Happy Easter!

Happy Easter, everyone! I'd take a picture of the daffs I had in the garden yesterday, but their little yellow heads are all flat and snow-covered...

Sunday, 8:30 am




Second coat of yellow going on...

And - knitting!! Not the greatest of photos - beads don't show up too well in daylight... But here's the first end of the Flutter scarf with beads...

The reveal....

Yes, it's going to be yellow again... But without the stripes...

And as you can see, I've not done a lot today. The lurgy came up and hit me overnight, so having spent most of the night blowing my nose, hacking up green gunk and being generally completely unable to get warm enough, I did my library shift this morning and went back to bed at 1pm for a short nap. I woke up at 6 when the street light outside the bedroom window came on! Oops.

I'm intending to get the rest of this coat of emulsion on though - it'll need at least one more coat to cover the remnants of the stripes and the Polyfilla... I'm using a paint pad, which is quick but gives quite a thin coat.

Tomorrow, the reason for losing the stripes... Otherwise, it's a bit 'move along, nothing to see here...'

I may also get my Flutter scarf cast off - the first half, anyway. It's taken about an hour to cast off so far, because I'm beading every stitch using the crochet-hook method, and it increases to around 180 stitches towards the end... Probably utter insanity, but looking damn good, though, and the usual really easy-to-follow Mim pattern - written and charted directions. Photos when that half's done...

Almost invisible progress...

Friday, 10:30 am


Polyfilla in [note to self: Magic polyfilla in a tube is a stupid idea. Not so much the 'magic' bit, which turns the polyfilla from pink to white as it dries and lets you know it's ready for sanding, but the 'in a tube' bit. Which of course makes sure you don't get one of those nice little spatula things. Thank goodness for the City and Guilds hoarding habit - still had one in the printing/stamping box...]

Friday, 12:30 pm


Polyfilla sanded, all the walls and the floor sanded and washed. Lunch time!

Friday, 8:30 pm

And at that point, progress gets incremental... You can't tell from this photo, but the ceiling has had two coats, and the side wall has gone from the yellow of the stripes to the cream of the background... I had a guest for dinner last night, so no more progress was made between 8:30 pm and this morning; I'm blogging from the library on my Saturday morning volunteer shift...

With any luck, this afternoon there'll be some actual visible progress...

First progress pic

Friday, 8:30 am

Room cleared and swept, furniture out (apart from the table - which will move halfway into the kitchen); fasteners removed from doors... Alll looking very grubby and cobwebby...

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?)

Around the block

There were signs of spring in the village this week:

Daffs at the Hall (thanks, Kate and family for planting those; they're really cheery for everyone walking past, and you can't see them from the house...)

Across the road, blossom on the tree by the church:

And some forsythia.

And here's some more forsythia on the same day, in a slightly different setting: the pods at the top aren't seed-pods - they're the topmost people-pods of the London Eye.

Wandering along the South Bank, you do see some strange things: yes, it is indeed a "living statue" in Charlie Chaplin/Hitler make-up, a policeman's uniform, a tutu and a truncheon...

Or Big Ben seen through the legs of a semi-skeletal Dali elephant...

And a photo I've been wanting to take for a long while - Boudicca, implausibly dressed in diaphanous robes, by Westminster Bridge and Portcullis House.

She looks great - three storeys high... Until you see her from a distance, and realise her relative size in the landscape. Which is, I guess, why the Iceni never stood much of a chance.

There's an urban myth that Boudicca is buried at Kings Cross; it's a nice metaphor for the hopelessness of trying to get from East Anglia to London on mornings like last Monday, when the process took 5 hours... A chariot with knives on the wheels would have been seriously welcome; and quite possibly quicker...

Writing in an Age of Silence

by Sara Paretsky. London; New York : Verso, 2007. ISBN-13 978-1-84467-122-9.

I don't normally do book reviews, but this was just tremendous. It's been a very, very long time since I read a book in one or two sittings, finished it and then started at the front again for a longer read.

I've loved Paretsky's stylish detective/private eye novels for a long time; I've waited anxiously for the next one to come out for the last 15 years or so - but knew nothing about the author apart from the fiercely liberal opinions she's given her character VI Warshawski. In the last couple of books, written since the events of 2001 and the US administration's reaction to them, Paretsky has nailed her colours to the mast more clearly, but in this collection and elaboration of five lectures - part (sometimes startling) autobiography, part polemic, part literary theory - she explores voice and voicelessness, and does it brilliantly. She presses all the familiar buttons - the Civil Rights movement, Roe v. Wade, the USA Patriot Act; but she brings her personal experience to bear. And she introduces some slightly surprising elements to the arguments - Laura Ingalls Wilder, Natty Bumppo, Beth March*...

You don't need to have read a Paretsky novel to enjoy this book - she's a fierce, compassionate, feminist, literate, liberal American voice at a time where such are scarce - but I can't imagine finishing this book without wanting to read one...

*and the arrest of Joshilyn Jackson, author of the wonderful Gods in Alabama and Between, Georgia...

Normal knitting coverage will be resumed shortly.

Phew, and gah, and ooh....

Phew...

The baby sweater is done. And is very pretty.

The dyed yarn for the sleeves works pretty well, and there was just enough to make the neckband and seam up... I've attached the sleeves using my favourite waste-yarn finish (like a machine knit finish), and found some buttons which were just right, from an old dress of my mam's... so I'm enjoying the famous-knitwear-designer-meets-make-do-and-mend combination...

Here's another picture of the pretty that is Mr F's colour combination:

I love the way he works with such unlikely combinations....

Gah...

I was hoping to cast on my Flutter scarf in the pub at the KTog this evening - unfortunately my formerly delightful 3.25mm Brittany needles had a bit of an accident on the way home, and one of them snapped about 3" from the top... They were already the short size - I'll probably try chopping them off and doing a thing with a pencil sharpener and some sandpaper at the weekend, but they were very beautiful...

Ooh...

There were lots of new people at knitting this evening, and some welcome returners, and it was all very lovely. The experience was enhanced still further by the Blue's adoption of Gwatkin's Foxwhelp as their dry cider of choice (no URL, can't find it on draught anywhere else!) - blimey, that stuff's strong; but very nice... And people were knitting beautiful things...

When I got home, I found my consignment of these had arrived, a calendar week after I ordered them from Texas...

I'd been ordering from Ana's Etsy store, but then found (via Ravelry) that she had a bigger store of her own. I've raved about these before, but there's just something about the combination of the beauty and the completely functional which is incredibly attractive.

See?

Mother of invention...

So having planned out today (trip to Peter Jones, morning meeting, productive rest of day) I then spent the first half of the night throwing up... No work for me today... Gah!

Which also meant no emergency yarn trip to Peter Jones - I work earlier on Tuesdays so I can get to one of the KTogs a month, and have a lunchtime meeting...

Once I'd woken up again around lunchtime, I had a rummage and found two-thirds of a ball of 4-ply Matchmaker in a leaf green which, while still Clearly Wrong in colour,

didn't look as if it was going to be impossible to tweak to being a right colour. Into the dyepan with a smidge of dark brown it went; then into the tumble-dryer after its rinse (wrapped in tulle and tied several times... Et voilà. I was quite pleased...

Being around and still feeling generally crappy meant I got quite a lot of knitting done. I'll have to pull out about 3" on the sleeve I've done most on because of the way the self-patterning yarn was wound - if I'd realised I'd be using a solid colour for the tops of the sleeves, I'd have waited until the front and back were both done - but it's getting there. And I have lots of odds and ends for the neckband...

While I was winding this yarn and yarn for an Etsy order (thanks, Heather!) I thought I might as well see how much cashmere was left on the cone of denim blue "heavy laceweight" I used for my Hanging Garden stole. Turns out there was about 540m before washing - so that went into the dyepot too. I think it's going to be a Flutter - but I'll be adding some matte raku beads to it too as I bought two tubes for another project which didn't in the end need them...

Another possibly lunatic project...

... Feeling liberated from the demands of knitting for a stand at a show, or for samples for a class, I suddenly realised that I'm meeting a friend's 10 month old daughter for the first time on Wednesday evening, and that I was such a bad keeper-in-touch that I didn't know baby K existed until a few weeks ago... So of course, she needs a sweater... I went back to Tadpoles and Tiddlers, because it's great for a good basic sweater pattern... And found a 4-ply pattern which was crying out for Kaffe Fassett sock yarn. (The Landscape one, in Fire)...

So I have been sitting, knitting, reading a couple of superb books - Stuart Maconie's utterly wonderful Cider with Roadies which has had me crying with laughter and recognition, even when he's adulating bands I really couldn't stand at the time, and another I'll blog when I've finished it - and doing way too little of the enormous amount of tidying up around here... And catching up on sleep... Anyway, the back and three-quarters of one sleeve has been done - and I am definitely going to run out of yarn - I was hoping the extra yardage on sock yarn, as opposed to the Rowan 4-ply botany in the original pattern, would help me out, but I'm going to be about 10 grammes short. Despite the size of the Stash, there's nothing machine-washable in 4-ply which will do for the top half of both sleeves - none of these are colours I usually go for, apart from the dark pink, but as ever with Mr Fassett's combinations, together they're fabulous...

I'll be the one standing impatiently on the pavement in front of Peter Jones when they open at 9:30 tomorrow morning then - please keep out of my way - I'll be a woman on a deadline; my first meeting's at 10:15...

And as a PS - I do have one photo of last weekend - Caroline, who runs the really excellent White House Arts, wearing a drop-stitch scarf I was very pleased with; made of Patons Baroque (thanks, Jan!) and Louisa Harding Sari Ribbon. Not a good photo - but the one with flash was far, far worse...

Cheap music...

So; I got up unfeasibly early this morning to do some work before my training course. Put it this way, I was already fully awake (for me) by the time David Cameron was saying nice things about my local MP on Farming Today...

Anyway. It did mean that I got a leisurely stroll down to the course, and despite having no camera, I thought I'd go round the outside. Which meant I walked past the somewhat distracting spectacle of someone who, from the back, looked exactly like Josh Lyman (in Tuesday-suit, bouncing-on-the-balls-of-the-feet-and-full-gesticulation mode) leading a bunch of students. As I got within ranting range, it transpired the guy was Italian; which gave me full licence to listen.

[Warning: if you speak a foreign language I understand and love, and are within my hearing, I'll be listening to everything. Even the details of your sister-in-law's mother's Doberman's gynae operation, frankly... ]

This was Civil War stuff. But they were just by this statue; and the guy threw out both arms in expositionary mode and said "Olllllliverrrrrr Crrrrrromwelllll". [Photo of Citizen C taken on previous occasion...]

So - conjunction of this (favourite/famous actor), that (statue) and the other (italiano)... I've spent the entire day at my training course with the phrase "Oliver Cromwell's Waiting (Talking Italian)" going round in my head... Thankyou, Bananarama, and goodnight...

Keep meaning to say...

I'm greensideknits on Ravelry. (Knittingonthegreen was just too long for their name limit!) A few people have asked recently...

Textiles in Focus 08

I'm tired, but nowhere near as tired as I usually am, at the end of this weekend.

I'm sure this is due to Sue, Rosie and Jackie who were amazing over the weekend; helping set up, helping break down, bringing lunch, titivating the stand, and sitting knitting/crocheting... You were amazing, ladies. Thanks. And due to not having a lot to do with the competition, which I've done the admin for over the last few years... Thanks to Pauline for that!

And it was, as usual, a total pleasure to spend 3 days talking to Gill; and obviously a serious hardship to be sitting next to a selection of the stock from Woolly Workshop... Purchases were made.

I was a Bad Blogger (again) though - no photos... Sorry!

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...

Pioneers

I was at a long meeting this morning; and had lunch there and walked back through Tower Gardens as I had my camera in my pocket. I'd seen London Daily Photo's post about the Emmeline Pankhurst statue so I thought I'd get a photo of it in the sunlight because it was really clear, pretty weather.

When I got there, there was a Photo Opportunity happening - the camera over at the left is taking a picture of Some Guy in a Dark Overcoat Wittering to Camera. The person mainly hidden behind the cameraman - you can just see her red coat - was holding a certificate - I think it may relate to this. And of course, the Lady in the black is Baroness Boothroyd; the first woman Speaker. And of course the conjunction of the statue and the reality was just... astonishing is the closest I can come to it...

I wished I'd got Madam Speaker's ankles in; she was a Tiller Girl, and you can tell... Then I realised I'd taken another photo before BB turned round because I was interested in the certificate...

I had a variety of slightly unnerving meetings today - but I love my job.

Poetry for St. Brigid

Part of the annual Silent Poetry Reading

This poem's been rattling around in my head for a few months now, maybe because my family's been blessed with two beautiful children this year... Warning : it's not exactly cheerful...

Limbo

Fishermen at Ballyshannon

Netted an infant last night

Along with the salmon.

An illegitimate spawning,

A small one thrown back

To the waters. But I'm sure

As she stood in the shallows

Ducking him tenderly

Till the frozen knobs of her wrists

Were dead as the gravel,

He was a minnow with hooks

Tearing her open.

She waded in under

The sign of her cross.

He was hauled in with the fish.

Now limbo will be

A cold glitter of souls

Through some far briny zone.

Even Christ's palms, unhealed,

Smart and cannot fish there.

Seamus Heaney, from Wintering Out (1972)

Finally, some knitting... Christmas, part I!

I've done quite a lot since Christmas, but it's been really busy; a lot of it in a good way, but the last two Wednesday nights' commutes have been nightmarish (last night it took 4h 35mins to get home, the week before just under 4 hours...) and the last couple of weekends have been nice and busy too. This weekend seems to be shaping up to be pretty well-occupied, but I've been editing pictures by dribs and drabs and there's something to show now...

This year's Christmas knitting was neither as time-consuming nor as intricate as previous years - the two baby shawls this year, particularly the cobweb-weight one, nearly killed me! Most people got something, though. On the basis that it's more blessed to give than receive, I'll start with the gifts given. And I think I'll go by approximate order of age, so babies first...

Baby A got the ubiquitous Baby Surprise Jacket - but I loved the way that the self-striping Regia DK/6-fädig (present from Jan before she moved!) behaved when knitted with the "wrong" number of stitches. It's quite a lightweight DK, so even if he's not big enough for it until the summer, there will probably still be chilly evenings when he can wear it... I think it's Joseph's-coat-ish!

Baby O had a sweater - from a lovely book I got at John Lewis just after they re-opened. The variegated yarn is one of mine; the dark blue some Emu Superwash from Sew Creative's bargain bin a year or three ago... The buttons "go" better than they appear to in this photo...

Fiona (L), and Lorna (R) now. F's sweater was my first attempt at a top-down raglan (she's tall and slim so being able to rip back the cuffs and knit them a bit longer is a distinct advantage); and I used mainly Stylecraft Apache (now discontinuted and another Sew Creative bargain) with stripes of anything-washable-I-had-handy-in-about-the-same-colours. Some of the stripes are furry, some just bright!

L got a bag - she usually gets a sweater, but her mum very sensibly reminded me she'd had one for her birthday and usually got the hand-me-downs, so why didn't I make something smaller? This is felted (some Rowan Magpie from the stash), and then embroidered with chain-stitch and buttons. It reminded me a little bit of a Kandinsky when it was finished.

On to adults. First, a Halfdome variant for a friend. I'm saying "variant" only because I didn't follow the colour-scheme - there are random numbers of rows of each colour - otherwise it's the small size from the pattern stitches-wise, and the middle size length-wise. I was convinced it was going to be too big, then too small, and in the end it turned out to be just right. This is half Rowan Felted Tweed and half Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sport (colour "Motherlode").

Some of the Christmas projects have already been blogged - Sue got a pair of the Serpentine Mitts, and my aunt Barb got the well-documented Monkeys.

Friend Chai in Canada got some Socks of Doom - and these were victims of the camera loss just before Christmas. They were knitted in a fantastic hurry before last-posting-date came along, and photographed the same week - and two days later there was the camera débâcle... At one stage I thought I didn't even have a photo of the hand-dyed yarn - but here it is...

Dad had a scarf - I made him a brown one in Felted Tweed a couple of years ago which he'd commented on several times; so I thought a grey one in the same yarn might go down well. This is a reversible cables pattern - I was slightly embarrassed to buy the pattern from here because I thought it was the sort of thing I could do for myself, and in the end I changed the number of stitches, repeats, etc.; but I'm really glad I did because it was a fun uncomplicated knit of a very nicely written pattern and I got it done well before Christmas... Unfortunately, I only seem to have a picture of it at its very beginnings - but imagine that you can see both sides and the cables are perfect both ways round; because they are...

Mam got a Nantasket Basket for holding her stocking-fillers - and I completely forgot to take a photo of that either. So here's one of a similar one I made for EJ's birthday in August.

Mam's was actually in this colour combination:

which is a swatch for the cushion I made for Jan, which she has documented elsewhere! (Another I forgot to photograph; thank God for friends with digital cameras!)

And I think that's it! Next time: beautiful yarny things received! After which normal service, whatever that is, will be resumed...

Epiphany

January 6, Epiphany, Twelfth Night... It always feels much more like the beginning of a New Year to me than the changing over of the calendars. I'll be keeping my decorations up until the last minute, as usual, and doing some New Year tidying up...

Just back from a lovely overnight break with Jan in Hove and Brighton; more on that later! But I'd just missed a train in London, so when I got to Kings Cross I visited the refurbished St Pancras - and loved the way their huge tree was still up, and the blue lights and silver star against the pale-blue girders of the ceiling. There are so many shops and bars in the ground floor, though, that I think you must have to be on the platforms themselves for the real beauty of the old station to come through... While the tattiness of Kings Cross is a bit depressing (I spent half an hour in the pub there last night, and anyone who's been in there...), I do like the cathedral-like feel of being able to see all 8 platforms at once...

Knitting content next post - promise!

2008

I wasn't going to do a retrospective on 2007, although there were some very good things in there - or a 'new year's resolution' thing for 2008, because I keep my resolutions to myself, in general...

But then I saw this over at Neil Gaiman's blog, and yet again he says it perfectly... Hope all that comes true for everyone reading in the year to come!

Every home should have one...

Not a cat (although I think every home should have one of those too); she's come back from her holidays and sloped off to the bedroom to pretend to sulk. Actually, she's come back smelling of grooming powder and stuffed with biscuits, but she does like to have a moan for form's sake...

After a day's hard tidying up, the dining-room table was finally Ready for the Assemblage of the Big Christmas Present. It arrived in November, but I didn't want to make it up before Christmas...


What can it be? It's certainly in a big enough box! (The people at the post office were worried about how far I'd have to carry it... then they looked at the address and realised that 'about 50 yards' was the answer...)


And it came with a Christmas card...


I opened it when it first arrived just to make sure Customs hadn't done Bad Things to it on the way in, but all the little bits and bobbins were securely contained in a sealed bag, so I took out the card and left the rest alone...


When you get it out of the box, here are all the bits... The envelope in the foreground says "Assembly instructions. *Read first!!!*" (If only everything in life came in a flatpack, with instructions.... no, don't go there...) Look at all that oaky goodness, on my ash dining table...




Making it up was a doddle. I got out my box of 51 screwdrivers (I haven't actually counted them in and out, some of them are socket-set-type-things, but that's what it says on the label) despite only needing one #2 Philips; and it took only a short time to assemble the windmilly bit on the front (seen here sitting on top of the base with its rotation-counter)

wonder very briefly about which way round the main post went into the the base - before, you know, actually looking at it: this guy leaves nothing to chance:

sort out the bits which needed to go onto the main spindle [ditto]

and finally, wind a skein!

I had the idea of a 'can you guess what it is yet' series of photos, but I got carried away with the precision of the thing, and how it all made up so perfectly, and forgot to take photos of most of the assembly. But it's a skein winder from Ball and Skein, and it works brilliantly. Thanks to Mam and Dad for going with my somewhat strange idea of what I'd like for Christmas, and to Judy and Chris for the help with shipping info, different woods, etc.!

Dyeing day tomorrow, I think - better check the vinegar situation...