You wait a long time...

... and then three come at once ...


I haven't blogged in an age, and I haven't blogged about knitting since well before that; and I really enjoyed blathering away every day during the Ravelympics. So after reading Spinning Fishwife's blog yesterday, and then changing of the clocks which always makes me want to curl up and die for 5 months, I went and signed myself up for NaBloPoMo for November.


You have been warned.


In other news... Fat Charlie is complete.



I think I've mentioned how much I love this yarn before, but apparently I was so complimentary that one of the people from Malabrigo contacted me to ask if they could use my comment on one of their leaflets. My opinion hasn't changed, and it's cool that at least one of the yarn companies is using Ravelry to find out what people think of their yarns!

Final vital statistics

Pattern: Strangling Vines, by Nicole Hindes
Yarn: Malabrigo Sock, by Malabrigo (not on their website yet...); 2 skeins (400m/440 yds per skein), bought at I Knit London
Modifications: worked over 81 sts rather than the 45 in the pattern; worked each end using 0ne skein of yarn and three-needle-bind-off at the back of the neck (the skeins are slightly different; I don't care).
Measurements: 30cm wide by 220cm long (12" wide by 88" long).
Opinion: Love it!!


And because I'm a mean-spirited, snarky person at heart; two things which have amused me an unreasonable amount over the last couple of days. First, a flyer from a local ironing firm (name removed), with an offer which seems a little harsh, if not illegal?





And then a sign at the bottom of King Street yesterday...

As it was very near the local arts-and-graphics shop, and the lovely (albeit blogless) Vespertine was having her birthday party in an arty little shop just round the corner, you could have been forgiven for thinking there was some sort of Installation going on. Unfortunately, no. That would be the car park of Christ's Collage, Cambridge...

Literacy was preserved, however, at least for sad nerdy taxonomists, by the presence of these at the party...

(I remember an ex-colleague dealing with an early 20th-century index which had Illegitimacy: See BASTARDY pencilling in, in beautiful handwriting, Child Support Agency: See BASTARDS... I didn't like to inquire...)

And that's just about me for the weekend; talk to you (repeatedly) in November...

Fat Charlie

No turtles today - sorry. I've got the head done now, and the little eyes look good; and have come to grief on the long moss-stitch band. Not that there's any problem with it - it's just a 9st strip of moss-stitch which needs to go round the edge of the bottom bit, and it's just the right texture - and moss stitch is sometimes exactly what I need to knit, and sometimes it drives me berserk. (Other things driving me berserk today are Virgin Media and the US Presidential debates, but we won't go there.)

The stealth Christmas Fair-Isle is still on the go. I've had an idea of blogging Christmas projects as I do them and then fiddling with the dates to release the posts after Christmas... It's the major knitting-event of the year and by the time it's over I can barely remember what I made for whom let alone what the yarn was and whether I changed anything...

But there's something else on the needles; so - Fat Charlie.

A couple of weeks ago, just after I Knit Day, Yvonne and I were in I Knit (as we often are), and they had (and unless it's all gone this week, still have) this wonderful array of Malabrigo Sock Yarn. The story of the colour I chose (2 skeins' worth, all they had), along with one version (the pinker one) of the colour, is here. This is as good a picture as I can get of mine, although it's definitely pinker than here. Imagine all the pinks, oranges and terracotta colours you'd get in a Burne-Jones angel, and then imagine it in silky-soft merino...

I'm using the Strangling Vines pattern by Nicole Hindes, but over 81 sts rather than the suggested 45 for a more stole-like scarf.

So, apart from the width, why Fat Charlie? Well, these days, whenever the word Archangel comes into my head, the Paul Simon Song Crazy Love Vol II comes with it. The line "Fat Charlie the archangel slopes into the room" has to be my favourite first line ever; closely followed the Mountain Goats' Oceanographer's Choice "Guy in a skeleton costume/Steps up to the guy in a Superman suit/Runs through him with a broadsword" (unfortunately, in this clip the first line stops him in his tracks so that's just about all you get!)...

Oddly enough, when I googled Fat-Charlie-the-Archangel, I was taken to a Neil Gaiman page where people were wondering whether there was any relation with Fat Charlie in Anansi Boys. And I remembered that this came through on Mr Gaiman's blog today and I thought it was rather cool... And we're back to the US elections. So I'll stop now.