Generosity

It was a Fibrefusion day today (sometime soon this should be an actual link...) and also the last session before Christmas, which means Serious Food. Everyone has her own speciality - Ros brings a baked gammon, Sandra brings her special rice salad with roasted veg, Helen and I compete to make the most calorific dessert, and so on...

We were sorting out the aftermath of the shows - getting postcards back to their owners, settling up for meals from the hotel bills, paying for photography we'd had done - when Madelaine said "Oh, and you left these behind..." and handed me a paper bag containing these...


I'd ogled these at Pavi Yarns, who were just opposite us, several times over the couple of days I was there, but apart from them being somewhat out of my price range, I'd assumed they were glass, ergo fragile (they were in a little display case), and therefore unsuitable for being hurled onto slate floors by huge deranged cats. Turns out they're resin; and that Madeleine, Sue and Pauline had decided I ought to have them... It's a generous group, but that was totally unexpected! (I think three extra people will be receiving small knitted items this Christmas. Note to self; extra hours in day required...)

In the background, Daughter of Sherwood. I've reverted to a largely stocking stitch sweater with a Saxon Braid front and back, and it's going more quickly...



Here's the Harrogate stash; clockwise from top left, one ball James Brett Marble to go with the other 8 - every pattern I see seems to need yardage from 9 balls... three balls Twilley Freedom Spirit, probably for another multidirectional scarf; two lots of three balls of Lang Mille Colori, which is beautiful and soft, a 50% acrylic, 50% wool mix (colours 0056 and 0053). All from the various branches of RKM Wools - they had three stands...


And a ball of Opal Hundertwasser sock yarn in Silver Spiral, which I've been after for a while... from Web of Wool. Taking colours from paintings is such a good idea - I'd love some Klee or Kandinsky colourways!

Say goodnight, Sherwood...

After several weeks of knitting on this, and an almost equal period of denial, I finally came to the realisation that whatever I do to this sweater, Sherwood from the current issue of Knitty, it's not going to be anywhere near the measurements I need for Fiona's Christmas sweater; it's definitely too short, and possibly too narrow... Unravelling is the only thing to do... Back to the drawing board with the schematic from her current favourite sweater and Barbara Walker's first book...

Some other Christmas knitting has been done though; two multidirectional scarves (not sure who's getting which at the moment) which are wonderfully easy and therapeutic to knit... the top one in Elle merino variegated bought at Ally Pally, the bottom one in Freedom Spirit in colour Fire, bought at the NEC;

Christmas card manufacture has also started...

and the Christmas lights have appeared on the Green again making everything look peaceful and festive. Better cast on for the replacement sweater...!

Harrogate '06

I like Harrogate. This year, I was travelling up alone but then did the last little bit of the journey with Sue after we bumped into each other at Leeds station. Over the couple of days I was there (Thurs/Fri) I met Wye Sue, Fred, Yvonne, Sussolu, Quite Contrary and What Katie Did, among others.

I was there to steward the Fibrefusion stand, but we were somewhat mob-handed on the Friday, so spent quite some time in the Relax and Knit area. Here are Wye Sue knitting up fingerknitting and wearing her fab Colinette sweater;

Yvonne demonstrating the Mobius cast-on to Fred

and Sue wearing her newly finished hat and crocheted flower...

Also on the Friday, I bumped into Jackie and Sue from the Cambridge knitting group; the train from Leeds was horrendously crowded but met back up with Jackie for the last part of the journey.

Blogger has eaten the stash photos, so the shopping part can wait...

Sock torture

Went over to EJ's last Tuesday night. We started off in very civilised mode; nice dinner, wine, conversation, admiring of Baby M who gets more interesting by the visit (she's got that holding her head straight and smiling business sorted out now). Then we started sock-casting-on. After 4.5 tries, this happened...


Ran out of camera batteries to record the sock-needle-warding-away-by-sign-of-the-cross moment... or the reappearance of smily Baby M in Mason-Dixon bib...

Curate's egg...

of a weekend last weekend. My parents visited... On the Saturday, we went to Burwash Manor Barns, which are very pretty

and each bought several Christmas presents. After lunch at the café

also went to the Larder and the butchers' there and picked up good things to eat, including some extremely nice Berkswell ewes' milk cheese and some Italian stuff which looked like Chaumes, but was tastier... After that we went off to the Christmas Market at St John's, Waterbeach; we drank mulled wine, bought some extremely cheap CDs and books (Aerosmith's Pump, anyone?) and watched the molly dancers.

Molly dancing is an East Anglian thing. This is the molly side of the Ely and Littleport Riot; there are some stranger black-face molly sides made up of both men and women such as the Ouse Washes. The musicians here were a banjo player, a violinist who looked like a cross between the local vet and Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman (neither of which is a bad thing), and a bodrhán player. Worked fine...

The Sunday went less well, entirely due to my shower-head's successful attempt to leap off the wall and maim my mother. All those things you hear about scalp wounds bleeding a lot... believe it; it's scary. A visit from the ambulance/paramedics and a trip to A&E for general reassurance and head-glueing later, and we were all back at home 3 hours later attempting to calm down. In the end, the stove was lit, a picnic lunch was had, Dad went into town with the shopping list for Christmas and we sat around having a Quiet Day while beef stew bubbled quietly in the slow-cooker.

Someone was happy at this turn of events...

Remind you of anything?

A century

Grandma Christie was born a hundred years ago. This is a picture taken in 1980 (I think) ; she'd just finished playing cricket on the beach with 4 of her grandchildren, in a skirt and court shoes.


Grandma Christie liked gardening, and Rich Tea biscuits, and Margaret Thatcher, and horse-racing, snooker and cricket. She brought up four strong, opinionated daughters. She knew all about plants, and birds, and entertaining small children.

Grandma Christie didn't like her first name; or pop music; or quite a lot of things about the modern world. She didn't have a phone until nearly everyone had one, and collected 2p pieces in a brass jug on the mantelpiece, and went round the corner to the phone box in her fur coat.

Grandma Christie knitted and crocheted and embroidered, although I never actually saw her doing it... She cranked out school sweaters; and possibly socks; and made blankets; and beautiful crochet lace; and cutwork traycloths... She ran the sewing machine over pieces of paper to make stamps for kids to colour in.

Everyone needs a Grandma Christie.

Ooh...

The KnitPicks order arrived, forwarded by an Internet friend Judy in the US, and indeed it was fabulous and even with customs and transatlantic postage, extremely cheap. Blogger needs to install some sort of virtual fondling option. So to speak.

On the right - 4 skeins of Bare laceweight. That's 3200 metres... I reckon that's 2 stupendous or 4 moderate lace projects... Front left, 4 skeins of Shimmer in Turquoise Splendor, for the Peacock Feathers Shawl ... Back left, 4 of a beautiful dark, dark, slightly heathered burgundy, Shadow in colour Vineyard,

which was completely unphotographable (it's much, much darker than this) but will probably make a lovely Paisley Long Shawl, if one of Miriam Felton's doesn't get to me first... Back right, the pièce de résistance, 4 of Alpaca Cloud in colour Autumn.

This is utterly gorgeous yarn... I have a note somewhere to say what it's going to be, but at the moment I'm just picking it up at intervals and squeaking...

Meanwhile some knitting has been done. Sherwood continues; this is it in terms of colour...


The photo kills the texture completely, but Blogger's disappeared the other photo, so I'll try and show that later...

Gah!

The postcard telling me to come and pay the customs on my Knitpicks order (forwarded by a friend in New York State) arrived this morning, one minute after the post office closed for the weekend. Ah well; at least I know they've relinquished it - Jan's arrived just over a week ago, having been sent on the same day!

Also in the post, my new pension documentation. I find it difficult to believe in pensions; and even more difficult to care; but work has moved our group scheme to another company, and they have a long-standing ethical option, probably due to their Quaker roots. So if I end up paying a proportion of my salary into something which is going to mean I still die in poverty and get eaten by my cats, I will at least have the comfort of knowing I haven't been shoring up the international arms trade by doing so...

Don't normally do the Saturday Sky thing, unlike Anne and Wye Sue; but today I am, because on Tuesday I finally got fed up enough to make a Heath-Robinson device for washing the kitchen roof, to compensate for my general cowardice on ladders, and this is the view through it...



And yes...


I'm going to be re-knitting most of that scarf... Turns out it's fisherman's rib though, so not too taxing; and the other pompom was eminently rescuable...

When life gives you... quinces...

I was going to have a bit of a rant about the general crappiness of this week and particularly today, but things conspired against me tonight. A reminder of Tuesday's Mid-Term results in the US, for instance... all hail to Mark Morford (yet again). A conversation with a friend after work which made me remember that there are good things about living alone, an e-mail from another friend of long standing which puts us back in touch (you know who you are but I don't know whether I should link to your blog!) and news from another friend of what sounds like an excellent new job, and a perusal of my Bloglines feed to see that lots of people I read are having whinges with more justification, or are indeed just whingeing more amusingly, I'm feeling positively Pollyannaish. So I'm going to post this and then lie in the bath with a glass of wine.

I would say I'll be relishing the silence; but I succumbed to the allure of a special offer on Felix at the village shop, and The Maiden Aunts do not approve. Not at all. There's a deputation in the kitchen. If they were American cats, they'd be walking in a tiny circle with those placards. As it is they're just yelling the equivalent of "Scab!" from the sidelines. They'll eat it eventually.

Some knitting pics. Exhibit A: Caroline-at-work's small daughter was presented with a very nice Italian wool scarf. Seconds after leaving the givers' home, it was the victim of a Horrific Buggy Accident.


You can't really see in this photo - partly because I've made the damage rather worse by starting unravelling - but the edge is pretty much chewed to pieces for 10-12 rows... I'm thinking I need to unravel it at both sides of the damage and attempt to graft it (obviously, I like Caroline; a lot; or I wouldn't be uttering the g-word) . First, I need to understand which stitch it is and why it appears to be made using two strands and from both sides at once. I suspect this is some dastardly machine-knitting trick... I can see myself reknitting the damn thing from scratch, having destroyed it and being unable to re-graft...


Also, I got a huge donation of quinces a couple of weeks ago - despite leaving it a shamefully long time before doing anything with them, I made chutney last night, am about to make more this evening, and will make some jelly tomorrow. Quinces are amazing things. This year I'm going to freeze some so I can put them in stews... The thing surrounding the chutney is the beginnings of a Sherwood, for Fiona. You might see quite a lot of this before Christmas; the other people I'm knitting for seem to read this blog...

Pretty...

I was clearing my backpack out earlier and found a ball of yarn Jan gave me on Tuesday; a ball of Lorna's Laces sock yarn in soft blues... which will work perfectly with the Watercolour to make the next set of Mamlukes. Aren't they pretty together?

Anyway; back to the Christmas presents!

Welcome to the weekend...

... and it's very welcome indeed.



First, a Finished (and Bloggable) Object! Most of my knitting over the next couple of months will come as a splurge of pictures after Christmas, but here's the Tibet socks finished - I think they're my favourites at the moment. Done on 2.5mm needles over 56sts; the feet are a tiny bit long but they're soooo comfortable. (I also finished one Christmas present and started another...)

Due to a slight and comic misunderstanding, Jan and I ended up within about 50 yards of each other at the BL on Tuesday, for about an hour; which did mean I knitted half the foot of the second sock! When we got inside we had the usual bag-lady experience, swapping over quantities of DVDs, CDs, books, yarn, etc. etc. - and I got an unexpected present - look at these needles!

US size 15 Serendipity needles from Stash. The expressions are really sweet....


... and I love the way they look just slightly apprehensive at being surrounded by the others in the jars in my kitchen...

The other, and original, reason for going to London was to meet my friend/cousin-in-law Kate and go to see the wonderful Show of Hands again; they were all looking very fine (and, thankfully, less blurred in real life, but I wasn't about to start using flash at the Bloomsbury) and played a satisfyingly different set to the last two they did in London.

And I found out that my current favourite song, Fionn Regan's Put a Penny in the Slot, has its official video on YouTube.

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...