Angel Pearls progress

The Angel Pearls scarf is coming along - when I have time to sit down with a chart and an audio-book, it's knitting along at a little more than a repeat per hour, so should be finished well in time for Christmas! The pinning-out on this is appalling and doesn't do justice to it...

Icarus is tantalisingly only 10 rows from the end, too; but I've been working on a sketchbook for Fibrefusion this evening instead...

Anyone in the UK who can get BBC7 on the radio - there's a one-hour Linda Smith Gala at 11pm on Friday night...

And just when...

... I thought they couldn't get any more photogenic, I came back in earlier and found this:

This is Amelia Peabody Jarrahkatt, gradually dragging a sock towards herself by the joint powers of Cuteness and Huge Padding Claws. I wrested it from her grasp shortly after this photo was taken. Note the complete lack of interest in the completed sock, which is presumably Out of Play.

Spot the Difference

Photo one: cats at 8:15 am


Photo two: cats at 12:15 pm

They did move, briefly but at some speed, when biscuits were poured into their bowls at about 9.

Tilda is sitting in a washing-up bowl containing random skeins of yarn waiting to be put away. Amelia is lying on the bag containing Icarus and his yarn...

Did a library shift this morning - nice children signing up online for Children in Need information packs, polite and friendly teenagers placing holds, smiling people paying fines without a quibble - it was all rather St Mary Mead (apart, of course, for St. M. M.'s liberal scattering of cadavers).

Beware...

... Show Secretaries bearing gifts.

I have no idea what I'm going to do with this for the next year. Having entered stuff for the village show, I won prizes (first for knit and crochet, second for embroidery; which was a moment of some chagrin, as the piece in question had won actual money in national competition, but was headed off in the village by a very beautifully-executed cross-stitch of the Grand Canal (and may be the reason my embroidery adult ed. class in the village didn't happen this year)) and it turned out I got the Most Points in Craft Classes.

Anyway; Sandra came round, somewhat apologetically, with the Engraved Thing (AKA the Transcore Transformers Shield) this evening. All I need to do is put it somewhere I can find it for the first weekend in September next year...

Just worked out...

... why this colour is called Vintage.

Duh.

Thankfully I'd removed the wine before this happened...

Norwegians [the Forest Cats, not actual Norwegian people] seem to sit with their feet stretched out like this a lot. Thankfully she'd slid them daintily under the needle on Icarus (while I wandered off to post the first half of this) without disturbing any actual stitches - I'm halfway through Chart 3 with nearly 500 stitches on the needles...

Alchemy...

... seems to have been this weekend's theme. Or at least, transformation...

Before any of the crafty stuff, John Humphreys did a magical thing with words in this Saturday's Today programme, in his essay on the 40th anniversary of Aberfan. Reading the transcript isn't enough; you need to hear him delivering it in the audio clip.

Meanwhile, I dyed - mainly for a project I can't blog about - but did, on the side and last weekend, turn this:

into this...

by the judicious application of purple... (There should be more purple in the world).

I cooked (which used to happen a lot more often than it does these days...). But a pan of lasagne, although delicious, isn't that photogenic if you only remember to take a picture when it's been partly eaten and the rest has been stashed in the freezer.

And I cleaned. It's amazing what a walk through an Apple Day festival on a cathedral green will inspire; in this case a whacking great bunch of inexpensive sunflowers, the perfect background of the piece of felt I made at Wingham three years ago, and no space at all on the table. So here it is, as cleared-up as the house gets (note large quantity of yarn lurking in corners).

I've just realised how many craft-attempts there are in this picture, from the slightly wobbly vase I made in pottery several years ago which still pleases me, to the slightly wobbly felted vessel made with tapestry wool earlier this year... The completely non-wobbly basket on the table behind the vessel, made by Stewart and a Christmas present the year before last, was full of tags and labels when I took the picture, but a neighbour came round with some pears this evening. I think they look like little green seals or something... it definitely feels as if some sort of conversation's going on...

The cats are, obviously, displeased with the expanse of table. They like this sort of arrangement;

preferably with the option of kicking small fragile objects off the edge. I have a very exciting flame-like pattern on one corner of my (really quite new) mobile's screen thanks to a leap-with-flying-flail from Tilda on Friday morning...

Don't you just hate it...

... when this happens?

Sivia Harding Hanging Garden Shawl, nearly two repeats in; mysteriously partly removed from the needles...

Discovered this when I went in to nab the row-counter from this project (which is lovely, but I'm going to pick it up again once the Christmas knitting and at least one of the Arans are finished need something more mindless...
Having said that, the row-counter is for this

... the Angel Pearls Scarf. The knitalong started yesterday, and it only takes 230m of yarn, so I'm hoping it's going to be a relatively quick and delicate knit for my SIL...

Blog birthday

This blog was a year old yesterday! So, in anticipation, I bought it some presents at AP... (Hey, a genuine annual excuse...) Unlike the stash from the NEC, I managed to stay off reds and turquoises this time...


Exhibit A: on the left, 1 skein of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Watercolour, from Get Knitted. I love this colour - have a couple of skeins of the DK Swirl in this colour too. This is for another pair of variegated Mamlukes, but subtle ones - teaming it with some heathery green from the stash; or a light air-force blue if I can find the right one... on the right, two skeins of Cherry Tree Hill Glitter Alpaca, from Woolly Workshop, in shade Martha's Vineyard; this will be a shoulder-shawl of some kind as there's 400m of it. The glitter is very subtle, and sort of coppery.


This is Elle Wool Boutique Merino Variegated - can't find it anywhere on the Web at the moment, but it's 100% wool - possibly for felting, or maybe for a scarf of some kind.

This, however, is definitely one for a scarf. Yarn snobs look away now...

100% polyester, from The Handspinner Having Fun. About 200m/just over 200g and shiny as shiny can be... I'm thinking big lace pattern, big needles, big fringes...

Also found out that Cottenham Summer School have invited me to teach again next year - yay! It was such fun this year... Will have to get a proposal and brochure entry together at the weekend...

Ally Pally...

Well; I had this post, which wasn't just about Ally Pally; and I saved it, and uploaded photos, and then Blogger ate it; presumably my carefully-prepared words were regarded as some sort of offering which would be consumed in exchange for the gracious posting of the photos... arrggh.

So, this was the scene at 7:33 on Saturday morning as I set off for Ally Pally. Yes, it's that time of the year where the Fens are particularly attractive, if you like fog. [That would be between November and March, with odd October mornings like this in thoughtful preparation for the SAD season...]


By Kings Cross I'd revived somewhat, and bumped into Ruth, aka Woolly Wormhead, heading for the same train; so I got a sneak preview of some of her wonderful hats. People tried them on too:



The pic below is not a reaction to the wearing of the above hat, which I think is rather fetching; but the subsequent one... I was too busy looking at Ruth to photograph Jan...

Here's a random shot of some people at the Relax and Knit stand, organised by Yvonne; and one to shove at people who persist in thinking you have to look like Miss Marple if you're a knitter...

Other things from the show; met Kerrie and bought a copy of Yarn Forward which is potentially the most exciting UK knitting magazine I've seen so far; also caught up with Wye Sue, Fred, Sue from Stitch 'n Dye, caught a glimpse of Lixie as she flitted by in a very nice crocheted thing, saw Nic briefly, and met Sue from Knittiotherapy. Her video of the hats is worth watching... Also Gill from Woolly Workshop. While volunteering, got to meet a 12-year-old American crocheter who picked up knitting in about 3 minutes flat, and then taught her little sister...

I had stash; and it was relatively modest; but Blogger hates that too. So maybe tomorrow...

Tibet

Since I saw the Regia Tibet yarn on Colin's blog in April, I've coveted it; last week I saw some at a reasonable price on eBay and it arrived on Thursday. Cast this on tonight, and then couldn't stop knitting it...

Isn't it pretty?

Dyeing tonight

Another weekend of partial-clearing-up and procrastination... I'm now exactly halfway up the first sleeve of St Brigid, and at the point where one-and-a-half rows of Icarus = one journey to/from Tesco... [They had Billy Madison for £2.84 at Tesco today, and as it has Bradley Whitford content I bought it - I gather this is the nadir of his 'yuppie scum' period though...]


Yarn. I did some dyeing for a project today. And also a skein as part of the Sivia Harding Hanging Garden KAL prize draw, which is what you get here... The recipient, Kim, likes blues and purples and is OK with brights, which is lovely as they're my favourite combination too. It's all likely to be darker than this, Kim; this photo was taken with flash, on wet yarn; but it's currently looking nice hanging over the towel-dryer in the bathroom...

St Brigid's Revenge

Well, it's been a weekend of two halves. Yesterday I went to Stash with Jan and met Sue again (met her briefly at last year's Ally Pally) and also Dawn; Michelle and Nic, and later Nathalie, were there doing the actual yarn-shop-minding thing... Knitted some on Icarus; but he's a gift, so I'm not blogging him until after Christmas... Bought some Trekking XXL and some ribbon yarn to add to some matt black ribbon in the stash... and also acquired some very nice wool/cotton blend sock yarn which Jan hates...

Today I was trying to do my FLYLady thing (which I don't follow with any degree of fervour, but I do think gives some good ideas which work for me) by timing things and trying to clear up the chaos... while attempting to make some cards for the Harrogate show next weekend to go with our exhibition there.

My compensatory knitting was St B - trying to avoid the sweater equivalent of Second Sock Syndrome by casting on the next bit as soon as the previous bit is finished. And she completely gave me a good kicking. This could be cold-related fuzziness but I'd swear I'd read, and re-read, the instructions several times and was convinced that I needed to do one pattern repeat before I started the sleeve increases. Despite the schematic, which shows a steady increase from the wrist. So, I did a repeat, and then re-read yet again; and then thought 'that's an awful lot of increases before the saddle shoulder...' so I calculated, and worked out that the AT THE SAME TIME notation, which I was positive came after the first repeat, actually applied from the beginning of the sleeve...


This is St-Brigid-viewed-through-whiskers (this from the cat which attempted to bring in a half-dead mouse on Thursday night in a rainstorm, was chased back out again, and then spat out half a mouse-head onto the kitchen floor on Friday morning while I was still deciding whether I was too fragile to go into work; now she's being friendly)... and here's an update from later today.

I think the sleeve's under there somewhere. Amelia Peabody Jarrahkatt on patrol... Another shirt ruined.

Finished and partly done...

Contrary to the impression given in recent posts, some knitting has been going on... enhanced by having had a foul cold all week and no inclination to do things other than knit and sleep...



First a couple of squares for Grandmother Purl in cottons; patterns taken from Jan's 200 Knitted Blocks book and sized up for 8" squares. These were mailed off yesterday.

The Gryffindor scarf is also finished. It was a breathtakingly boring bit of knitting, but it's done and looks good... Here it is with the present I have yet to deliver to Baby M...

Here's a closer pic of the fringe, because there's an absurd amount of it...

And finally, the back of St Brigid is done! I've been working on this for about a year, but using 5 charts simultaneously doesn't make for portable knitting... However, the St Brigid KAL group picked up again at the beginning of the month, and I bought an Addi needle the right size... Two photos of this one - the first shows the colour but flattens the cables, the second has nice poppy cables but no idea of the colour... this is Jamieson's Soft Shetland in colour Pagan which was a special offer last year...

Feeling almost human again today, and am off to Stash with Jan... Am taking Icarus to start on the train...

Look! a shiny thing! And cats!

An attempt to distract from the lack of knitting content. A beautiful shawl pin from Chrissy at Scotts Mountain Crafts, my first Etsy purchase - I actually got an even prettier one but that's a present (I don't think the recipient reads this, but better safe than sorry...). The pin is 11.5cm long, as an idea of scale...


And what happens when you bring in 10 large boxes containing exhibition pieces, and take your eye off them for a minute or two. Instant cat furniture. And the house pecking-order is maintained with Tilda getting the taller position as usual...

I have two nearly-finished things - will take pics when they're done.

The damage...

Pretty things from the NEC - in the red corner, two balls of Socka Limbo in rainbow colours; on the left three balls of Twilleys freedom Spirit in colour Fire

And in the blue corner, on the left two balls of Adriafil Quarzo in blue/green/golden brown, and on the right a ball of Fortissima Colori... No idea why everything was pinky/red or turquoise this time, but hey.

And some buttons in a pack - I think all of these may be used on one item, just haven't decided what yet...

I also picked up less photogenic items - four 1 lb cones of dishcloth cotton and one of blue flecked lambswool DK at Uppingham Yarns

And here's a better colour impression of the Handmaiden with the Icarus pattern - it looked a little bright in the photo the other night...

The phoenix at the NEC

Some photos from the NEC, then... We were in stand F24, which was just about central in the hall. Here's a view looking from the entrance


and one from the back of the hall.

I haven't asked for permission to blog other people's pieces yet, so I'll just show some pics of mine. The group challenge was to make something to a particular size (and we commissioned steel shelves to that size) which was based on an idea of recycling, and used mainly recycled materials. It had to be accompanied by a sketchbook (the shelves on the left in the second picture).

Mine was based on the Phoenix myth, and the general cultural consensus that a Phoenix lives 500 years; which is the lifespan of a plastic carrier bag in a landfill site.

I used knitted plastic for the 'nest', a Fanta bottle neck as a stand for the 'egg' (velvet from an old skirt), and turned sweet wrappers from a colleague's leaving do and some shiny purple tissue from last Christmas into feathers when combined with food wrap. There's some reclaimed electrical wire in there too.

The photo above shows the colours more accurately, but the distance shot using flash didn't work with the toplighting and spotlights in the building...

Another detail of the 'egg'...

I ws going to blog the stash acquisitions tonight, but the photo upload problem has struck again; maybe tomorrow...

Back from the NEC

Got back from the NEC an hour or so ago and am currently waiting for the oven to heat enough to throw in a pizza - haute cuisine this evening chez stroppy-cats. Amelia is, however, obligingly eating any daddy-long-legs within range... Quick pic of my show knitting; the view from the stand, and a Gryffindor scarf (PoA/GoF version) for a small friend's 8th birthday... she's got heavily into all things Harry Potter this summer and has a birthday in late November...

The show was very good fun if relatively quiet compared to Ally Pally and Harrogate. We chatted to a lot of people who hadn't been to that sort of thing before; and that was great. I got a natter with Gill on Saturday, and caught up with Fred on Sunday; he brought Noonie along later and I met her (but had completely failed to realise this was the weekend she was doing a skydive; well, evidently she survived!) ... The knitting content was wonderful; there were a couple of notable omissions because they were off elsewhere but I came, I saw and I spent (within budget). Then we broke down the exhibition like insane, driven women, packed it all into Sue's car and came home...

Haven't sorted out the 73 photos I took over the weekend yet, most of which need rotating and otherwise mucking around with, but will blog some tomorrow - I wisely took the day off to recover. However, one rather blurry pic.

Spot the difference puzzle for objects lounging around: one blob of Hand Maiden Angel Hair mohair (colour Vintage); one blob of cat.

Hint; although essentially the same shape as the cat, the mohair doesn't look pissed off...

Meme break

Again off topic, but so many friends have had this on their blogs recently and they've invariably been interesting, so snagging this one for myself and apologies if it doesn't measure up... I'm off to the NEC (Knitting and Stitching show) this weekend, anyway...

One book that changed your life Le ventre de Paris by Emile Zola. Worth it for the stunning descriptions of Paris, and food; changed my point of view on both. There's a plot there too if you're reading the whole Rougon-Macquart series. Read during a truly miserable year abroad in Paris in 1988/89, it restored my faith in many, many things.

One book you've read more than once: The one which springs to mind is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I re-read this every couple of years; the combination of Southern heat and righteous anger always keeps me hooked. I also have this as a DVD and my mam and I share an admiration of Gregory Peck.

One book you'd want on a desert island I'm assuming the Bible and Shakespeare are included. If they are, I'll take one of Barbara Walker's Treasuries of knitting stitches. I'm sure I'll be able to find some form of sticks and fibre somewhere, even if I have to derive fibre from seaweed... Otherwise, I'll choose the Bible, preferably in the first Jerusalem translation as that's the one I'm used to - complete guide to humanity at its best and worst.

A book that made you laugh Most which fall into that category these days are political and therefore cynical. But the Christianna Brand Nurse Matilda books, every time; I can laugh just thinking about them. Molesworth has the same effect.

A book that made you cry For some reason, biographies do this more than novels these days. The first couple of pages of Bill Clinton's My Life are shockingly sad. And there are chapters in Julian Clary's otherwise-hilarious A Young Man's Passage which make me teary thinking of them...

A book I wish I'd written Apart from the Harry Potter books, which would keep me in yarn for life, I'd love to have written the Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide; such a brilliant idea.

A book I wish had never been written I'd probably prefer that Mein Kampf had never seen the light of day, but obviously as a liberal I can't oppose it. However, I do nominate Proust's A la récherche du temps perdu. I hated it; it sucked out my soul for the time I was reading it and for a long time thereafter...

A book I am currently reading Anthony Bourdain's The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Useable Trim, Scraps and Bones. He's probably the only chef who can genuinely get away with dedicating a book to the dead Ramones. God, he's good: the combination of the high-octane, mucho-macho, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas stuff and the incredibly delicate, almost ethereal, descriptions of the food. I was reading this book on the train earlier, after writing the first half of this several days ago, and Bourdain cites Le ventre de Paris as a must-read, too; and I'm really not surprised; it's the same combination of breakneck speed and delicacy, total sensory overload and incredible precision...

A book I've been meaning to read Bryan Garman's A Race of Singers: Whitman's Working-Class Hero from Guthrie to Springsteen. Got it for Christmas and it's working its way to the top of the pile.

A book I wish had been written Not so much a book, a section of a book; there's a 7 year gap in Margrave of the Marshes, John Peel's autobiography, between the point he left off and the point he met Sheila and she was able to carry on with the story...

Bridge art and the phoenix

There's not been that much knitting going on here, and this post is a bit random. First, photos of Mill Road Bridge in Cambridge, which has been repainted thanks to the Castle Project (which helps vulnerable 16-25 year olds with housing and work) and the Cambridge Youth Forum. I cycle over this twice a day and until now it's rained every single time since they repainted. Today it didn't, so this is the north side

and this the south side looking towards the station.

It's just tremendously cheering. So far it's stayed untouched by the attention of vandals or anti-war protestors, unlike most public spaces that size along the road.

The main reason I'm distracted and seriously sleep-deprived (and not knitting) is due entirely to my own almost zen mastery of the art of procrastination. Until Sunday night, this was what I had for exhibition at the Knitting and Stitching Shows (Birmingham and Harrogate iterations)

which would be fine if it didn't have to be a piece 9" by 12" by 18" consisting mainly of stitching by hand or machine using one of those needles with a hole in one end. However. This is the nest for my Phoenix piece, knitted out of fine strips of carrier bags and parcel ribbon and melted round a Pyrex bowl using a heat-gun. I spent 20 hours on Monday working on the rest of the piece (culminating in a particularly poignant moment at 3:15 on Tuesday morning when my machining on water-soluble fabric did the inevitable and completely dissolved on contact with water.... I went to bed; I got up 2 hours and 45 minutes later and embarked on a replacement) and eventually, 6 minutes before my lift to the selection meeting arrived, it was finished. So, it is done, and I did it. Still have the sketchbook to finish and post to the group leader...

I can't show you the finished piece. I'd like to say this is because it's confidential until the shows, but that would imply that anyone who cares was reading this, or because I'd rather leave it until it's sitting on its rather beautiful display thingy; and there are good reasons why both of those are true; but actually, I didn't remember to take a picture before it was transported off to be seen again at the NEC in a week or so's time.

And one final random thing. I distinctly heard Jennifer say "Mrs DeSouza came out one day and found a Gloucester Old Spot nibbling on her sarong" in The Archers this evening; am hoping this was some form of exhaustion-induced auditory hallucination...