Photos!

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

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!

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

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

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

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.

(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

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?

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 :)

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..."