Ordre et beauté

Absolutely not a description of my life today; which went something like

• wake up looking like something from Shrek due to ludicrously swollen eyelid - remnant of something-or-other incurred during the folk festival which has decided to make its presence felt again; listen to splashing rain, decide to get bus rather than cycle-train-cycle; miss bus, which arrives early; go home and potter about for hour and a quarter until the bike ban no longer applies; cycle-train-cycle; arrive wet at work and discover first meeting started 35 minutes earlier; a new low for professionalism there, then...
• at lunchtime, go into town on employer-provided bus (no complaints there, certainly), pay in cheque, buy Optrex, attempt to get new watch strap in market (nope; watch/phone vendor replaced by T-shirt stall), attempt to find out why mobile no longer working (nope; Vodafone shop currently inhabited by workmen having lunch), buy copy of Knit Today (first issue*), go to usual uninspiring-but-quick pub for lunch, wait half an hour while reading Knit Today*, get refund for forgotten order, buy sandwich, go back to work
• go home via station, which has two broken-down trains clogging platforms, a fatality and broken points down the track, every train on the board cancelled at one stage and an "emergency service" for local stations provided, onto which the damp and huddled masses stream; but then the inevitable tacit commuter-leperdom-for-cyclists treatment prevails while I attempt to extricate my bicycle up the line... the scene at the home station, when the two people guarding the doors stand with their backs pressed against the 'open door' buttons staring into the middle distance, is particularly fine... you'd think they've been rehearsing... Tom Stoppard would have been proud.

*am not going to comment on Knit Today in the light of the rest of this; maybe I was just in a bad mood and it wasn't that bad. I'll have another look at it tomorrow.

So. Something much nicer. Last Saturday.

Jan and I set off, fired with Cultural Zeal, to go to the Tiffany at Somerset House. We started off at the British Library. The café at the BL has a lot to recommend it, if you're stuck in the Kings Cross/St Pancras area for any length of time. You don't need a BL card to get into it (or the bookshop), the sandwiches are good, it's quiet and civilised, and you get to stare at books from the Kings Library while you're at it. You can give, and open, presents in relative privacy and coo over them for a reasonable amount of time. And you can knit (Jan demonstrates)

and finish and blog socks.

Those are books from the Kings Library in the background, but Jan's photo is much better.

Anyway, les Baudelaire - basta! - they're finished, they're really lovely, I'd do them again no problem, they're easier than they look, and I wore them for the rest of the day (it was, frankly, not very warm on Saturday, and they sort of went with the rest of what I'd hesitate to classify as an ensemble)...

Obviously all that kulcheral proximity had worn us down; a simultaneous decision was made to ditch the plan and go to Loop because we'd not been there for a bit... I picked up the latest IK, a pair of purple 3.25mm Swallows to replace the one I snapped last year, an Addi for St Brigid and a skein of undyed Opal sock yarn because I belately realised I'd dyed up the one I offered as a prize in the Hanging Garden KAL. Phew. But got out of there without further temptation.

So that's the beauté part of this post; apart from this last one: EJ has already blogged the mouse; but here he is in his new habitat, surprisingly unfazed by surrounding cats... Bless. And as ever when I get something handmade, I end up picking him up and and just looking at him every so often... The urge to say 'Look, my friend made this for me!!!' on the bus on the way home from Ely was very strong, but I quelled it on the grounds that People Just Don't Understand.

Now. Ordre.

I'm trying. Here's The Stash. It fits into 12 large storage boxes (at the moment; I've rounded most of it up from around the house) and I'm now trying to bung it onto a spreadsheet... Most of it is odds and ends; I need to learn to crochet ripple stitches...

Mon semblable - mon frère!

The first Baudelaire is finished, and its brother is well on the way - I have four or five repeats of the pattern to go. The leg looks small in this photo, but it's pretty stretchy... the sewn cast off recommended works extremely well for this pattern, although Elizabeth Zimmerman, who probably invented it, doesn't originally recommend it for ribbing... I like this toe-up sock business; somehow it seems to go faster!

I also started Ragna from Elsebeth Lavold's Viking Knits - I'm adapting the original sweater to be a zipped jacket and this is one front. It's a 16-row pattern so should be easy to memorise. The colour is just about there, but taking this picture using flash washed all the texture out... it's a Wendy mostly-acrylic-with-wool Aran in a grey/green/purple mix, and is destined to be The Thing I Leave at Work for Days When the Air-Conditioning Is Fierce...

This is a skein of Opal previously-undyed sock yarn, dyed with the leftovers of another experiment at the weekend

and here are two balls of Velvet Touch from the bargain bin at the LYS (and Amelia, who wouldn't get off the table); this stuff acid-dyes beautifully (100% nylon) so the somewhat icky colours don't bother me. It's soaking in vinegary water at the moment waiting for me to go and colour it...

More Baudelairing and some Tapestry

Got to the heel part of Baudelaire on Tuesday/Wednesday - this pattern is more-than-slightly addictive and I really like the heel construction - and then came a total cropper when I went for the 'leg with larger instep' option. The pattern says to knit into the back/front loops of the stitches without dropping them, and then into the front/back loops of the stitches, and create a cable. I just couldn't manage it. I don't know whether this is the relative strengths of bamboo and metal needles (I nipped the tips off a new bamboo needle trying) or my own ineptitude, or what. So I did something different...

I did a standard increase (k1 into the front, then 1 into the back) of the 4 stitches ...

... then I separated the fronts from the backs on 2 needles ...


... and then I twisted them and put them onto one needle again for the cable...


and reversed the order of the knitting into the front and back for the cable at the other side, so the front part of the twist has the knit-into-the-front, and the knit-into-the-back horizontal bars are hidden in the twist each time

It's not as much of a twist as I got on the one attempt on one side which did succeed according to the pattern, but better than, say, flinging the whole thing across the office/train, as on all other attempts... So I'm plugging on...

Also went into Robert Sayle/John Lewis today to see the new Rowan yarns. Tapestry is gorgeous - and feels like something a lot more expensive - I fell, and picked up the last three balls in the Pot Pourri colourway, which I'm hoping will make into a small felted satchel-type bag with this button as a clasp (while I seem to be on this pink-and-brown kick...).

The button comes from a felted embroidery workshop several years ago by Teresa Searle... it's about 4 cm long and is some sort of bone...

I also loved Country in the purple-and-red colourway but the yardage put me off... looked as if I'd need at least half a dozen to make anything at all... There was also a really nice new Wendy novelty yarn called Moiselle which was unpriced there - if they'd had a price on it - and I gather it's less than £3 a ball from anywhere on the Internet - I'd definitely have had a couple of oddments for mad scarves, because the colours are excellent (shinier and more vibrant than on the shade card I linked to)...

Concert in the Park

This was my Mystery Project of a couple of months ago - I handed it over to EJ last night at knitting because her baby is now imminent... the Concert in the Park shawl worked in Blackberry Ridge wool/silk "laceweight" (more like a 4-ply)...

Knitted some more on Baudelaire (halfway up the foot gusset) and started another project yesterday...

Bohémiens en voyage

Gill and I started our mini-Baudelairealong today - and so far I'm loving this sock. It's by the designer who also gave the world Pomatomus...

Gill has great photos of the figure-8 cast-on, which was less complicated than I thought although a bit fiddly first time...

Once I'd done the toe and a pattern repeat over lunchtime at work, I realised it was going to be too big (great advantage of the toe-up thing!)... so instead of doing the middle size on 2.5mm needles, I'm now doing the smallest size on 2.25mm needles. The second cast-on attempt was easier and neater than the first one...




I'm using Fleece Artist merino in Burgundy, bought at Stash. The wine in the pic has sirop de violette in it for full Baudelairian decadence... It's an 8-row pattern repeat which is going to be really easy to remember...

Dances with Wasps

I've always had a bit of a problem working out what wasps are actually for. This afternoon, particularly. I had a phone call yesterday from Kate, who lives in Waterbeach Hall, which comes with a wonderful old garden which includes a mulberry tree. The mulberries are now ripe and it was an invite to come and pick some.... Being a bad blogger, I didn't take my camera to take pics of the house, the garden, the tree or the stroppy black-and-white cat which sat and commented on my efforts throughout... So, it was me, the tree, the cat, many thousands of lacewings, very many moths; and several hundred wasps. The wasps and I decided to bide by some sort of uneasy truce. I didn't nick the fruit they were actually sitting on, and they didn't sting me...

I had already had a Bit of a Day today, largely courtesy of Burtons Buses, who run what's laughingly called the Sunday Service. Suffice it to say that I set out for the supermarket 2 hours later than intended due to non-appearance of bus, and then ended up having to walk the 4 miles back, the return service apparently being beneath them... A Strong Letter is being composed.

However, it's amazing how quickly anger and frustration dissipates when doing something peaceful and constructive like picking fruit... And here it is, 2 kg of mulberries. [I won't show the growing bruise on my calf where I failed to drag my second leg up onto the low wall; but the colour is similar...]

Reassurance - no ladybirds were harmed in the making of this jelly - I filched this one out of the mulberries as soon as I saw it in the camera lens...

Here's the amazing colour of the juice boiling;

and here are the 8 jars of jelly...

Blocks and Hanging Garden

Two things:

Blogger vetoed me adding yet another photo to the last post; so here's Caroline sitting in front of the blocks from 200 Knitted Blocks, kindly donated by Jan, which meant we had a whole wonderful library of stitches and techniques to play with, and people could also see how different colours might mix... I was sure I had a photo of just the blocks because they looked brilliant all spread out with people poring over them; but I think I might have taken a film of the blocks by accident! But anyway; you can see them behind Caroline - the wall of cabinets was about 2.5m long, so they were still stacked pretty deep - and also one on the table in front of Addy. In fact, they were all over the place by the end of the week; several in front of each person... thanks, Jan!

Once I got home, feeling suddenly as if I'd been felled by a blunt instrument, and spent an hour in the bath reading, and bunged a supermarket curry in to heat up, I spent a couple of hours watching some episodes of Firefly and knitting on the Hanging Garden KAL from Sivia Harding.

I cast on at the Cambridge Ktog in the Blue on the 25th, but only did the cast-on and 6 rows of garter stitch at the time (it took me 6 goes to get the cast-on right; on the penultimate try, I stared blankly at a stray bead sitting on the table in front of me throughout the cast-on; and then realised I was one bead short... "One bead short of a cast-on"; it doesn't quite compete with John Irving's "One oar out of the water and one wheel in the sand"; but almost). Anyway; I was hoping this was going to be the most difficult bit, and so far, it's proved to be so; I have to look at the pattern at the beginning of each row to start, but it's easy to memorise, and I'm two-thirds of the way through the first repeat and loving it so far...

I'm using a denim-coloured "heavy laceweight" cashmere from Colourmart, bought on eBay - the yarn is oiled so knitting it is like working with sewing thread, but it ought to bloom afterwards. The beads are from Beads Direct and are called 'raku' - they have some of the blue from the yarn as well as the brown... They're not the colours I usually knit with, but I think I'll actually wear this one more often...

What I Did on My Holidays

Was teaching this week at the Cottenham Summer School. I suppose the summer school is about 300 people in all, and covers a variety of activities from bridge and bricklaying to walking and watercolours. This year, they included knitting, and a lovely group of ladies turned up on Wednesday morning... I'd anticipated 7 of them, but the class filled towards the end of registration so we were a full house with 12 students plus me... here are Judy, Tracey, Diana, Gill, Christine and Maggie:

We covered various things over the days, including I-cord, colourwork (Fair-Isle/intarsia/slip stitching; slip-stitches were a favourite...); a bit of cabling; different ways of making holes (intentionally), and some non-linear-type stuff - log-cabin, short-rowing... bit of dry felting to embellish felted knitting; also scribble lace courtesy Debbie New. Here's the sample swatch I made up combining a lot of those techniques - I did have some individual swatches as well... This ought to become a scarf, if only because I've used nearly a ball of my very beautiful and quite pricey Swirl DK from Stash in it. And actually I do quite like it although it's not at all my usual colours!

Here are some more pictures of things people made:

Scribble lace from Mary from Sheffield (L), wielding the biggest baddest circular needle I've ever seen; and from Gill (R) using smaller needles but working drop-stitch to get the loopy effect; and below, from Maggie who doubled the fine mohair...

Here are Tracey's samples: she's going to be making scarves with these for the forseeable future...

and Addy's sample, which did all sorts of things and came out gorgeous (the row which looks green here is actually metallic gold, but the tables are turquoise which threw the camera completely...); this woman has only been knitting for a few months... she also makes the most beautiful things in basketry. Was too gobsmacked when she was showing us her rainbow-coloured fishing creel to take photographs, unfortunately....

Gill did a sample with holes, using Rowan Paper Tape, which looked quite a bit like coral;

My first time teaching knitting; my first time teaching a session longer than 2 hours... and it was a bit of a deep-end thing; three whole days. Came out feeling as if I'd been through a mangle, but in a good way!

Festival revisited

This is a general view of the site across from the Radio 2 Tent to the merchandise stalls and the beer tent - gives a good idea of the good-natured, organised chaos of the event.

John Tams and Barry Coope were wonderful on both Saturday and Sunday - strong songs about the decline of traditional industries interspersed with incredibly dry Derbyshire wit. I can't really replicate the delivery, but they need to be seen.

Likewise Rosie Doonan and Ben Murray - their CD Mill Lane is great too - this was a very laid-back set, with Rosie's guitar going out of tune in the heat and being retuned by a member of the audience. Dry Geordie wit, this time.

On the US front, Tift Merritt played an excellent set; the all-American-tennis-player good looks were slightly disconcerting, as was her verbal resemblance to Ainsley Hayes... but she can't half sing.

This was my merchandising-type treat from the festival;

wasn't aware this set was available. 4 CDs with 17 tracks on each and a very nice accompanying booklet ... Something to save for the darker evenings when Tabor's chocolatey voice might make winter seem a little more attractive. A particular highlight of the booklet is the photo of her on University Challenge (for St Hugh's, Oxford) in 1968.

By the way, the item at the top left of this last photo is a sofa-button. Just clarifying...

Festival

Spent the weekend at the Cambridge Folk Festival with Kevin and Kate:

Here's Kate discussing something about asbestos with someone from work, while Kevin reads a Learned Book about mosquitos and West Nile disease; we were waiting for the camp site to open at this point...

And here's the campsite immediately behind us, 15 mins before the festival was due to begin.

The photo fails to show the ankle-deep soup of swampy vegetation across the area... the lorry was there to pump it all out a few minutes later though, and the weather did improve almost immediately. Here's mainstage on the Sunday afternoon...

Music highlights started with the completely storming Nizlopi on Thursday night (no photo; but there were manymany pre-teens and small children on dads' shoulders) - they had the huge virtue of seeming genuinely delighted to be there, and worked their arses off to give everyone a good time.

On Friday there was Richard Thompson, who played the best set I've seen him do for about 15 years. He was simply stunning.

After that I repaired to the Club Tent and saw Waking the Witch and another band which wasn't called Usquebaugh but something like...

Part 2 in another post; photo problems again!