Dyeing day

I had various KToggers and Ravelry people round to do some dyeing. Which necessitated quite a lot of rushing round and cleaning, but some nice yarns were painted; which as ever I entirely failed to capture on photograph... Here are Clare (tigerchilli) and Heather (cybil) painting yarn, anyway! Clare very kindly brought me some mohair laceweight yarn and beads, which may well be put to use quite soon - I dyed the mohair and it's drying outside.

Casting on...

I meant to blog every day during the Ravelympics. But things got away from me on Friday and again yesterday. I am, however, using the great Blogger way-back machine to fake posts for those two days!

Friday, the casting-on event at the Cambridge Blue. Photos are on the KnitCambridge blog - there were around a dozen of us there and it was a nice evening, despite my frogging my second Olympic project after the first hour and a half!!

I'm making the Mystic Meadows Stole as my Team Cambridge group knitting project, and the Hypoteneuse Shawl as my Team I Knit London project. The London half of the biathlon is working a lot better. Photos as things go on.

The weekend project

I'd like to think this was putting up pics of the very wonderful KTog 5th birthday get-together on Wednesday night - and I'll get to that on the KTog blog this weekend too - but there are a lot of pictures to crop strategically...

But no, it's finally getting round to painting the dining room. To this effect, if you've not got completely cheesed off with the irregularity and non-knitting-content of this blog over the last few months, please cheer me along. I'm intending to take a pic every 12 hours over the weekend; at 8:30am and 8:30pm; and to blog on progress once a day...

So here's the first shot - as I walked through the door this evening at 8:30pm.

Thursday, 8:30pm



Most of the pictures are down, but that's about it. There's still a very large pile of yarn on the table, and on the floor... You will note the resentful feline apparition by the door at the left. This door is not often closed and is generally wedged open. It took approximately 20 seconds - the time taken to slam the door quite hard to get it to shut, walk through two not-very-big rooms, turn round and aim a camera - for Amelia/Bug to shoot through the cat-flap from the garden at the sound of the door, notice the Problem and start doing the distraught-cat-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-closed-door thing. You'd think she'd been locked away for weeks... But she's a creature of infinite curiosity and extreme patience... always a bad combination...

More tomorrow... if the lurgy that's been stalking me for a week or so doesn't get me first, anyway...

Tomorrow - sugar soap! and Polyfilla! (and does anyone know how to glue stray flaps of ceiling paper back down/up again?)

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!

A second kiln

So I was walking to the station on the way back from buying the steamer, with it perched precariously on my bike basket, when I bumped into an ex-colleague; after the usual pleasantries he asked what was in the box and I said 'oh, I'm doing some dyeing and I need a second steamer'. And suddenly remembered that awful Barclays ad with the woman who took out a loan for her second kiln, and cringed inside...

But it is a very beautiful steamer; made in Thailand, which you can guess from the jaunty angle of its handles... and a double-layered one, to boot... you can get an idea of the size when you realise that's one of the larger Le Creuset kettles, but thankfully it's extremely light. And pretty, did I mention pretty?

So Anne, Carole, Claire, Debs, Jayne, Rosie and Sue came over in the afternoon, and we dyed; in several phases as there was really only enough space for three to work, but we're all grown-ups


(in theory at least)... If you want to see what Anne has in that bowl, go here...

Here are some skeins drying out (and yes, that is blue sky out there! after a downpour as people were arriving, it all dried out quite nicely)



And here's Jayne posing with her mad laceweight - watch this space for what that might eventually turn into:



I did my usual and mopped up a bit of everything that was left with a skein (of laceweight BFL in this case): here it is hanging on the line in an attempt cunningly to disguise that Garden Design casa Knittingonthegreen is brought to you this year by Tomasi di Lampedusa.


Here it is in Exhibit A mode on the patio table
and lurking in its natural habitat in the honeysuckle/bindweed combo by the washing-line...

After all that, Sue, Rosie, Debs and I went off to Helen's Open Studio, just down the road (my Serene Face pot came from there - here's a pic of it a couple of weeks ago:



We were chatting - and she was talking about her... second kiln... (she is not, I hasten to add, anything like the Dreadful Barclays Woman...)

After that, Sue and I went to the pub for gin and tonic while waiting for our Thai takeaway (thanks, Sue!)

I finished MS3 Clue 2 - but the sheets are washing at the moment - I'll pin it out and admire it later on when they're ready to put back on the bed! I'm probably mad, and wrong, but I'm thinking 'dragon' for the theme at the moment...

The sock has fared less well.

I don't know whether it's knitting lots of lace, or just the 'mediumweightness' of this yarn, but I seem to be knitting socks for the Three Bears at the moment. The first one was at least 12 stitches too big, this one was at least 6 - so I'm now working on 2.5mm needles on 48 stitches, and fully expecting to have something that even Baby Bear couldn't get his foot into... It is, thankfully, not only gorgeous yarn but also very forgiving of repeatedly being ripped out... This time I did at least entertain two yoof at Cambridge station with the frogging...

Socks, steamers and lace addiction

I went down to London on Thursday and needed train knitting for the way back. My visit included an X-ray of my briefcase; the security guy was amused by the sight of a hardly-started toe-up sock in the monitor...

This is the Tequila Phoenix variation of 'Vog on from this time's Knitty. Happily it is actually that variation - I printed out the toe-up version without noticing that I hadn't included the lace pattern, and had to work it out by squinting at the photo (the thought of an 80 minute train journey without knitting being... unappealing), so I'm pleased I got it right! The yarn is Socks that Rock mediumweight in Chapman Springs; previously seen lounging about at the British Library but ripped as I'd managed to make something yeti-sized by accident... This time round it's pooling, but interestingly; I'm hoping that will continue or replicate itself on the other sock, or I may be ripping again!

I'm also finding the second part of Mystery Stole 3 completely addictive - sat down last night to knit 'just a couple of rows' and ended up wrestling myself to bed at the end of row 18 some time later... Whatever it's going to be, it's going to be pretty. And it looks as if there were 6,707 knitters in the group at closing time; huge last-minute surge in membership when the Yarn Harlot and Bonne Marie joined the fun and blogged about it! Sometime in the next day or so I'll get the written instructions for Clue 2 to proofread, but for the moment I'm just really enjoying the knitting... More than the other stole I'm doing, by the same designer, and I'm still trying to work out why...

This morning I'm going out to buy a new steamer (from the Chinese supermarket) and a new supply of latex gloves - members of the Cambridge KTog are coming over to do some dyeing this afternoon!

Done

The Christmas knitting is accomplished. (The rest of the Christmas preparations, not so much.) This is the earliest I've ever finished it so I'm waiting for the realisation that there's something Huge on the list I haven't started yet. I can't post pictures yet, because some of the recipients have the address of this blog; but have taken pics as I'm wrapping things up, to post after Christmas.

Otherwise, am still waiting for two major gifts to arrive from internet suppliers and am completely devoid of ideas for my brother and his wife... Tonight the cats go to the vets for their annual checkup and boosters so I'm on tenterhooks wondering exactly how expensive it's all going to be... Only five and a half days at work left till the New Year...

Tuesday night was knitting night at the Regal. I didn't take my camera, but Anne did, and has photos of us on her blog - her Dryad hat on the same page is gorgeous ...