Hatopia

Contributing to the announcement of a new collection by Woolly Wormhead.  But this one, with a difference.

People who follow Woolly's blog will find mentions of the community in northern Italy she and her family moved to several years ago.  Now that community is threatened by the actions of one local person, and its residents, many of them artists, face substantial legal fees in their battle to remain and preserve the artworks around the site.

So, what do you do as a designer when faced with that sort of fundraising challenge?  You put together a collection, and donate the proceeds to the fund.

And a fine collection it is (as copy-editor, I had a sneak preview, obviously!).  I've only knitted two of these, Encircle:

(Silvia rocks this design above - this is my more staid and much more fluffy version below)

and Pavone (Italian for peacock)

(Sara wearing a less drapy version than the one I test-knitted, modelled by Anya against the background of the building we work in)

I can attest to the excellence of both.  Looking forward to choosing the next one...

You can buy the collection through Ravelry (recommended if you're a member - then it's in your library and you can print out bits and bobs as you need them); if you're not a Ravelry member, you can also get it via Woolly's website.

I'm going to finish with the words of the community in their Statement.  And when you've read it, if you want to know more and offer support, there's a Facebook page; and there's a petition at Change.org, and the Twitter hashtag in English is #savemutonia.

Our Statement

 The Mutoid Waste Company arrived in Santarcangelo di Romagna, Italy in 1990 to perform in that year's "Festival Dei Teatri", a renowned annual festival held in the town. From that time on Santarcangelo became a base for the group and it became their home. Their art, their way of life and they themselves became an accepted part of life in Santarcangelo. Over the last 23 years they have increasingly collaborated on projects with local institutions such as schools, and their ties with the local community have strengthened. In recent years some of the Mutoids have chosen the Yard as a safe place to raise their own children.

The Yard is unique: a place that follows the rules whilst living completely outside them, a place that advocates an alternative outlook on life, a place that allows people to discover new things - and it's wonderful that such a place is considered a true part of Santarcangelo and that the locals readily accept the Yard as part of their community.

Unfortunately the Yard currently finds itself under a very real and serious threat of eviction - a reality which would not only destroy this unique community but also disperse its inhabitants and their artwork. 

 Despite these many years of mutually respectful cohabitation there is one voice that has continually spoken against the Mutoids presence; a single objector who now seriously threatens this culturally important phenomenon.

 Mutonia is not a campsite (even though its inhabitants live in caravans, buses, trucks and temporary constructions that look more like works of art than houses); it's not a standard travellers site (although many of its inhabitants have a semi-nomadic lifestyle); and the group have never illegally occupied the land.

 In recent years Santarcangelo's local council has been searching for a solution to the situation, seeking help from other government bodies, with the ultimate aim of declaring the Mutoid Yard as a Site of Cultural Interest.

Photos in this post copyright (c) Woolly Wormhead (1, 2, 4), (c) Franklin Habit (3) (c) Liz Marley (5).

Fifty shades...

... well, not exactly; but this is a bit unusual



For some reason, all my active WIPs are in neutral colours.  I'm not quite sure how this has happened, although two of these three items were requested by other people, so I haven't suddenly gone in for neutrals on purpose...  Clockwise from left, Baby Newsboy Hat (a replacement for a lost item for BabyBoyAbroad, originally knitted by his mum); a Miralda shawl for my mam's Christmas present (dark brown with beads, at her request); the Woolly Wormhead Mystery Hat in angora...

I'm enjoying all of these - but will be casting on something bright after the hats are done!

(Oh, also, haven't read any of the Fifty shades... books, and don't intend to.  There are eleventy hundred books I do currently want to read out there!)

Trying this...

Not the first time I've signed up for this - and I think I did complete it once!!  But here I go again (as David Coverdale, in usual heroically terrible mime mode, would have it...) 

Let's see if I can post every day in November this year.  I have a few nice things to look forward to this month in addition to the usual November Gloom; and a huge backlog of photos...

That's if anyone's still reading this.  It's not been the best of years, and blogging has been the thing which dropped off the edge.  That and keeping in touch with the people I really should keep in touch with!!

Another big thing this year was sorting out the back bedroom from this  in March (and it was like this all over the room)

into a room my nephew might be able to sleep in in July.  That took up a lot of the free hours in the first half of the year; and because it was a much smaller space than the garden, taking photos of the small amount of progress each weekend didn't really work.  But now I haz craft room, and I'll take pictures of that this weekend.  Haven't quite sorted it out enough so I can have the sewing machine up there, but that's an aim for next year - need to weave up some of the stash first!

I've also signed up for this: which is always fun.

I didn't finish last year's, but the year before's was one I wore a huge amount, until I put it over the radiator to dry and it felted... Still wearing it; just not as slouchy as before...

I'm going to be knitting this year's in dark grey bunny... Photos of that one to follow, too.

Oh, and I now Tweet.  Sort of; don't really know what I'm doing.   I'm @greensideknits over there...

I Knit Weekender

I spent Friday and Saturday at the I Knit Weekender, and I had a marvellous time. After a stress-free journey down, so unlike last year, first up at the Royal Horticultural Halls was a presentation from Debbie New, author of Unexpected knitting. She was interesting and warm and funny, had some great slides of her projects and techniques, and was unfazed by questions being fired at her from the audience. Here she is knitting a complicated knot before the presentation started.

And here are some of the samples she brought. This little sweater was something I hadn't really noticed in the book, but was the most exquisite thing seen close up.

And one thing I'd not really taken account of was the amount of warm colour in her projects - you tend to think of techniques rather than colour, but the colour combinations were wonderful.

She'd also brought one of the "some assembly required" puzzle sweaters - you can see it as a long strip trailing off the first photo, and here it is after two keen volunteers from the audience had assembled it on the floor...

It was lovely to meet someone who's been a bit of a hero for a long time...

There were fashion shows - I only caught the very beginning of the Biggan show because I went to sit on the KCG stand for a bit of the afternoon.

Gill had some of my yarn on the stand - they do say everyone has her price...

And here's the full Woolly Workshop stand complete with Gill - fabulous colours, as ever. Mini Mochi seemed to be the best-seller but the Manos was hopping off the stand as well...

Opposite was Rockpool Candy with their Fibre Activism.

An overview of the beautiful halls. When I took this I didn't realise I had Jeni from Fyberspates in the shot - she's the tall blonde lady in the black.

The I Knit stand (and lots of knitters including Skein and Jill)

View from the top of the steps just before the fashion show.

Crocheted blankets on the Natural Dye Studio's stall - beautiful faded antique colours...

Herdy had all sorts of good ideas including the Herdybank and some lovely mugs.

And John Arbon/Coldharbour Mill had some fountains of beautiful fibres. Some of the 70% alpaca/30% merino at the back begged to come home with me so I let it.

After presentations, shopping and volunteering it was Wine O'Clock.

Jackier knitted faster than the camera could cope with

while roseanglaise, still justifiably chuffed by her recent honour from the Oil Pastel Society, found a novel use for a Harmony DPN.

After some dinner with Gill, I went back to Wigram House where I was staying for the princely sum of £28.50 plus booking fee - it's clean, quiet after midnight, incredibly central but in a residential street and very efficiently run. I'd certainly use it again - highly recommended.

On the Saturday morning I did a class with Alice Starmore. I'd signed up partly out of curiosity - she does have something of a reputation both for her expertise and for her business model - but mostly because if you're going to see your first steek cut, there probably isn't anyone better to do it! It was a wonderful class - the first half hour was some history (with an emphasis on the financial imperative having developed the highly efficient two-handed style of knitting, the left hand working Continental and the right working in English style), and a demonstration of all the basic techniques, with several samples, and the aforementioned steek-cutting (up the front of a v-neck cardigan). In the second half we embarked on a sample (on two DPNs, breaking the yarns off at the end of each row so we were always knitting from the front), while Alice came round each small group of people and commented/corrected as necessary. I was keen enough to finish the sample in the bar at St Pancras before catching my train home; and am going to do some more soon. And I got my new book signed!

As last year, the best part of the day was meeting up with people I knew and hadn't seen for ages. I didn't get pictures of littlelixie (apart from a sliver of her back on the final Debbie New photo!), who was on fine form in a lovely sequinned top until her back gave out again, or of daisydaisydaisy who was there on Sunday and shared a half-hour in the café with me. Or of several other people...

Sparkleduck was around, and some of her beautiful yarn was also on display at Woolly Workshop.

Here's Harvey, taking a well-deserved break towards the end of Friday

and from way too early on Sunday morning, the wonderful Woolly Wormhead - it was soooo good to see her again! And look, she's carrying two of her gorgeous Hats. She was teaching, but not till the afternoon...

From Cambridge, frizzyknits and her friend whose name I have forgotten again (I always want to steal their beautiful hair...)

And a very rare sight, Gerard, the force behind the whole enterprise, actually sitting down. I think this probably only happened for about 3 minutes. The whole organising crew was dashing around all over the place. Comments from last year had obviously been taken on board by the venue - the food lasted all day and the cashpoint had been filled up! As I left at about 4pm, AlpacaAddict came racing round the back of the building heading for the front - still working away... Thanks, guys; it was wonderful.

It was an altogether charmed weekend. I was so cheerful even trailing my three rather large bags through the village that I tried my "make-an-emo-smile" trick and it worked (if you grin unexpectedly at them they smile back , they can't help it, until they remember that everything's-just-wrong-and-life-isn't-fair and reassume their scowl. Bless their miserable little hearts...). And then I got home just as an SUV from Emmaus pulled up outside - one of the occupants got out and headed towards the shop. So I chanced my arm as everything was going so well, and talked to the driver, and he came in and got the folding bed I've been trying to get rid of for a while now and bunged it into the boot and drove away with it. Result.

I'll take pics of the shopping later on, for the next post...

Town and country, and a party for a book

Last weekend, I went to Brighton on Friday night, and failed yet again to get any pictures of Jan, her flat or the views therefrom, or the Brighton ICHF Show. I started off well, with a nice photo of sunset over Chelsea Bridge [please correct me; I'm an ignoramus; from the map we thought that was the most likely candidate];

and then left my camera in the bag which was propping up a basket of yarn all day... But it was lovely, and Jan and Yvonne and Annie and Fred were there , and although I wasn't in the main drag of the teaching, I showed a few people a few techniquey-type things, and purchases were made. One has already been gifted, the other will be handed over tomorrow; and then There Was Yarn. Most of it has been dyed for the weekend. But I'll blog the rest as I knit it up...

Since then, I've tried to pack a five-day week into a three-day one, mainly by avoiding unhealthy things like sleep; but as far as I'm concerned, it's Friday night now...

Now going back to the title of this, and not wanting to get all Beatrix Potter on anyone (I'm not sure I was ever that keen, although Jemima Puddleduck and Mrs Tiggy-Winkle spring to mind, mainly because of pretty bonnets and sprigged gowns; the only one I really loved was the Tailor of Gloucester with its illustrations - cats, needles, cherry-coloured yarn, utterly unrealistic Christmas deadlines, nope, no idea why I liked that one...) , until I got this job, I'd have counted myself as a country-mouse; happy to go up to town every now and then but basically content to be provincial. On mornings like today's, travelling from this (village station, 8:03 am)

to this (corner of Westminster Bridge and Parliament Street looking over Westminster Abbey, 9:37 am)

is really very pleasant. (I've no idea whether it cleared up in the village during the day - the fog had re-descended by the time I got home 11 hours later...) I'm doing the village a disservice, but the Fens in February are not, and have never been, my favourite place to be. And there is something slightly unnervingly Ruritanian about those propane cylinders right next to the track, firing off semi-controlled pop-pop-pop-pop noises in little explosions under the tracks to keep the points ice-free...

Another thing about being a daily town-mouse is that you can get to events like this

even if you can't stay very long when you get there! That's Woolly Wormhead, signing my copy of her book. There were hats galore, a full array of the glamorous models from the book (I was leaving as the last arrived fashionably late), presents flying around, and lots of knitters. MLQ was also there, but we just sort of waved at each other in the distance... This blogging business is sometimes really odd - I think I'd met MLQ before at Ally Pally; but I'm not entirely sure...

The photo above is really unflattering; sorry, Woolly - you were looking very fine when not exposed to a horribly harsh flash!! So I'm also going to post this one, which probably qualifies as a Heroically Bad Photo, but actually conveys the essence better - I tried several without flash, but there was some Serious Explaining (and therefore general animation) going on... But once I cropped this, I really liked it...