Bleuuugggghhhhh...

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

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....

...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!

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'

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

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!

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!

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

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:

The fearless hunter

Tigger likes to persuade us that he is still a fearless hunter at the advanced age of 9. OK, so 9 isn’t very old for a cat - barely 45 in human years - but this summer, thank goodness, he seems to be losing the knack of trapping small, live things, and bringing them back to show me. As my longer-term readers may remember, he and I had an intense discussion about the bringing in of livestock after this incident.

In order to maintain his reputation, he has discovered a new source of presents for me. Let me explain: I live in a terrace of bungalows, originally built as a war memorial. The entire block is E-shaped with the central arm of the E being the communal hall and visitors’ car park. I live at one end of the E and Tigger’s hunting grounds extend over the whole site right down to the bottom arm of the E. Because I rarely go out I don’t know many of my neighbours - nor their strange habits, as you will see.

A few weeks ago, Tigger came charging in, making his giveaway preeping noise, with something unusually large in his mouth. I drew in breath to scream at him just as I realised what he had “caught”; it was a piece of ham.

I wrestled it away from him (those extending grabber sticks are really useful) and dumped it in the bin. He promptly went out and brought in a second, larger piece. Just as I was playing tug-o-war with him, my carer arrived. She got the ham off him, and was as bemused as I was about where he could possibly have found it.

The next few days were quite uneventful. Then he barrelled in again with a large, misshapen yellow thing which turned out to be the very tail end of a piece of battered cod. This one had me really baffled; it wasn’t as though he could be mugging people for their sandwiches this time.

Equally unsettling (not to mention smelly) was the following day’s offering: half a kipper. I was really starting to worry now...

The pièce de resistance, and the final explanation, arrived together this week. This time he appeared through the window with the remnants of a rather thick and overdone burger. This time I was sure I had him; he had obviously found somebody having a barbeque and had done his Oscar-winning poor-little-me-nobody-feeds-me-I-am-a-starving-little-kitten routine with the huge eyes of Puss in Boots from Shrek 2.

The truth turned out to be much weirder than a mid-week barbeque in a complex inhabited mainly by tough old ladies who don’t hold with soft, modern ways and wouldn’t go near a barbeque if their lives depended on it. Jacky-the-carer brought the final missing piece of the puzzle.

Apparently we have a new neighbour at the other end of the E. While perfectly pleasant, she is sometimes deserted by her common sense and does things which are rather... bizarre. She really enjoys feeding the birds, but occasionally forgets that all of our visitors are of the breadcrumbs and birdseed persuasion rather than carnivorous varieties which she seems to want to attract with ham, kippers, and burgers.

Although strangely enough, I did see a pair of gulls this week. Perhaps the word is out...

(If you look carefully, you can seem me reflected in his pupil; this is another of Richard's super photographs - please feel free to visit his website, richardwinskill.co.uk, where you can see more photos and even send Tigger an email!)