches/30cm wide. Gauge is not crucial to this project, but I worked at a gauge of 12 sts and 5 pattern rows to 4 inches/10cm.

If you wish to have a more versatile bag, you may wish to line it – I left it unlined, to act as a beach bag.

Materials:

About 540yds/500m of ribbon yarn A
About 210yds/190m of ribbon B
6mm (J) crochet hook
Pair of bamboo handles 4.5inches/11.5cm diameter

UK instructions:

Working with two strands of yarn A held together, work 20dc around one of the handles. Turn.

Row 1: ch3, work 2tr into every dc. Turn.

Row 2: ch1, work 1dc into first tr, 2 dc into second tr. Continue across the row alternating 1dc and 2dc. Turn

Row 3: ch3, 1tr into every dc across. Turn.

Row 4: ch1, 1 dc into every tr across. Turn.

Work 3 more rows, alternating dc rows and tr rows. Fasten off.

Repeat for second handle, but do not fasten off.

Next row: Begin working with one strand of A and one strand of B. ch1, dc across the row, and then on across the last row of the first handle section. At the end of the row, sl st to the first ch to join into a round. From now on, you will be working in rounds, with one strand of A and one of B, but still alternating dc rounds with tr rounds.

Next row: ch3, tr around, sl st to 3rd of commencing ch.

Following row: ch1, dc around, sl sl to commencing ch.

Continue with one A and one B until you have worked 10 rounds in total in those colours. Change back to two strands of A, and work a further 4 rounds. Turn the bag inside out and ss the bottom together.

US instructions

Working with two strands of yarn A held together, work 20sc around one of the handles. Turn.

Row 1: ch3, work 2dc into every sc. Turn.

Row 2: ch1, work 1sc into first dc, 2 sc into second dc. Continue across the row alternating 1sc and 2sc. Turn

Row 3: ch3, 1dc into every sc across. Turn.

Row 4: ch1, 1sc into every dc across. Turn.

Work 3 more rows, alternating sc rows and dc rows. Fasten off.

Repeat for second handle, but do not fasten off.

Next row: Begin working with one strand of A and one strand of B. ch1, sc across the row, and then on across the last row of the first handle section. At the end of the row, sl st to the first ch to join into a round. From now on, you will be working in rounds, with one strand of A and one of B, but still alternating sc rounds with dc rounds.

Next row: ch3, dc around, sl st to 3rd of commencing ch.

Following row: ch1, sc around, sl sl to commencing ch.

Continue with one A and one B until you have worked 10 rounds in total in those colours. Change back to two strands of A, and work a further 4 rounds. Turn the bag inside out and ss the bottom together.

Here we go again

2009-08-18T13:48:00.002+01:00

Yet again the humidity has beaten me, and I am unable to blog properly this week. The lack of sleep (and presence of unpleasant and disturbing dreams) is really starting to annoy me now!

I'm used to having quite a narrow life, but having it narrowed even more is very irritating....

It's Tennyson time!

2009-08-10T17:26:00.002+01:00

Radios 3 and 4 are obsessed with Tennyson at present - last Thursday (August 6) was the 200th anniversary of his birth. I have what I thought was a fair working knowledge of 19th century English poetry, and I tended to lump him in with Wordsworth as Poets Who Irritate Me. However, as there are so many of them around - anniversary programmes, not PWIM - I listened in to some of them.

I discovered one thing pretty quickly:

Tennyson Is Not Wordsworth.

In fact, what I have heard so far sounds quite modern, and surprisingly full of tags of lines which I recognise - but not of clichés. There's a lot of Tennyson on line, and I wholeheartedly recommend you try a little.

If all you know of Maud is, 'Come into the garden, Maud', and you think it sounds like a trite drawing-room ballad, think again. It is weird and creepy and very disturbing.

Or try In Memoriam, a massive work written after the death of his best friend, which considers not only love and grief, but also scientific ideas such as evolution.

And if you want an example of a poet having huge fun with words and sounds, try The Eagle. I had to learn this for a drama exam, and to my shame I had never realised it was by Tennyson...

I'm all for people reading more poetry, but I never thought I'd find myself championing Tennyson!

Good news week

2009-08-03T15:28:00.002+01:00

First of all - I got a cheque for my bank charges, in full, by return of post, with no haggling. I am somewhat better disposed to the company now!

Secondly, my mum and sister came to visit for the day on Thursday, and we had an absolute blast :D Mum was in fine form - even though she refuses to wear her hearing aids ;) - and I haven't seen her laugh so much for ages.

Mind you, she made us laugh, too. A couple of days before, there had been a meeting at her sheltered accommodation which my sister had attended with her, so that she could tell Mum what was being said (I mentioned the hearing aids, didn't I...). At the end of the meeting it was obvious that further discussion was needed, and my sister asked if more notice could be given of the meeting next time - there were several relatives there, and she didn't think she was the only one with other commitments. To which Mum piped up: 'Yes, she should have been in court this morning.'

Every head in the place turned to look at my sister....

...who explained that she is a magistrate, and should have been on the bench that day!

Mum also loved my Raspberry Ruffles shawl, and has apparently been telling all her friends about it. I'll be making one for her for Christmas, in another of Patricia's gorgeous hand-dyed yarns, called Elsinore - blues and greens, very seashore! And a quick plug - if you want to see Patricia's gorgeous yarns for yourself, why not nip over to her Etsy shop, Yummy Yarns UK? I can guarantee that whatever you buy will be well worth the asking price!

This week at theworlddrivesmecrackers.com...

2009-07-27T15:55:00.003+01:00

Well, I have definitely picked up since last week! One of the problems is that my usual morning carers have a new team leader and, when either of them is off, she keeps sending in carers from another area instead of using people I know.

This is really stressful - partly because I have had a stream of total strangers turning up to shower me, but also because I keep having to tell them, step-by-step, what the routine is. Mornings are not my best time, and having to face a barrage of, 'Where does this live? What do I do now? Where do I find...' morning after morning has been awful. Anyway, that has now been sorted out, and from now on I get only carers I already know. (Let's face it, it's no fun for the carers either - they're coming in blind, not knowing what I want done, what the routine is or anything.)

The other problem is that the insurance company which pays my pension from work suspended my payments - they sent me a form to fill in, to confirm that I was still ill, and because I didn't send it back, they suspended my payments.

I didn't return it because I didn't receive it. I didn't receive it because they sent it to the house I left two years ago, despite having written to me on several occasions since at my current address. They sent it to the wrong address because - and I can still barely get my head round this - the rest of the company uses a central computer database of all clients, which has been updated, but the admin section, which sends out the forms in question, is still using....

...filing cabinets.

We're talking about a big national insurance company, one of which everyone recognises the name. And one of their departments still uses paper files. AND DOESN'T UPDATE THEM.

Well, I got my payments back, and a letter of apology. I am now trying to get them to pay the bank charges that accrued over the five days I was without my money. I'll let you know how it goes.

...filing cabinets..... shakes head

Back soon

2009-07-20T19:02:00.001+01:00

The last couple of weeks have been very stressful for a variety of reasons, so I'm taking this week off from blogging. I'll be back next Monday, though!

Socks and the Single Girl

2009-07-13T16:47:00.002+01:00

I'll say one thing for the hot weather - it really encourages me to go back to the socks that have been lying around, unloved and unfinished, in the UFO pile!

In January I received some glorious rainbow-coloured Regia Color, and immediately cast on the Broadripple Socks pattern, which is designed to make the most of variegated sock yarn. I enthusiastically knitted the first leg almost to the heel.... and then got distracted. For the last six months, they've looked like this:

When it became too hot to knit my lovely warm woollen shawls, I cast about for something light and manageable, that wouldn't end up as a pile of yarn in my lap, and found the socks again. Within a few days I had completed one sock, and then in two more days, having rediscovered the lovely and soothing monotony of knitting with very little shaping, I finished the second:

I am beyond reason captivated by them :)

Having got the taste for socks, I then picked up the Paint It Black Socks which have also been languishing. I had actually finished one of these, and cast on the toe for the second, although this is the only photo I have so far:

These are my first toe-up socks. I'm undecided at the moment about whether I'll do any more. The pattern (Ravelry link), 'Sock Stew' by my lovely friend Ari Ridpath, is excellent, but I can do top-down socks on auto-pilot, so I'm still in two minds. It would be good to have another pattern by heart, though. Hmm. I feel more socks coming on.....

What next?

2009-07-06T14:46:00.003+01:00

I think Merlin has become a vegetarian.

OK, I know all cats go off their meat a little in hot weather, and goodness knows it has been hot.

I also know that cats often eat green stuff to aid digestion.

I have never, however, had a cat who would sit in front of me while I eat salad, drooling and attempting to steal lettuce from my plate. When he manages to get some, he runs off with it, growling, and eats it in a hurry so that he can get back for more. Meanwhile his cat food grows crusty in the kitchen.....

He's a weird cat. It's a good job we love him :)

Merlin says: "Be fair, Mum. I eat flies, too..."

An award!

2009-06-29T23:39:00.003+01:00

I was given this blog award by my lovely friend Jan Lyn, over at Off the Beaten Path. She actually awarded it to Still Life, which she describes as "a really good Quaker read that is to the point, fresh and honest. She writes poetry I so enjoy as well." I said she was a lovely friend!

Jan Lyn writes beautifully about the nature with which she is surrounded, her family, her faith, home-schooling, the family animals, and the chronic illnesses she lives with. She writes about everything with grace, humour and honesty.

I'm replying to it here as I had a lot of other stuff to write about over there this week, and nothing special planned for here.

I have to share 7 things about myself here, now.

Hmmm.

What haven't I told you???

1. I have what amounts to a passion for roses. I think I got it from my father. Wherever I have lived, if possible, I have planted a wonderful rose called Zephirine Drouhin. It is my ideal rose - thornless, climbing, quick-growing, long flowering season, hot pink blooms - and scented! I recommend it to everyone.

2. The first time I saw 'The Hound of the Baskervilles', aged 8, I was so scared that I had to sleep with the light on all night.

3. Talking of things that scare me, I am terrified of the Jacob Epstein sculpture of St Michael and the Devil at the entrance to Coventry Cathedral.

4. I played Noah in the Andre Obey play of the same name, when I was 15. It was a school production, and we were an all-girl school. I had to have my boobs strapped down (they've never recovered!), and an artificial beard gummed on with something that ripped off the top layer of skin when I took it off. Ah, the glamour of the stage :)

5. I was at school with David Bailey's wife, the ex-model Catherine Dyer. She was always absolutely beautiful, even without makeup, and a graceful and lovely person.

6. I dyed my hair blue while I was pregnant with Richard.

7. I can ice skate (I took my first three grades in figure skating when I was a teenager), but I can't roller-skate.

Wow, that took a lot of dredging up :)

I'm supposed to nominate seven people for the award now, but I'm stopping at three:

1. My dear friend Linda. We have been friends since we were around 17. We met when I understudied her in a play. She is a marvellous writer, and very funny, as well as a loving and supportive friend.

2. Gil, who writes the blog Stumbing Blocks to Stepping Stones. She writes about her Quaker journey in a way that is never less than thought-provoking and honest.

3. Mary Anne, who writes as Miss Woolly Knits. Like me, Mary Anne has severe ME, but always posts every Friday, sharing the things that have pleased her, amused her or given her joy through the week. Lots of wonderful photos, too!

Oh, and Mary Anne - you are excused duties for this. Just enjoy the award :)

Shawl photos!

2009-06-22T16:22:00.002+01:00

My lovely shawl came back this week, beautifully blocked by the brilliant Rosie, and I got Richard to take a couple of photos on Lobelia the mannequin:

As I hoped, the blocking not only opened up the lace, which was looking very sad and crumpled when I sent it off, but also evened out the stitches in the main section, and opened up the yarn over holes.

It's amazingly light to wear, and very warm, of course, being made with pure Shetland wool!

He also photographed a dishcloth I included in this month's themed RAK parcel. This month's theme was animals, and everyone who joined in said what their favourites were. I had to send to Sian, who loves owls, so it was obvious what I had to make her:

...the Diagonal Owl Dishcloth (Ravelry link), designed by Janelle Schlossman. I love this pattern - it's simply and beautifully designed, fun to knit and gives such a cute result!

We had a little excitement this week, as Chloe went missing for the day on Wednesday. She never goes outside, so we thought at first that she was hiding in the house. Only when we had looked everywhere did we realise that she must have slipped out without anyone noticing.

She is nearly 19, so our first thought was that she had gone off to die. Everyone we knew in the village (and several people we didn't) offered to look for her, but no one could find any trace.

I was coming out of the bathroom at 11.30pm, very sad and wondering if we would ever know what had happened to her, when I heard a faint meow outside the back door. First I couldn't grasp the key, then I couldn't unlock the door, but when I finally got it open, in she strolled, quite unconcerned - and bone dry. It had poured all day on Wednesday, so she'd obviously spent the day in someone else's house!

She casually beat up Merlin, had supper, curled up and went to sleep as if nothing had happened. It seems the old girl has a trick or two still left ;)

Shawl crazy

2009-06-15T14:33:00.002+01:00

I've finished my 'Raspberry Ruffles' Shetland shawl, and my friend Rosie has very kindly offered to block it for me. She's even set up a project page for it on Ravelry (I don't think this link works if you're not a Ravelry member - sorry).

So, after completing a crochet project for a friend, I cast on... another shawl! Yes, I still have one crochet shawl and one knit one that are unfinished, but I had some glorious Wensleydaie 4-ply sent to me by the friend who dyed the 'Raspbery Ruffles' yarn (I'm making her a Bishop tea-cosy like Erica's, and this was thank-you yarn), and, well.... it called to me. It didn't want to be put in the stash.

Plus I'd bought Victorian Lace Today by Jane Sowerby with some birthday money, and I was itching to try it out. The photos, as with every Interweave book, are gorgeous, and set your fingers twitching just to look at them. After much deliberation, I chose a pattern with the glorious name of 'A Handsome Triangle', which is a top-down shawl (I like shawls that start 'Cast on 4 stitches'!) in proper knitted lace, ie patterned on both sides rather than having plain purl rows.

I may regret this. On the other hand, if I pull it off, there may be no stopping me!

Cosy knitting

2009-06-08T14:11:00.002+01:00

I end up making very odd things sometimes...

A few months ago, my sister sent me a newspaper clipping about knitted home decor, including a teacosy with MORE TEA, VICAR? on one side. She volunteers at York Minster, and joked that she should have one with, 'More tea, Archbishop?' on it. That set me thinking.

Just before her birthday I finished her tea cosy:

I made it more or less the shape of a bishop's mitre, and turned a slight problem into a resounding success by deciding to put ties in the bittom instead of sewing it up. This was actually because I wasn't sure of the size of her teapot, but they ended up looking like the bands at the base of a mitre. I love it when a plan comes together. Especially when it's accidental.

I made the two sides separately, and made a diamond-shaped section in contrasting yarn (the one I used for the ties and embroidery) to go between the two pieces at the points. I fixed the points shut with a press stud, so that, if she wants to use it with a tall coffee pot, she can undo the press stud and have extra height if she needs it.

The embroidery was much simpler than I had feared it would be. I typed the phrase into my word-processing package, tried different fonts and sizes till I liked the look of it, then printed it off onto ordinary paper. Then I followed the instructions in this article. I had to fill in one or two stitches when I removed the paper, but by and large it worked extremely well.

The back looked a little bare, so I found an outline cross design online and embroidered it on in the same yarn:

It was a surprisingly quick make, and now I'm about to make another for a friend - whose surname is Bishop!

Hurrah!

2009-06-01T18:08:00.003+01:00

Still writing poetry!

joy

the swift slip of yarn
through practised fingers
smooth wood needles
sharp and blunt

the roll and roar of language
ebb and rise
the music in my head

when words collide
and crash upon the page
the rightness of the finished line

the full moon winks
over the rounded shoulder
of the half-dressed hill
the world is silent

only my needles click
only my pen moves

The Sound of Mew-sic

2009-05-24T15:14:00.002+01:00

For most of my school life, I was in the choir. At senior school, we went to all kinds of competitions, and had numerous set pieces, one of which was a selection of songs from The Sound of Music. As we were a convent school, our competitors found this hilarious, and I still remember the merry quips with which they greeted us ('How many girls sing in the La Sagesse choir? Nun!!'). Anyway, this has left me with the lyrics stuck fast in my memory, for better or for worse.

I have been writing poetry again lately, which has been wonderful (I've had writer's block for most of the time I've been ill), and I will be posting some of it here in future. This week, though, I want to share with you the discovery I made yesterday afternoon when Merlin was being - well, himself.

It came to me in a flash that it would be very easy to rewrite 'How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?' to refer, not just to Merlin, but to any kitten. If I ignored the half-sung, half-spoken introduction, then it would need only a few small tweaks, and I would have a song I could hum to relieve my feelings as he tears across my lap in pursuit of Chloe, sits on my crossword, and steals my lunch. Feel free to sing this to your cat (with apologies to Oscar Hammerstein II):

How do you solve a problem like the kitten?
How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?
How do you find a word that means the kitten?
A flibbertijibbet! A will-o'-the wisp! A clown!

Many a thing you know you'd like to tell him
Many a thing he ought to understand
But how do you make him stay
And listen to all you say?
How do you keep a wave upon the sand?

Oh, how do you solve a problem like the kitten?
How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?

When he's with me I'm confused
Out of focus and bemused
And I never know exactly where I am
Unpredictable as weather
He's as flighty as a feather
He's a darling! He's a demon! He's a lamb!

He'd outpester any pest
Drive a hornet from its nest
He could empty any belfry of its bat
He is gentle! He is mad!
He's a riddle! He is bad!
He's a headache! He's an angel!
He's a cat!

(Rpt ad lib)

Merlin says: 'Don't believe her. Look at this noble profile.'

AWOL

2009-05-18T01:50:00.002+01:00

Just a brief note to explain why there is no new post this week.

I'm having to take some time off from my online activities because I'm not doing too well. I think the shock of Mum being ill triggered a crash which I am still coping with. I seemed to be running on adrenaline for days, and then came down to earth with a bump!

I hope to be back with more news and photos next week.....

Hippo birdy!

2009-05-11T14:37:00.004+01:00

It was my birthday yesterday!

I had lots of beautiful cards, some of them hand-made :) I also had books, CDs, DVDs, knitty stuff, and a beautiful pewter pill box with an owl sculpted on the lid. I'm still expecting the books I ordered from Amazon with gift money and vouchers, so my birthday will be going on for a while yet!

Merlin loved all my presents. He played with every bit of wrapping paper, every ball of sticky tape, every ribbon and every piece of rustly plastic. He commandeered a big box, and has put some of the paper balls into it to remind us it is his.

He also insisted on inspecting everything. He was extremely impressed with the catnip cushions, the organic catnip, the cat treats and the cat toys - some of my friends thought he should have presents too :)

The weather was awful - grey, cold and drizzly - but I had a triple-chocolate muffin as my birthday cake (the diabetic nurse said it was OK!), and we had a Chinese last night while we watched 'W.' on Sky Box Office. Good times :)))

The kindness of knitters (and crocheters)

2009-05-04T13:44:00.003+01:00

I don't intend to make a habit of posting the smae thing on both my blogs - what would be the point of having two, if I did? - but this week I am sharing the same story again in both places, on my Still Life blog because it is a wonderful example of human generosity, and here because it involves knitters being generous!

My mother lives in sheltered housing in York, just around the corner from my sister. On April 27, just after my sister had gone on holiday, my mother was admitted to the Coronary Care Unit at York District Hospital with chest pains. Mum only allowed the hospital to tell us on the following day, when they established that it had been a small heart attack, and not the indigestion she had hoped it was.

My brother couldn't come up from Luton till Friday, and Mum refused to let my sister leave her holiday early. There was never any chance of my going down there. I was terribly upset, thinking that she would be alone with no family around her. Without much hope of anything coming from it, I posted messages in four UK groups on Ravelry, asking if anyone in York could pop in and see her, and maybe take in some fruit.

I expected, at the most, a few kind messages saying that they hoped she was well again soon, and these I got. I also received six offers of practical help, four of them from total strangers.

The next day, Mum had a visit from one of these strangers, bringing fruit and soft drinks. She sat with Mum for half an hour, and then emailed me to say Mum was in the main ward now, and in good spirits. She refused to be reimbursed for the shopping she had done – 'It was the least I could do,' she wrote.

Another woman who worked in the hospital was all set to visit her that evening, and I had other people lined up for Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Luckily, Mum was discharged on Wednesday afternoon into the care of the warden at her sheltered housing, so I didn't have to call on them – but they were all prepared to go out of their way to visit a sick old lady, whom they had never met, just because they were asked to.

I was also inundated with kind messages of support, and enquiries about how Mum and I were doing, after she came home.

I would have expected this from my online friends, who are like penpals to me – we know so much about each other, and our families. But I didn't expect total strangers to do this for Mum and me, and I was very humbled by the whole thing.

Missing in action

2009-04-27T16:22:00.002+01:00

I'm taking the unusual step of re-publishing my entry from my Still Life blog, because it's something that has really made me stop and think:

Today I met someone I've known of for a long time, but had never been introduced to, and I had a rather odd experience. Before I was ill, we moved in somewhat similar circles, and so we know a lot of the same people. It was lovely to hear about all the old names - but I was shocked by how many had died. And several times my new friend made a comment like, 'Of course, she's nearly 80 now...', which shocked me almost as much as the news of the deaths.

My mother told me once that, when the Second World War ended, she somehow expected her friends who had been killed to come back - to get up off the floor at the end of the game - and it was a new grief to her to realise that they really had gone. I think this is what, unknowingly, I've been doing with my illness - thinking that, when I get well again, everything will go back to the way it was. But it won't. Already it has stolen nearly twelve years of my life. People have got old and died, people I really liked and never spent enough time with. They won't be coming back, even if one morning I wake up to a miraculous cure.

This is an extremely unsettling thought, and one with which I need to sit for a while.

It's a good job we love him....

2009-04-20T18:38:00.003+01:00

We say that a lot at the moment. The 'him', of course, is Merlin the Mad Kitten - now 6 months old, still with huge paws he has to grow into, but already almost the size that Tigger was, full grown.

He is a one-cat Demolition Derby.

In the seven weeks we've had him (feels like a lifetime!), he has abducted, adopted or wrecked (and in some cases, all three) the following items:

1 inhaler
1 inhaler sock
1 glasses case
1 MP3 player cosy
2 duvet covers
1 large china owl
1 crystal water lily
2 knitting needles
1 ball of Artesano Alpaca
1 ribbon
1 angel made from a palm leaf
1 needle-felted crocodile
Half an aspidistra
1 tradescantia
1 lampshade
1 plush cat

And that was after I thought I'd kitten-proofed the place...

(The Artesano Alpaca, by the way, was not a full ball. After I gave up attempting to unpick the collision of knitting and physics, Richard was rather struck by the ornamental value of one of the small balls I produced, and has had it sitting on his bookshelves. He always has had impeccable taste.)

Two friends yesterday decided he was a dog, after seeing him catch, retrieve, growl, and chew the arms of people trying to cuddle him. Personally, from the size of him, I think he is the offspring of the Beast of Bodmin.

Still - he's very cute. But it's a good job we love him....

Merlin says,"But... but... look at me! I'm so well-behaved. Why are you telling people all those awful lies?"

Yarn to dye for

2009-04-13T16:51:00.002+01:00

A few months ago, the only yarn I owned which was not factory-spun and machine-dyed was a skein of Hipknits hand-dyed cashmere/silk blend, which I got for resubscribing to Yarn Forward - I wrote a post about it called 'The Adventures of the Blue-Green Skein'.

Then I joined the UK RAK group on Ravelry. Not only is it full of very kind and generous people, but many of them are very talented spinners and dyers, too - like Kristina (AKA Wyndwitch), who created the Heather yarn for me. Now I am in the enviable position of having a whole bagful of hand-dyed (and frequently handspun) yarn.

First I received (from Caroline, AKA craftyfox) a raspberry-coloured skein of the Hipknits, which is sill being wound up and untangled. The stuff is like Velcro to wind, but that also means it clings together when knitted or crocheted, to make a wonderfully smooth fabric.

Then, out of the blue, I received this wonderful package from Zoe, AKA woolbird:

Among the goodies is a large skein of the softest yarn I have ever felt, hand-dyed by Zoe in a wonderful range of shades of violet.

This lovely parcel was from Jaana, AKA Muoriska, in Lapland, and was part of a challenge - we had to post a yellow parcel (put your sunglasses on before you click that link!). Among the other lovely things I received was a skein hand-dyed by Jaana, in gorgeous flame colours of orange and yellow.

Next was another total surprise, from Lucy, AKA LucyJ, and included a skein of Blue-Faced Leicester wool from her own flock, commercially spun, but hand-dyed in a fabulous variegated purple called 'Fizzy Grape':

By this time I had also purchased a green/magenta/copper skein of English DK, hand-dyed by my extremely talented friend Otiva, AKA Patricia, of Yummy Yarns UK on Etsy. I can't show you that just now, because it''s being made into an item for this month's RAK Challenge - but a photo will be forthcoming soon! Anyway, she very kindly asked me if I would make something up in one of her handspun, hand-dyed yarns, so that she could show visitors to her shop what the yarn looks like once knitted. I jumped at the chance, and she sent me a skein of 4-ply Shetland wool. I immediately christened it 'Raspberry Ruffles' - it has the pink of the raspberry centre, the brown of the chocolate, and the dark pink (and, originally, green) of the wrappers!

By the way - if you click that link, I am not responsible for any damage that may be done to your credit card. I've used them a lot, and they're a great firm!

I am about two-thirds of the way through the Eliina shawl with it. She also sent me a cake of brown Ecology Shetland, which will be used for the deep lace border:

I don't know what it is about Shetland - it seems to have a liveliness to it that almost knits itself. I think it's magic....

At the same time, Kristina (Wyndwitch), of Flutterby Creations, asked me to road-test a hand-dyed sock yarn for her. It was a hard decision, as she has some amazing Terry Pratchett-inspired colourways, but eventually I settled on 'Paint It Black':

The red actually looks a little orangey here. It's more of a cherry red. The other photo is a little closer:

I really love the way the stripes are forming in this, with the wider 'flashes' of black punctuating the thinner stripes.

I am very lucky in all my talented and generous friends, and I am very happy to have discovered the joys of handspun and hand-dyed yarns!

The next big thing!

2009-04-09T16:20:00.003+01:00

A quick plug for my friend's book, and the excellent website it's on.

Authonomy.com is a website set up by Hodder to 'flush out new talent'. It's a site for wannabe writers to upload their work, and read and critique the work of others. Most importantly, once a month the editors at Hodder will read and consider the 5 most popular books.

There are hundreds of books there, if you don't mind reading online, and you could even spot the new big thing! Speaking of which, I really want to plug my dear friend Amery's book on this site, The Living and the Dead: The Awakening, which is an urban fantasy.

You can register, read and comment without having to upload your own writing.

It was all yellow....

2009-04-06T17:51:00.002+01:00

On the UK RAK group on Ravelry, we have started a monthly game where, every month, we agree to send a RAK parcel to a partner on a specific theme. The theme for March was 'Yellow', and I decided to make three of the things in my parcel.

It was only when I put them together that I realised how different the colours were, and how each colour affected the others.

First came the neon yellow doily, crocheted from thread sent in the RAK parcel which came to me, all the way from Lapland (we're not all in the UK!):

This really is yellow - just photographing it on a blue surface is making it look greenish, but I can assure you it isn't!

Next were these vibrant yellow crocheted mitts:

And lastly, the yellow crocheted flower brooch:

(Why, yes, I am having a bit of a crochet binge at the moment. Funny you should ask....)

And then I put them all together to put into the envelope...

....at which point my yellow items became a cream flower, orange mitts and a green doily.

I love colour, but it drives me mental!

Stop Press!

2009-03-31T15:07:00.003+01:00

I can now tell how spaced out I was yesterday - I completely forgot my most exciting news!

My very clever friend Kristina dyes yarn and batts for sale in her shop, Flutterby Creations (including a wonderful range inspired by Discworld characters!). She announced a competition last week on her shop blog, where you could win your own design of yarn. I was thrilled to see I was banned from entering - because she was already designing one in my honour!

It's a gorgeous, springlike blend of yellow, lavender and grey, and you can see it for sale on her site.

Mine is in the post. I am so thrilled :)

Stop, thief!

2009-03-31T02:11:00.002+01:00

Merlin is becoming more devious and mischievous with every passing day.

Not content with every knitted case I've made for things in the past year, his mousie, his tassel, and various paper balls, he has become a sneak thief.

Wondering where one of my mascots has gone, I find it under my bed, distinctly soggy, and ragged round the edges.

I sit quietly with my knitting (not often, granted, but I do get the chance sometimes), minding my own business - and a little paw comes snaking onto the table, and steals my notions bag.

I put my knitting down, and a black streak shoots past and disappears with my ball of yarn.

Yarn retrieved, I go to pick up my knitting again - only to find he's had that away, too.

And this week, I have had to transfer my imminent-project yarn from the lovely lavender tote, in which it has sat unmolested for several years (not always the same yarn, I hasten to add - although, come to think of it....), into a zipped holdall, because Someone has discovered he can hop up next to it, and find a huge supply of new woolly balls.

He looked very indignant when I zipped the holdall and stopped his games, but there's a limit to how long I can watch my precious hand-dyed, hand-spun goodies disappearing out of the door and down the corridor, trailing between his scampering feet - and it's about 0.1 of a second.

Poor Merlin. As we say to him countless times a day - 'It's a good job you're cute'....

Scrunchie doll

2009-03-24T15:08:00.003Z

I'm feeling pretty brain-dead today - I enjoyed a Quaker Meeting for Worship at my home on Sunday, but it wiped me out yesterday (hence the lateness of this entry), and I'm about at the end of my energy today - so I'm giving you another free pattern.

This one is from SlipKnot issue 112 (June 2006), and gives a cute and very kitsch way for little girls to store their hair scrunchies - as a tutu on a little ballerina.

You need some kind of small doll for this - I used an Impkins doll which I bought on eBay.

Although I give a scrunchie pattern here, there are loads online. Try Crochet Pattern Central (always a good source of crochet patterns), or the Ravelry pattern search.

Because there are so many suitable small dolls available, this is more of a guideline than a pattern!

Scrunchie Doll

You will need a small amount of plain yarn and a scrap of ribbon for the body, and a hair elastic and some eyelash yarn for the scrunchie. Use needles and hooks which are suitable for the yarn you choose.

Using the plain yarn, cast on enough stitches to go around half the body, with a provisional cast on. Work in stocking stitch for length needed to gusset.

Decrease 1 st each end of the next 4 rows, then increase 1 st each end of following 4 rows.

Work up the back straight for the same length as the front, and do not cast off.

Undo the provisional cast on, and thread a thin ribbon through the stitches. Put the strip of knitting in place on the doll, and thread the ribbon through the last row of stitches. Pull up and tie in a bow.

To make a crochet garment, work in double crochet (US - treble crochet), following the instructions above. Thread the yarn through the stitches in the first and last rows.

To make the scrunchie, I used an oddment of eyelash yarn, which makes it very fluffy and full:

UK version:
Round 1: dc closely around the elastic band and sl st closed.
Round 2: (ch4, miss 1 dc, dc into next dc) to end, then (2ch, 1 tr) to close.
Round 3: (ch6, dc in next ch4 loop) to end, (ch6, sl st) to close.

US version:
Round 1: tr closely around the elastic band and sl st closed.
Round 2: (ch4, miss 1 tr, tr into next tr) to end, then (2ch, 1 dtr) to close.
Round 3: (ch6, tr in next ch4 loop) to end, (ch6, sl st) to close.

Merlin!

2009-03-16T16:23:00.002Z

Well, we certainly know we have another cat!

It's not just the talking, or the thundering down the hall like a herd of elephants, or even the destructiveness - it's his absolutely unshakeable belief that, whatever we are doing, we cannot possibly accomplish it unless he helps. My books all have teeth marks. My yarn has all had to be securely fastened into containers he can't open - and he's already working on zips. I had to abandon half a yoghurt today because I couldn't get my spoon past his head.

He has a fascination for anything knitted. So far he has abducted my inhaler bag (complete with inhaler - we can't find it anywhere), my glasses case and my MP3 player cosy. He throws them around, drags them into a corner, and then growls over them.

I can't knit or crochet, because he drops onto my chest every time I start, and tries to run away with my project. He chews my hair, claws my chin, and makes my arm ache by refusing to sleep in any other position than draped over my elbow.

And you know what?

I wouldn't change him for the world :))

He makes me laugh so much, especially when Richard gets him chasing the laser pointer. He has woken Chloe up and given her a new lease of life - they play together several times a day, and seem to get on amazingly well. And he is the softest, cuddliest kitten I've had apart from Tigger (and let's face it, Tigger was a one-off). He has us wound quite securely around his huge black paw, and he knows it :)

Richard has photos and two video clips at his Flickr site, but this is my favourite:

Merlin says: 'So, let's see - inhaler bag, check; catnip mouse, check; Mum's ability to say no to me, check...'

Extra, extra! - revisited

2009-03-09T14:28:00.003Z

I wrote on Monday:

I've now got my copy of Simply Knitting 51, and I notice the sizes on Spring Leaves, the lace tunic, have been recalculated. I designed it for sizes 16 to 30, and it's been printed for 12 to 20.

I have no huge problems with this - it's their magazine, they're entitled to edit things to fit in better - but I thought it would be nice to reprint here the original pattern, for larger sizes. For copyright reasons, this is not the entire pattern - you will still need to buy the magazine for the stitch patterns. I don't want to break my contract, just provide some extra information...

It seems I posted a little hastily - what the magazine has done is relabel the sizes, not recalculate them, and so the pattern I published here is actually the same as the one in the magazine.

The editor assures me that the top I supplied as a 16 actually fitted a 12 perfectly, and was too small for a 14. That means that the pattern as written would actually fit the sizes with which the magazine labelled it. What happened I'm not quite sure - but obviously, for some reason, my tension measurements were out. Please take this as an example of the importance of measuring gauge accurately!

Thus I've taken down the pattern. The offer for the lace charts still stands, however, and if anyone would like the pattern in a larger size, let me know and I'll work it out for you.

As a footnote, I have received a pdf from Simply Knitting of my design in issue 53, which will fit bust sizes of 38 to 56 inches, and it looks wonderful. I hope you'll like it too.

Merlin

2009-03-03T15:17:00.002Z

Here's the first photo of the darling boy, taken at the foster home. He hasn't stopped moving for long enough for a photo here yet :)

Chloe was mildly interested, and then stalked off in disgust.....

Good news, good news, and more good news!

2009-03-02T16:52:00.002Z

I had a rotten week last week, for several reasons (including a replacement carer breaking my CD player and lying about it - that's sorted now, though), and I really needed some good news. Well, I've had it, in bucketsful!

First I found out that one of my patterns had been published in Simply Knitting 51 - I don't know where my contributor's copy went, but it will be nice to see it anyway (a kind fellow Raveler is sending me her copy). It's my favourite of the plus-size patterns, a lace tunic in Artesano Alpaca:

The lace pattern is the Beech Leaf lace pattern from Mary Thomas' Book of Knitting Patterns, and the bodice is garter stitch. There's a band of something called Star Stitch, also from Mary Thomas, at the empire line/start of the bodice.

I've also heard that a sleeveless jacket/gilet thing I made in Rowan Tapestry will be featured in issue 53. It's lovely to see all these items finally hitting the pages. I finished them all quite a while ago, but have had to wait for them to fit a theme before I see them in print.

On Friday I finally managed to find a sewing machine on Freecycle. I have been putting in claims for a while, and not being successful, and even putting in my own 'Want' ads hasn't helped. This time, though, I actually had two offers, and I am now the happy owner of a very lovely Jones electric machine - nothing wrong with it that a little cosmetic cleaning won't solve!

And the best news of all - we think we have found our kitten. Chloe has been so clingy and vocal that I finally realised she was actually missing Tigger much more than I thought, so we decided to get a new kitten which would, perhaps, stop her fretting. It took a long time to find one. Now that people spay and neuter their cats (hurrah for responsible pet owners!), there are a lot fewer unwanted kittens around. However, I have just been speaking to an RSPCA foster mum, who wants us to come and see Merlin tomorrow, to see if we like each other.

He is a black Siamese cross, about 12 weeks old, big paws, bat ears, flat nose - and very vocal! He has had his first vaccinations, but is happy to be a house cat (phew - I hated it every time Tigger went out!). He loves other cats, dogs, and especially people, and when he gets tired he snuggles down and sucks his blankie.... (She thinks he was probably taken too early from his mum.)

Richard is going to meet him and, hopefully, fetch him home tomorrow. Photos to follow. Please cross your fingers for us....

Daisy, Daisy

2009-02-23T16:46:00.004Z

Another freebie, in my quest to make all my free patterns more widely accessible on Ravelry - and to everyone who reads this blog :)

I designed this little flower as an ornament for a Christmas parcel, at a friend's request. I liked it enough to submit it to SlipKnot, the journal of the Knitting and Crochet Guild.

You could also use it as an embellishment on a hat, bag, cushion etc, or attach a hair-slide or brooch pin to the back. It also works pretty well as a pen topper, but you may need a dab of glue to help it stay in place, depending on your gauge.

It's worked by crocheting twice into the same round - once into the front loops, then back round again into the back loops. You can create a bigger flower if you wish, by adding 4ch to the loops of each extra odd-numbered round, but the back of the flower does become quite thick, quite quickly.

DAISY, DAISY

MATERIALS

Use any thread or yarn and an appropriately-sized hook to the yarn or thread you use. The size of the decoration will vary with the size of the fibre used.

For the example illustrated (about 2"/5cm diameter), I used a size 10 crochet thread held together with a strand of Twilley’s Goldfingering in Silver, worked with a 4mm (G) hook.

ABBREVIATIONS

beg - beginning
ch – chain
ss – slip stitch
sc - single crochet
dc – double crochet
FL - front loop
BL - back loop

INSTRUCTIONS - British terminology

Round 1: Ch 6, ss to close

Round 2: Ch1, dc into same space, 7 dc into ring, ss to 1st ch. (8dc)

Round 3: FL only - ss in first FL, ch6, ss in same loop, [ss into next FL, ch 6, ss into same loop] in remaining loops. (8 ch-6 loops)

Round 4: BL only, working into the back loops immediately behind front loops used in previous row - ch1, dc in each BL to end, ss into 1st ch. (8dc)

Round 5: FL only, working into the front loops of the dc created in previous row - ss in first FL, ch10, ss in same loop, [ss into next FL, ch 10, ss into same loop] in remaining loops. (8 ch-10 loops)

Round 6: Rpt row 4.

Round 7: FL only, working into the front loops of the dc created in previous row - ss in first FL, ch14, ss in same loop, [ss into next FL, ch 14, ss into same loop] in remaining loops. (8 ch-14 loops)

Fasten off and sew in ends. Ease petals into shape.

INSTRUCTIONS - American terminology

Round 1: Ch 6, ss to close

Round 2: Ch1, sc into same space, 7 sc into ring, ss to 1st ch. (8sc)

Round 3: FL only - ss in first FL, ch6, ss in same loop, [ss into next FL, ch 6, ss into same loop] in remaining loops. (8 ch-6 loops)

Round 4: BL only, working into the back loops immediately behind front loops used in previous row - ch1, sc in each BL to end, ss into 1st ch. (8sc)

Round 5: FL only, working into the front loops of the sc created in previous row - ss in first FL, ch10, ss in same loop, [ss into next FL, ch 10, ss into same loop] in remaining loops. (8 ch-10 loops)

Round 6: Rpt row 4.

Round 7: FL only, working into the front loops of the sc created in previous row - ss in first FL, ch14, ss in same loop, [ss into next FL, ch 14, ss into same loop] in remaining loops. (8 ch-14 loops)

Fasten off and sew in ends. Ease petals into shape.

A Fine Vintage

2009-02-17T17:18:00.002Z

Sorry this is a day late. I had a lovely but exhausting day on Sunday and so spent most of Monday asleep!

I'm developing more and more interest in vintage knitting patterns, and, as I know I'm not alone in this, I thought I'd share some of my favourite links.

The main things to bear in mind with vintage patterns are that

they rarely supply a gauge measurement
much of the terminology is different from modern terminology
vintage sizes are often much smaller than modern ones!

However, there are plucky souls out there who are decoding the patterns and making them much more accessible for modern knitters.

For the original publications, as well as actual paper patterns and books, I use two online sources of public domain textile books : Project Gutenberg, which has an entire Craft Shelf full of textile books; and the Antique Pattern Library.

There are also individual free vintage patterns available such as those on the Vintage Purls blog, and the 1940s patterns on the V&A website.

Some bloggers have taken on an entire book, or a whole lace sampler, and resolved to decode and rework every pattern for modern knitters. The best that I have come across are FitterKnitter, who is slowly working her way through a book from 1897 called The Art of Knitting, and Kathleen, who is reworking an 1884 lace sampler book. Her notes on antique terminology are very useful, and she explains things very clearly. Both of these bloggers provide charted and written instructions.

Well, that's it from me. Not very entertaining, but I hope it was useful - and next week I will be rested and back to my usual self, fingers crossed ;)

Spokes Coaster

2009-02-09T14:59:00.002Z

Well, the Ruffled Flower has been a hit on Ravelry - so far it has been favourited 27 times and queued 7 times! OK, so it's no Clapotis, but that's a lot for one of my patterns :)

Comic Relief launched the 2009 Red Nose Day a few days ago, and a UK-based crafting forum called Crafteroo has opened a shop on Folksy to raise money for it. All items have been donated by the crafters, and Folksy has agreed to waive the fees so that all proceeds will go straight to Comic Relief.

I have given permission for all of my patterns to be used to make fundraising items, and I thought it would be useful to reprint here one that originally appeared in SlipKnot, the journal of the Knitting and Crochet Guild.

Spokes Coaster

MATERIALS
To make a coaster 4" (10cm) diameter, I used a small amount of Aunt Lydia's Denim and a 4mm (G) hook. Thicker thread or yarn will make bigger coasters, thinner thread smaller ones. Two thin threads of contrasting colour held together makes a very pretty effect.

ABBREVIATIONS

beg - beginning
ch – chain
ss – slip stitch
sc - single crochet
dc – double crochet
tr – treble crochet

INSTRUCTIONS - British terminology

Foundation: Ch6, ss into first ch to form ring.

Row 1: 3ch to act as first tr, 11 tr into ring, ss into 3rd of beg ch (12 tr)

Row 2: Ch 4 to act as first (tr, ch1), then (tr, ch1) in each tr around. Join with ss to 3rd of beg ch (12 tr, 12 ch1 spaces)

Row 3: Ss into first ch1 space, 3ch as first tr, 2 more tr in same space, (3tr in each ch1 space) around, ss to 3rd of beg ch (36 tr)

Row 4: Repeat row 2 (36 tr, 36 ch1 spaces).

Row 5: Either reverse dc (crab stitch) or plain dc into each ch1 space. (36 dc). Crab stitch gives a neat rolled edge.

Alternative row 5: Ss into first ch1 space, ch1, dc in same space, 3ch, (dc into next ch1 space, 3ch) all the way around to last space, ss into first dc.

Finish off. Weave in ends.

INSTRUCTIONS - US terminology

Foundation: Ch6, ss into first ch to form ring.

Row 1: 3ch to act as first dc, 11 dc into ring, ss into 3rd of beg ch (12 dc)

Row 2: Ch 4 to act as first (dc, ch1), then (dc, ch1) in each dc around. Join with ss to 3rd of beg ch (12 dc, 12 ch1 spaces)

Row 3: Ss into first ch1 space, 3ch as first dc, 2 more dc in same space, (3dc in each ch1 space) around, ss to 3rd of beg ch (36 dc)

Row 4: Repeat row 2 (36 dc, 36 ch1 spaces).

Row 5: Either reverse sc (crab stitch) or plain sc into each ch1 space. (36 sc). Crab stitch gives a neat rolled edge.

Alternative row 5: Ss into first ch1 space, ch1, sc in same space, 3ch, (sc into next ch1 space, 3ch) all the way around to last space, ss into first sc.

Finish off. Weave in ends.

Ruffled Flower

2009-02-02T16:50:00.004Z

As promised last week - the Ruffled Flower!

MATERIALS

I used about 5gm (50m/55yds or so) of a cobweb-weight cashmere/silk blend, worked with a 2.75mm (C) hook. I used a 1cm (half inch) diameter spherical pearl button for the centre. The flower came out at 7cm (about 3 inches) diameter. Thicker yarn and hooks will produce bigger flowers.

ABBREVIATIONS

ch – chain
ss – slip stitch
sc - single crochet
dc – double crochet
tr – treble crochet

INSTRUCTIONS - British terminology

Row 1: Leave a long end, then ch3, ss to close

Row 2: Ch3 in place of first tr, then 27 tr into ring, ss into 3rd of beginning ch (28tr)

Row 3: Ch4 in place of first tr and ch, (skip next tr, tr into next tr, ch1) to end, ss into 3rd of beginning ch (14 ch-1 spaces)

Row 4: Ch4 in place of first tr and ch, (tr1, ch1) 4 more times into 1st ch1-space, then (tr1, ch1) 5 times into each ch1-space to end, ss into 3rd of beginning ch (70tr)

Row 5: ch1, work 2dc into each ch1-space to end, ss into 1st ch (140dc)

Row 6: ch5, ss to 1st dc, (ch5, ss to next dc) to end, ss to base of 1st 5-ch (140 ch-5 spaces)

Sew in ends, using the cast-on end to sew a gorgeous bead or button into the centre. Attach to a pin, or sew onto a top, shawl or evening bag.

INSTRUCTIONS - US terminology

Row 1: Leave a long end, then ch3, ss to close

Row 2: Ch3 in place of first dc, then 27 dc into ring, ss into 3rd of beginning ch (28dc)

Row 3: Ch4 in place of first dc and ch, (skip next dc, dc into next dc, ch1) to end, ss into 3rd of beginning ch (14 ch-1 spaces)

Row 4: Ch4 in place of first dc and ch, (dc1, ch1) 4 more times into 1st ch1-space, then (dc1, ch1) 5 times into each ch1-space to end, ss into 3rd of beginning ch (70dc)

Row 5: ch1, work 2sc into each ch1-space to end, ss into 1st ch (140sc)

Row 6: ch5, ss to 1st sc, (ch5, ss to next sc) to end, ss to base of 1st 5-ch (140 ch-5 spaces)

Sew in ends, using the cast-on end to sew a gorgeous bead or button into the centre. Attach to a pin, or sew onto a top, shawl or evening bag.

The Adventures of the Blue-Green Skein

2009-01-26T23:46:00.002Z

Once upon a time there was a beautiful skein of blue-green cobweb weight yarn. It was cunningly made from cashmere and silk, and was as cool and beautiful to the touch as it was to the eye:

It had come to live with a Keen Knitter, who stroked it lovingly and told it that she would make it into something wonderful, as it deserved.

First it had to be wound into a ball. This was not an easy matter: the silk fibres were very shy and nervous, and clung together until the whole skein was one tangled mess. Luckily the Keen Knitter had a friend who loved to turn worried skeins into smooth balls of yarn, and she worked at it gently over many hours until every last knot was undone, and the yarn was in balls and ready to be knitted.

The Keen Knitter wanted to choose a pattern that would suit the beautiful blue-green yarn, the colour of summer waves, so she found one which reminded her of the sea. She cast on, and concentrated very hard, but she made so many mistakes that she undid her work and sat, disheartened. She had never knitted with anything so fine and delicate before.

She wondered if that was the biggest problem. She hunted down a simple pattern that would allow her to get used to the fine strands before she tried to do anything clever with them, and this worked very well. As soon as she felt confident, she started to look for a more complex pattern.

As luck would have it, another kind friend of the Keen Knitter sent her a lovely pattern which she thought might be just right. It was designed to look like the leaves on the trees outside her window. It took a lot of concentration, and she worked very slowly, but at last she had done three complete repeats of the pattern.

But then disaster struck. Just as she put her needle into a stitch, the stitch snapped. A whole row of work unravelled before her eyes. She could have wept. All that effort, all that concentration - she was just not cut out for knitting with something this fine. She put the balls of yarn away, and picked up a sock instead....

Two days later, picking up a dropped stitch with a fine crochet hook, inspiration struck. Perhaps she could crochet with the blue-green yarn? It was far too beautiful just to sit at the bottom of her work bag. She pulled some yarn out and began to doodle with it.

It seemed to like the crochet hook. It seemed much more relaxed and the stitches were more even. She doodled and scrumbled until she had made a beautiful ruffled flower. Then she found a lovely pearl button for its centre, just as a nod to the sea-colour of the yarn. It was pretty, and soft, and it had worked.

So the Keen Knitter, who was also a Clever Crocheter, found another pattern for a shawl. This one was made with a crochet hook - and this one, she hoped, would get finished.

(As soon as I get Richard to take its photograph, the flower - and its pattern - will be appearing here!)

Christmas Presents

2009-01-19T15:17:00.002Z

Yes, yes, I know - Christmas was nearly a month ago (where does the time go??), but I never blogged properly about my handmade Christmas. I did supply a couple of photos of projects in progress, but not a proper round-up.

I decided that my three carers, Jacky, Joan and Hayley, should have mitts. These would keep them warm and allow them to smoke, as they walk between clients, without taking their gloves off... I am an ex-smoker, and I know what it's like!

I used the excellent and very quick (3 hours per pair!) Ysolda Teague Garter Stitch Mitts pattern. They're constructed side-to-side, so I made them in Quaker rib for a little extra stretch (it's a mock rib for when you are working side-to-side: row 1 knit, row 2 purl, row 3 purl, row 4 knit.).

Joan got Stylecraft Baby Velvet chenille:

Hayley got Jarol Hyde Park DK:

and Jacky got purple Sirdar Denim Tweed DK:

...which I packaged up with something else, and they got left in the paper and thrown away.

Ho hum....

Richard's grandfather and my brother both got Moebius neckwarmers, one in Sirdar Denim Tweed DK held double:

and one using the reversible cables of the Palindrome scarf pattern by Kristin Bellehumeur. I made this one in Rowan Tapestry held together with some unlabelled cream acrylic:

The shading shows up well in this photo, but not the clever reversible cables. They're much more visible on the actual piece.

One of my friends loves turquoise, so she got the Storm Cloud Shawlette by Hanna Breetz, in a glorious, clear turquoise from Woolcraft New Fashion DK:

Mine was a little smaller than the original pattern, but it tucks in nicely under her coat collar!

For Mum I had a load of small presents, and her only handmade item was a washcloth - the Christmas Dishcloth by the talented Kristen Patay. Because it was in white, it didn't photograph well, but you can see the design clearly on the linked page.

Richard also got a stocking-stuffer washcloth - the Transformers cloth by Enid Danforth. He hasn't photographed this yet - so follow the link and imagine it in red :)

Finally I made two lined cotton handbags. For Richard's grandmother I made the Rowan International 2006/2007 members' kit, the Dolly Bag, in green Rowan Handknit Cotton:

It's meant to have bobbles, but I found them too hard to do in cotton, so I substituted eyelets! I lined it with Barefoot Roses fabric by Free Spirit at Get Knitted:

The second bag, for my dear friend Linda, was the Square Cake bag, a Knitty.com pattern from Jairlyn Mason. This was a repurposed bag kit: Rowan Handknit Cotton again, in shocking pink:

with vibrant matching Kaffe Fassett fabric to line it:

Everyone seemed to like what they got, and it was such good fun making them all. I got to try out several patterns I would probably not have made otherwise, as well as using up some of my stash. I'm already planning this Christmas - the carers are getting cowls, for a start. And Jacky's will be too big to get tangled up with the wrapping paper.....

Sock surgery

2009-01-12T15:32:00.002Z

A couple of months ago, having discovered how comfy my Tiger socks were, I was pondering the ways I could fix some of my other socks, which were rather tight round the cast-on and didn't 'give' enough to fit my little fat legs. I tried unpicking one, to cast it off more loosely, but trying to unpick slightly-felted sock wool from the cast-on down, rather than the cast-off up, is something guaranteed to bring madness and bad language, so I abandoned that idea.

Next I tried simply cutting a chunk off, unravelling it, picking up the live stitches round the top of the sock and reworking the ribbing and cast-off. This worked pretty well, but I soon discovered that I am hopeless at cutting in a straight line, and thus wasted some yarn in little runs of stitches where the scissors had wavered. However, the principle was a sound one, and the re-knitting went smoothly. The socks were once more wearable, and it didn't take much time to do, either. Here they are before:

and after:

Quite a bit of yarn lost, but you can see how much floppier the tops are.

Next I dropped the slash-and-rip technique, and went for precision. I snipped one stitch in the row I wanted to start from, and carefully unpicked it all the way round to separate the top from the rest of the sock. This worked much better - much less loss of yarn, and a much quicker and tidier job. I went from these two:

to these:

I used this cast-off, which is stretchy to the point of ruffling, and so is ideal for uses like this where I really need them not to dig into my leg:

Slip first stitch of round onto a crochet hook. Hook round yarn, pull through. *Hook through next stitch, pull through. Pull this stitch through the first one on the hook. Hook round yarn, pull through. Rpt from * to end. Pull yarn all the way through the last stitch on the hook and sew in end.

You can adjust how often you hook though the yarn to make it more or less ruffled.

In future I shall use the garter-stitch cuff I used with the tiger socks, but I was pleased with how these turned out as a quick fix.

Of course, as it's me, there is a funny story attached. My tiger socks were on the drying rack, and the top pair of socks was on my over-bed table, one whole and one with the top removed, ready for picking up stitches. After my shower, I asked my carer to fetch the tiger socks from the rack. She brought them back and put them on me, and then fastened my slippers over them. I thought they felt odd, but it was first thing in the morning and I wasn't really with it.

I wore them till lunchtime, when I went back to bed, kicking off socks and slippers together as I climbed in. I couldn't find the pair I had been working on - and then I looked down. They were in my slippers, the half-sock trailing yarn halfway down the hall....

You can't get the staff, you know ;)

New Year, New Habit

2009-01-05T12:45:00.002Z

Well, it's an old one, actually - trying to get into the routine of writing every week. It worked well before, until I had food poisoning and lost interest in everything except sleep, and it's time I did it again. I'll try to be here every Monday, even if I drivel on about nothing. ("How will we tell the difference?" you cry. Good point, Faithful Reader...)

We had a wonderful Christmas. Some Quakers don't celebrate Christmas, and some do so in quite a low-key way. I would say mine was pretty low-key, but we still have a tree, and decorations, and presents, and I always listen to the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College, Cambridge.

This year it was on TV, so I got to use the subtitles for the words of the songs which were unfamiliar. No matter how wonderful the choir (and this choir was pretty wonderful), it's always easier to hear the words if you can see them in front of you!

They included one of my absolute favourites, "Three Kings from Persian Lands Afar", which I used to sing in the school choir, and T S Eliot's "Coming of the Magi". I love that poem, and it is always a part of my Christmas.

None of my family and friends wanted big presents this year. We all have so much, and we all decided to give just token gifts. Even so, I ended up with a considerable number of presents, all of which were things I wanted!

My knitterish presents were the latest Interweave Knits; some button blanks (you decorate them to match the project you're working on); some ceramic buttons with black and lavender designs on them; and three lots of yarn - two denim blue, one burgundy (both soft, squooshy, high-quality acrylic DK), and some navy Debbie Bliss Cotton Angora. Other than that I got some audio books, some real books, a DVD of Sir John Betjeman, a beautiful silver bookmark with a jointed teddy charm on it from my brother, some owl notecards, a gorgeous blank notebook, some smellies, some sweeties, a fabulous Archers Diary from my sister, and a beautiful dévoré wrap from Mum.

Oh, yes - and some knickers :)

(Actually, they were quite exciting too, because they were two sizes smaller than usual, and made me appreciate how much weight I've lost!)

We had a simple Christmas meal (lamb, mint jelly, mashed potatoes and cauliflower/broccoli cheese), at a time that suited us, and didn't have to answer to anyone else for how we spent the day. It was relaxing, celebratory and absolutely brilliant :)

I hope your Christmas was all you wanted it to be, and that you are excited by the prospect of a whole new year of knitting challenges. I'll be back next Monday - and I may even have some knitting content :)

A little present for my faithful readers!

2008-12-19T23:29:00.003Z

I had a request today for the vintage pattern I used to make these cutie booties, back in May this year:

As it's out of print and out of copyright, I am happy to provide it below.

Happy Christmas :))

Vintage Booties

Originally published in Girl's Own, volume 2

UK: Use DK yarn and 3.75mm needles. (I used RYC Cashsoft DK.)

US: Use sport weight yarn and size 5 needles, or worsted-weight and size 6.

Not sure how much yarn – about 30g.

Centre pattern:
([sl1, k2tog, psso], K2, M1, K1, P1, K1, M1, K2 [sl1, k2tog, psso])

M1 = Make 1, or add one stitch, lots of ways to do this (probably easiest to Google them).

Seeded stocking stitch:
1: (K1, P1) to end
2: P
3: (P1, K1) to end
4: P

Slip-stitch rib:
(yarn forward, sl1 purlwise, K2tog) – repeat to end of row, every row

Cast on 53 sts

Short-row toe:
Rows 1 to 11: Knit
Row 12: K22, work centre pattern, turn
Row 13: P15, turn
Row 14: K1, centre pattern, K3, turn
Row 15: P17, turn
Row 16: K2, centre pattern, K4, turn
Row 17: P19, turn
Row 18: K3, centre pattern, K5, turn
Row 19: P21, turn
Row 20: K4, centre pattern, K6, turn
Row 21: P23, turn
Row 22: K5, centre pattern, K7, turn
Row 23: P25, turn
Row 24: K6, centre pattern, K14, turn
Row 25: P whole row
Row 26: K13, centre pattern, K13, turn
Row 27: P
Row 28: K12, centre pattern, K12, turn
Row 29: P
Row 30: K11, centre pattern, K11, turn
Row 31: P
Row 32: K10, centre pattern, K10, turn

Ankle separator:
Rows 33 to 35: K
Row 36: sl1, (YO, K2tog) to end
Rows 37 to 39: K

Calf:
Rows 40 to 55: Work seeded stocking stitch, increasing one stitch at each end of rows 46, 48, 50 and 52

Top:
Rows 56 and 57: K
Rows 58 to 68: Slip-stitch rib
Rows 69 and 70: P

Cast off (bind off) loosely, and sew up.

Crochet edging, UK version:
With 4mm hook, work (1ch, 1dc) into every other cast-off stitch right round. Slip-stitch into first ch to close round.

Next round: (ch3, 6 dtr, 1tr) into first ch-sp, 1dc into first dc of previous round, then [(1tr, 6dtr, 1tr) into every ch-sp of previous round, 1dc into every dc of previous round]. Slip stitch to 3rd ch of initial 3-ch to close round.

Crochet edging, US version:
With G-6 hook, work (1ch, 1sc) into every other bound-off stitch right round. Slip-stitch into first ch to close round.

Next round: ch3, 6 tr, 1dc into first ch-sp, 1sc into first sc of previous round, then [(1dc, 6tr, 1dc) into every ch-sp of previous round, 1sc into every sc of previous round]. Slip stitch to 3rd ch of initial 3-ch to close round.

Thread ribbon through eyelets.

Sticks, String and Stories

2008-12-08T02:57:00.003Z

First of all, thank you so much to all the people who took the time to leave comments on Tigger's death. I have been overwhelmed by messages from all kinds of people, all over the world, via comment, email and phone. I never realised how many people understood how special Tigger was. I've never had another cat like him, and I don't suppose I ever will.

I am intensely grateful that we were with him, that he didn't suffer, and that he had spent his whole life being loved. He would throw himself at anyone who came in the door, absolutely confident that they would love him - and 99.99% of the time, they did. Even people who weren't keen on cats loved Tigger.

Chloe has coped very well with his loss, gradually blossoming into Sole Cat, and realising the advantages of not having to fight for attention, cuddles and first go at the breakfast. She has become noticeably more sociable and less wary of people, and has really helped us grieve.

The other things that have helped me - hence the title of this post - are knitting and reading. With that in mind, I present a meme, courtesy of Wibbo, which I just could not resist:

The Big Read meme

This meme is originally from the Big Read. Apparently they reckon most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Underline those you intend to read. (I had to make them a different colour instead - no underline on Blogger!!)
3) Italicise the books you LOVE.
4) Post your list so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them.

(I've also marked with an S the books I started and couldn't finish....)

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - J D Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens S
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy S
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy S
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert S
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov S
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville S
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce S
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert S
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

So there you go - more than you ever wanted to know about my reading habits. If you like the look of it - consider yourself tagged!

Sad news

2008-11-06T14:17:00.002Z

I'm afraid I have some sad news. I'm sorry to say that Tigger died today, very suddenly, from an embolism. The vet says there was nothing we could have done to prevent it, and nothing he could have done to treat him, although Tigger actually died in the car on the way there. It was very quick, and he hardly suffered.

We are both devastated, as you can imagine.

He was 11 years and a couple of months old, and we'd had him since he was a kitten. Everyone who came to the house (and a few who didn't!) knew Tigger, and everyone loved him. He had an amazing personality, and an ability to make friends with people, even those who weren't keen on cats.

If I had to choose between feeling like this now, and never having had him, I would choose feeling like this. He was a real one-off.

A Grand Day Out

2008-10-03T05:18:00.002+01:00

On the Quaker Faith and Fellowship forum, where many of us are in less than tiptop health, we decided to have a day out today. Here is the account I posted of mine:

I had a fascinating day out today. I started off by scaling the heights of Waking Up. The tame mountain lions that roam Duvet Plateau both came to say good morning - until they realised there was food going on in Kitchen Gulch, and shot off down the track.

Well, I got my trusty Alpenstock and set out on the long trek to the caves at Shower Falls. It's a precarious path, and as always I was glad for my stick on one side and conveniently situated handrails on the other.

The trip to Shower Falls was refreshing, but tiring, and I was pleased to find myself a short stagger from there at Window View. You get the most beautiful view of a pair of growing oak trees, whose canopies have merged into one.... as well as the local wild dogs and marauding pygmies, a strange tribe called Grandchildren.

With great forethought, I had brought my knitting, so I could sit and appreciate the scene until my faithful Sherpa, Jacky the Carer, delivered my lunch (salad, yoghurt, fruit - all very healthy and full of energy for the long haul back).

After letting the picnic settle, I prepared for the trek back to Duvet Plateau and beyond. After a swift detour into the Shower Falls caves (to the amazing self-cleaning, self-replenishing porcelain chasm), I was ready for the journey home. The track seemed much steeper going this way, and took me much longer to climb. I was glad of the handrails and my stout stick. After what seemed like hours, I passed Kitchen Gulch on my left and knew I was halfway home. At last I glimpsed Duvet Plateau, and it gave me the little burst of energy I needed. I scrambled the last few steps to the plateau, and slid down the other side of it - into Bed Heaven.

It had been a long and tiring expedition, worth it for the memories of the trees, and the fresh air.

But it's a good job I live in a bungalow.

Tigger says: "I am mountain lion. Hear me roar...."

Lara cowl

2008-09-13T16:22:00.002+01:00

Yes, folks, your eyes do not deceive you - two posts in one day!

I've had this design finished for about 3 years. I submitted it to a magazine, who held it for ages, then returned it to me looking as though it had been kicked around the office floor, so I've never submitted it anywhere else. I would like to add it to my designer page on Ravelry, and for that I need a URL (as it is unpublished in a book or magazine) - so here we go.

This was one of the first things I designed, and I love it. It's quick to make, very easy, light, warm, and even flatters a face deeply unsuited to hats - like mine :) It's called

Lara

Size
To fit an adult head. Circumference 70cm (28in), length 32cm (12.5in)

Materials
Colinette Silkychic (100% polyamide, 204m per 100g hank), 1 hank in 72 Tapis

(Unfortunately, this is now discontinued, but a fine mohair or eyelash yarn will be fine. Don't use too chunky and firm an eyelash yarn, or the lovely drape will be lost.)

5mm circular needle, 60cm length

Tension
17sts and 23 rows to 10cm using 5mm circular needles over stocking stitch. This is not as crucial as for some garments.

Pattern
Cast on 120 stitches, loosely. Join cast-on row to form a circular piece of knitting. Continue to knit round and round until you have about 280cm (112in) of yarn left.

Cast off loosely and sew in ends.

Drop the tube down over your head. Pull the top edge (at the back of your neck) up and over your head, and pose mysteriously like Lara in ‘Dr Zhivago’...

(Copyright Heather Cawte 2005)

Tigger says: "I see you're coming round to the idea of fur, then."

My life as a Maraca

2008-09-13T15:42:00.003+01:00

Well, I knew it was going to happen. I have extra meds. I couldn't get diagnosed with diabetes and be left as I was. Yes, folks - in addition to everything else, I now have diabetes!

It wasn't too big a shock, really. There's a history of mature-onset diabetes in the family, and the docs have been testing me for it for ages.

One big phew - I do not have to give myself injections! Hurray!! I do have quite a good pile to add to the things I'm already taking, though.

I'd been having blood test after blood test, and I was getting quite fed up that I wasn't hearing what any of the results were, or why they were being taken. I finally ended up pouring my heart out to the nurse who came recently for yet more blood, and she said she'd ask my GP (local family doctor, for non-UK readers).

Sure enough, I got an unexpected visit from my GP the next day, to tell me all about my results. Firstly, I have a folic acid deficit (insufficient greens!), so I got a supplement for that. Apparently it has the effect of a type of anaemia if not corrected. I have since added broccoli to my salads...

My cholesterol was slightly up, so, given the family history of heart attacks and strokes, he wanted to clamp down on it - another tablet.

Then he wanted me to take a preventative aspirin once a day.

And finally, he wanted to start me on tablets, as well as a healthy eating plan, for my diabetes, to really attack it and keep it down to a good level. The latest thinking is that the younger the onset, the quicker you should start on the tablets, to avoid complications later. I had to build up to 4 tablets a day - but they have a relatively common side-effect of diarrhoea!! Luckily I seem to have been OK; I'm up to 3 a day now, with no unfortunate occurrences ;)

I had to type up an updated copy of all the meds I take, for my client file at the care company, and I was amazed at the totals once I added them up:

Breakfast: 3 inhalers, 14 tablets
After breakfast: 3 tablets
Lunchtime: 2 inhalers, 3 tablets
Dinnertime: 2 inhalers, 10 tablets
After dinner: 2 tablets

Bedtime: 2 inhalers, 12 tablets

Hence the title of the post....

And now you see why, despite its faults, I am daily thankful for the National Health Service. I could never afford all those on co-pay :(

Tigger says: "Just as long as you don't give any to me...."

6 weeks later...more photos!

2008-08-06T02:08:00.003+01:00

The heat is really wiping me out (and playing old hob with my sleep patterns), so this is the first time for a few weeks that I've felt like blogging here. I managed a Still Life post the other day, because I don't use photos there and all I have to do is type. (And think. Which can be a problem area... )

Anyway.... I am really enjoying myself investigating other designers' patterns. I learn so much from seeing how other people construct things, and communicate the instructions. I'm also loving learning lace!

In a recent Knit Today there was a free booklet with some beautiful lace patterns in it, including this beret by Mary Hickmott, called 'Lime Lace':

It was a breeze to make, which really surprised me, as I'd been expecting to get thoroughly confused by the decreasing lace pattern. I used a glorious sunshine yellow yarn because I was fed up of knitting neutrals :)

It's destined for charity, as I don't know any children it would fit. I just wanted to try out the pattern. Some cold little head in Afghanistan or Mongolia is going to get a very posh hat. And why not? Why do we associate charity knitting with boring patterns and unpleasant colours? I'm sure that cold people across the world like pretty things to wear as much as we do.

I'm also making good progress with my Christmas presents. I've made up the Rowan Dolly Bag kit (from my Rowan International subscription a couple of years ago) for my mother, and bought some beautiful rose-patterned fabric from Free Spirit at Get Knitted to line it:

The only changes I made to the original were to replace the bobbles with eyelets (I don't like bobbles, and trying to make them in inflexible cotton was a real pain!), and to work a plain cast off edge instead of a bobbled one.

I'm also making progress with my neck warmers. I finished one for Richard's paternal grandfather, made with two strands of Sirdar Denim Tweed DK held together, worked on 10mm needles:

The fabric this made was wonderfully soft and warm, with a lovely scrunchiness to it. I'm very pleased with how it feels.

I'm also working on one for my brother, who is about to move up from Luton to Bridlington, so he'll need a warm scarf when he walks the dog. I'm using the Palindrome scarf pattern, and making it up as a moebius when I finish (twist the scarf 180 degrees in the middle, then sew the ends together). My method is a cheat, as a moebius should be seamless, but as I am a knitter and not a mathematician I'm not going to lose too much sleep over it :)

I picked this pattern because it has reversible cables, something I have been wanting to try for a while. And of course, because they are reversible, it doesn't matter which part of the scarf is facing outwards - you will always see the front of the cables! They're not as obvious on the photo as they are in real life, so don't think I've gone mad talking about cables that aren't there :)

I'm making this on my trusty 10mm needles, to create a looser, springier fabric, as I have done with the others. This also creates a more thermal effect, like the string vests Polar explorers wear under their specialist gear!

I'm using a ball of Rowan Tapestry, left over from Penny's jumper, together with a basic cream-coloured acrylic. The shading of the Tapestry is really showing up beautifully, and it's growing fast.

Finally, on the presents front, I've almost completed a last gift which I can't blog about as the recipient reads this blog (hello Linda!).

I've also started a little something for myself. When I resubscribed to Yarn Forward, I received 1000yds of a cashmere/silk blend laceweight yarn called For The Love Of Lace:

A kind friend is still rolling it into a ball for me - silk sticks to itself really easily, so it's a nuisance to roll up. I had tried, and got into a tangle, but I'm using one of the little balls I made to swatch the Shetland Shell Lace Scarf. I wanted the pattern I used to have something to do with the sea, because of the beautiful turquoise colour of the yarn (much greener than it looks on this photo). It's exactly the colour of the North Sea as it hits the beach on a sunny day.

I haven't done much yet (on my new Addi Lace needles!), but I'm enjoying it:)

Well, it's finally cool enough to have a go at sleeping, so I shall sign off.

Tigger says: "I have no idea why she finds it so hard to sleep, you know."

Photos!

2008-06-15T12:40:00.003+01:00

I finally managed to get Richard, his camera and my birthday presents in one place, so I can share them with you!

First, from my sister, antique (probably mock) tortoiseshell needles - 2 straights, 4 dpns, and a button hook (although the vendor thought it was a crochet hook!), as well as a beautiful bell needle gauge:

(Apparently the old UK sizes were based on the classification system of wire thickness, as the usual needles were simply steel wires with points.)

Next, from one of my dear friends, a beautiful shawl pin worked in wood from Roleswoodcrafts and bought from an excellent yarn shop in Darlington Covered Market, A Fine Yarn, run by the friendly and helpful Christine. If you've never tried it, and you are in the area, I recommend it - I have heard many good things about it:

I'm not sure, but from the photos on the website, I think it's in Zebrina wood.

Now for two FOs and a WIP, also posted on Ravelry. Firstly, the famous BSJ:

I worked this in RYC Cashsoft DK. It was good fun, and I enjoyed making it. I enjoyed even more handing the shapeless piece to non-knitters and saying, 'Turn that into a baby jacket' :)

My ongoing lace piece at present (currently sadly neglected while I finish something I've had hanging around for even longer!) is the Lucy Neatby Cloud Scarf (scroll down to see details), which I'm making in Debbie Bliss Cathay to act as a runner for my Welsh dresser:

It's quite complex to work, but I'm loving it. The edging worked all in one piece with the rest is really clever!

Lastly, socks - I finished these a while ago. They're in Opal Rainforest Tiger, and I followed Lucy Neatby's suggestion in Cool Socks, Warm Feet of purling the black sections. They may look squat and wide, but so do my feet :)

I also used her cuff from the 'Mermaid' socks in that book, where you work a piece of garter stitch until it fits round your leg, graft the ends together, and pick up the stitches around it to start the body of the sock:

That's about it for this week, I'm afraid. As Tigger says: "Just wanna sleeeeeep....."

Rosanna's Lace

2008-06-07T16:47:00.007+01:00

First of all, an apology - I still haven't got Richard, his camera and my birthday presents in the same place at the same time. But I will. Oh yes.

If you have been bumbling along with me for a while, you may remember that my sister, while investigating the family tree, came up with a lace-maker. I've been looking into this a bit further, and found out some fascinating details.

Rosanna Reeves, our great-great-great-aunt, was born in Downton, near Salisbury in Wiltshire in 1838. In the 1851 census, at the age of 13, she was described as 'lace maker'. I realised this was most likely to be pillow, or bobbin, lace, so I wrote to the Victoria and Albert Museum to ask if they had any idea what kind of lace she would have been making.

I wasn't sure if they would reply, as I'd never contacted them before and didn't know if this was the kind of information they would have time to offer, so I was very pleased when I had an e-mail back within a week. The person who replied told me that it was most likely Rosanna had made Downton lace, a type of bobbin lace specific to that village. It was made for sale until the 1960s, but has been carried on by dedicated lace makers who work it for pleasure.

She also suggested I contact the Salisbury and Wiltshire Museum. I looked up their website and discovered that they have a whole gallery devoted to Downton lace. I would love to go and see it!

I've only tried a little bobbin lace, so I wasn't very clear on the different types - but I knew there were differences, so next I set out to find out what was distinctive about Downton lace.

Thanks to an informative site called 'Jo Edkins' Lace School', I found out that Downton lace uses something similar to Bucks Point ground (the basic 'net' of the lace - Bucks Point makes an almost hexagonal net), but combines it with a left-handed footside - every other British lace uses a right-hand footside. (This refers to the way the threads are twisted up the side of the work). Overall it looks more like Torchon lace, a continental lace, than it does any other British lace.

And no one seems to know why. Isn't that odd?

Even odder is the matter of the bobbins. I'm sure we've all seen those beautiful slender bobbins, intricately turned and shaped, weighted with circlets of beads, and perhaps even watched a proficient lace-maker as the bobbins seem to fly back and forth of their own accord. Well, Downton bobbins weren't quite that decorated.

In fact, they were short! They had very little shaping, and no beads, the weight being provided by the bobbin itself. They sometimes had messages pricked out on them, filled in with red or black lead, like other bobbins, or other decoration, but they had no fancy turning, and they tapered almost to a point. One site suggests they look more like Spanish bobbins than British ones.

Anyway, I have emailed the museum to ask if they do mail order, as their shop carries a set of notelets featuring a Downton lace maker, and three books on the subject (one history, and two sets of patterns).

I am mulling over a way to convert them into patterns for knitted lace....

Tigger says, "Zzzzzzzzz..............................."

Posh!

2008-05-22T14:56:00.008+01:00

Before I go on to tell you about my spiffy new wet room, I'd like to plug my second blog, Still Life. It's where I can post and write about stuff that interests me as a Quaker, without tangling it up with my knitting stuff. Not that the two things are separate, but the audiences might be different :)

How will I keep up two blogs when I have trouble updating one? Only time will tell ;)

When I moved in here (nearly a year ago - it seems like yesterday!), my bathroom had a bath with an electric shower over it. This was no good to me, as I needed a walk-in shower like the one I was leaving. For reasons that I still don't understand, my Housing Officer announced that, in order to have the new house released to me, I would have to sign a waiver agreeing that I would not ask for a shower cubicle.

My first thoughts were that this was at least immoral, and probably illegal, but she would not budge, so, making my feelings very clear as I did so, I signed the waiver.

After about six months of being sponge-bathed by my carers, with the occasional hair-wash (hanging my head over the bath whenever my vertigo wasn't too bad), I decided that I had waited long enough for the Housing Officer to change her mind, and contacted my Occupational Therapist.

Thanks to her, within a few weeks, there were (very nice and friendly) workmen in my bathroom taking out my bath :)

We thought they would be putting in a large walk-in cubicle like I had in the old house:

Sorry it's so dark, but you can just about see the waist-high cubicle and the width of the area behind it.

It soon became clear that they were actually turning my already sizeable bathroom into a wet room! Apparently it is no longer protocol to put in cubicles, as wet rooms are so much easier for clients and carers alike. They gave me a bigger shower curtain and rail, a new portable screen to protect the carers' clothes if they wished to stand behind it, a new shower chair, an extractor fan, and some lovely new tiles. That was quite funny, actually - they said that, if they couldn't find matching tiles, they would re-tile the whole area, but I said I'd be happy with a close match, as the tiles are perfectly good. They found the best match they could - plus a border to act as a dado rail, to make the two colours of tiles look deliberate! They were so chuffed about it, and so was I :)

Finally a specialist company came in and laid a non-slip floor. Part of the process absolutely stank (I don't know how they work with it!), but it was soon over, and we just had to wait a few more hours before we could try it out.

I can't begin to tell you how lovely and refreshing it is to be having showers after all those sponge baths. And the bathroom seems enormous :)

Tigger says, "I don't see why you make all this fuss. All you need is a tongue."

Booty call

2008-05-15T20:13:00.003+01:00

I have been having such fun with a bootee pattern.

It's originally from a vintage girls' magazine, but it was republished in SlipKnot recently. It involves so many different elements that you never get bored! There's

a garter stitch sole
a short row foot with a simple lace pattern
a stitch I have been calling 'seeded stocking stitch' (because it looks like stocking stitch with a regular pattern of seed-stitch like dots)
a slip-stitch rib that almost knits itself
and a really simple but effective crochet edging

I made it in RYC Cashsoft DK, and, although I think Rowan yarns tend to be a little expensive, I have to recommend this one. There was an error in the first line of the short-row section, and I ripped that puppy out 5 TIMES before I realised it should say 22sts, and not 20.... Anyway, it knitted back up as smoothly and evenly on the sixth attempt as it had on the first.

I've also been making my sister's birthday present. I decided on the Friday (2 May) that I had enough time to knit her a decorative scarf before she came to visit me on the Tuesday (6 May). She wears a lot of those very long and thin silk or chiffon ones to dress up her tops.

I picked out some gorgeous Jaeger Cotton Flamme from stash (I miss Jaeger...). It's a DK-ish weight, gold mercerised thread with creamy viscose slubs, and it's seriously lovable. I found a pattern online for a lace bookmark, grabbed my 4mm needles and cast on 15 stitches. I'd done 100 rows by bedtime, although I was slightly worried at the roll it was developing. It was a stocking stitch base, after all.

Next morning (Saturday) I shoved all the worries to the back of my mind and worked another 44 rows. By this time I really couldn't pretend the roll was going to block out, so I put in a lifeline and tried it out with a WS knit row instead. Well, that looked lovely, so, after about 30 rows of that, I cut off the first 140 or so rows, frogged to the lifeline and cast off what was now the first row.

Well, this went beautifully, and I was congratulating myself on having learned the pattern, and on even being able to watch TV as I knitted. By the end of the evening I had knitted 90 rows. I held it up to admire it, and realised that I had worked a third with the RS on top, a third with the WS on top, and the last third with the RS back on top again.

I toyed with calling it a design feature.

Next morning (Sunday), as I frogged it all, I decided to cast on lengthways for a simple garter stitch strip, that would show off the beauty of the yarn. 300 stitches later, I began the first long row. It didn't take long to remember how quickly I get bored with garter stitch.

On Monday afternoon, when I had still only produced two inches of width, I was beginning to hallucinate cables and yarnovers. I quit. It was too dense a fabric, it didn't show off the yarn, and it was just taking too loooong. Perhaps it needed a bigger needle for drape? And then a small light went on.

Scribble lace.

I grabbed my posh new 10mm coloured metal needles (thank you, Let's Knit), cast on 12 stitches, and four hours later had a light, lacy, softly draping 60-inch long scarf which looked a million dollars:

I am glad to say that my sister loved it. I also pointed out to her that, when someone compliments her on it, she can say with prefect truth, 'Thank you, it's Jaeger' :)

Next time I hope to have photos of my new wet room, and of my lovely birthday presents (it was last Saturday, and I had a wonderful day!).

Tigger has been back to the vet because he's throwing up more than usual (we are often presented with a pile of undigested biscuits, when he eats his tea too quickly and it bounces). The vet thinks he's had a tummy upset, but that it's just about over, so he didn't need tablets.

Tigger says, "You wouldn't believe where he put that thermometer..."

How to tame a wild yarn

2008-04-12T17:59:00.003+01:00

This is going to be pretty photo-heavy (especially for one of my posts), so I apologise in advance!

Well, no one correctly guessed the mystery item. I should have been kinder and included some kind of relative size thing - the piece is actually only about 8 inches or so long. Does that change your ideas? Watch this space...

A little while ago, Vicki gave me some amazing DK yarn. She'd enjoyed playing with it, but found it a bit strident and overpowering, and asked if I had any ideas on calming it down. She has a good point - we're talking neon variegated here:

This really doesn't do justice to the true eye-poppingness of the colours. The first thing we both knew about this yarn was how much it cheered up a dull Spring day - it makes you smile just to use it. But it had its problems.

First step was to see how it was in stocking stitch:

Like a lot of commercial yarns, the rigidly repeating colour changes make the colours tend to pool and stripe, even on a small swatch like this (about 4 inches square, on 4mm needles). The problem is, how to interrupt these sequences so that the effect is more mottled - and how to tone down the colours.

First of all, garter stitch - and this is where the mystery item comes in. Garter stitch breaks up the pooling somewhat because of the structure of the stitch. It's as if you can see the bumps and the v's of the stitches on the same side, instead of them being kept to one side each in stocking stitch:

If you compare this with the stocking stitch swatch, you'll see that the colours, while still being grouped together to some extent, are starting to look a little less regimented and more random.

So what is it?

It's a baby hat:

Isn't it fab?? Mum has been telling me for years about this pattern, which she knitted for loads of family children in the war years. It takes very little yarn, despite being in garter stitch, and is really fun to make. I finally found it reprinted by Sirdar in an early 70s pattern leaflet. So how does the strip become the hat? Simple - seam the top and bottom of the piece together, then sew each left-hand point to its neighbour. The right hand points become the 'cheeks' and peaked front of the hat. Then you knit a strap, find a button, and hey presto! One cute hat. I love it :)

Next I decided to try double-thickness knitting, the technique where you knit and slip alternately all the way along the first row, then slip and knit all the way back along the second, to produce a little 'bag' of knitting without circular needles or dpns. (Although there's an excellent article in Knitty about making a pair of socks with this method, using dpns - just like the woman in 'War and Peace'!)

Vicki has written a lovely pattern for an iPod cosy using this technique, so I tried it out:

This was odd, because I expected it to interrupt the colour changes altogether - instead of which, they ran round the entire pattern. And so, I should have realised, they were bound to do - it's a single piece of knitting, after all!

Looking for something that would really shake the colours up, I tried a mitre square:

This had a very interesting outcome, much more the kind of thing I was looking for. For an excellent tutorial on mitre squares, see Planet Shoup.

Now, how to tone it down? That bit was easy. Work it together with cream yarn of the same weight, in garter stitch on 6mm needles:

This has the immediate effect of diluting the colour. The stitch structure shows bits of cream yarn alongside bits of neon yarn, tricking our eyes into reading the whole thing as a paler version of the neon yarn. And, of course, being garter stitch, it disrupts the colour changes a little. (It's also a quick and easy way to make a thicker, springier fabric - it really is quite wonderfully squishable!)

Finally I tried a technique I found in The Knitting Answer Book (which I cannot recommend too highly. I only wish I were on commission). It's called helical knitting, or spiral knitting, because - you guessed it! - it's made in a spiral. Of course, all knitting worked in the round is a spiral, which is why we get the problem of the colour jog, but this technique actually capitalises on that instead of trying to fight against it.

You begin by casting on however many stitches you need, onto a circular needle or dpns. DO NOT join the round. Turn the work, attach the second yarn to the needle (you will now have two cast-on ends of yarn at the same end of the needle) and purl back in your second colour. You now have one row of each colour, with the working yarns both hanging at the same end. Pick up your first yarn and, without twisting the two yarns together, join the round and begin knitting. At the end of the round, swap to your second colour. Carry on till you're bored, work a 1x1 rib (still working alternate rounds in each colour), cast off, seam the top and you're holding a baby hat with no colour jogs. Honestly. It's like magic, do try it yourself.

I love learning new techniques :)

For the same reason as on the iPod cosy, the colours still tend to follow each other round the hat - but, for the same reasons as on the garter stitch square, they're also diluted by the cream and don't seem so strong anyway.

So there you go. A few ideas on the taming of wild yarns. I hope it's been helpful, because it's been lots of fun for me, and has brightened up several dull days. You can't knit with yarn like this and not feel happy :)

Now, especially for Tracey, two pictures of the beehive yarn holder. These used to be really common, but they're out of production now and can only be found on eBay and suchlike places. Because they're made of Bakelite, they're quite fragile (note the crack on the base of mine, where I knocked it from a table onto a wooden floor!), so they don't survive as well as some other designs:

It's about 5 inches high; the bigger hole on the top is for yarn, while the other two are for a ribbon handle (I took mine off because it was making an irritating noise against the yarn inside!). It's about four inches diameter at the base, so you can't put huge balls of yarn in it. It's the shape of an old-fashioned straw beehive (weren't they called 'skeps'?), but I don't know whether it was a promotional item for Patons Beehive yarn - there's no printing on it to tell me. There is a helpful needle gauge on the base, though:

Spot the crack, on the left!

The base screws off, you put the ball in, thread the end through the top, and screw the base back on. It's brilliant for stopping yarn rolling around, but you can't always see when you're nearing the end of a ball.

Well, this has been a bit of a marathon. It's taken me most of two days to put this together, so don't expect another post too soon :) Off to have a rest and a nice cup of tea.

Tigger says, "Does that mean I get biscuits?"

The biggest yarnover in the world

2008-04-04T17:07:00.004+01:00

Of course, it had to happen, the minute I announced that I'd got the hang of lace knitting. Hubris - the kind of pride that comes before a fall....

I was swatching in the round, on a circular needle, with my yarn in one of those 1950s Bakelite beehive-shaped yarn holders. Every time I needed to stop, I put the beehive down in the middle of the circle, leaving it in a little moat of knitting. Every time I started again, I would move the beehive out of the centre, pick up the swatch, and carry on.

Except this one time. I can only excuse myself by saying I was talking (you should see me try to walk and chew gum at the same time), but I picked up the swatch first, then moved the beehive, pulled a length of yarn from it and started knitting. The quick-brained among you will realise what I did not (for two more rounds) - that in doing so, I had looped the working yarn down the inside of the swatch, back up the outside and up to the needle.

In other words, without noticing anything wrong with the position of the yarn, I had worked the world's biggest yarnover - not round my needle, but around the entire depth of my swatch.

And then I managed not to notice the fact for two rounds.

When I shut my mouth long enough to actually look at my knitting, it took me a good ten minutes just to figure out what on earth I'd done. And then another ten hiding my red face under the duvet so that it wouldn't distract aircraft overhead.

I tinked back the entire two rounds to make sure I had put it right, and to double-check what I had done wrong. It took a while.

Ahem. I can assure you I now double-check where my yarn is every time I restart, talking or not....

Now, to distract you from my tales of incompetence, a challenge. What is this?

Yes, yes, I know it's a strip of knitting. You know jolly well that's not what I meant. What is it going to be? Answer next time, when I show a variety of ways to tame a wild yarn....

Tigger says, "Leave me alone. The swine have stolen an hour of my nap time..."

This week, I 'ave mostly bin makin'... lace.

2008-03-15T17:26:00.004Z

(Apologies to the Fast Show for mangling the catch phrase!)

I used to think I couldn't knit lace. My friends Mandy and Marilyn make the most beautiful cobweb lace shawls, the kind of thing you can pull through a wedding ring, and I was, and am, completely in awe of their abilities. Mandy gave me a selection of practice balls of cobweb yarn, and I struggled and sweated over them, eventually producing enough mangled and holey knitting to act as net curtains in my terraced house for the Homes and Gardens display.

I have drooled over many shawls, in patterns and on blogs, bewailing my dodgy eyesight and pudgy little fingers. I kept on trying to produce something lovely, only to produce something slightly grimy and of a rather more freeform design than I had intended.

A year or so ago, I had a bit of a revelation. For years I have been making crochet lace, both in thread and in yarn. (Apparently, according to Doris Chan, crochet lace worked in yarn is called 'exploded lace'. I just call it 'being able to see what I'm doing'...) If I could use yarn for crochet lace, then why not for knitting? And of course I could, as squillions of knitters have discovered before me. So, with a ball or two of Debbie Bliss Cathay, and needles that were visible to the naked eye, I set out on Lucy Neatby's 'Cloud Scarf' as a runner for my Welsh dresser. This is a very civilised pattern, as the edging is worked at the same time as the main piece :)

I loved working (slowly) on this, but I could only do it when I was feeling really awake and competent; understandably, therefore, the whole thing is still less than halfway finished, and has been completely frogged several times. After the first two froggings I learned to use lifelines, but then I got the lifeline tangled up in the unpicked yarn, and had to have the resultant mess forcibly pried from my shaking and tear-stained hands.

I have to be quite clear here, and say that this is not Ms Neatby's fault! I was working from her written instructions, but had to count every stitch across the row as I knitted it, because of my foggy brain. Thus I could never look ahead and see the structure of the entire piece in my mind. I struggled on, a row here and a row there, enjoying what I did, but achieving very little.

I really wanted to use some lace on a forthcoming commission, so I dug out the instructions for Feather and Fan (the only lace pattern I knew I could manage) and sat down to swatch. After a few repeats I was terribly bored, and felt like the whole thing just wasn't growing as fast as I'd like. I rooted around in my own notes, and in my stitch dictionaries, looking for lace patterns with only one or two lines to them. I found a few, and tried some of them out.

I separated each repeat with a stitch marker, as I do when working cable patterns: it saves a great deal of sanity if you can catch an error within a group of stitches, rather than getting to the end of a 100-stitch row and finding you're one stitch off....

I was still making heavy weather of following the patterns, so I thought I'd be brave and try using charts. I quite happily follow charts for Fair Isle, cable combos and knit/purl patterns, so why I was so worried by lace charts I don't know. I think it was all those squirly symbols.

Anyway, I set up my cast-on row, positioned my markers, took a deep breath, and... worked a flawless set of 15-stitch repeats right across the row. This had to be a fluke. I moved my chart marker up one row, and worked all the way back. And again. And again...

I was knitting lace :)

And honestly, that's all it's taken for the whole thing to click. I am still making errors, but it's so much easier to see how to pick up dropped stitches when you have a picture in front of you showing which stitch is above which other stitch. I am now working a 15-stitch 8-row repeat lace for the commission, a 25-stitch 28-row repeat in another yarn for a small group within the Knitting and Crochet Guild, and my Cloud Scarf is, excuse the pun, sailing along.

I don't know why it took me so long to take the step of using charts. I know the knitting community divides pretty sharply between chart lovers and written pattern users, but I had already used charts in other areas.

I love being surprised by unexpected abilities :)

And so to cat photos. I've been meaning to show you this one for ages - Vicki took it, to prove not only that I really do have two cats, but that they occasionally deign to share the same space:

Tigger says, "Don't be fooled. I have her trapped under this duvet now."

The creative wossname

2008-02-17T17:00:00.004Z

I had a brilliant afternoon yesterday, simply following links to the websites of different artists (in all kinds of media and at all kinds of levels of competence). It was funny, touching, inspiring, and sometimes just downright weird....

I found a lot of the links on the Craftzine blog, although once you're on an artist's website it's fun to follow the links they recommend, too. Some of the best (for a variety of reasons!) were:

Weird chocolate from Japan on PingMag
A tutorial from Skinny laMinx on her amazing papercuts (click the gallery button, too)
Photos of the winning entries in last year's Washington Tribune Peeps Diorama contest
SockPixie's stashbusting Munchkin Slippers pattern
The slightly unnerving work of Diem Chau (check out her crayon sculptures in 'Past Work', too)
Party dresses made of balloons (yes, you read that right...)
A Flickr set from the woman whose job it is to create kid-friendly craft projects for the official LucasArts Star Wars site. How cool a job is that.....

This is why I love the 'net. I would never have seen any of these by other channels. I find other people's work so inspiring - not in a plagiaristic way, but because the best art (and craft) makes you look at things a different way. And because some of the stuff out there is more bizarre than anything I could ever have dreamed up myself.

Tigger says, "I'm very artistic too, you know. I create poses."

Where did January go?

2008-02-03T16:09:00.000Z

Still, here I am again - eventually!

Did everyone have a good Christmas? Was Santa kind? Richard and I had a splendid, very quiet time. Christmas always begins for me with the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on Radio 3 on Christmas Eve afternoon, although this year I felt there were too many unknown pieces that showed off the choir without really adding to the atmosphere. Everything sounded amazing, though.

We both had lots of small presents (books, gadgets, board games etc), which we prefer to large presents. The whole family is the same. Richard cooked a chicken, which was delicious (he's a very good cook).

Mum was staying with my sister for Christmas, so they visited on Boxing Day, which was like a second Christmas, swapping more presents! I ended up with five books (including Knit One, Haiku Too), four boxes of chocolates, some beautiful stationery, 3 bookmarks, some purple knitting needles and a stuffed bookworm (that is a seriously weird company :) ). Oh, and my kitchen lino, from Mum, my sister and my brother!

Richard excelled himself, with a stainless steel kitchen bin (mine is matt, not polished, though). I've wanted one for ages, but it's not the kind of thing you treat yourself to - well, I don't, anyway! He also got me a wondrous gadget called a Mood Beam. I've long been coveting the eggs Richard has which change colour, but my Mood Beam is even better - it has several modes, including following the beat of music. Mine is called Chipper (scroll down - he's at the bottom of the page).

I've been pretty productive over Christmas, too, producing a jumper for Knit Today with very few hiccups. The only one that really set me back was finishing the neckline, when I decided that I would do it on 3.75mm dpns instead of the 4mm needles I had been using throughout. One nasty, buckled, too-tight neckline later and I realised my error - I had to unpick the whole thing. Serves me right for not doing it the way I know will work!

I'm briefly between commissions now, so I'm trying out the new Purple Pins. I love making my own socks, because I can contour them to fit both my swollen legs and my perennially problematic short, wide feet with high insteps. Mum used to have such a fight on her hands to find me school shoes that fitted me! Even though the socks end up really wide (90sts on 2.5mm needles), they're fairly short, as I can't tolerate anything fitting too high up around my legs. I only work 3 inches, including the ribbing, before I work the heel. This means I can get a pair of socks, plus enough left over for something like an iPod cosy, from 100g of Opal yarn.

I'm using the Rainforest Tiger, and doing what Lucy Neatby suggests with the black stitches. If you have black working yarn and black stitches on your LH needle, then you purl them. The rest of the time, every stitch is knitted. This gives a raised section of black stitches which is very effective.

I used another of Lucy's design elements, which is the garter-stitch 'ribbing' from her Mermaid socks. Essentially you knit a strip of garter stitch (mine is 12 sts wide) until it will wrap around your leg, then join it and pick up your working stitches around one edge. This gives a soft, flexible fabric around the top of the sock, as well as ensuring you cast on the right number of stitches!

I'm also using a star toe which was featured in a recent SlipKnot, the journal of the Knitting and Crochet Guild. It looks more effective in a plain yarn, where you can see the points of the star more clearly, but it's still OK in printed yarn.

I have to say that I am happier with the second sock than with the first - the colour changes seem to be much more close together, whereas the first sock has big blocks of colour which I don't like as much. I'll get the Beamish Boy to photograph them when they're finished, and you can see what I mean.

Tigger is doing well - although, as it turns out, it's probably not asthma after all, as he didn't respond to the steroids. The vet then suggested lungworm treatment, which he said was a liquid we could mix into his food. Hah!

He had to have half a teaspoonful of what looked like PVA glue, and apparently tasted disgusting. We tried disguising it in moist food, yoghurt, beef paste. We tried bundling him up in a towel and squirting it down his throat. Nothing worked.

We ended up smearing it onto his fur so that he had to lick it off, and even then he sometimes managed to wipe it all over the furniture. Not a good time!

He seems perfectly happy and energetic still, with bright eyes and shiny fur, so the next thing the vet's doing is - nothing. He says that there are other treatments we can try if Tig gets worse, but that they all have side effects, and would damage his quality of life. In the mean time, he is still rushing round like an idiot, ambushing everyone who comes in and demanding a cuddle, and watching every mouthful I eat because he is a Starving Kitten and Never Gets Fed....

Tigger says, "I have to make do with the crumbs from their table, you know. And I don't even like raspberry."

And now - maths and knitting :)

2007-12-22T15:03:00.000Z

Well, so much for posting on my third blogiversary (3 December)! I've been knitting my little fingers to the bone to complete a private commission which I actually took on in April. I didn't realise at the time how long it would take me to produce the Simply Knitting plus-size set, and poor Penny (the commissioner) has been very patient.

She has been planning this jumper in her head for years, because she's never seen anything similar in the shops. She wanted a sleeveless polo neck, hip length - with a ten-inch diameter circular hole in the back to show off a tattoo... Well, the jumper itself was no problem (except that she wanted it in Rowan Tapestry with the stripes running vertically, so I had to do it side-to-side), but, oh, that hole!! I was panicking all the time I was working on it, in case it was in the wrong place, or too big, or too small, or not round enough.

Eventually, the Beamish Boy made use of his maths training, and worked out how many stitches I had to lose (or gain) on each line, and produced me a chart for the first quarter of the hole, which I then had to read backwards or upside down for the other three quarters. Success! One perfectly round hole, which I then had to edge with ribbing and find a way to cast off, flat. After three days of experiment, and two reknittings of the entire rib, I cast off using a crochet hook, with 3 chain stitches between each cast-off stitch. Next I made a crochet chain and threaded it through the 3-chain loops, drawing it up to the required size. Even then, it came out rather oval, from the weight of the garment pulling on it.

I've never had such a reception for anything I've made, in any way, ever. I hadn't realised how personal and important this jumper was to her, until I saw her tears of happiness over it. I admit I was pleased with it myself, but she was ecstatic. It's lovely to get such a personal response!

Anyway, because her name is Penny, she requested I call the pattern Pénélopé - not that I'm likely to use it again, of course! - and here she is:

The other big news is that poor Tigger had to go to the V-E-T because his breathing was a bit fast. Well, after telling me he was fine in every other way than his breathing, and taking some phenomenally expensive x-rays, the V-E-T decided he probably has asthma! Apparently it's common in cats. I wonder if they're allergic to themselves...

So, that's two of us puffing and panting and taking steroids, then. I know he loves me, but copying my illnesses is going a bit far :)

Tigger says, "I hope you're not expecting me to stick those pipes up my nose..."

When Physics and Knitting Collide

2007-11-18T13:33:00.000Z

Sometimes it is very easy to make a very big mistake. Even though you do all the right things - you swatch, you measure, you plan and execute perfectly - the God of Knitting Physics still comes along and raps you smartly over the head with a 15mm wooden needle, just to keep you in line.

I had a bit of a disaster. I started the third item from Simply Knitting's plus size collection, which was to be a loose garter stitch slipover to pop on top of a camisole to disguise the old "flying squirrel" arms that so many of us of a Certain Age experience. I really don't know why I design things in garter stitch, because it bores me rigid - bits of it here and there are fine, but an entire garment can get a bit tedious. To be honest, I feel much the same about stocking stitch. Stripes or stitch patterns are much more fun, because you can say to yourself, "Ooh, I'll just do another stripe", whereas you're very unlikely to say, "Ooh, I'll just do another few rows of stocking stitch"!

Anyway, I'd swatched carefully before I began and was quite confident that, even though I was knitting on bigger needles to increase the lacy effect, I was going to get a garment of the right proportions. Halfway through, I decided I was bored with garter stitch and, because I was working from side to side, thought it would be more fun to do the second half of the garment in drop stitch. I swatched again very carefully and found that the stitch count matched perfectly, although obviously the row count was different. This wasn't a problem as I could simply knit the same width of material as I had on the first half. I recalculated the decreases for the sleeve and set off on drop stitch.

I finished the top a lot more quickly (gotta love those wide drop-stitch rows!) and cast off. And then I held up the neck opening. The garter-stitch half of the neckline (a slash neck going from front to back) was about three inches smaller than the drop-stitch side. After a moment's panic, I realised that this was because I had cast off too tightly. I decided to be brave, unpick the cast off, and redo it with a looser one. I consulted the Oracle (aka The Knitting Answer Book by Margaret Radcliffe - thoroughly recommended; I'm sure it doesn't have everything in it, but so far it hasn't let me down) and picked the tubular cast off, which is a sewn cast off. Well, it was a bit fiddly till I got into the rhythm of it, but it worked perfectly and I congratulated myself that at least I had learned a new technique.

I sewed up the sides and found a similar problem on the drop stitch seam - again I had cast off far too tightly, and had to unpick it and do it again. This time I tried the Yarn-Over Cast Off which is absolutely brilliant if you, like me, tend to cast off too firmly. Effectively, it lengthens the stitches on the cast-off edge, and it's really easy to do:

Step 1: Knit the first stitch on the needle.
Step 2: Bring the yarn forward and slip the stitch you've just knitted over that yarn.
Step 3: Knit the next stitch from the left-hand needle and pass the stitch already on the right-hand needle over this new stitch.

And that's it - just repeat steps 2 and 3 to the end of the row. You can experiment with the yarn overs - you may find that you only need to do the yarn over bit every two or three stitches, depending on the tightness of your casting off. Clever, isn't it?

So I'd reworked the cast off on the neck, I'd done the same on the side seams, I'd learned two new techniques while doing so, and I was feeling pretty smug. Finally I did what I should have done a lot earlier in the proceedings - I got Richard to hold it up for me.

And it stretched.

And stretched.

And stretched.

What had been planned as a slipover that would end just below the waist was now six feet long and still going. And this is where the Physics comes in. What had I forgotten? Unlike Isaac Newton, I had forgotten to account for gravity. Stretchy yarn + big needles + gravity = the longest waist-length garment that has ever been seen in the history of knitting.

I didn't quite believe what I was seeing at first. My initial reaction was, "Maybe it will ride up a bit when it's put on..." Well, I gave up on that idea when Richard proved to me that the neck opening had stretched to a point where it would fall from my shoulders to the floor without touching me at any point. There was nothing left but to try to unpick it. Sadly the yarn, although lovely to work with, did not take kindly to being unpicked. Instead, I had to grovel to Debora - the very understanding editor at Simply Knitting - who is sending me some replacement yarn with which I intend to make an entirely different garment...

(If you're wondering why I hadn't held it up before, it's because I have been put back on to bed rest, having overdone it with the whole Walking Round the House bit. It's quite hard to hold up a garment to its full length when you only have little arms.)

Tigger says, "Will you stop waking me up with that camera? I'm enjoying this bed rest stuff...."

Crossroads

2007-10-21T16:04:00.000+01:00

It can't have escaped anyone's notice that I have not had a brilliant year, healthwise.

It has taken me nearly a year to design and produce a set of three plus-size garments for Simply Knitting (although I did use the time when I was waiting for yarn to knock out a baby cardigan for Knit Today, too). My blogging has been sporadic, and I have yet to provide the Beamish Boy with any content for the wonderful website he has designed for me - it's all already written, but I want to rewrite bits of it before it goes live, and I rarely have the mental stamina to face doing it.

I don't want to give up designing - I still have a headful of unused ideas! - but I find myself at a crossroads. On the one hand I have the option of employing outworkers to knit the actual garments, so that I can concentrate on designing, swatching, submitting ideas and so on. This would be OK up to a point, but I find a lot of my designs evolve as I knit them. It would also be difficult to pay people the minimum wage, as I don't even get that for the entire garment :)

I also have several people urging me to submit book outlines to publishers and, while I have plenty of material, I would need a co-author to do the actual work of putting the thing together - writing a book, especially a non-fiction, 'how to' book, with lots of pictures, is unbelievably complicated and very hard work. I learned that back in my old days of freelance copy editing, when one of my clients was a firm producing art books.

So I have quite a clear decision before me - do I expand my output by bringing in other people, or do I pull back a little and do what I can with my own resources?

I didn't begin designing to become a brand. I have huge respect for people like Debbie Bliss, Louisa Harding, Erika Knight - I have no idea how they achieve so much great work when there are only 24 hours in the day, but I suspect they survive on little sleep :) Even if I wanted to emulate them, I don't have the physical or mental stamina to allow me to do so, and that is something I have to keep learning over and over again. You'd think, after ten years of illness, that I'd know this, but it doesn't stop me overdoing things....

I started designing because that's the way my brain works, sick or well. I love seeing an idea evolve as I create it. I didn't want a job. I can't really cope with a job :) So these are the decisions I've come to:

I'm no longer designing things just because they're trendy. Anything I make will be something I love for itself. If I don't have much energy, I want to use it on designs I will enjoy making.
The design process carries on right through the garment, so - no outworkers. I'd be missing out on a vital part of the project.
I'm not going to be simply creating things to sell, one after another. I need socks. And I want to try the Elizabeth Zimmermann Baby Surprise Jacket, just because.
No book projects.
I want to take a little time out soon to do my part of the website, so that the Beamish Boy can finish it and it can start earning me money (by selling my patterns, although there will be free stuff too).
Must blog more!!
NO MOHAIR!!1!!!!! Ahem. Sorry. But no mohair. It makes me wheeze :(

I know it's not the obvious way forward for a designer, but I've always hankered for 'the road less travelled'. Let's hope that, for me, it will prove to make all the difference.

Tigger says, "Do what you like. Just take time to tickle my belly."

What I Did On My Summer Holidays

2007-09-05T18:43:00.000+01:00

It's been an interesting few weeks. Shortly after my last entry, I unexpectedly received the keys to the bungalow for which I'd been lobbying the council since the beginning of June. Exciting though this was, I was less than impressed to be told that I had only 2 weeks to move into it before I started paying rent on both properties. For those of you contemplating a house move, may I just say that it is possible to go from zero to Moving In in 10 days. I know this, because we did it! Lots of lists and a hard-working removals firm that packs as well as moves is all that you need. And a sense of humour. And a handful of takeaway menus. And a devilishly handsome son.

So, we moved in on 25th July, and thanks to the Beamish Boy everything was pretty much unpacked after a week. It's a brilliant house with a big living room, two decent sized bedrooms, a good kitchen, a lovely large bathroom, and laminate flooring throughout. It's wonderfully quiet, in the middle of a figure-of-eight shaped cul-de-sac. We look out onto two big oak trees in the middle of a lawn, and the road, which has very little traffic on it, runs down one side of us. It was well worth all the aggravation to get here, and we both love it.

Of course, being me, I couldn't let things go too smoothly. We'd just got sorted out when I developed cellulitis in both legs. A week after that, while they were still recovering, I had a dodgy prawn curry and ended up flat on my back with food poisoning for a fortnight. This, of course, made my legs flare up again. Then my chest - not wanting to miss out on the action - went haywire and I had to have a course of steroids.

So, ask me how I feel :) Actually, now that I'm eating properly again, and my legs are improving - which means I can walk around better - I'm feeling almost like my old self. My chest feels fine and I've even managed to start knitting again. Yes, gentle reader, I was Too Ill To Knit. It was awful.

In the last few days I have sent a completed baby garment off to Knit Today. They're very pleased with it and, I must admit, so am I. There's something very satisfying about making small garments, and it's not just the quick fix of having finished something. It's to do with nurturing and protecting as well. The magazine chose the most gorgeous colour (I hate wishy-washy pastels on babies, and apparently they can't see them very well), and I got to use some of my extensive collection of decorative buttons. Not sure when that's being published, but watch this space.

I'm still writing up the pattern for the second plus-size garment for Simply Knitting, and I had a bit of a hiccup with the yarn for the third one. Let's just say mohair is not a friend to my chest...

Another good piece of news is that Feed The Children UK have finally managed to produce their pattern booklet, Best Yarn Forward. This is the one for which I designed a boy's sweater in Sirdar Denim Aran. The booklet also includes a selection of patterns by the late Judith Whincup plus a beautiful little girl's dress by Mary-Louise Quick which is worth the cover price on its own. You get 6 patterns, and a number of motifs with which to jazz them up, for £3.50 (plus P&P) from Feed The Children UK. And well done to Kim Tame who was responsible for putting the whole thing together.

The cats, by the way, have settled in wonderfully, although Chloë was quite traumatised and tried to hide in a cupboard when we first got here. They now have a cat flap, which they take turns in staring through as if it were merely a handy cat-height window. Chloë won't use it at all, and Tigger will only use it to come in - preferring instead still to leave through the window. He always bursts through the flap with great excitement, bounding down the hall and proclaiming his return in a loud voice. By the speed at which he comes through, I think he must take a run up. It's certainly easier, now that we're here, to keep an ear on them, because their claws click on the floor as they walk :)

Hopefully it won't be so long before my next entry. To all of you out there who are moving house this year, all I can say is: best of British, and I hope it goes as smoothly as ours did :)

Tigger says, "It's very tiring, all this moving house lark. I have to find all new sleeping places... and break in new Little Old Ladies."

Brought to Book

2007-07-08T22:01:00.000+01:00

I've always been a great one for writing things down. Even before I developed Marshmallow Brain, I had a diary full of lists that had to be ticked off, and strange entries like "Water filter will need changing today". I also had a journal and, separate from that, a notebook for my creative writing. This was all, of course, before I had a decent computer and could store it all on that.

What I haven't computerised (apart from yearly lists of items and garments I have completed, and to whom they've been given) is my series of knitting notebooks. I currently have three, although I considering merging them all into one, in the interests of saving my muscles. I know I would get through notebooks three times as quickly, but at least I'd only have one to drag out every time I wanted to put something in it.

The first one is my knitting journal. At the moment, this is a rather fetching suede-covered notebook, courtesy of eBay. I'm not one to keep ball bands, samples of yarn, or tension squares but I do copy out all the information along with what tension I got, an overview of the whole project, and any problems I met along the way. I also record start and finish dates, and the eventual recipient.

The second one is my design notebook. At the moment, I'm using a Cath Tate spiral-bound A5 affair. The covers are printed with close-up photos of fair isle, and the front cover also has a delightful old-fashioned photo of small child, swathed in many knitting garments, with the caption: "Life would be so much nicer if my mother would only stop knitting", which makes me giggle every time I look at it. This contains sketches of potential designs, schematics, inspirational postcards, and the like.

Finally I have my Useful Bits-and-Bobs notebook, where I jot down stitch patterns of which I like the look, handy little wrinkles that I've worked out myself, and information to which I need frequently to refer, like measurements for each of the sizes I knit. I have a particularly groovy book for this one - a type I have just discovered at Ecotopia - which uses recycled carrier bags for the covers. Some of the pieces are still recognisable (there's a large chunk of a Tesco bag on the front), but I am desperate to find out who provides leopard-print carrier bags. There's just a sliver of one on the back. (They also make book covers from juice cartons, circuit boards, and tyres.) This one has all sorts of peculiar little snippets of information in it, and I thought it was about time I started to share them...

Pompoms, for example, seem to have come back into fashion recently, but I've always been a bit hit-and-miss with my sizes. I discovered that there are actual rules: the outer circumference of the cardboard ring should be a little larger than the desired size. The diameter of the hole should be between a third and a half of the total diameter. The larger the hole, the more tightly packed will be the finished pompom.

Alternatively, of course, you can do what I did the last time I made pompoms and buy one of those nifty plastic pompom makers. They are amazing. You get pompoms in about a minute :)

Oh, and I might occasionally post items from my Commonplace Book, where I keep all my favourite quotations. I have a section at the back called "English As She Is Spoke", which is home to all the bludgeonings of our mother tongue which I've encountered, usually on TV or radio. For example, on this week's 8 Out Of 10 Cats:

Sean Lock: It was a case of mistaken identity.
Trisha Goddard: Why?
Sean Lock: Because he thought I was somebody else!

If I tell you that Richard and I laughed at that until we wept, it'll give you a good idea of how bad a sense of humour we share :)

Tigger says, "I wish they wouldn't laugh so much; it's very disturbing."

Schism

2007-06-24T17:25:00.000+01:00

First of all, I just have to say what an utterly, utterly, fabulously brilliant and spiffing season finale we're having in Doctor Who. A great big meaty three-parter you can really get your teeth into. And what about John Simm, eh? It would be very easy for him to teeter over the edge and turn into a pantomime villain, but he keeps it just this side of parody. I knew he was good from Life on Mars, but this is a whole different performance. And you have to love a villain who can use the word "decimate" correctly...

Sigh.

What I was going to talk about, before I got side-tracked by the end of the world, was the unreasonable dislike some knitters have for crocheters, and vice versa. I have, in the past, had complaints about my knitting patterns, because they use small amounts of crochet. I was quite surprised by this, and even more so when I did some Googling. I found that there is a sizeable number of knitters who seem to regard crochet as simplistic and inferior, and only done by those who can't cope with knitting.

Not only this, but there is also a vocal section of crocheters who can't see the point of knitting, who think it's ugly and unwieldy and completely incapable of producing the beautiful pieces which can come from a crochet hook.

I have been able both to crochet and to knit for almost as long as I can remember. I picked up crochet much more quickly, and found that I could work it considerably faster than I could knit. But even at that age I could see that each had their own strengths and weaknesses, and that - quite often - these complemented each other. A crocheted edging could lift a knitted piece, and could be worked much more easily than a similar edging done with knitting needles. On the other hand, crochet takes up about 33% more yarn than the equivalent knitted item.

Both knitting and crochet have been responsible for some of the most garish and eye-melting fashion faux-pas (do I need to mention the 70s?). On the other hand, we have Shetland shawls knitted so fine that they can be drawn through a wedding ring, and Irish crochet wedding dresses which took a whole convent of nuns to make.

Of course you, gentle reader, would never be so narrow-minded as to say that anyone should stick only to one discipline; I'm sure you've discovered the ease of making up garments with a crochet hook, for example.

If you've tried one but not the other, why not give it a go? Whatever you learn will expand your abilities as a crafter. And that can't be a bad thing, can it?

We're all in it for the yarn; let's not squabble over what shape our sticks are.

Tigger says, "I don't care how you make it, as long as it's comfortable."

Have your cake and eavesdrop too

2007-06-10T22:29:00.000+01:00

First, an apology: I regret bringing myself down to playground level last time by personal name calling. I stand absolutely by my comments and my criticisms, but I feel I weakened my case by slinging mud back. So there.

My name, however, is still not Mavis and I am really relieved to find that Katie is not one of the two finalists. I am sure that people who make sweeping generalisations are not much of an asset to companies relying on up-to-date customer data.

Anyhoo.

I have finished it!! Yes, gentle reader, I have finally finished the plus-size garment for Simply Knitting, which I started in - wait for it - February. My impression of it, apart from the fact that I want to fling it from me and never see it again (because I'm sick of the sight of the damn thing), is that it's probably the best thing I've ever designed. I can't say too much in detail because it's commercially sensitive, but I'll be giving plenty of feedback about the yarns and the design elements once it's printed. At the moment we are looking at printing all of the plus-size garments at the end of the summer. This is the second of three for which I've been commissioned, but the third and final pattern is going to be a much quicker job.

It will also help, of course, that I will be taking all the correct medication while I'm making it up...

The Beamish Boy and I have spent a very happy weekend of celebration, as he turned 22 on the 9th. There has been chocolate cake. There have been presents and cards. There has been Scrabble. Which I lost. There have been "Woo"s, and there have been "Hoo"s.There has been Excitement. There has been Adventure. There have been Really Wild Things.

So please join me in wishing a Jolly Spiffing Birthday to the Beamish Boy, 'cause if anyone deserves one, he does :)

He has also added a dedicated blog to his business website, which is wittily called Cat Blog Sine Theta. There's only one entry at the moment, but he's going to use it to break updates on the business as well as comments on the design process itself.

And finally, more news of Tigger. I overheard two of my neighbours discussing him recently. He was sat looking out of the window, and they were stood just outside it. I don't think they knew I was there, so I couldn't suddenly pop up and join in, but I was delighted to hear what they said:

"She's a bonny little cat, isn't she?"

"Oh yes. Very friendly, too."

"I mean, I'm calling her 'she'; I don't know whether she is. All cats look female, don't they?"

"She sometimes comes and lies on my sofa, you know. People must think I'm mad when they see me in the kitchen talking away to no one, but I'm talking to the cat. She's very good company."

I shan't worry so much, now, when he doesn't fancy his supper; I shall assume he's eaten with one of his friends :)

Tigger says, "You can never have too many friends. Especially if they have food..."

My Name Is Not Mavis

2007-06-03T19:09:00.000+01:00

The Beamish Boy and I are not generally big fans of Reality TV. "Real people" aren't half as entertaining as actors pretending to be real people. One of our exceptions, however, is The Apprentice UK.

Unusually, we haven't picked a favourite this season, and not just because The Badger didn't win last time. It's just that, this year, they all seem equally snide, bitchy, and generally useless as each other. I must say, though, that we would certainly not pick Katie under any circumstances.

Last week's task was to pick items to sell live on a home-shopping TV channel. Katie has a tendency to personalise her target market by giving them a name and personality traits. Thus she came out with this gem:

My imaginary consumer is Mavis. I assume it's a "Mavis" because I assume it's someone who's got a massive bust, who knits a lot, who's got bugger all going on in their lives, and spend their entire time watching the TV just for some sort of companionship. I might be over representing the "saddo" bit, but I think that's what we need to be doing; we need to be talking and selling to Mavis.

I have one thing to say to this over-made-up, dark-rooted, smug suit:

Things can change in the blink of an eye, and your health is much less set in stone than you may think. I came home one night (in my business suit and high heels), ran up the stairs, slid down the wall at the top, and have barely been able to leave my bed since.

You may think I don't have much going on in my life, but I bet it's a damn sight more fulfilling than yours. I don't have to spend my time stabbing other people in the back, slapping on a fake smile, and generally working myself into an ulcer and an early grave. I can be me. I can have real friends. OK, so I've lost a few since I became ill, but I know that the ones that are left are true friends.

Knitting gives me not only mental and physical exercise, but a boost to my self-esteem every time one of my patterns is published. Also it is the means by which I have met some of the most fascinating and genuine people in my life.

So don't you dare look down on people like me. If I had the choice, I still wouldn't be you - with or without a job with Sir Alan Sugar.

Tigger says, "Let me see that manicured hand..."

Hippo Birdy To Me

2007-05-27T21:59:00.000+01:00

Well, you can tell how much I enjoyed my birthday (10th May) by the amount of time it's taken me to recover enough to blog about it!

Last year I instituted the Three Day Birthday (partly because I wanted to open a present on the 9th). This year I went for broke and had a Four Day Birthday. I had most of my cards and presents on the 10th, as expected, but I also had some arrive on the 11th and 12th.

On the 13th, we had tickets to go to the theatre in Durham to see Tony Robinson's one-man show. I was really looking forward to this, although I hadn't been out of the house since October (in fact this was one of the reasons I was looking forward to it). All of the preparations went off without a hitch; taxi turned up on time, carer came in plenty of time to get me dressed, etc. The problem came when I hauled myself out of the door and into my wheelchair, where I promptly had a 15 minute panic attack. [Ed: In the rain.]

Still, once they loaded me onto the taxi, and I got there, I had a really good time. Tony Robinson performed both halves himself, with the aid of a screen behind him for showing photographs and bits of film. It was more or less about his life as an actor, but also explained his lifelong interest in championing the ordinary people in history.

The first part of the second half was a question and answer section, and included him getting some poor unsuspecting chap called Walker up on stage to act out the job his ancestors would have done. This originally involved stomping in a tub full of wool, fullers earth, and urine for many hours a day in order to felt the material. Aren't you grateful for washing machines and old pairs of jeans?

We also got a chance to speak to him at the end. There are benefits to being in a wheelchair, and queue-jumping is one of them :) I have to come in and out through the stage door in order for the taxi to pull up next to the building, so the Stage Manager always comes to find me at the end of the night to let us through the keycode doors. I used this information to persuade the lady who was looking after Tony and his book signees, to let me sneak in ahead of the next person in the queue. He was very sweet, and was delighted to hear that I remember seeing him in 1977 in Chichester Festival Theatre, playing a character called Everypeasant, who was not too dissimilar to Baldrick!

I did really well for presents this year, too. I got:

7 books, including "The Friday Night Knitting Club" and "The Knitting Answer Book".
A gizmo for holding my book open while I'm reading it.
A couple of bookmarks. (Are we sensing a theme here?)
A very pretty silver necklace that I wore on my night out.
A huge gingerbread-scented candle.
Flowers
Chocolate
Belgian chocolate cakes.
And three (count 'em: three) Pulp CDs from Richard because he is wonderful and knows how to read my Amazon wishlist; although he did wrap each CD in paper, then cling-film, then two together in paper then cling-film, then the three together in paper then cling-film, then a padded envelope, but he wouldn't be him if he wasn't daft...

Admittedly it's taken me two weeks to get over it, but it was all very enjoyable, and I think I'll have another one next year...

Tigger says, "It's my birthday soon. Don't forget it's my birthday soon. My Birthday. It's soon."

On The Up

2007-04-29T16:03:00.000+01:00

I've had two pieces of good news since last I blogged. The first is that I have had two designs accepted by Knit Today. Yay! Go me! I'm just waiting for the editor to finalise my contract, and then I'll just be waiting for the yarn to turn up. No idea, yet, when they're going to be published, but watch this space.

The second piece of good news is related to that, in a way. The reason that it's taken so long for me to produce the item I'm working on at the moment for Simply Knitting is that I've felt like my O₂ levels have been off for several months, and that therefore I haven't been able to concentrate properly. I can't tell you how many times I've had to check and recheck the Hard Sums on the pattern, not to mention having to frog and reknit. I've also been unable to read anything with a narrative. Knitting magazines and books have been OK, because they are a collection of short pieces, but if you'd asked me to keep track of a story and its characters...

Richard and I tested the oxygen flow from my concentrating machine, following his initial suggestion that maybe I wasn't getting enough (mind you, that's been my problem for years...), and turned it up a notch. This helped a bit, but I still asked for a visit from one of the hospital's Respiratory Nurses. I was still expecting them to tell me that there was insufficient oxygen in my bloodstream, but I tested at 95%, which is pretty good for me.

We had a long chat about my fuzzy head (which is also part of the ME, of course) and my breathing difficulties, and eventually she suggested upping the dose of my fluid retention tablets, because extra fluid generally makes it harder for my lungs to expand, and big puffy legs don't help mobility, either.

"Um... I kind of stopped taking them."

She was baffled. "Why on earth would you do something like that!?"

If I'd been standing up, I would have shuffled my feet. "Well, I felt like they were irritating my kidneys. And they made me wee a lot."

"Yes, that's the point of them. If they're reducing the fluid, it has to go somewhere. Now, are you going to start taking them again?"

"...mm-hm..."

"And you won't stop taking them?"

"...noo..."

"And I'll phone you next week and see how you've improved."

"'nk oo."

She packed up her stuff and left, and I rooted about in the drawer to find my fluid retention tablets...

Well, suffice it to say that when she phoned the following Monday, I had read a novel-and-a-half and zoomed ahead on my knitting. So much for my self medication; I think I ought to leave it to the doctors in future!

(One of the novels was Ark Baby by Liz Jensen, which is incredibly funny and very cleverly written, all about the theory of evolution and the Missing Link. I recommend it unreservedly.)

So I'm now in the pleasant position of having work coming in and knowing that my brain is up to doing it. And I'm being much more diligent over my medication...

Tigger says, "Nurse? What nurse? Oh, you mean that nice lady that came to make a fuss of me?"

Ta-dah!

2007-04-12T17:16:00.000+01:00

Well, the big news of the month is the launch of the Beamish Boy's official web design business. He's been designing websites for himself and other people as a hobby since he was about 15, and now he's doing it as a professional. He's working on a great retail site for me at the moment. If you would like to see his business website, you'll find it at http://www.catdogsinetheta.co.uk/. Feel free to tell your friends :)

The biggest trauma of the past couple of weeks has been taking Tigger to the V-E-T. He needed a little light pedicure as well as his booster shots. He took the needle in the neck like an absolute trouper, but he complained bitterly about the Vet touching his paws! He has a unique method of protest about car journeys, too. Rather than howling, weeing himself, or trying to get out of the box - which are the methods all my past cats have used - he sits in his box, quietly and regularly uttering a pitiful "mau" (to rhyme with "cow"); somewhat reminiscent of a metronome... if metronomes went "mau"...

Once he came home he behaved as any sensible cat would do, and lay about the place pretending to be at Death's door, while ignoring that heartless human who made him go through the ghastly process in the first place: me. Yes, folks, even though it was Richard who took him to the Vet, it was me he ignored for the next 24 hours...

Oh, and I've had a reply from Rowan, who say they don't have any vacancies for designers at the moment, but that they'll keep my details on file for when they do. In the mean time, I'm sending more submissions off to Vogue Knitting and the Interweave group.

Tigger says, "Vets? We don't need no steenkin' vets!"

This thing is bigger than both of us...

2007-03-15T14:31:00.000Z

How did it get to be so long since my last entry? What with the Beamish Boy going off to see his mates from Uni, and my laptop dying, I was aware that it had been a while - but I really didn't think it had been 5 weeks.

I've been thinking a lot about the role of the designer in knitting patterns recently. There have been a couple of conversations on knitting lists which have sparked this off. In one, I was told that I wasn't a professional designer. After I had explained, very clearly and in words of one syllable, just why I am a professional designer, I came to understand that what she meant by 'professional' was "well known, and with books to your name." Well, I have to accept that I will never be the kind of designer who runs workshops at knitting shows - because I can't travel to them. But I have been thinking about a printed collection of patterns.

Back in the days when I wrote fiction and poetry, I knew exactly how to approach a publisher (synopsis, sample chapter, all double-spaced, and neatly printed on A4) - but I'm not altogether sure of the etiquette to be followed when submitting an idea for a knitting book. Obviously most of it will be the same - but instead of a sample chapter, do I send a sample hat? Anyway, it's something I'm looking into, and I will report back on my progress.

The next conversation was about knitting for designers. Broadly speaking, it seems that fashion designers are likely to provide a sketch of the finished item and expect knitters to work out the actual pattern and knit it up. (Just like the seamstresses at, for example, Chanel - did anyone else see that excellent series on BBC 4 which went behind the scenes at Chanel? It was quite fascinating, but I have to say that Karl Lagerfeld is really weird...)

This seems very unfair to me. I understand that the important part of being a designer is having the ideas in the first place, but surely the best ideas come from understanding the way items are created and put together in the actual materials you are going to use? I don't think it's right that someone who has done so much work on an item isn't given any credit. Similarly, I think it's disgraceful that individual designers and/or knitters are not credited in the individual patterns that yarn companies sell.

I can understand why designers, however good a knitter they may be, use other people to knit their designs up and it's something I may have to start considering for myself. You see, when you are a designer, everybody always asks you where you get your ideas from. Nobody ever asks you how many of the damn things attack you at once. I don't know what it's like for other designers but, as soon as I pick up my needles, my brain is off thinking up all kinds of other useful and inventive ways to use the yarns that are sitting around my room. Even if I were in the best of health, I would never be able to knit up all of my designs, so I'm starting to see an additional appeal in working with magazines like Vogue Knitting and Interweave Knits, where you supply the pattern and it is knitted up for you. I can't see how I will ever put all of my ideas into practice without farming them out to other knitters - especially if I am going to produce a collection in book form.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not giving up knitting altogether; I love knitting up my own designs. In fact, quite often, the designs evolve as I'm creating them. But I think that I have enough work with British knitting magazines and private commissions to keep my needles clicking for a good while yet. It's just that I know, if I want to see more than a quarter of my designs knitted up, that I have to admit that I need other people to help me do so.

Anyway, those are my thoughts at the moment. I haven't even got so far as considering how I will choose my knitters, or how much they will be paid. But you can be sure of one thing: they will be given credit for doing the work!

Tigger says, "You will still have time to cuddle me, Mum, won't you?"

It was a dark and stormy night...

2007-02-08T22:21:00.000Z

Although, to be fair, night is always dark and it isn't especially stormy out there. We have, however, had blizzarding snow all day. Not much of it has actually settled, although the hill above the village is uniformly white. It is odd that it's the South and South East that seem to get all the snow these days, while we in the North get very little. It's a complete turn-around from when I was growing up in the South. Perhaps that's the key: snow avoids me. I ought to hire myself out to places which want to have little snow during the winter.

The first plus-size garment is now with the Editor of Simply Knitting, and she loves it. It took me almost a week to write up the pattern, because I hadn't realised quite how much Christmas had taken out of me. Mental activity is just as draining as physical, and I know this, but somehow it always manages to take me by surprise. That's one of the reasons it's been a while since I blogged; that, and the fact my faithful amanuensis has been on a pointless course [Ed: It's the Gateway to Work course the Job Centre sends you on after you've been signing on for about 6 months. It's a two-week break in job-hunting (during which you still have to fit in job-hunting) to tell you how to hunt for jobs. They tell you how to write a CV, analyse job adverts, and write formal letters - all of which I already know how to do; so it was a complete waste of time for me...]

I've finally had my designs returned from Vogue Knitting and Interweave Knits. Both were accompanied by letters which were full of praise for my work, and asking me to submit more designs, which is a step up from the very first letter I got from VK - "Thanks, but no thanks", in effect - so I'm not too disappointed. Back to the drawing board! [Ed: We have a drawing board?]

And finally, my thought for the day:

I've come to realize that the secret to a happy life is not looking like Barbie or Ken, and suffering through tofu and rice cakes to stay that way.

It's eating chocolate, staying fat, and explaining that you're really a perfect size - but you keep it covered with fat so it doesn't get scratched.

Tigger says, "Diets? We don't need no steenkin' diets!"

Déjà Tricoté

2007-01-16T20:26:00.000Z

Sorry for the gap in postings. Christmas has rather caught up with me. (Thanks to everyone for your comments, which kept me amused - and a special hello to nimblynaff in South Africa!) On the odd occasion lately that I felt like dictating, Richard wasn't here to type. And every time he was available to type, my brain took on the consistency of damp cotton wool, without even the possibility of cress seeds growing in it to give it a bit of life and vigour. (Do kids still do that at school, grow cress seeds on damp cotton wool? I remember doing that quite vividly. And growing broad beans against the side of a jar. Mind you, I remember dissecting a rat and a bull's eye as well, so it shows you how long ago I went to school...)

Anyway, I had a bit of a disaster last week. At least, I said it was a disaster - Richard insisted that, as it was fixable, it was more of a hiccup. "A disaster," he said, "would be your yarn catching fire because you were knitting so fast." Phew, no chance of that, then.

It all happened because I thought that I could remember the pattern. I was supposed to do part of the row in garter stitch, and part of the row in a pattern stitch; it was roughly 80 sts in pattern and 60 sts in garter stitch, but in my cotton wool state this translated on my needles into 60 sts in pattern and 80 sts in garter stitch. And then, to compound the error, I increased one stitch on every row instead of on every other row.

I only noticed something was wrong when I came to cast off, held up the entire thing to look at it, and realised it was a shapeless mess. I nearly wept when I realised that it would all have to be unpicked.

Eight.

Bloody.

Inches.

I am not a one for making New Year's Resolutions, but I think my resolution for this year may be summed up thusly: Never Assume You Can Remember The Pattern, Even When You Have Written It Yourself...

(I did unpick it, and reknit it, and it worked fine the second time. Thank goodness knitting is forgiving!)

Tigger says, "Relax..."

Who Ya Gonna Call?

2006-12-31T19:48:00.000Z

I've received an advance copy of the February issue of Simply Knitting (lovely stitch markers as the free gift!). I'm delighted to see how well my crocheted Stashbuster Serape has been staged and photographed. I was really in two minds, when I sent it off, about whether it should be shorter and wider. It looks most luxurious on the model, however, and I'm glad I left it as it was. It's designed as a project for which you choose your own yarns from stash (obviously). Just in case anyone wants to know what yarns I used for mine, here they are:

Elle Monet (278 – Pisarro)
Texere Recycled Yarn (discontinued)
Red Heart Plush (9536 Lt Purple)
Wendy Precious Moments (197) (discontinued)
Rowan Calmer (484 Lucky)
Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran (502 Pea Green)
King Cole Merino Blend DK (69 Olive)
Cygnet Wool-Rich 4-ply (0268 Olive)

I also supplied an alternative knitted pattern for this, which is something I'm considering doing in future in my more simply constructed items. If a garment is made out of basic shapes, then it should be just as easy to make those shapes by knitting or by crochet. Of course the crochet will take more yarn (about a third as much again seems to be the accepted wisdom), so the crochet versions will drape a little differently; but I like to give people the choice...

Still on the subject of using what you have, instead of buying new, I have to share with you a few lines from a book which my sister found for me on her bookshelves. It's from 1943, and is called New Life For Old Clothes by Gertrude Mason. I imagine it would have been a remarkably popular book during the War – with clothes and yarn both being rationed. This comes at the end of a description of how to create a bath robe from a bathing wrap and an out-of-date swimsuit:

Remove the skirt from the swim suit and cut the lower part of the sleeves from it. Cut the facings for the lapels from the body part of the suit, using the front of the pattern as a guide. The trunks should provide sufficient material for belt and pocket, and a small back collar if required.

I know that bathing costumes used to be more decorous, but it sounds like this one was positively Victorian :)

The other book she brought for me is rather battered. It has lost its cover and the first and last few pages, so I have no idea what it's called or when exactly it was published. Judging by the copious photographs, it looks as if it comes from the 50s. It also contains advice on unravelling sweaters to use the wool for something else. I particularly enjoyed the child's pixie hood, made from a cut-up felted sweater!

I used to love pixie hoods. I looked like a gnome in them, but I still loved them...

"You did want it unravelling, didn't you?"

Comfort and joy

2006-12-22T11:27:00.000Z

First, a newsflash: Santa's toyshop has been shut down, following inspection by Elfin Safety. Boom boom! I thengyow....

I know it's a little late for this year, but may I pass on my top Christmas tip? Don't send cards. Not that I don't like getting cards - I do - but since I've been ill, it's been an even bigger problem to get them all written and distributed than it was when I was well. So, a few years back, I announced that I would no longer be sending them. Instead, I donate the amount I would have spent to the Salvation Army, and it pays for them to supply a hamper and some presents to a family who wouldn't otherwise get them. Plus, of course, it saves resources!

Anyway - Happy Christmas to all my readers, and I hope Santa brings you all the things you asked for. Personally, I know it's unlikely that I will get David Tennant, but a girl can dream...

Tigger says: 'Don't drink and drive, just drink and nap...'

Zap! Kaplow! Blammo!

2006-12-11T19:13:00.000Z

Thanks to everyone who left a comment last time. Getting comments is a bit like getting applause when you're on stage - it reassures you that there really are people out there, and you're not just whistling in the dark. (Good to see another Floyd fan, Steelbreeze!)

I want to give a little plug to a new craft zine, Proud to be Crafty. It's edited and produced by Alexandra Byrne, who blogs as LittleLixie. The current edition is the second; the first was limited to 50 copies and sold out in gratifyingly quick time. The new issue costs £1.50 and is available at http://www.proudtobecrafty.blogspot.com/.

It is an endearing mixture of fun and interesting articles, including a fascinating piece on the online publishing service lulu.com. It also comes with an attractive length of Taos yarn to play with :)

I'm considering working with Richard to produce some video podcasts for the Knitting & Crochet Guild, as I can't go out to groups to run workshops and pass on my hints, tips, and expertise. Would anyone like to suggest a topic or area of knitting or crochet that particularly needs to be covered? Obviously I want to do topics that people are going to find useful, as well as entertaining, so I don't want to go off into areas in which nobody is interested.

I had hoped that I would get a bit of peace and quiet to concentrate on my knitting from last Friday onwards. Friday was the launch date for the new Nintendo games console, the Wii, and Richard has been telling me far more than I ever really needed - or wanted - to know about the damn thing for months. He'd preordered one at a shop in Durham, so he was able to go down there at 11:30pm on Thursday for their midnight launch. Of course, once he brought it back, he had to set it up to make sure it was working.

I think he got to sleep at about 4 o'clock...

Now, to be fair, I must admit that it is jolly good fun, although rather strenuous for those of us with puny muscles because its big selling point is its motion sensitive controller, which allows you to swing it to hit the tennis ball, roll the bowling ball, and box your virtual opponent. The one thing it can't do, however, is make Richard shut up about it. Instead of telling me how amazing it was going to be, he's now telling me how amazing it is.

Still, it could be worse, he could have painted his bedroom black and been listening to death metal...

Tigger says, "Nobody ever asks me if I want to play on the Wii..."

Happy Second Blogiversary!

2006-12-04T18:45:00.000Z

Yes, gentle reader, it is two years to the day since the Doodles blog burst on to the stage. Well, it was more a tiptoe on in the back row of the chorus, but you know what I mean.

I missed last year's Blogiversary, because I was convinced, at the back of my mind, that I had started it quite a way into 2005 and by the time I realised, I'd already missed it...

So, you have my permission to eat twice as much cake, get twice as drunk, and sleep with twice as many ugly people as you would normally do when celebrating. Balloons, streamers, party hats, jelly and ice cream, pass the parcel, and being sick into your goody bag are all recommended.

I know that I have readers all over the place. I think it would make a great celebration if every reader (yes, this means you) left a comment, no matter how small. I'd love to hear from you all!

Tigger says, "Ooh! Did someone mention cake?"

The rumours of my demise have been greatly exaggerated...

2006-11-26T22:53:00.000Z

I suppose the main reason is that I have Been Out. Three times in about two months, actually, and all to Durham Gala Theatre. In a vain attempt to Get A Life, I foolishly booked tickets for three different shows in October and November and, although I enjoyed all of them greatly, it has left me absolutely flat. Still, if you get the chance to see Marcus Brigstocke, Jeremy Hardy, or The Play What I Wrote then do go and see them because they are all - in their own ways - extremely funny.

I have done one important thing in between periods of recovery, and that was send off my swatches. In the end I sent three to Rowan, three to Interweave Knits, and two to Vogue Knitting. I've already had an acknowledgement card from Interweave Knits to say that the parcel got there safely, so Watch This Space.

We've also solved The Mystery of the Smelly Cat: every so often, Tigger has come in smelling pleasantly - but distinctly - of non-cat smells, like the incense I mentioned in the last post. Apparently he has taken to visiting a neighbour of ours, who has just lost her little dog. My immediate reaction was to go along and apologise to her, but the Warden for our block assures me that she's very happy to see Tigger when he visits, and that he's helping her get over the loss of Lady. Obviously it is from spending time in her house that he picked up the scents over which we then puzzled...

"I won't be long. It's baking day today, so I'll be back in a minute - smelling of cinnamon..."

A sobering thought

2006-11-05T23:57:00.000Z

Before I get to the main thing I want to blog about this week, can I just say: thank goodness Bonfire Night is over! As the Beamish Boy said last year, "Some people go to firework displays; some people organise firework displays; and some people have firework displays thrust upon them..." The village has not had an official display this year, but we have had all the local youth trying to outdo each other with the number, size, and loudness of their bangers. The past two nights have been like living in a war zone :(

(Note for non-UK readers: on 5th November every year, we commemorate a plot to blow up Parliament. Some people let off fireworks because they are pleased that the plot was foiled; others do so in gratitude for the plot being hatched at all...)

Anyway, I was given a large bag of crochet thread this week by a friend who had received it from a recently bereaved family. She passed it on to me because she knew that I am a member of the Knitting & Crochet Guild and hoped that I would be able to find a good home for it. Before I gave it away, I naturally had a good rummage through. It was really quite sad; the threads were all tangled together, and had obviously just been dumped into the bag from a drawer or work box.

As I sifted through, I found a small piece of tatted edging. As I pulled it out, I found another one tangled with the end of it; then another, and another. By the time I reached the bottom of the bag, I had unearthed several pieces of quite elaborate edgings, some small individual motifs, three complete – or nearly complete – doilies, and three tatting shuttles:

Then something stuck in my finger. I thought it was a needle until I pulled it out and realised it was a tatting hook – the tiny hook used to draw thread through a picot on a tatted motif to attach one piece to another. We've put a penny coin in the photo to give you an idea of scale:

There's a mixture of crocheted and tatted stuff, but it all has three things in common: it all needs a gentle, but thorough, wash; it needs bits finishing off and threads sewing in; and it was somebody's pride and joy, which was never intended to be dumped unceremoniously into a bag and given to a complete stranger.

The last one made me think. What's going to happen to all of my stash when - although not for a good many years yet, I hope - I cast off my last row and head for the Big Stitch 'n' Bitch in the Sky? It's not something that any of us likes to think about, but even a small stash can be a great gift to another knitter or crocheter.

I have a friend who inherited a stash from the relative of a friend. It has taken her two years to knit her way through it, and everything she has made from it has benefited a charity. When she has knitted up the last ball, she intends to type up the list of items she has made and present it to the family. I'm perfectly sure that they will be amazed at what that small stash has achieved.

On an even gloomier note: is your stash insured? Even a moderately sized stash of yarn, needles, and books could be worth a considerable amount of money, if it all needed to be replaced after a fire, flood, or unexpected plague of moths. I'm not too sure that you can insure your stuff against plague of moths, but it's a niche market that I'm sure insurers should be looking into :)

So, in short, get your stash into your Will and onto your contents insurance; you don't want it ending up jumbled together in a bag in a stranger's home.

I'll do my best to restore and complete all these lovely pieces, and I'll post photos to show you what they look like when I've finished.

On a lighter note, Tigger presented me with a bit of a puzzle today. He came in smelling unmistakably of incense. The only solution I can think of was that he had gone to the Catholic church across the road, misread the sign as "Cat-holic" and joined the congregation for mass. After all, he can be a very devout cat:

It's In The Genes

2006-10-24T16:48:00.000+01:00

Those of you who read My Family and Other Knitters - pt 1 will know that I come from a very creative bunch. Since my sister has been studying the family tree, we have discovered another little sprig of needlecrafting ability.

As all of my maternal grandfather's family were seafarers, I always imagined that their wives and sisters spent their time faithfully knitting ganseys. My maternal grandmother's family, however, tended towards brickmaking, and it was with great please that I discovered my great-great-great-aunt Rosanna, born in 1838, who appears on the 1851 Census as a lacemaker. She would only have been 13, and was already earning money, which seems strange to us these days, but was the norm back then. However, she is the only one in the family, so I would love to know where she learnt her skills and what kind of lace she made. She lived near Salisbury in Wiltshire, so she was nowhere near the great lacemaking areas like Honiton or Notingham.

The present is also quite interesting this week. Poor little Tigger has had a trip to the V-E-T because he has a cold. He's determined to punish us for this; both Richard for taking him, and me for letting him. It has to be said, that he is punishing me far more!

I've been in contact with Deborah at Simply Knitting, and I am please to say that my plus size patterns are now underway. The next thing I am having published is in issue 23, not a plus size pattern in the strictest sense although scarves do tent to be one-size-fits-all. Also, Simply Knitting now has a blog, which is well worth a read.

Lastly, I am very proud to announce that I have finished all the sketches for my samples. Not all to my satisfaction, but the best that my limited artistic ability can produce. Watch this space...

Tigger says, "Try getting me in that carrying box again, and it will be the worse for you..."

I Aten't Dead

2006-10-15T23:17:00.000+01:00

Sorry for my non-appearance last Sunday. It's been a bit of a time, what with my tooth, and going out gallivanting, and the Beamish Boy upgrading my computer and introducing it to Linux. It wasn't love at first sight...

However, now that the BIOS has been upgraded, everything seems to be working fine, and I am no longer under the oppressive thumb of Bill Gates :)

I've spent part of the past week wrestling with my mother's Christmas present. She requested a big lacy knitted circle, with slits left in it for her arms to go through, so that it would just cover her shoulders nicely if she had to go into hospital. Not that she's planning to, you understand, but she likes to be prepared. I faffed about with a number of different knitting and crochet patterns, none of which really fitted the bill. In the end, I dug out one of my favourite crochet doily patterns, and worked it in 4-ply yarn with a 4mm hook. This gave me a good base on which to build, probably by adding a few plain rounds at the end and working the slits into them.

It was at this point that I phoned my mother and told her what a pretty bed jacket she was going to get.

"Oh, I didn't want anything as complicated as that," she said. "I was thinking of just a length of knitting joined up at the ends to make cuffs. I didn't want you to go to any bother."

I told her firmly that she was having a fancy bed jacket and liking it, and then went straight back to my crochet and started working out how to add cuffs...

In the end what I did was simply to work in half-rounds, gradually decreasing as I went, to turn the circular doily into an oval shape. When it was wide enough, I put the edges together and started working round, and round, and round to make sleeves. Of course I would have done this a lot more quickly had I remembered that the doily was composed of 16 motifs. The first time I started on the half-rounds, I counted up and came to 15, so I worked the whole of the first side and sleeve from a beginning of 7-and-a-half motifs. It was only when I'd nearly finished the second side, worked over 8-and-a-half motifs, and held up that sleeve against the first one, that I noticed the discrepancy in width. Luckily crochet is much easier to unpick and work up again than knitting...

Well, it's finished now, and I can get back to my plus size patterns.

And I promise that this week, I really will do the sketches to go with the swatches I made weeks ago, and get them sent off...

Tigger doesn't care what I do, as long as I don't move :)

Extracting Information

2006-10-02T21:18:00.000+01:00

My teeth and I have had rather a week of it, which is why I am blogging a day late - the Beamish Boy wasn't here yesterday and, in my codeine-befuddled state, I couldn't remember how to switch on the laptop...

Whether it was the stress of going out, or the result of gritting my broken teeth as I concentrated on navigating, I don't know. All I know is that I developed something nasty under my teeth, which has taken a week of antibiotics to kill off, and a large amount of codeine to subdue.

Anyway, once I get the All Clear, I can force myself to visit a dentist. Yes, I have found one - not only an NHS dentist who is still taking patients, but a wheelchair-accessible one too.

They weren't easy to find, even with the help of one of those Patient Helplines that we're always being told to ring. I explained that I needed a wheelchair-accessible NHS dentist whose books were still open.

  "Oh, yes!" the lady said, brightly. "We would recommend Tiggywinkle's Tooth Emporium¹ on Steep Street."
  "Is that the one halfway up a steep cobbled hill, with no car park?"
  "That's the one!" she replied, cheerfully.
  "OK," I said carefully, "but it's not really wheelchair-accessible, then, is it?"
  "Ah," she said, ruffling a few papers. "Then what about Dingly Dell Divine Dentists?"
  "Three stories up, and no lift," I reminded her.
This had her stumped. "We-ell..." She ruffled a little more. "The Pixie Palace for Pearly Teeth?"
  "It's a converted terrace house," I pointed out. "There's not exactly a lot of room inside; remember, I need it to be wheelchair-accessible."
She sighed a deep sigh. "Well, I can think of one place," she said, "but it's outside of the town."
  "Is it an NHS practice?"
  "Yes."
  "Is it still taking new patients?"
  "Yes."
  "And is it wheelchair-accessible?"
  "It's a hospital," she muttered. "Own car park, all on one level, automatic doors. But I don't know whether it will suit you..."
  "Why on earth wouldn't it suit me?"
  "Because you said Durham City, and this one's three miles outside..."

I am delighted to report that I didn’t call her a Rude Name, but thanked her politely, took the hospital's phone number, and hung up...

So, another little adventure looms. I don't know how soon they'll be able to fit me in, but I'm hoping it will be in the next couple of weeks. Yes, gentle reader, my life is indeed full of Excitement and Adventure and Really Wild Things :)

1. Names have been changed to protect the innocent Durham dentists who practice in listed buildings and therefore can't install lifts...

PS. Tigger says I should do what he does, and sharpen my teeth on Chloe...

Photos!

2006-09-24T17:16:00.000+01:00

The photos of the display have now been uploaded to Flickr and can be found here.

Bleuuugggghhhhh...

2006-09-24T13:41:00.000+01:00

I made it out to the Knitting & Crochet Guild exhibition in Sunderland Art Gallery yesterday, so today I feel like a small piece of chewed rag.

I also have toothache... Still haven't found a wheelchair-accessible dentist in the area!

Richard took loads of photos, so we'll be posting them soon. In the mean time, here is a picture of Tigger with his new ornamental friend:

PS. The problem with leaving comments has apparently been sorted out now, so you shouldn't have any more problems. Why not test it out today :)

Odds 'n' sods

2006-09-17T23:19:00.000+01:00

It's been a quiet week here in Lake Wobegon Esh Winning, my home town. Oops, been listening to a little too much Garrison Keillor...

Apart from Tigger bringing in another two pieces of meat, and a child's fireman's hat turning up on my wheelie bin, nothing much has happened. I did get my new Rowan magazine, which has some lovely items in it and blissfully plain photographs. In other words, in this issue you can actually identify what the knitted item is :) I'm still not quite sure about the ball gown, though...

Talking of new issues of magazines, my Simply Knitting also arrived this week. The jumper featured on the cover is a wildly vibrant orange bobbly cabley thing, which would lift your spirits every time you wore it, were it not for the rather unfortunately placed bobbles on the chest!

Speaking of Simply Knitting, I had a good chat on the phone with Debora Bradley this week about my plus size patterns. She absolutely loves the sketches I've sent her, so it's just a matter of our deciding on yarns and colours. Watch this space...

Finally, I know a few people have had trouble leaving comments since I switched to Blogger Beta. I've found this to be one of the main drawbacks (it also means that I can't leave a comment on a blog which isn’t using Blogger Beta), although I suppose that these snags will disappear once the new version has reached everyone. In the meantime, you can always leave a comment as "Other", entering your name and blog URL manually. Bit of a pain, I know, but I hope it won't be long before everyone can switch to Beta.

Tigger says, "Don't disturb me, I'm waiting to see what she chucks out next..."

And the runner up is....

2006-09-10T23:16:00.000+01:00

...me! Like I expected (having had a quick vote for the others in my category to check on their totals), I came second in my section of the blog awards. I am so chuffed to have been nominated that I could have come last and not cared :)

This entry will probably be shorter than usual, as I am missing my faithful amanuensis. For the last few weeks I have been dictating and the Beamish Boy has been typing, like Eric Thingummy for Delius. Except I don't write music... Anyway, this week I'm flying solo!

I've almost finished my swatches, and I'll soon be onto the sketches. I love doing those, as I've only discovered in the last few years that I can make marks on paper which can be recognised as the thing I intended them to be! Until I was 12, I attended a school where art lessons were all about free expression, which was great; unfortunately I had a teacher who constantly put my work down and told me I couldn't draw. Then I went off to my convent high school, where we had lessons with a rather eccentric working artist - great at her own work, but didn't teach us much, and used to tell us all we couldn't draw. So, when I left school, I was pretty much convinced that I was a dud at art.... It was only when I wanted to keep a note of my design ideas that I tried sketching figures, and found I could produce rather stylised models which were ideal for hanging my pieces on!

The yarns have all been very pleasing to work with, but I am the most impressed with Inca Cloud by Artesano Alpaca. I've been wanting to use this for a while, as it is a Fair Trade yarn (something in which I believe very strongly), and I finally found the correct project for it. I swear, the stuff is like knitting with butter - there's just no effort needed to make the stitches and move them along.

I love alpacas, with their funny little teddy-bear faces. I wonder if I might be allowed to keep one on the lawn in front of the bungalows here? It would be so much more pleasant than putting up with the council's earsplitting, stinking petrol mowers, and would be lovely to look at:

(Thanks to the Beamish Boy for the photoshopping!)

Swatch It!

2006-09-04T00:33:00.000+01:00

Firstly, two snippets of news: the voting for Knitting Fiend's blog awards has now closed, and the results will be announced on the 6th. I am expecting to come second. Also, I have now switched to Blogger Beta, which probably won't make any difference to your reading enjoyment, except that the archives are now easier to get at.

It's been a bit of a rough week, because I foolishly enjoyed myself by having three lots of visitors last week. It was well worth it to see two of them, but I could have done without the Methodist minister turning up in the middle of my Friday afternoon nap, plonking himself down in the chair, and proceeding to tell me how awful his job is for the next half hour. I must have one of those faces...

Anyway, all this excitement meant that I wasn't really in a fit shape to work on anything larger than a swatch this week. So, I've spent the week producing samples to go with the latest round of sketches. I'd already sent three sketches of possible plus size items to Simply Knitting - they didn't need samples because I've worked with SK before. I'm also now submitting a dressy top and a sweater to Interweave Knits; a shrug and a man's sweater to Vogue Knitting; and a baby cardigan, a sweater, and a jacket to Knit Today. If you have fingers, prepare to cross them now :)

The beauty of swatching, of course, is instant gratification. You get to work on a small scale, not some huge and heavy piece of knitting, and after a few hours, you have a finished thing of beauty which you can admire. It's also brilliant for trying out new stitch patterns, which is also something I've been doing this week. Even with my befuddled brain, if I use enough row counters, stitch markers, and little bits of paper I can follow new patterns with only a minimum of frogging...

Their other benefit, when produced as a sample for editors, is that I can take my tension from them and start writing up the pattern, rather than selling the idea and then having to make a tension square when I'm itching to start the garment itself.

Tigger says, "See this claw? If you stop me sleeping on your yarn one more time, it's going right in the middle of that nice lacy pattern..."

Error in 'Summer Dreams'

2006-08-27T13:43:00.000+01:00

Many thanks to Libby, who posted this comment:

I'm literally in the middle of knitting your top (even though I think I will need to add straps when it's finished!) but I've got slightly confused starting the decreases. I think it looks like a typo but it could be me being dim.

On the 3rd row of decreasing it says slip stitch, then pass the slip stitch over but I haven't done anything to pass it over. Should it be a repeat of the instruction at the end of the 1st row where you slipped the stitch, then ssk then pass the slipped stitch over that?

Libby, you're not dim at all - it's an error! It's correct in the file I submitted, but it's slipped into the printing. I didn't even notice it myself .... (slaps hand)

As you say, you should SL1, SSK, PSSO as for Row 1.

Can I just say a little something about comments? I love replying to comments, but if you don't have a blogger account, the reply address shows up in my email as 'no-reply@blogger' and I can't mail you. Please, please, when you leave a comment, spell your e-mail addy out - like snoopy at dogkennel dot com, or harry potter at hogwarts dot ac dot uk ;)

Oh, and keep voting - the deadline is Wednesday....

Happy knitting :)

Fat Birds Knit Bigger

2006-08-20T19:37:00.000+01:00

Well, that wasn't quite what she said, but if I tell you that it was said by a bewildered participant in the ridiculous Gillian McKeith's You Are What You Eat - during a discussion on digestive processes and lavatorial habits - I'm sure you can guess which rhyming word I've replaced...

Thank you to all the people who have voted for me (and will hopefully continue to do so) in "The Addicts Choice Knitting Blog Awards". Don't forget to keep voting for me until August 30th.

Can I also recommend voting for Odd Ball Knitting and Knit the Knits in the Minor Categories.

Also, Richard has excavated the second half of my bookshelf, which means that a whole load of other stuff is up for grabs on the Prunings page. Items are going pretty quickly, so go over there now while you think of it :) I've learnt my lesson from last week's postage costs; things weigh a lot more than I imagined! Standard postage is now £1 per item to a maximum of £5 per order for UK buyers.

Anyway, on to the knitting content! I had a chat with Debora Bradley at Simply Knitting this week about the feasibility of my contributing some plus-size patterns. I'd been a bit wary of suggesting this before, as I know that models' fees are a consideration in the budget for the issue, and I wasn't sure whether the budget would stretch to an extra model just for one pattern.

However, she's very positive about the idea, and has asked for some sketches. I have plenty of ideas for items, and lots of practical information from my own experience and from my design books, but I want to canvas opinion before I send anything in.

So - do you regularly knit yourself patterns with a bust size of 42" or larger? Do you have strong views on the sort of patterns you would like to see in sizes up to a 60" bust? If you do, then please leave a comment or email me. I'd like to be able to send in patterns which are likely to be popular with the knitters who will make them.

All this excitement is too much for Tigger...

Vote for me!

2006-08-17T20:13:00.000+01:00

Nominations closed a couple of days ago on the "The Addicts Choice Knitting Blog Awards". There are four blogs in my section, so I am shamelessly touting for votes.

Click here to go to the voting page, and feel free to vote for me every day until August 30th.

The awards are announced on September 1st.

Go Doodles!

Ta-dah!

2006-08-17T00:31:00.000+01:00

I've just received this exciting information from Mary Anne:

Heather,

did you know your blog has been nominated at this site?
Scroll down to Best Pet & knitting Blog
http://www.thedietdiary.com/blog/lucia/1533

And I went, and there I am! How exciting is that!!

I mean, in other categories are people like the Yarn Harlot......

squeak

If anyone fancies voting for me, I won't object :)

The Space Race

2006-08-13T18:39:00.000+01:00

In my ongoing search for more storage space in my one-bedroom bungalow, I have decided to rehome a tottering pile of knitting magazines and books.

Like most of the other knitters I know I have more knitting books than I could possibly ever use and, although I enjoy looking through them, I have very rarely made anything from them. Therefore the majority of what I'm offering is virtually in a new condition. The Beamish Boy has very kindly created a special little sales page for me, and he will be fielding the emails that result from it.

Prices range from 50p to £3 with a standard charge per order of £1 Postage & Packing, unless you want Special Delivery or you live outside the UK. Therefore, the more you buy, the cheaper postage and packing becomes. Feel free to go wild...

The page is http://richardwinskill.co.uk/knitting

There is a requirement to enter a username and password, just to fox the SpamBots, but it will be the same for everyone: beamish for username, and boy for password (there's a reminder of this on the page itself).

Orders are on a first-come first-served basis - please don't put your requests here as a comment or in an email to me because that will just confuse the whole system.

Secondly I have been contacted by several readers concerned about Chloe; they worry that she may be feeling left out because Tigger is so photogenic, and poses so well for the camera. Truth to tell, Chloe hates the camera and runs away from it at every occasion, leaving Richard with a lovely collection of shots of her backend rapidly disappearing out of the frame. However, after days of patient stalking, Richard managed to get this fine shot: