Generosity

It was a Fibrefusion day today (sometime soon this should be an actual link...) and also the last session before Christmas, which means Serious Food. Everyone has her own speciality - Ros brings a baked gammon, Sandra brings her special rice salad with roasted veg, Helen and I compete to make the most calorific dessert, and so on...

We were sorting out the aftermath of the shows - getting postcards back to their owners, settling up for meals from the hotel bills, paying for photography we'd had done - when Madelaine said "Oh, and you left these behind..." and handed me a paper bag containing these...


I'd ogled these at Pavi Yarns, who were just opposite us, several times over the couple of days I was there, but apart from them being somewhat out of my price range, I'd assumed they were glass, ergo fragile (they were in a little display case), and therefore unsuitable for being hurled onto slate floors by huge deranged cats. Turns out they're resin; and that Madeleine, Sue and Pauline had decided I ought to have them... It's a generous group, but that was totally unexpected! (I think three extra people will be receiving small knitted items this Christmas. Note to self; extra hours in day required...)

In the background, Daughter of Sherwood. I've reverted to a largely stocking stitch sweater with a Saxon Braid front and back, and it's going more quickly...



Here's the Harrogate stash; clockwise from top left, one ball James Brett Marble to go with the other 8 - every pattern I see seems to need yardage from 9 balls... three balls Twilley Freedom Spirit, probably for another multidirectional scarf; two lots of three balls of Lang Mille Colori, which is beautiful and soft, a 50% acrylic, 50% wool mix (colours 0056 and 0053). All from the various branches of RKM Wools - they had three stands...


And a ball of Opal Hundertwasser sock yarn in Silver Spiral, which I've been after for a while... from Web of Wool. Taking colours from paintings is such a good idea - I'd love some Klee or Kandinsky colourways!

Say goodnight, Sherwood...

After several weeks of knitting on this, and an almost equal period of denial, I finally came to the realisation that whatever I do to this sweater, Sherwood from the current issue of Knitty, it's not going to be anywhere near the measurements I need for Fiona's Christmas sweater; it's definitely too short, and possibly too narrow... Unravelling is the only thing to do... Back to the drawing board with the schematic from her current favourite sweater and Barbara Walker's first book...

Some other Christmas knitting has been done though; two multidirectional scarves (not sure who's getting which at the moment) which are wonderfully easy and therapeutic to knit... the top one in Elle merino variegated bought at Ally Pally, the bottom one in Freedom Spirit in colour Fire, bought at the NEC;

Christmas card manufacture has also started...

and the Christmas lights have appeared on the Green again making everything look peaceful and festive. Better cast on for the replacement sweater...!

Harrogate '06

I like Harrogate. This year, I was travelling up alone but then did the last little bit of the journey with Sue after we bumped into each other at Leeds station. Over the couple of days I was there (Thurs/Fri) I met Wye Sue, Fred, Yvonne, Sussolu, Quite Contrary and What Katie Did, among others.

I was there to steward the Fibrefusion stand, but we were somewhat mob-handed on the Friday, so spent quite some time in the Relax and Knit area. Here are Wye Sue knitting up fingerknitting and wearing her fab Colinette sweater;

Yvonne demonstrating the Mobius cast-on to Fred

and Sue wearing her newly finished hat and crocheted flower...

Also on the Friday, I bumped into Jackie and Sue from the Cambridge knitting group; the train from Leeds was horrendously crowded but met back up with Jackie for the last part of the journey.

Blogger has eaten the stash photos, so the shopping part can wait...

Sock torture

Went over to EJ's last Tuesday night. We started off in very civilised mode; nice dinner, wine, conversation, admiring of Baby M who gets more interesting by the visit (she's got that holding her head straight and smiling business sorted out now). Then we started sock-casting-on. After 4.5 tries, this happened...


Ran out of camera batteries to record the sock-needle-warding-away-by-sign-of-the-cross moment... or the reappearance of smily Baby M in Mason-Dixon bib...

Curate's egg...

of a weekend last weekend. My parents visited... On the Saturday, we went to Burwash Manor Barns, which are very pretty

and each bought several Christmas presents. After lunch at the café

also went to the Larder and the butchers' there and picked up good things to eat, including some extremely nice Berkswell ewes' milk cheese and some Italian stuff which looked like Chaumes, but was tastier... After that we went off to the Christmas Market at St John's, Waterbeach; we drank mulled wine, bought some extremely cheap CDs and books (Aerosmith's Pump, anyone?) and watched the molly dancers.

Molly dancing is an East Anglian thing. This is the molly side of the Ely and Littleport Riot; there are some stranger black-face molly sides made up of both men and women such as the Ouse Washes. The musicians here were a banjo player, a violinist who looked like a cross between the local vet and Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman (neither of which is a bad thing), and a bodrhán player. Worked fine...

The Sunday went less well, entirely due to my shower-head's successful attempt to leap off the wall and maim my mother. All those things you hear about scalp wounds bleeding a lot... believe it; it's scary. A visit from the ambulance/paramedics and a trip to A&E for general reassurance and head-glueing later, and we were all back at home 3 hours later attempting to calm down. In the end, the stove was lit, a picnic lunch was had, Dad went into town with the shopping list for Christmas and we sat around having a Quiet Day while beef stew bubbled quietly in the slow-cooker.

Someone was happy at this turn of events...

Remind you of anything?

A century

Grandma Christie was born a hundred years ago. This is a picture taken in 1980 (I think) ; she'd just finished playing cricket on the beach with 4 of her grandchildren, in a skirt and court shoes.


Grandma Christie liked gardening, and Rich Tea biscuits, and Margaret Thatcher, and horse-racing, snooker and cricket. She brought up four strong, opinionated daughters. She knew all about plants, and birds, and entertaining small children.

Grandma Christie didn't like her first name; or pop music; or quite a lot of things about the modern world. She didn't have a phone until nearly everyone had one, and collected 2p pieces in a brass jug on the mantelpiece, and went round the corner to the phone box in her fur coat.

Grandma Christie knitted and crocheted and embroidered, although I never actually saw her doing it... She cranked out school sweaters; and possibly socks; and made blankets; and beautiful crochet lace; and cutwork traycloths... She ran the sewing machine over pieces of paper to make stamps for kids to colour in.

Everyone needs a Grandma Christie.

Ooh...

The KnitPicks order arrived, forwarded by an Internet friend Judy in the US, and indeed it was fabulous and even with customs and transatlantic postage, extremely cheap. Blogger needs to install some sort of virtual fondling option. So to speak.

On the right - 4 skeins of Bare laceweight. That's 3200 metres... I reckon that's 2 stupendous or 4 moderate lace projects... Front left, 4 skeins of Shimmer in Turquoise Splendor, for the Peacock Feathers Shawl ... Back left, 4 of a beautiful dark, dark, slightly heathered burgundy, Shadow in colour Vineyard,

which was completely unphotographable (it's much, much darker than this) but will probably make a lovely Paisley Long Shawl, if one of Miriam Felton's doesn't get to me first... Back right, the pièce de résistance, 4 of Alpaca Cloud in colour Autumn.

This is utterly gorgeous yarn... I have a note somewhere to say what it's going to be, but at the moment I'm just picking it up at intervals and squeaking...

Meanwhile some knitting has been done. Sherwood continues; this is it in terms of colour...


The photo kills the texture completely, but Blogger's disappeared the other photo, so I'll try and show that later...

Gah!

The postcard telling me to come and pay the customs on my Knitpicks order (forwarded by a friend in New York State) arrived this morning, one minute after the post office closed for the weekend. Ah well; at least I know they've relinquished it - Jan's arrived just over a week ago, having been sent on the same day!

Also in the post, my new pension documentation. I find it difficult to believe in pensions; and even more difficult to care; but work has moved our group scheme to another company, and they have a long-standing ethical option, probably due to their Quaker roots. So if I end up paying a proportion of my salary into something which is going to mean I still die in poverty and get eaten by my cats, I will at least have the comfort of knowing I haven't been shoring up the international arms trade by doing so...

Don't normally do the Saturday Sky thing, unlike Anne and Wye Sue; but today I am, because on Tuesday I finally got fed up enough to make a Heath-Robinson device for washing the kitchen roof, to compensate for my general cowardice on ladders, and this is the view through it...



And yes...


I'm going to be re-knitting most of that scarf... Turns out it's fisherman's rib though, so not too taxing; and the other pompom was eminently rescuable...

When life gives you... quinces...

I was going to have a bit of a rant about the general crappiness of this week and particularly today, but things conspired against me tonight. A reminder of Tuesday's Mid-Term results in the US, for instance... all hail to Mark Morford (yet again). A conversation with a friend after work which made me remember that there are good things about living alone, an e-mail from another friend of long standing which puts us back in touch (you know who you are but I don't know whether I should link to your blog!) and news from another friend of what sounds like an excellent new job, and a perusal of my Bloglines feed to see that lots of people I read are having whinges with more justification, or are indeed just whingeing more amusingly, I'm feeling positively Pollyannaish. So I'm going to post this and then lie in the bath with a glass of wine.

I would say I'll be relishing the silence; but I succumbed to the allure of a special offer on Felix at the village shop, and The Maiden Aunts do not approve. Not at all. There's a deputation in the kitchen. If they were American cats, they'd be walking in a tiny circle with those placards. As it is they're just yelling the equivalent of "Scab!" from the sidelines. They'll eat it eventually.

Some knitting pics. Exhibit A: Caroline-at-work's small daughter was presented with a very nice Italian wool scarf. Seconds after leaving the givers' home, it was the victim of a Horrific Buggy Accident.


You can't really see in this photo - partly because I've made the damage rather worse by starting unravelling - but the edge is pretty much chewed to pieces for 10-12 rows... I'm thinking I need to unravel it at both sides of the damage and attempt to graft it (obviously, I like Caroline; a lot; or I wouldn't be uttering the g-word) . First, I need to understand which stitch it is and why it appears to be made using two strands and from both sides at once. I suspect this is some dastardly machine-knitting trick... I can see myself reknitting the damn thing from scratch, having destroyed it and being unable to re-graft...


Also, I got a huge donation of quinces a couple of weeks ago - despite leaving it a shamefully long time before doing anything with them, I made chutney last night, am about to make more this evening, and will make some jelly tomorrow. Quinces are amazing things. This year I'm going to freeze some so I can put them in stews... The thing surrounding the chutney is the beginnings of a Sherwood, for Fiona. You might see quite a lot of this before Christmas; the other people I'm knitting for seem to read this blog...

Pretty...

I was clearing my backpack out earlier and found a ball of yarn Jan gave me on Tuesday; a ball of Lorna's Laces sock yarn in soft blues... which will work perfectly with the Watercolour to make the next set of Mamlukes. Aren't they pretty together?

Anyway; back to the Christmas presents!

Welcome to the weekend...

... and it's very welcome indeed.



First, a Finished (and Bloggable) Object! Most of my knitting over the next couple of months will come as a splurge of pictures after Christmas, but here's the Tibet socks finished - I think they're my favourites at the moment. Done on 2.5mm needles over 56sts; the feet are a tiny bit long but they're soooo comfortable. (I also finished one Christmas present and started another...)

Due to a slight and comic misunderstanding, Jan and I ended up within about 50 yards of each other at the BL on Tuesday, for about an hour; which did mean I knitted half the foot of the second sock! When we got inside we had the usual bag-lady experience, swapping over quantities of DVDs, CDs, books, yarn, etc. etc. - and I got an unexpected present - look at these needles!

US size 15 Serendipity needles from Stash. The expressions are really sweet....


... and I love the way they look just slightly apprehensive at being surrounded by the others in the jars in my kitchen...

The other, and original, reason for going to London was to meet my friend/cousin-in-law Kate and go to see the wonderful Show of Hands again; they were all looking very fine (and, thankfully, less blurred in real life, but I wasn't about to start using flash at the Bloomsbury) and played a satisfyingly different set to the last two they did in London.

And I found out that my current favourite song, Fionn Regan's Put a Penny in the Slot, has its official video on YouTube.