Four!

I'm not sure the Christmas list needs revising here: the Mad Plaid might turn into a Christmas present, or it might not.  I am so nearly in a position to cast off this Christmas's major project... just not quite yet...

It's too early - but it's there.  St Pancras has done its Christmas tree for the year, and the theme is Olympic Gold, which is not surprising given the Eurostar and the Javelin trains to the Olympic Park.  It's rather a nice tree, too...

The lettering around the base remembers the summer of sport, the Olympics, the Jubilee, the welcome given by London to people visiting.

It's not as shiny as some of the trees they've had in the past; but I think this is my favourite so far; it's thoughtful, and the spiralling ribbon is a nice design idea.

Six!

.... Weeks to go until Christmas, that is!  There's certainly a tighter deadline on some of my Christmas knitting, but I need to get in touch with relatives to find out what it might be...

So: this year's count-down:

On the list to be knitted for Christmas: 14 +1 (end-of-November birthday)
Cast on: 10
Cast off: 8
Finished (blocked, labelled): 7

This isn't actually too bad compared with previous years*... and anything which needs to be posted before mid-December is complete...  I'm not going to say I'm optimistic about finishing everything in good time, because that  might lead to a broken wrist or house fire...  There are two sweaters for 5 year olds and one for a 2 year old in the "as yet unstarted" heap, and next week's focus is going to be on the Woolly Wormhead Mystery Hat AKA Fluffet...

*I note that in December for the last two years I've posted nothing about Christmas knitting... which probably tells you all you need to know about how it went...

Ah well... and competition reminder.

NaBloPoMo isn't really working for this month. Partly it's the freezing temperatures; mostly it's spending 6+ hours each day just ploughing back and forth to work.... I shall keep trying. It's not as if knitting isn't being done...

And if everyone can Think Good Thoughts to prevent trains hitting people in my local area, that would be good too. I've no idea whether this was suicide or an accident (although I understand you would have to try very hard to end up on the line accidentally at that particular point); but please, let's just hope people stop doing that.

On a more cheerful note, my brother sent me a YouTube clip of Gypsy Girl by Cruella De Ville. At the time, we thought this was a really good video. How times change... In return, I sent him a YouTube clip of possibly the most absurd Christmas recording ever.

And I realised I never gave an end-date for the annual competition. Let's say Sandi-o'clock on Friday (i.e. 6:30pm GMT this Friday, January 15). I'm hoping I'll be enjoying a drink with colleagues at that point, but it's as good a time as any...

BEST wishes for the New Year, and a competition...

Happy New Year! 2009 was a reasonable one for me - no major changes, no terrible events for me personally although several friends went through the mill this year; lots of knitting and many things I'm grateful for.

I've signed up to NaBloPoMo again - a few people have commented to me over the holidays that they liked the daily blogging, and actually I quite liked doing it too. Sometimes the theme for the month doesn't grab me (and I know you're not required to follow it anyway), but this month's theme is "BEST", and we all really need something to celebrate in January...

I had a very good Christmas - the best one for a while. Here are some of my fambly - Dad, SIL, Mam and Nephew - opening presents on Christmas Day.

I was allowed to cook Christmas dinner, and it seemed to go well...

OK; the competition. I will be doing 2 prizes this year, and simplifying it a bit. There are only 2 questions:

1. How many finished objects did I produce this year (NB this blog is not an accurate guide and nor is Ravelry - you probably just need to make a guess)?

2. How many metres of yarn did I knit this year (NB for visitors from North America, add approx 10% to a yardage estimate...)?

For some sort of idea - this was the roundup of last year's stats...

Happy competitioning... I won't bother doing an anonymous e-maily thing this year, just leave answers in the comments if you're so inclined!

Christmas Countdown - 2 days to go.

Christmas knitting 2009

Items on list: 17 (unchanged)
Items started: 17 (+2)
Items finished: 16 (+2)
Net progress since Sunday - +2

Items still unfinished which are needed for Christmas Day - 0.

I win.

(I should probably admit that one item was finished on the train, and another is still blocking, and the final one is only technically started. But really, who cares at this point!)

Happy Christmas, all...

Countdown, 5 days to go...

Christmas knitting 2009

Items on list: 17 (unchanged)
Items started: 15 (+2)
Items finished: 14 (+3)
Net progress this week - +3

As ever, Franklin has hit the nail on the head...

Countdown, 3 weeks to go...

Threat level: still at substantial...

Christmas knitting 2009

Items on list: 17 (unchanged)
Items started: 12 (unchanged)
Items finished: 9 (+3)
Net progress this week - +3 - yay...

Back to my needles... The usual Attempt at a Christmas tree went up on the Green today. I'd like to hope it'll last any length of time, but I'd bet it'll only be a matter of days before a) the wind blows it down b) joyriders crash into it c) the Yoof decide climbing it would be a great idea d) all of the above...

It's beginning to look a lot like...

After a really nice evening at IKL last night, and an earlyish night, I woke up this morning feeling completely appalling. Couldn't work out whether I was getting flu, or whether I wanted to throw up, or what. So apart from a trip downstairs for water and pills, and another to phone work and let them know I wasn't going to be in, the morning sort of didn't happen.


This afternoon I've been feeling a lot better; and sometime or other while I was lying around feeling sorry for myself, this happened outside...



It's amazing how a single line of coloured light-bulbs can make somewhere look magic. And at least this afternoon I have the energy to knit...

Study in contrasts

It was One of Those Days, weatherwise. Woke up to driving hail, and by 9am there had already been a period of blue skies, and then this (click to embiggen) which Never Bodes Well - that was the second bout of hail coming over. I do love the 'sun-before-the-storm' moments though - the light is so amazing.

It was vile outside, and a perfect day for just sitting around knitting and making copious quantities of tea, but I had promises to keep...

After a quick look round the shops (and a reassuring discovery that M&S's sizes for this winter are less punishing than last year) and very nice noodle lunch, Sue and I went to the Val McDermid/Mark Billingham talk at Winter Wordfest (.pdf link). I was delighted to find out the moderator was Nicholas Wroe of the Guardian review, but actually they hardly needed him.

While I haven't seen McDermid speak in person (I had to back out of a previous event), I've heard her on the radio a lot and was prepared to be entertained, which I was; Billingham was an unknown quantity, and because his books are on occasion very dark, I was unprepared for his being quite wonderfully funny (apparently he was a stand-up comedian before he turned to writing). It was a fantastic two-hander with a very light touch from Wroe; and the opening chapters of both books, Blood line (Billingham) and Fever of the bone (McDermid) were gripping enough to send me off to the library catalogue as soon as I got home to place reservations...

And in the interests of continuity; with just over 4 weeks to go the Christmas Threat Level is at Substantial...

Christmas knitting 2009

Items on list: 17 (+2 - one I'd forgotten , and one I'd already done but forgotten to count)
Items started: 12 (+3)
Items finished: 6 (+2, one of them the biggest bit of knitting for this Christmas, yay)
Net progress this week - 0 (hmmnn...)

Lazy(ish) Sunday

The weather is pretty terrible outside, and public transport is pretty limited on a Sunday, so I've had a fairly lazy time knitting and pottering around tidying up, paying the bills ready to post after payday etc... This is the only Little Ray of Sunshine this afternoon, and it didn't last long - not long enough to go out and plant the bulbs I bought earlier in the autumn, anyway!


I did produce my course blurb, syllabus and requirements list for next year's Cottenham Summer School (the link is to this year's programme but gives you an idea of what's usually on offer). Feedback last year said people had enjoyed it and would like an extra day, which is very flattering but will be pretty tiring - 4 days' teaching with the same class is a lot less tiring than multiple classes doing the same thing though...

I also had a good clearout of the spice rack in the kitchen. I got rid of some jars I don't really use, and made a list of what I need to refill (there are South Asian, South East Asian and Korean shops just on the main road around the corner from the Cambridge Blue so I can sort this out before knitting on Tuesday...) It's a big rack (about 90cm/3' by 60cm/2'), with 1-lb jam-jars, and one of the most satisfying things about getting a kitchen built a decade or so ago - you can draw something on the back of an envelope and a cabinet-maker will get together proper plans and produce something like this...

Anyway; got rid of the most out-of-date things including three separate quantities of yeast (haven't even bought bread for 2 years let alone made it) and some generic curry powders I never really liked... And although I really like star anise, I also seem to really like buying star anise more... Most of the jars came from the rather wonderful Daily Bread, but it's not the easiest place to get to without a car; I'll have to try and get there on a Saturday sometime after Christmas.

My hat from the Woolly Wormhead Mystery KAL on Ravelry is done and blocking - but I'll wait for the full reveal to put up a picture; and I started another Christmas present today...

The countdown begins - 5 weeks to go

It's that time of year again.

Christmas knitting 2009

Items on list: 15
Items started: 9
Items finished: 6

Hmmnnn... A couple of things on the list are smallish, but a couple are quite large... better get knitting!

Probably best that after many years of making my own Christmas cards I realised I was devoid both of inspiration and of time this year; found some nice charity ones online which arrived today... and realised the last overseas posting date for Christmas is actually only about a fortnight away!

Slightly funny moment in the library this morning - went to shelve some Young Adult books and there was this huge gap on the shelves in the middle, in a library which is chronically short of shelving. It took me a minute to realise that that was where the Twilight books would sit - if we ever actually had them in the library for more than 30 seconds or so at a time... Presumably they did come back at some point last week before flitting off into the darkness again...

Couple of bits...

Couple of FOs - they won't look like this in wear (at least I'm hoping not!) -but two little cowls for two not-so-little girls... Both to the Clémence pattern by Katya Frankel, the top one in Aran weight (bought at The Skep in Pudsey the first year SkipNorth went there and languishing forgotten, and uninventoried, in the stash), and the bottom one in DK (Schoeller and Stahl "Limbo", one of my favourites...)

A nice quick knit once I'd figured out the pattern. It's one which is quietly more difficult than it looks; which is relatively rare in knitting... But once you get the hang of it you can't stop... There may be more of these made for Christmas...

Not a great picture - but we're into the several months where I don't see daylight... part of doing NaBloPoMo is to convince myself I'm still alive...

Outside...

Handmade presents on Christ's Pieces, yesterday...

Jan has taken much better photos than this of this present, but this is the scarf against the really pretty silver birch tree near the Wesley sheltered housing in the centre of Cambridge...

and a closer photo...

And the pretty, pretty crocheted gloves from E-J; here doing jazz-hands on the gateway which, oddly enough, leads to the Sew Creative yarn shop....

Thanks! It's so lovely to receive presents as well as to make them.

There was also this: Tiny has a friend in crochet - I had a card for the maker but am hoping Wibbo will be able to help me with the details... Edited to add, the maker is NiftyKnits and she has a shop over on Folksy...

Tomorrow - the South Bank and another gift. I have been very lucky this year.

Happy Christmas

Tiny Clanger is in mourning this year and has her black armband, but wishes you a happy and peaceful Christmas.

Surely not...

I am waiting, with some trepidation, for the other shoe to drop. It's all going entirely too well.

Stats first:

• Projects on list: 19 (-1; arbitrary extra Turtle removed - self-imposed deadline...)
• Projects actually needed before Christmas: 18
• Projects started: 18
• Projects finished: 18
• Projects to finish before New Year: 1
• Weeks to Christmas: 0.5

The three most recent finishes: Lorna's hat, finished 20 December (!!!) - one of Kim's Hats, from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts

Fiona's hat, finished 19th December; Fake Isle by Amy A. King.

Barb's Blowsey Ruffles scarf by Janine Le Cras, finished 19 December

Note shawl-pin. I said I was going to have to make one - I was intending to use Fimo - because I'd managed to lose the circular shell-piece from this Pryn pin, despite only taking it out of the bag a day or so before... It turned up at the bottom of a knitting bag (one of the many) just before I was reduced to Blue-Peter-esque mixing-Fimo-with-embossing-powder-and-hoping-it-didn't-turn-the-oven-toxic antics. This is the Dream in Color yarn I won at the Brighton Knitting Safari, so thanks, whoever donated it! It's really lovely to knit with.

So; I've finished the pre-Christmas knitting, it's wrapped, I'm packed, and while the house doesn't look particularly glam, it's decorated, and it's 1000% cleaner and tidier than this time last year. I know a lot of this is having had Friday and today off, rather than just the weekend like last year, but I'm waiting to find some Huge problem now. Like having forgotten to buy presents for some significant member of my family... There must be something.

File under Miscellaneous...

As a taxonomer (and intermittent tagger of blogs), I'm a natural enemy of "miscellaneous". But some random things ...

First, the picture - the Clock Tower and buses (one bendy, one not) in Parliament Square on December 10. Christmas connection: you can just see the star on the top of the Parliamentary Christmas Tree between the two buses...

Next up, Neil Gaiman's lovely Christmas memoir from today's Independent. The only thing which would have improved it would be having an accompanying audio file of the man himself reading it...

Found that just after hearing my personal dream-team of Bill Paterson and Richard Thompson reviewing the papers on Broadcasting House (after a brief discussion about Jimmy Shand) and questioning the merits of a university education or home-ownership - they didn't actually come out and say 'and another thing, capitalism is a bit rubbish' but you felt it was only a matter of time... If they'd had Mark Steel as the third man, that would have made the trifecta but might have reconfigured the universe as we know it. However, they were on with Kirstie Allsopp, who I gather is Something off those housing-ladder programmes on the Telly. She is (sigh) going to be doing some series about making things by hand and has 'rediscovered craft'. Another one, eh. The only "helpful tip" given (NOT by Ms Allsopp, to be fair) was that you teach left-handers to knit by sitting opposite them. AARRGGGHH. (Yes, I mailed in; and was calmed down by the lovely David Tennant interview).

And the best LOLCat of the festive season so far is here....

Later, some exciting (to me) Christmas knitting news. Better go and make a shawl-pin (for reasons I'll explain later) and wrap some presents.

Agadoo...

... is what I keep trying not to think of while knitting this particular piece of black lace... This is a Christmas-present request from someone who doesn't really read this... It's going to be Cleite when it grows up... Eventually there will be beads but I'm keeping those for the last couple of repeats...

I'm saying nothing to jinx anything...

There have been pictures of The Boss shaking hands with the Obamas all over the media, and I flashed back to his shaking hands with John Kerry last time; and I remember 1992 in this country so well. So, no comment on today's really important event... I'm not going to be Tempting the Wrath of the Whatever from High Atop the Thing, as Aaron Sorkin put it so well in The West Wing's first election episode.


So just for a laugh, on a day when people seem to be going to be dealing with extraordinarily complicated voting forms, I'm going to let you see my Christmas knitting list. Names of recipients have been blocked off. And this was the state of it on Sunday night.

You ought to be able to embiggen it; but even if you can't, the number of empty boxes in there is enough to tell you that I'm Extraordinarily Behind Schedule...

So, at the moment:

Items needed, 18
Items cast on, 6
Items cast off, 4
Items finished, 3


Hmmmmnnn.


I'm hoping to knock one off the list tonight - better get on with it. Not sure how late I'm staying up...

Finally, some knitting... Christmas, part I!

I've done quite a lot since Christmas, but it's been really busy; a lot of it in a good way, but the last two Wednesday nights' commutes have been nightmarish (last night it took 4h 35mins to get home, the week before just under 4 hours...) and the last couple of weekends have been nice and busy too. This weekend seems to be shaping up to be pretty well-occupied, but I've been editing pictures by dribs and drabs and there's something to show now...

This year's Christmas knitting was neither as time-consuming nor as intricate as previous years - the two baby shawls this year, particularly the cobweb-weight one, nearly killed me! Most people got something, though. On the basis that it's more blessed to give than receive, I'll start with the gifts given. And I think I'll go by approximate order of age, so babies first...

Baby A got the ubiquitous Baby Surprise Jacket - but I loved the way that the self-striping Regia DK/6-fädig (present from Jan before she moved!) behaved when knitted with the "wrong" number of stitches. It's quite a lightweight DK, so even if he's not big enough for it until the summer, there will probably still be chilly evenings when he can wear it... I think it's Joseph's-coat-ish!

Baby O had a sweater - from a lovely book I got at John Lewis just after they re-opened. The variegated yarn is one of mine; the dark blue some Emu Superwash from Sew Creative's bargain bin a year or three ago... The buttons "go" better than they appear to in this photo...

Fiona (L), and Lorna (R) now. F's sweater was my first attempt at a top-down raglan (she's tall and slim so being able to rip back the cuffs and knit them a bit longer is a distinct advantage); and I used mainly Stylecraft Apache (now discontinuted and another Sew Creative bargain) with stripes of anything-washable-I-had-handy-in-about-the-same-colours. Some of the stripes are furry, some just bright!

L got a bag - she usually gets a sweater, but her mum very sensibly reminded me she'd had one for her birthday and usually got the hand-me-downs, so why didn't I make something smaller? This is felted (some Rowan Magpie from the stash), and then embroidered with chain-stitch and buttons. It reminded me a little bit of a Kandinsky when it was finished.

On to adults. First, a Halfdome variant for a friend. I'm saying "variant" only because I didn't follow the colour-scheme - there are random numbers of rows of each colour - otherwise it's the small size from the pattern stitches-wise, and the middle size length-wise. I was convinced it was going to be too big, then too small, and in the end it turned out to be just right. This is half Rowan Felted Tweed and half Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sport (colour "Motherlode").

Some of the Christmas projects have already been blogged - Sue got a pair of the Serpentine Mitts, and my aunt Barb got the well-documented Monkeys.

Friend Chai in Canada got some Socks of Doom - and these were victims of the camera loss just before Christmas. They were knitted in a fantastic hurry before last-posting-date came along, and photographed the same week - and two days later there was the camera débâcle... At one stage I thought I didn't even have a photo of the hand-dyed yarn - but here it is...

Dad had a scarf - I made him a brown one in Felted Tweed a couple of years ago which he'd commented on several times; so I thought a grey one in the same yarn might go down well. This is a reversible cables pattern - I was slightly embarrassed to buy the pattern from here because I thought it was the sort of thing I could do for myself, and in the end I changed the number of stitches, repeats, etc.; but I'm really glad I did because it was a fun uncomplicated knit of a very nicely written pattern and I got it done well before Christmas... Unfortunately, I only seem to have a picture of it at its very beginnings - but imagine that you can see both sides and the cables are perfect both ways round; because they are...

Mam got a Nantasket Basket for holding her stocking-fillers - and I completely forgot to take a photo of that either. So here's one of a similar one I made for EJ's birthday in August.

Mam's was actually in this colour combination:

which is a swatch for the cushion I made for Jan, which she has documented elsewhere! (Another I forgot to photograph; thank God for friends with digital cameras!)

And I think that's it! Next time: beautiful yarny things received! After which normal service, whatever that is, will be resumed...

Every home should have one...

Not a cat (although I think every home should have one of those too); she's come back from her holidays and sloped off to the bedroom to pretend to sulk. Actually, she's come back smelling of grooming powder and stuffed with biscuits, but she does like to have a moan for form's sake...

After a day's hard tidying up, the dining-room table was finally Ready for the Assemblage of the Big Christmas Present. It arrived in November, but I didn't want to make it up before Christmas...


What can it be? It's certainly in a big enough box! (The people at the post office were worried about how far I'd have to carry it... then they looked at the address and realised that 'about 50 yards' was the answer...)


And it came with a Christmas card...


I opened it when it first arrived just to make sure Customs hadn't done Bad Things to it on the way in, but all the little bits and bobbins were securely contained in a sealed bag, so I took out the card and left the rest alone...


When you get it out of the box, here are all the bits... The envelope in the foreground says "Assembly instructions. *Read first!!!*" (If only everything in life came in a flatpack, with instructions.... no, don't go there...) Look at all that oaky goodness, on my ash dining table...




Making it up was a doddle. I got out my box of 51 screwdrivers (I haven't actually counted them in and out, some of them are socket-set-type-things, but that's what it says on the label) despite only needing one #2 Philips; and it took only a short time to assemble the windmilly bit on the front (seen here sitting on top of the base with its rotation-counter)

wonder very briefly about which way round the main post went into the the base - before, you know, actually looking at it: this guy leaves nothing to chance:

sort out the bits which needed to go onto the main spindle [ditto]

and finally, wind a skein!

I had the idea of a 'can you guess what it is yet' series of photos, but I got carried away with the precision of the thing, and how it all made up so perfectly, and forgot to take photos of most of the assembly. But it's a skein winder from Ball and Skein, and it works brilliantly. Thanks to Mam and Dad for going with my somewhat strange idea of what I'd like for Christmas, and to Judy and Chris for the help with shipping info, different woods, etc.!

Dyeing day tomorrow, I think - better check the vinegar situation...