Thankyou, America...

... for living up to the ideals of possibility and progress many of us in Europe admire you for, and had almost forgotten in the events of the last several years ... *


And the speech was wonderful. I fell asleep at 1:30 with the radio on when everything was in the balance, and woke at the roar before the acceptance speech sometime before 5 - I had to go back this morning and look at the language again to see whether I'd been dreaming or not.


But this is a knitting blog and there's been hardly any knitting here for a while... So, on the first day of the New Era, I went to buy beads. And forgot to take my camera. Which was a shame, because Trafalgar Square had a huge group of very tired and emotional American youth who were still wearing their Obama gear and presumably had been up all night at one of the many bars and pubs which were hosting election night parties; and there were men on ladders cleaning pigeon poo off the Cenotaph in preparation for this weekend's wreath-laying; and one of the horses at Horseguards Parade was way less happy than usual about having its picture taken with flash and was getting a little fractious (there are now health and safety notices about horses being big kicky bitey things on occasion, right next to the horses, which must annoy them no end...); so it was all quite amusing. I walked up to Covent Garden to the Bead Shop (getting out with only £2.23 of damage for 100g of #6 beads...), and back, and had lunch, all in my designated hour - and bumped into an old college friend on the way back along Whitehall...



Oh yes; knitting. Anyway, the beads are here - with the yarn - and completely fail to illustrate the total perfection of the colour match. Yes, the beads look way too blue here - but they are right, honestly.

This is destined to be a shawl for my mother who has requested one - which is great. While it's a time-consuming thing (laceweight silk/cashmere and a reasonable size for keeping out draughts) it's also a much more pleasant use of time than wandering forlornly around shops hoping to spot the Perfect Thing... I'm still looking for a pattern, but she suggested the beads and the yarn colour. I spent an hour or so of my fretting-at-the-radio time last night in dyeing the yarn and I'm pleased with the way it turned out - it's a proper grey rather than being overly pinky or bluey or whatever. To my eyes, anyway.

(And to finish up, you have to admire a cat who muscles her way into a photo purely to look affronted; naming her Amelia Peabody was possibly a mistake.)

*Although, California, what do you think you're doing with Prop 8?

Blocking, and... not.

I clocked up two FOs on Ravelry today - go me. Neither is an Olympic project, but both have been "95%" projects for a while, which in my personal lexicon means "it's all over bar the shouting". In effect, the things need blocking, or buttons need to be found and sewn on, or labels need to be attached with washing instructions, that sort of stuff... And for some reason, keeping them at 95% on Ravelry motivates me more than having to move them every time I want to sit down and eat... I know, that worries me, too.

Today's projects, however.

First I present you Flutter: this is a MimKnits pattern by Miriam Felton, utterly beautiful and I thought it would go very well with businesswear. The original is a soysilk blend which lends weight; I was using a remnant of denim-blue Colourmart cashmere which I'd dyed into a semisolid purple, and I added the weight by using beads (#8 blue-plum raku beads from Beads Direct, to be precise; 2 tubes needed...)

It's gorgeous. I love the way she does the increases and I've loved wearing it today... Blocking -erm; nope. I gave it a good hot steamy iron instead...

Second up : my second Hemlock Ring Blanket. Just realised I've got in there 2 days before the anniversary of Brooklyn Tweed blogging it in the first place. Because this was for me, it's been lying around for ages while babies were born, Christmases and fairs came and went... so here we are. I used Classic Elite's Mackenzie Tweed. No links to the yarn because Texere had it on sale for a couple of months last year but it's discontinued. It's a wool and silk mix which looks like oatmeal; but as I'm a horribly lazy blocker, and had actually washed this whole thing in shampoo and put it through the spin-cycle three times before finally pinning it out, it's got softer and softer each time...

Blocking: yes, severely. The silk seems to have made sure I don't have the sort of rucheing I had with the last one... I just wish you could get Clover blocking pins easily here, the 2-pronged sort; they're amazing.

Having brought the blanket down in triumph this evening and laid it on the sofa... I've decided I don't like it there after all. Instead, I've moved it over to the chair by one of the bookcases, which has a strange bow-legged charm...

And because I've kept the downstairs tidy(ish) for a whole week, and I do like it like that, a gratuitous calm-and-tranquil house photo with some beautiful statice and everlasting flowers I bought today... I've actually printed this picture out and am going to put it on the boiler in the kitchen to remind me of how nice the place looks tidied up...