Though this time, a bit less doomy. Yes, I have been watching Star Wars.
I finally finished the Milla Mia Lova Babygro I was moaning about the other week (it turns out that if you just buckle down and concentrate on one thing, you can finish it- who knew?!).
The ribbing round was such a relief after all the stripes, even if it was in 1 x 1, I didn't pick up the number of stitches it said to (I had a few more) yet somehow still got my buttons to be evenly spaced out:
Buttonage
I can't tell you how much I would have stressed about the discrepancy between how many stitches I picked up and how many it said I must pick up a few years ago, but I am now past that, and can usually find my way through things (a good skill to have acquired when you can never get row gauge, I can tell you).
The buttons are simple blue four hole ones, I sewed them on with top stitch tread,. This thread is a revelation to me. It doesn't tangle, it doesn't snap, and you can imagine your buttons never, ever falling off (I buy Guterman thread, always)
So here is the finished item, packed up waiting for its recipient who is currently cosied up in North Yorkshire with her Mummy. It's a bit big yet but if this perpetual winter continues then I'm sure it'll come in handy.
All the knitting leaves here with a sheep postcard (until I run out of sheep postcards):
Baa
(I admit, having recovered from this project, I've introduced another stripey item into the pipeline)
A lunchtime browse of Ravelry (I know, dangerous stuff!) led to me stumbling on the 'maud' thread in the Kate Davies group. I don't remember reading about it on her blog but I suppose I would have done, only at a point when I was less interested in sewing than I am now. She wrote one of her marvellous essays about the 'maud' (I like the tasselly one in particular, so I may have to make two) and later published details of how to make one for yourself .
I had a lot of material given to me a while ago, amongst it was a pretty long length of tweedy stuff with a blue/yellow colourway, and some smashing (possibly Liberty) prints, so I chose this blue/green for the lining:
I cut the pieces on Thursday afternoon and sewed them into the L shapes using my trusty ancient Bernina (it goes back at least to 1982, my Mum got it for me from my old school when Thatcher decided no-one needed to learn how to cook or sew any more...but that's a whole other rant!) on Thursday evening:
I may be ancient, but I've still got it...
Inside-out
I did all the pressing as directed (pressing makes such a difference, like blocking, of which I was ignorant for so many years...):
Also, an ancient ironing board cover...
and sewed round again:
Until I finally had a finished 'maud' - here it is, wrapped around a chair...
Chairs can wear them too
...because by now I had the un-commonest common cold known to humankind, and there was no way I was going to self-photograph. So I
nested myself on the sofa, wrapped in my lovely new maud, knit a sock and watched 'Argo'
until school pick up time.
It is very warm, but tends to slip off my shoulders a bit (all coats and wraps do this on me) so I shall need to get kilt pins if I want to 'go about looking like a Victorian re-enactor' (and I will, I'm a morris dancer - I'll never look stranger than I do when doing that!)
Hello. I have been knitting a stripey Baby Gro. I seem to have been knitting it for decades. And it's really not Milla Mia's fault, I have been doing this knitting thing for a long time now and should have known it would start to suck the very soul out of me.
It'll be a pretty baby-gro when it's finished, and frankly I have a lot of love for the turquoise yarn, but I should have realised that a 3 x 3 stripe in stocking stitch on a garment which is frequently only 2.5 inches across can be mentally challenging:
Yarn changes?, we got 'em!
It can also be challenging to the dexterity of the knitterly hands to juggle needles, attempt to change colour without leaving a huge loopy first stitch AND try to weave in as you go* while remembering to k2tog or skpo at the same time.
Also it's in an odd number of rows per colour so the keeping of a tally sheet is (for me) SUPER important as some of the decreases are on a grey row and some are on a turquoise row, no mental cue of a colour change thereto remind me - just don't lose that Post-It note! Oh...
Sometimes I didn't remember to do the weaving bit, but having ENDS, I tell myself, is not as bad as having the wrong number of stitches** is it?:
Escapee ENDS of frustration
I am not over the moon about the seams, if I'm honest:
Seams, I would like them to be somehow different
I don't know why it's taking so long, because I honestly haven't been distracted at all, and really I haven't got a quarter of the way through a Windward (I'm blaming the Yarn Harlot for that one) when I should have been doing STRIPES. And I may also have only been doing some beginnery noodling on my new bass guitar, a little bit...but you know, not so much...
So I still have to do the hood, the ribbing, with (argh) BUTTONHOLES and then sew on ONLY TWELVE (laughs hysterically) buttons.
Here is the current status of this garment, looking somewhat like a curly rag (because that's the other thing, stocking stitch, of course, curls like a bugger until you sew it all together):
Not far now.......help me.
I may
weep, I may crawl into the Talisker bottle at some point, but it will
get done, as the little one it's intended for is already growing like
the clappers. And it will be worth it in the end.
*Well, thank god I know how to do that at least. But, ah, I hear you say, why not carry the yarn up the sides? Well, I
have (after the sucky stripey shenanigans) to pick up and knit ribbing
all round the thing. My perfectionist streak is already struggling with the
not so deeply neat seams, let alone pick ups on top of carried strands]
Now then, it's not often I think of a a thing to do and then do it within a week. However, a miracle seems to have happened, and lo, the sashiko embroidery of the last post is now a cushion, thanks mainly to the long ad breaks in 'Lewis' and my being able to find everything I needed to do this almost without trying (almost):
I had some slightly paler blue fabric (I say some, it's about the size of a single bed sheet - there may be a lot of blue cushions ahead) than the indigo dyed stuff the embroidery was done on. I cut four strips to border the panel and machine sewed them on:
I think I got away with the paler blue fabric with my sashiko border being pale blue, which already set the white 'Blowing Pampas Grass' pattern off nicely:
I put a backing in the same blue fabric on the embroidery panel and sewn side strips to stop them from rubbing on the cushion pad and possibly unravelling, and then sewed the whole thing into a cover. I can't be doing with zips so the bit the pad goes into is an overlap, just like a pillow case. I find if you make this overlap quite large, and double turn the hems it keeps the pad in just as well as a zip, without the trauma of sewing in said zip!:
I'm really proud of this piece of work. Here it is on the stripey throw from Spain (I think it came from Bubion, Andalucia)...:
...and again, nestled on the little sofa with a melodeon and a rams and yowes. Which is where I'm headed now.
After my sashiko experiment brought on by the textile fumes of the Knitting and Stitching show, I bought myself another kit. This one is a pre-printed cotton square from Cotton Patch in the 'Blowing Pampas Grass' design:
I started it a while ago now, but it got put away to make time for some deadline knitting, but even deadline knitting cannot stand in the way of excruciating knitting-related RSI, so it came out again this week as an alternative to the yarn and needles.
I have finished the other half of it pretty quickly. This time I used an embroidery hoop to help with the puckering I had on the first sampler I did. I'm not sure if this is how it's supposed to be done but it worked for me!
I decided to buy some variegated blue thread for the border, and it's worked really well:
At the back you just tie off the threads when you're finished on a section. I suspect there is a method for the order in which to sew the pattern, but I made it up as I went, eventually deciding to do all the big arcs at once, and fill in the wispy bits after:
I love this so simple method (running stitch is the first thing we're ever taught when learning to sew, surely) giving such a stunning effect - especially in the blue and white combination - when it's finished:
Next step is to add on a border (I have lots of blue fabric) to make this large enough for a cushion pad, it'll probably need a friend or two as well. But I might come up with my own design for those.
Never fear, for wool is here, in the form of an item to warm the ears from, you guessed it, Kate Davies:
Just leave me hanging would you...?
Sadly for me I didn't knit this for myself, so I must live, until Saturday at least when we'll be back at an unseasonable 6 degrees, with the constant fear that my ears may go black and drop off during my early morning cycle ride/slither through the back streets of East Oxford. I actually do like proper wintery weather but I wasn't prepared for cycling in it, the bargain merino base layer I got the other day is helping though. Wool is marvellous.
This wwwww1 is for my Mum, who's got a trip to Switzerland coming up, so really it should be in the post, but I had to take its picture in the snow first.
Here's the very lovely trad. 'Selbu Star' motif in actually completely unplanned patriotic Jubilympic colours...:
Red, white and blue. And purple.
It's knitted in a mixture of J&S Jumper Weight (that red of theirs is very much what I want from RED) and the leftovers I have spoken of before. Colour work is so useful for using up leftovers!
The inside (which needed to be completely non-itchy) is some Rowan felted tweed in a dark lilac colour. I had to do some extra rows on the inner as the row gauge didn't match, but because you begin with a provisional cast on this was really easy to do:
Through the headband hole...
The i-cord bind off does make a lovely finish:
Next time, well, I think there'll be another red thing to show you.
I did, of course, buy 'Colours of Shetland' by Kate Davies about half an hour after it went on sale (there are some perks to being up early, though they usually happen more in the summer than the winter) so I got a signed one, which I wasn't expecting at all!.
The book is lovely, with beautiful photographs and well laid out pages. Kate's essays are informative and entertaining as usual. The one which goes with this - and the main pattern, for a cardigan these mittens match - is about Ursula Venables (writer, naturalist and craftswoman) who I knew nothing about at all until now. I'd quite like to read her memoirs myself.
I knit this in Jamieson & Smith /Hanne Falkenberg/Rowan I had in the giant stash so it was - as with my Rams and Yowes - a way to use up a bit more of it (though despite my best efforts, it doesn't appear to be shrinking). They've come out looking very '1940s', which is in the design. My choice of a grey background with red, blue and charcoal pattern though, makes them look, I think, a bit more 'urban', or even like mittens made from re-used yarn, as if they were a 'make do and mend' project.
I'm not sure why I went with this muted palette, I have white/cream yarn, and much brighter colours in my piles of available materials - and heaven knows it's been grey enough round here for weeks - but this is what I did:
Taken during a brief window in the deluge
My shed bolt is, I think, actually rusted shut
I fear they won't be seeing a Shetland winter any time soon, but they'll do just as well for winter in Oxfordshire (and at least wet wool still keeps you warm):
There may have been a small amount of 'sun' in the sky for this one
We did have snow here in Oxfordshire last week - a bit of a surprise and it didn't last long, but have you seen the forecast?:
It's cold...
I shall be alright in these freezing temperatures* because I have finished Snawheid. When I say finished I mean the main knitting is done, but it's not blocked yet, so these are of it in its un-pompommed, unblocked state, otherwise I'll find myself without daylight for photography purposes.
For the main colour I chose some Jamieson and Smith 2ply Jumper Weight shade FC41 which is the most beautiful dark teal with a product code for a name I have ever seen (to be fair, there are a LOT of shades in this yarn, I don't blame them) and the natural white 01A, both from the stash:
Some ribbing in the grass
The snowflakes are beautiful:
Some snowflakes in the grass
And the crown of this hat is just so lovely...
Woolly beauty
...I am almost on the point of not pom-pomming** at all!
A lonely pom-pom, earlier
Snawheid is yet another smashing pattern from, of course, Kate Davies, who I think is a genius - everything is so clear and the stitch charts are so well laid out they can be followed after a couple of glasses of merlot, which is what I need from Friday night knitting.
This one isn't about knitting. I love knitting, I also love music, lots of different kinds. And a bit like knitting - which I didn't really pursue for 30 odd years, though would often find myself in the haberdashery section of John Lewis stroking balls of yarn and pondering patterns - Squeeze have also always been there, in the background.
1982 I was 14 when Black Coffee in Bed came out and I must have sought it out (according to the internet it only got to No. 54) and listened to it a lot because I have no memory of not knowing the words to this, more or less. However I don't recall this video at all, - we didn't have MTV. Quite a lot of hairspray here, it was the 1980s. The ozone layer didn't thank us:
I don't actually own a copy (of this or anything) from then. I never bought many records - I didn't have the funds. So I probably heard all their earlier stuff at parties, and on the radio, and I would have borrowed LPs and taped them. Which makes me feel a bit guilty even though it appears that home taping didn't kill music after all.
It didn't
Quite soon after 'Sweets from a Stranger' (I just had to look that up, because I am not a music fan in the way that the hero of High Fidelity is) the band broke up. I didn't pay much attention because I was discovering boys, cider, cigarettes and how much I could get away with. There were other bands I loved; the Human League and the Thompson Twins and Heaven 17...lots more (but never, ever, Duran Duran).
1984 ('O' Levels year) and Difford & Tilbrook are back together. I absoloutely remember this video because my 16 year old self had a really, really huge crush on that big furry coat (and Glenn Tilbrook - those curls! and what a lovely voice, and he plays the guitar!). Now I watch it and I think, they must have been absolutely bloody freezing:
Love's Crashing Waves (1984, Difford and Tilbrook):
Very late 80s - early 90s (I have a bit of a gothy phase, go to University, everything frankly goes a bit pear shaped with the university thing). I end up working in theatres as a box office manager and I move to London. I recall a very, very long and alcohol soaked evening with Karen (who I have since lost touch with, which is a shame, but how things go) when we drunkenly sang through 45's and Under over and over again, got through five bottles of Chardonnay and smoked a lot of Silk Cut. That wasn't uncommon. Squeeze seemed to be on MTV a lot - Hourglass, Last Time Forever and Some Fantastic Place (and only now do I know what that one's about)
1995 Eventually I ended up working a summer for Square One Events, who did the mid-90s Heineken Music Festivals. And there they were again, Roundhay Park, Leeds 1995:
Second Column, after Mike and the Mechanics. Poster £4.99 on Ebay. What's really annoying is I had a stack of these hanging about for ages...
I definitely watched them, I may even have said hello! This event also led to the only time in my life I was practically mobbed, delivering the tickets to the HMV in Sheffield (PULP were newly huge). The tickets were FREE... imagine!
The turn of the Century: Time trundles on, I am not entirely happy with my lot and I become obsessed by archaeology (I don't know if those things are linked). I also start to listen to a lot of folk music after I notice Eliza Carthy when she's nominated for the Mercury prize. I eventually leave London and get a proper job in a normal office in Reading, but it's all a bit dull and I get fairly depressed and behave not nicely.
2005 I start helping out, and eventually being a director of, Oxford Folk Festival (which is not dull) and I go to a lot of gigs - I realise I haven't listened to music properly in years, and perhaps this is not helping. I start to play the melodeon (I' ve never played anything) this is not dull! Finally I got to Cropredy for the first time, and one night soon after extricate myself from Reading and run away to Oxford and my new beloved. In the car on the way up the M4/A34 I listen to 'Loving you Tonight' (included on Excess Moderation, which I'd bought off the second hand CD stall at Reading University) on a loop, and in god knows what state of mind.
August 2005 -The day after I ran away to Oxford I hared down the A303 to Beautiful Days and arrived just in time for Bellowhead. I hadn't seen the line up for the rest of the festival, I didn't really care, my new love was waiting for me (he already had a ticket, mine was obtained from a Welshman found on the gate who had a genuine spare ticket to sell). But there on the bill was Glenn Tilbrook and The Fluffers...and all those old songs (and some new ones) were back in my head, tangled up with the weekend my life changed, when I thought it never would.
August 2006 - Cropredy - Glenn is on, on his own, in the bit around teatime before Fairport come on for their marathon Saturday night concert. And he's great, just him and his guitar. He sings loads of Squeeze songs as well as his own stuff, which I like (and his little boy is on the stage side, with his guitar, which is almost too much cuteness when you're feeling broody). We're right down the front and I think, crikey, I've been listening to this stuff for years, and it's never, ever boring, and I still love it.
August 2008 - Beautiful Days again. The broodiness ended up in a small boy and we're planning our wedding. Squeeze are back together and playing festivals. I couldn't for ages think why I wasn't down the front for this appearance, but then realised we had a baby, a fairy light festooned pram, and there was a LOT of mud. I remember still singing very loudly, despite being very sober.
2010 - For some reason - probably the existence of a two year old and a loss of any sense of time or of ourselves as anything other than childcare providers - we don't go to any of the Spot The Difference tour.
2012 - August, Cropredy again. We have a very short discusssion about who is going down the front for Bellowhead. The four year old says he definately is so his Dad has to take him because I can't get him on my shoulders, and as is pointed out, I will want to go for the last band on that night. Squeeze did a fantastic set, I was buzzing about it for weeks, and I wasn't the only one. I think I was standing just behind the person who took this video:
I faffed about and didn't book tickets for the Pop Up Shop Tour for ages - and then I watched 'Take me I'm Yours' on BBC4, and did book, and felt a bit poorer, but also happier. The next day I was in the office and Linda was playing 'Cool for Cats' I asked why, and she told me " 'this lot' don't know who Squeeze are...'"
24 November 2012 - Reading Hexagon . There was a lot of dancing, and a lot of singing at the tops of our voices. They did an acoustic bit in the middle which was lovely, and my only regret is we couldn't stay to queue and get CDs signed. Being able to get the gig you were at on CD though is marvellous, even though half of mine doesn't work (I have a working one now, sorted very quickly).
Until I wrote this I hadn't really realised how much they'd always been on in the background. I wouldn't ever have called myself a fan (I might now!). But all those brilliant tunes and clever lyrics, that distinctive octave apart vocal - and they can still sing like that, it's fantastic - I always go back to them! I'm so glad Glenn and Chris are back together writing and performing again, and they have a great band on with them. I'm listening to their songs now more than I ever have for years, and the new stuff is just as good as the old:
Years ago (probably seven or eight, and definitely Before Child) I did some dyeing. Because in the B.C. era I seemed to have a lot of that stuff called 'spare time', and I like to learn new stuff.
This was not complicated dyeing using plants, wood shavings, mordants and so on* but using food dye, and also 'Kool Aid' which is something you can safely ingest, but not to my taste, and heaven knows I have, due to my great age, eaten icing coloured with actual cochineal - which is made of actual beetles. I have to say I much prefer to boil yarn up in the Kool Aid than drink it (you can even get turquoise from one of them).
A packet of Kool Aid, this one would turn your yarn pink
Hmm...beetles. Anyway, during this dyeing phase I made a skein of really alarming self striping yarn in Bright Green and Bright Red (this was from Supercook food colouring):
The true horror of the green doesn't come over. Yes that's another Kate Davies going on there, and a glimpse of the chaos that reigns, constantly, over my coffee table.
So, like the good stasher that I am, I put this thing in a the cupboard because it would come in useful One Day. That Day, it turns out, is the day of the great Pom Pom Mania of 2012.
And, some clever people have invented a doodah (Prym do one, so do Clover) for making pom poms which does away with the cardboard circles of infant school. Clever them, and thank you.
With this new device you wind round one half of the circle, then round the other, and then fasten them together:
A pom pom in its embryonic stage
After that, you cut round the wound on yarn in the traditional manner, hoping all the while the thing doesn't ping apartbefore you get the yarn tied round its middle, as it will do if you have wound too much yarn round it and you finish with no pom pom but 100s of lengths of un-useful 4inch pieces of yarn as a result. You only do it once.
Once past this hiccup (it was a very shallow learning curve) I suddenly - this is quick *and* addictive - had lots of balls. I have no idea what I will do with them though...:
Some balls, this morning.
* it's on my list, I have a vision of me, the washing machine brazier and a big cauldron, boiling stuff up of a summers eve. I could wear my goddess trousers and pixie coat. I might move to Glastonbury...
I haven't knit anything for the boy since he was but a tot. So I asked him 'What would you like' and he answered 'A red thing', 'Cardigan or jumper?' I replied, 'Cardigan' said he.
Luckily I had bought Millamia's 'Wonderland' at the Knit and Stitch show, so an 'Alexander' Jacket it is (I am not doing the patches, I'm really not sure about them).
And why have 'red' when you can have SCARLET:
Redder than a red thing in a red paint factory
The Millamia yarn is amazing, beautifully soft merino, excellent stitch definition a joy to knit, and machine washable. I just wish John Lewis hadn't seen fit to package each ball individually, and then in the big silver parcel:
Never knowingly underpackaged
Meanwhile, Wobember is underway here: http://wovember.com/ celebrating all things wool, and well worth a look at (there are pictures of Lincoln Longwools, what more could you want?)
I like a mystery. It usually helps if it's Scandinavian and has knitwear in it. This project satisifes at least one of those criteria already - and maybe two, because none of us except Woolly Wormhead know what the hat design is...
I have been deep into the Stash and swatched some Rowanspun 4 ply, but don't think it's quite right.
Then discovered what I believe to be (the ball band is long gone since it was recycled from a top I made for the boy when he was still unborn) some kind of DK weight merino blend in a smashing almost raspberry red. And it knits to gauge so it's a done deal.
I have never done a KAL before (I did once start a mystery scarf, however the lace chart got the better of me in week two and it was abandoned) but this is a small project and should be achievable. I also know it'll be a well written pattern, as Woolly's always are.
Here's another 'mystery hat' for you (or gratuitous picture of Cumberbatch, possibly):
Socks are useful as knitting projects because they are small, portable and, in my case, fairly brainless knitting. I admire the many intricate sock patterns out there but can't understand why you would put in all that time and then stick them in shoes for no-one to see - for example look at these stunners from the Twist Collective . But then I am an habitual 'sensible' shoe person, and wearer of slightly too long trousers, so my feet are invisible. The heights of sock complex-ness for me is maybe a little 3 x 1 rib up the cuff, or a Jaywalker and/or self striping yarn. But - back to the portability, you can take them anywhere, and knit on them anywhere. In theory...:
I really don't have clown sized feet
This pair of socks has been on the needles for about two years, I am pretty sure they've been to Beautiful Days (twice), Cropredy (probably twice as well), and Musicport. It's hard to knit outside in the blazing sunshine (or, lets face it) pouring rain, and even harder when your diet mainly consists of cider, or they would have been finished by now.
They have definitely been to Heathrow, Seattle, Battle Ground Washington and Bend and Portland Oregon. And yet still, here they sit, an inch away from being finished. If certain carriers would allow you to knit while in transit (what do they think knitters will do?) they would have been finished by now.
The needles of doom
If I hadn't become horribly distracted by the Madelaine Tosh in Knit Purl in Portland, and forced to swatch just to see how it knit up in the car on the way back to base, and yet again be beset by the booze too nice to turn down problem (I'm looking at you Deschutes Brewery), they would have been finished by now.
But most af all, if I hadn't hidden them at the bottom of the knitting basket, only to have them surface again when searching for supplies for another project, they would have been finished by now (this more than one project thing probably isn't helping...)
I don't think I (or they) can take much more, so I have made a decision. I will finish them tonight. If no-one reminds me about that tune I'm supposed to be learning...
