I came, I saw, I spent; I offer a prize...

Ally Pally again! Most of the summer was spent in job-limbo, so it's amazing to realise that it's autumn again... This was forcibly brought home to me as I left the village before it was properly light this morning...





I have no idea what I did to make it look as if there's ectoplasm in this picture, but it's quite creepy, anyway. I had to leave this early because the rail maintenance people are Fiddling with the Track every weekend till the end of the year, and Ally Pally became a train, a bus, a train, another train and another bus each way...


Undeterred, I got there just after 9:30 and found to my delight that they were letting people in to the box office and the Palm Court; don't think I've ever been there before the doors opened before! Talked to a nice lady from Toronto in the queue - she was here on business but had decided to come all four days... Did my usual with the catalogue and ringed the suppliers I wanted to see. There were an amazing number of yarn places again - I thought this was the best selection yet although I know opinions have differed...


I bumped into several people on the way round, including Debbie, who used to teach pottery at Chesterton, and who I seem to bump into every year without fail despite us both varying our days, and despite our living only a few miles apart the rest of the time and never meeting... Also Emily, from the KTog group, at the very first stand... And more expectedly, Gill, who had Cheryl Potter with her on the Cherry Tree Hill stand; and an extremely elegant haircut...

At the Relax and Knit area, Yvonne had just been given a birthday present by Sue - the most gorgeous velvet bag with a hinge closure...




I meant to go back and say hi-and-goodbye, but ran out of energy after about four hours and made my way home! Having been the other side of the counter, exhibiting with Fibrefusion or volunteering on Relax and Knit, for the last few years, I'd forgotten how tiring shopping (which I generally avoid like the plague these days, unless there's yarn involved) and chatting, and things, actually are when there are so few places to sit down and take stock!

So - the damage...

As ever, the first stall I saw was Colinette, next to the doors to the corridor; this skein of Jitterbug whined to come home with me, so I let it. The colour is Slate, and it's actually quite a lot greyer and less lilac than this - while being a lot more attractive than the colour on the Colinette site... I think I'm probably going to turn it into these which appeared on Mim's blog last night...

There were some other delightfully squooshy yarns around, too; this, for instance, from the extremely nice lady at Touch Yarns - I was looking for yarn for Anne at the time and this hopped into the bag with it... It's 100% merino 4-ply, and I think it's probably not robust enough for socks; I'm thinking about a scarf or small shawl in a simple lace pattern (there's 455 yards)...

I went by RKM Wools - I see Rosie has some Lang Mille Colori on her blog so they must have had some somewhere, but I didn't spot it (although I only saw two of their stalls and they had three last year); I did, however, pick up this for the princely sum of £2.50 a ball. Silver Thaw, this is (colour 13)...

Surprisingly, this is the only really purple thing I got this year. I did fondle quite a lot of purply things, though.. And had a lovely conversation with the ladies at Knit n Caboodle about knitters and their involvement with the colour purple. They tried to entice me to buy purple needles, but I have a very similar set from Jan... They were great, though. And have purple carrier bags...

I picked up this DK sock yarn for the next Baby Surprise Jacket (they were also doing the pattern); and these, which may be useful once I start commuting with my sock projects! I saw something similar on the Yarn Harlot's blog last year but I think that one was metal... as I may have to put my bag through an X-Ray on the way into work in the morning, these reinforced cardboard ones look like a better idea... Once I've got something on DPNs I'll try them out and take photos...

There were also needles. Pretty, pretty needles. Lantern Moon needles... Rosewood Lantern Moon needles... Ickle baby 2mm, 5" Lantern Moon needles... This isn't the first time I've bought needles from LM, just the first time I've bought them for me... It'a a ridiculous sum for five cocktail sticks, but they're delightful... And will live in the little bag when not in use - I learned my lesson with the tiny Brittany ones...

And roving! I see all this pretty spinning on people's blogs done with pre-dyed roving... Fyberspates had some lovely stuff...

And so did these people from Finland - yes; it really is that bright... If it's too eye-watering, I have large quantities of plain Jacob fleece and some dark brown fleece to tone it down; but I have a feeling I'll be using it as is. Any hints and tips from the spinners are welcome...

And now to the prize.

My first post was about Ally Pally two years ago, and the blog's birthday is on Friday. I know there are people who read this and don't comment, and I'd love to know who you are; so as encouragement, leave me a comment about anything at all between now and the end of Friday (midnight BST), and I'll pull a name out of the hat - the winner gets a 100g skein of hand-dyed sock yarn (base yarn is undyed Trekking) in a colour of her/his choosing, either custom-dyed or a colourway from the shop.

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.

Back to my knitting...

... which is all pretty baby-centric at the moment. Mainly because I still don't have this year's measurements for the older children I knit for!



This is (a bad photo of) an Elizabeth Zimmerman two-needle-nearly-seamless-baby-sweater - except that this one is totally seamless because I bunged the arms onto DPNs to do the sleeves, which was really nice to do... I never quite get the cuff seams to match up, so being able to knit the thing in the round was much more satisfying. I'm not quite sure which baby this is for, but it's so much fun to knit that I think I'll be casting straight on for the next one... The yarn is Click DK with wool - only 30% wool, but it's really reminiscent of the Phildar yarns I used to knit with all the time; soft, but it keeps its shape and the stitch definition is nice. And it's pretty economical; and machine-washable, of course... (And why don't Sirdar have any information on yarns on their site?! weird...)



And here's some yarn eye-candy - need to list this for the shop tonight... I'm toying with this being called Rainbow in the Dark, which shows my heavy-metal roots...


No sign of the purse yet... but the guy at the bus company said it was possible the driver hadn't got back to the bus depot (which is miles away from the bus station...) yet. I live in hope.

Domesticity

I'm in a state of enforced domesticity this evening - discovered as I was heading out to the KTog that I no longer had a purse. . So I've had a jolly evening cancelling cards... Thankfully I'd put my one and only credit card in a secret place; and was even able to remember which secret place; and even more fortuitously the PIN hadn't changed with the new card. So I'm OK for cash, and so on; but GAH!!! It's also made me re-think going to Ally Pally this weekend...

I'm just hoping someone does actually hand the purse in - the rest of the stuff in it is useless, but there are so many library cards, and passes, and people's business cards... And then the stupid things you end up carrying around in your purse, like your favourite needle for running-in-ends, and cute foreign coins... Anyway, by the time I'd got it all sorted out, it was way past time I could get any form of transport to KTog... so DOUBLEGAH!!!

I was already in an irate frame of mind, having listened to the segment of Woman's Hour where Jenny Murray and Kate Saunders apparently attempted to pin Yarnstorm against the wall and beat the crap out of her. Fortunately, she's made of sterner stuff and acquitted herself beautifully... and evidently things seemed friendlier right up close given her post today...

I'd be the first to say that although I'm an avid reader of her blog, Yarnstorm's particular form of domesticity isn't for me - if I baked cakes a couple of times a week, my house would look like Miss Haversham's wedding feast, because I don't like eating them; but oh; the tulips... And her photos are gorgeous, and doubtless the book is, too... I haven't seen a copy, but I'll seek one out now.

It's interesting how much of a nerve she touched on Woman's Hour, though. And what a degree of prejudice she unleashed... from the idea of the breadwinner coming home and, finding out his wife (italics mine) had spent the day embroidering, would say 'get a job'; to the repeated use of the word "insidious" to describe Yarnstorm's book...

I think the perceived threat from Yarnstorm was her sheer existence, as a woman who has had fulfilling jobs but is able to enjoy this sort of domestic activity... But while dissing Yarnstorm, both Jenny Murray and Kate Saunders managed to express a lot of contempt towards all people who enjoy the activity of craft.

I am disappointed that we're still having to fight this battle. If what I did in my evenings was photography, or fine art, or fell-running, Woman's Hour would be interested in me.... If I were a woman in a less developed country spinning, knitting and running a small Internet shop while holding down a full-time job, Woman's Hour would be interested in me. If I do the latter in a developed country, Woman's Hour thinks of me as a dilettante who is, in some way, wasting her time while attempting to corrupt other people into the same mindset...

Way to go, Woman's Hour. We have battles to fight, still... It's a shame we seem to be squabbling among ourselves.

Magic

Gosh, it's been a long time; I hadn't realised...


And all of a sudden, it's autumn... My veg. box has started arriving with interesting squash in it; and while I was heading off to Sew Creative after work on Thursday, I found five beautiful shelled conkers under one of the horse-chestnut trees on Christ's Pieces. Either I was never that good a conker connoisseur (very probable) or I can feel very old and blame Kids These Days. Either way, I couldn't resist bringing them home... (Who shells conkers and then just leaves them there? someone more public-spirited than me, anyway...)


My Knitting from Your Stash ended at the end of September. I must confess here that I started falling a month or so before, but it's been a very trying summer, and towards the end I needed Treats... But they still had Apache in the £1 stand outside Sew Creative, so I picked up the last half dozen balls, and some Sirdar Click DK to make up something for my cousins' baby Oliver for Christmas.


The trying time is, however, over. I've never blogged much about my job, and I'm not intending to start now; just to say that I'm about to go back to actual Libraries, and more specifically the one here. So I will become a Commuter with a Proper Job, and with any luck I'll get some dedicated knitting/reading time on trains too... It'll be almost exactly 4 months from the offer date to the start date, and I've been living in limbo between the two all summer... I'm intending to take a week's holiday between jobs; I'm still trying to decide between a couple of days away on a cheap flight somewhere, and a week at home knitting, drinking tea, reminding the cat of who I am before I take off again...


I've knitted a couple of things I can display (I've knitted quite a lot of stuff, in fact, but either I've failed to photograph it or it's still secret): a BSJ for my ex-boss Sophie's baby Linus (I had a very beautiful blanket in the wings, but somehow, giving a blanket to a baby called Linus?...) This is a ball of the rainbow Trekking with a couple of strands of a very fine navy blue machine-knitting yarn from a cone; makes about a 19" chest measurement when combined, and I had the buttons in stash...




and tonight while watching The West Wing with Sue, who was finishing the curly edging on another beautiful scarf, I finished the main body of the knitting on Fiona's birthday bag (Gryffindor bag from here).

Completely addictive. I started this at about 9pm last night, and cast it off about 24 hours later. I think I've got a two-colour circular knitting thing going on. Endpaper mitts next, I think - they've been in the queue for some time and I can think of a giftee... And I may need to revise some of the kids' Christmas present ideas...

But the title of this post is because of this which I picked up at the miraculously-revived Cambridge Fopp on Thursday lunchtime - and which is, in my opinion, extraordinarily fine, even by the Boss's standards. I was a bit scared when january one was a little lukewarm about it; but there are only three artists whose CDs I'll buy sight unseen, and I'm glad I went with my instinct again this time. It's got a new Big Sound about it, to be sure, but it's also got a combination of the out-of-season-walking-the-boardwalk-looking-at girls element; the slightly-scary-guy-Nebraska element; the I-wish-I-were-Elvis element; the what-the-hell's-he-on-about-here-I-need-to-listen-to-the-interviews element; the religious-sexual-imagery element; and overarching everything, some beautiful melodies; and the E-Street Band... so you've got Clarence's sax floating across it all at just the point you hope for it; and the mad keyboards, and even the bloody sleigh-bells sound appropriate... Oh well. It's been on autorepeat here for two days. I'm not sure the cat's as keen on it as I am but maybe there's just a colony of endangered tiny rodents nearby she's intent on wiping out... that'd do it...

Anyone doing Ally Pally on Saturday?

Mouton-cadeau + Mouton-Cadet = Mouton: Cadet!

I thought I was having a grown-up day. Not entirely grown-up; but we bought furniture, and didn't buy too many pink things, and most of the pink things weren't for us... (and do pink Pyrexes count? I think not...)

BUT then I went to Ely (despite one of Stagecoach's better moments, where the bus driver went straight past me despite my being at the stop, with my hand out, in broad daylight... and the subsequent dash for my bike and to the station...); and although I was meant to be giving presents (and EJ, can you take a photo of Miss M in the jumper when it fits? I've just realised I have no record of it whatsoever), I also received one... After an evening comprising wine, cider, deep-fried goats' cheese with onion marmalade, some very good chips and some extremely bad punning, I introduce Cadet the sheep...

Here, in "across the bonnet" Motor Show pose.

Here in relaxed "I'm glad you asked me that, Jeremy..." mode

And I think this is some sort of homage to Dolores.

A bit of a sort out

Thanks to a very kind friend (thanks, Suzanne!) I made it to the glories of Dunelm Mill at Huntingdon this morning. They didn't have quite what Suzanne was wanting, but they did have a lot of other interesting things - her girls are going to love their PVC ice-cream-pattern aprons when they're done - and when we eventually found it (having given up), the chest of drawers on their website looked as good close-up as it did on the site. After an unnecessary amount of to-ing and fro-ing, we got it into the car and brought it home... I am a bit of a fan of the FLYLady, although you really wouldn't guess it from the normal state of my house; but I do like her dictum that you can do anything for 15 minutes. I went for 15 minutes on that, and 15 minutes on finishing up something urgent... and it seemed to work - here are the stages starting from 0 minutes...

And because this sort of thing always fascinates me; the things in the drawers...

1: the ballwinder, underneath that is a spindle. When I find my yardage-measuring-thing, I'll put that in there as well...

2: a purple box (thanks, Jan!) containing my smaller DPNs and a small number of circular needles which haven't made it to the Big Purple Circular Case, which is squished underneath it (thanks, Nina!)

3: the next half dozen sock projects

4: skein of laceweight (Cherry Tree Hill in Fall Foliage) I can't bear to consign to the lace box in the loft; three balls of DK weight self-patterning - maybe a Baby Surprise Jacket?

5: the current Guilt-Inducing WIP bag, and a bag of oddments of sock yarn...

6: the next two blankets. The Hemlock Ring Blanket hit me hard...

7: St Brigid. She will be finished this winter. She will, she will...

Anyway I'm really pleased with it; and it was as a result of a bit of a windfall (thanks, parents!)

The question Not To Ask around here at the moment, though, is 'what happened to all that crap you took out of that corner'? Because I'm going out to knit at the Lamb with EJ (who is living rather than blogging at the moment), and I still have a very belated birthday present to sew up, and I've only got an hour, and I'm not listening, anyway!!

The aim with the chest though is to finish up the WIPs which are out in the living room in baskets, and start on the ones in the chest, and gradually getting to store WIPs in the chest. Bwaahahahaahahahaha, I hear you cry. But I have an ulterior motive for this. Have for some time. I just can't tell you.

August knitting II

The second finished object in August was another Pink Lemon Twist stole, the famous Mystery Stole 3.

It was a lovely thing to knit and these blocking photos really don't do it justice... I fell behind for a couple of weeks in the middle because I was teaching at the Summer School, and that also coincided with the 'pas de chat' lace in the middle section (on the left here);

but I was ready for the last chart when it was released, and short-rowing the wing at one end was lovely...

Then the poor thing sat around for a week or so waiting to be blocked...

The whole enterprise seemed more than a little mad, particularly once I'd roped myself in for proofreading Mrs R.'s Special Charts and was having strange conversations about abbreviations at odd hours of the day! But it was great fun imagining all those people knitting along at approximately the same time; and Melanie providing the beautifully-charted pattern, and an immense amount of support, to thousands of knitters, was a superb act of generosity...

I used Knitpicks Shadow in the Vineyard colourway - would have got away with two skeins but I lengthened it during Clue 4 so needed a small amount of a third skein... and 3.5mm needles. I started off on Bryspun straights, but couldn't resist the urge to spread the thing out and look at it at every opportunity, so ordered myself an Addi lace needle... The yarn was utterly beautiful to knit with - spongy and fine at the same time...

August knitting I

Some knitting did get done in August - and was blocked - just not blogged. Both were designs by Melanie Gibbons





First up, Hanami - in a not-exactly-cherry-blossom colour. I was puzzling over this one - I wanted to make a birthday stole for my mother, but she's not a pastel person. Then I noticed the pierced-wood wastebasket by the PC, and wondered if it would look like that at one end,
and like lotus-wood at the other...



I was pleased with the results, anyway! The only modification I made was right at the end - somehow the frill didn't feel extreme enough to me, so I did an extra set of increases to give 4 times the original number of stitches, and beaded the cast-off. You can just about see that here, but it's pretty subtle.

I did have one small disaster - half-an-hour into blocking really isn't the time to find that dropped K2tog a couple of hundred rows back!!

But ten minutes with a crochet hook and some judicious darning have rendered it almost invisible...

Happy Birthday, Bug

The Bug (officially Jarrahkatt Aimee, unofficially Jarrahkatt Amelia Peabody, Amelia, Mealybug or Bug) is 6 today. Which means, I believe, that she's (just) overtaken me in cat-years... She wears them well...

The fun thing about Norwegian Forest Cats is that they change so much with the seasons. Here's Amelia in full winter fig in early March ...



... and here she is in the Summer Short-Haired Version, this evening.


Some of my neighbours are convinced I have two similar cats...

Happy Birthday, Bug.

Small shopkeeper

I kept thinking of Reg Ingley, the original small shopkeeper in On the Town with the League of Gentlemen, while finally setting up my Etsy shop this weekend. I've got some DK and some sock yarn, and a skein of laceweight for sale... and it all fits in two baskets.





I'm at http://knittingonthegreen.etsy.com/ - do go and have a look and tell me what you think (and what I'm missing)! A very nice lady in Texas has already bought some DK from me...

Going over to the dark side...

Not my phrase - one of Jan's...

Look - crochet!!



The pattern's one of Jan's too, from her Encyclopedia of Crochet - the lace scarf has always fascinated me, and I managed to order Shepherd's Sport rather than Shepherd's Sock in an Internet order, so this seemed like the opportunity. I'm not sure the yarn's right for the lacy pattern, but it's gorgeous to work with, and I'm almost incomprehensibly actually having the right number of stitches in the rows so far...

I have various other things to show, but am completely shattered at the moment - something to do with this cold, grey weather probably, along with a weekend away - so I'll catch up at the weekend. After the Peterborough beer festival on Saturday, anyway...

A plea...

It's National Moth Night.

All week, there have been the usual radio news reports about moths as these pesky beasts which just gnaw on your stuff. Woman's Hour has done it; the Today Programme did it this morning... (although Carolyn Quinn did say moths just gave her the creeps, rather than that she'd beat them to death for the sake of her cashmere sweaters, which is, frankly, one better than Woman's Hour).

As the nice entomologist on Today this morning said, there are 2, or maybe 3, species of moth in the UK which chew yarn/clothes; and we have 2-3,ooo species of moths harmlessly flying around, day and night, minding their own business; some of them will come in to see what we're doing if we leave the windows open and the lights on... Strangely, so will local teenagers, but we don't instinctively try to slaughter them with a rolled-up newspaper...


Let's have a look at a few I've seen flying round the village this summer (not my photos)...

A Hummingbird Hawkmoth [seen feeding on the trumpet vine on the guesthouse opposite]

A Silver Y - dozens in the garden any fine night. No prizes for how they got their name.

A cinnabar moth; another day-flier and seen at the station yesterday morning.

Let's hear it for the other 99.9% which give us colour, and beauty, and biodiversity...

Here endeth the lesson.

The kindness of (relative) strangers

So, I taught a course last week, and in the main it went very well... If I'd had the energy over the weekend to unpack my bags, I'd have some samples to show you; another time... Here - look - pretty cat!

I had to advertise for lifts to and from the college at short notice, but thankfully I'm a member of CamLETS; and Judith and Anna stepped up and were wonderful about not only driving me around but also helping with boxes and bags... And my neighbour Ian was on a drawing course and gave me a lift back on the Thursday; and completely beyond the call of duty, drove me there on the Friday despite his course having finished...

Meanwhile Sue has good news on her prospective new flat/house (Sue needs a blog; she's crocheting up a storm these days...) and I went to London and ticked another box in my Unbloggable Non-Knitting Project...

(This is the statue of Oliver Cromwell outside the Houses of Parliament - there's something of the Snape about him...)

And these arrived from Art Van Go

in the usual good time, for this Saturday's second KTog dyeing session.