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...

Holiday at Home: part 2

I can't believe how quickly this week has gone. Although I have done things. Which I'll catalogue tomorrow, I think.

On Tuesday night, I knitted at the Lamb with E-J (whose blog needs to be seen, and particularly today, for the pastel which makes even our route to our former office look romantic and burgeoning with possibilities) and Rosie (whose blog always needs to be seen...). We had a very strange start to the evening, with an incredibly inebriated, extraordinarily scatological, racist, South African (not a guess, she told us about 32 times) woman who decided that standing at the counter and screaming at an assortment of staff about their nationality for 10 minutes was the best way to go. The staff all behaved with extraordinary grace in the circumstances... The new menu was slightly hilarious in the description (the word "napped" has reached Ely in the sense of 'covered in sauce', rather than in the sense of 'fell asleep for a bit in the middle of the day', which I suspect has happened for centuries) but really extremely good in the execution...


On Wednesday I went to Brighton to visit Jan. And although I took my camera, the only shots I took were some very grey ones of the Thames as we went over Blackfriars Bridge.



.. and adding to my geographical bemusement this week, went back over the river near Borough Market... Oh, I don't know, doubtless I'll pick it up... I chose the only dull, grey day this week to go to the seaside, but it's always good to get together, and we went to see the Indigo exhibition at Brighton Museum which was excellent. I love textiles exhibitions with historical/anthropological background, and this was good; and it was well-labelled, which is my usual complaint... And although it's boring shopping, I did find a Good Coat for work, and it was extremely nice to have a second opinion in the choosing! After that, we went to one of Jan's local knitting groups, at Borders in Brighton, and I met Up Knit Creek and several other really friendly knitters... (as if "friendly knitters" wasn't tautological...)

There has been some knitting. I'll show you the shot which shows some actual created Thing...
Tahoe - one sleeve, one back, nearly one front. Quite a quick knit - or it will be up to the neckband which will take a little while. Doing it in a week wouldn't have been unrealistic if I hadn't been trying to finish the Unbloggable Thing too. As it is, I think I'll have one sleeve and the neckband left to do...



The rest of the knitting has been on the Unbloggable Thing - which is now halfway round the edging after 16 hours' knitting - only another 2 working days to go on that!

And I picked up the Hemlock Ring blanket to watch the second Pirates of the Caribbean film with a friend, and realised that I'd managed to do something really, really weird about three repeats back on one (but only one) of the 8 segments... So that's actually made negative progress this week!

Compare and contrast...

Two lace projects. On the left, the Unbloggable Project making its only appearance before it's rehomed; on the right the Hemlock Ring Blanket. The only similarity between the two, other than both being knitting-with-holes, is the wonderful Entrelac stitch markers. I was going to do this Hemlock Ring on larger needles, but the stitch markers didn't slip over the needles nicely; and I'm so sadly addicted to these things that I took it down a needle size... No affiliation, just a fan. Unfortunately the most recent consignment is still in the postal backlog... I didn't get the HRB started on Thursday night as planned; Emily Ocker's cast-on was just too complicated even with this great tutorial, given that I kept forgetting how to do garter-stitch for the baby jacket edging!

OK, that's it

I should have anticipated this, really - although most of the people I work with have been aware that I was offered a new job on July 7, and have just been waiting for various clearances to come through ever since, I gave in my notice last week so everyone in the world is coming out of the woodwork with things they absolutely need me to do before I leave... By the end of today I was ready to leap tall buildings in a single bound (if that would get me out of there)...

And I've finished a couple of things this week (or got them to the stage where I have to start measuring linings etc.), leaving me with the Unbloggable Project which is way too complicated to be knitting in this sort of mood - every-row-lace in sewing-thread, basically...


So tonight I'm going to do the border of this baby jacket, and cast on the blanket I'm knitting for ME... I'm using Mackenzie silk and wool tweed which was a bargain because it's been discontinued by Classic Elite, in a tweedy dark grey which should match my living-room (this is not a good picture, but welcome to the Season of All Photos Being Taken with Flash). This'll be the second of these (I can't show you the first one yet, but it was lovely to do). I got some Quills needles to do it with (didn't have the right size, and these are made by the Bryspun people who make my favourite straights), and they were marvellous - really light for 6mm needles, and grabby enough not to slide all over the place when starting with an 8-stitch Emily Ocker cast-on...

So I'm drawing the curtains, switching off the phone and getting Stephen Fry to read me something Harry Potterish. Not in person, sadly, but the cassettes will do... I'm calmer already, even thinking about it...

Ain't knitting wonderful.