Yarn & Superyarn

New blog, new life?!?!

2010-10-27T14:13:00.000+01:00

As I:

a) am sick to death of fighting Blogger to get my images in here the way I want them to appear (nothing fancy, just 2+ in a row occasionally, and word-wrapped) - or indeed getting anything the way I want it to look

b) no longer wish to use a blog full of memories,

I have moved to Wordpress!

This blog will remain up, but not updated.

What a difference a year makes.

2010-10-10T21:51:00.001+01:00

AKA Tiny Husband is getting the chop...

It's been almost exactly a year since my last post - more than that if we go back to my last crafting post. And life has changed.

For a start, I'm now half way through my teacher training, and a single mother. TH and I separated in July, initially to give ourselves a break while he sorted out some issues. Now, however, it looks like we won't be getting back together, as TH - must find a more suitable acronym - has decided, in effect, that his problems are actually personality flaws on my part. But he doesn't want a divorce, unless one of us wants to remarry.

We'll be getting a divorce. It's either over, or it's not. I'm not having this hanging over me. I'm already pissed that I'm in this halfway house of being 'unofficially' separated. There is no way that I could put up with having to explain my whacko living arrangements and non-divorcee status for the rest of my life. And while we're at it, I'll be going back to my maiden name.

And so to our normal schedule: the remaining creations from 2009 -

And 2010 so far:

More later...

Tiny Husband is getting the snip....

2009-10-18T12:43:00.002+01:00

TH works for a company with a big history of charitable work.

In the past, for TH, this has included 30-mile sponsored walks for St Basils, a charity that works with homeless youth (not bad for a man who takes the bus to the corner shop!), volunteering as a teaching assistant in a Children's Hospital school, various dress-down fund-raisers, and a stint as Mr July in a, er, nuddy calendar. F'r example.

This time though, it's Personal....

He's having the cruellest cut of all - for charity.

Yes, in November, this sad old rocker is having his hair cut off. Those ears haven't seen sunlight for nearly twenty years! It's been over a year since his last cut, and it's almost waist-length: the ponytail is at least 16in.

His company is on board with sponsorship, and there is a raffle at work with the winner having the honour of wielding the scissors!

The charity is Little Princesses Trust, which provides wigs for children who have lost their hair due to cancer or alopecia. All hair donations are sent for wig-making, even bleached hair, as long as it's at least 10ins long and in good condition. Hair from all ethnic groups, hair that has been stored for up to 10 years, hair in layers (min 10ins), it's all good. And unlike some other hair-donation programmes, the hair is actually sent to wigmakers who return the wigs to the Trust for distribution - not sold to raise funds.

TH has set up a JustGiving webpage for additional cash donations to the Trust. Please consider donating, however small an amount - and, if you're a UK taxpayer, please add GiftAid to your donation: it costs you nothing, and gets the charity an extra 28%.

GO ON GO ON GO ON GO ON GO ON GO ON GO ON GO ON GO ON
YE WILL YE WILL YE WILL YE WILL YE WILL YE WILL YE WILL

ShareThis

Posted using ShareThis

I just made some gluten-free soda farls...

2009-08-21T21:52:00.008+01:00

and thought I should do some jotting.

Mother put me up to this the other day, mentioning that she now exclusively eats her own home-made soda farls instead of buying loaves that she can't finish on her own. It dawned on me that I'd never made soda farls myself, ever. So I went on a quest for a gluten-free version, motivated in part by the imminent demise of my bread machine, which still bakes, but no longer heats during the proving stages. I found some good recipes, among them Living Wheat-lessly, but was hampered by the rundown of the store cupboards before we go off to Sweden on Sunday. Finally desperation drove me to knock something together yesterday lunchtime, when we ran out of bread of all varieties. Hence the following.

The first lot were white, the second "wholewheat" - not really wholewheat, obviously, otherwise I would be in a very bad way atm, but fake gluten-free whole-fibre-ish.

Anyhoo, the flour blend for the first batch was:

8oz Rice Flour
8oz Tapioca Flour
8oz Soy Flour

Sorry about the Imperial units, but this was left over from a blend in a US book, so it's either cups or ounces I'm afraid. And I have learned to my cost (my nummy, nummy cost) that a US cup has nothing whatsoever in common with my coffee mug.

Mix 10.5 oz from this flour blend with 3/4 tsp baking powder, pinch cream of Tartar, and 1/2 tsp salt.
Rub in 3 tbsp cold butter (I use Stork).
Add 1 tbsp sugar (but see next recipe), mix and put a well in the middle.

In another large bowl, beat 2 eggs, mix in 8 fl oz natural yogurt, and add 1/2 tsp baking soda, whisking like mad.

AT THIS POINT YOU NEED TO START MOVING LIKE BUGGERY. The yogurt and baking soda mixture will start fizzing, and you need to combine it with the flour as if the very hounds of Hell were baying at your heels for the lickings.

It will be more like a batter than a bread dough, so just pour it into a preheated griddle pan (I used a wok - a frying pan would do: as long as it's heavy-based and has a lid, it doesn't matter). No oil, no flouring. Keep an eye on it, it should be mostly cooked through in 20mins, but flip it over anyway to finish cooking through. Now, I don't know if this makes any difference, but it's what my tribe does: take it out and wrap it in a dishtowel until it's cool.

It was a bit rubbery - no doubt because I put 2 eggs in instead of one - and too sweet for my liking, although I would consider it as a basis for a fruit soda. There it is on the left - with my home-made blackberry jam in the background, made from berries picked by the Mighty Offspring himself, awww...

The second lot uses this flour blend:

8oz Rice Flour
8oz Tapioca Flour
8oz Quinoa Flour (because I was out of Soy, hah! and quinoa is also a high-protein flour)

The same method - 10.5 oz flour blend with 3/4 tsp baking powder, pinch cream of Tartar, and 1/2 tsp salt, rub in 3 tbsp butter. NO sugar, but instead add a goodly fistful of toasted soya bran, available from Holland & Barrett.

Prepare buttermilk by mixing 8 fl oz milk with 1 tbsp vinegar, then mix in 1 - not 2 - beaten egg, 1/2 tsp baking soda: this will also fizz, but a little slower. You still need to get a wriggle on.

This mix isn't as liquid, and could probably be formed. I didn't, though - straight into the preheated wok and away.

It was a little crumbly when I tried to cut it when still warm, but turned lofty and elastic when cold, just like it should be. The lack of sugar was perfect - it was just the right degree of tangy and savoury. The slight bitterness of the quinoa also works well for this faux wheaten: soy flour would be just a bit too soft and waxy. It's not overly wholewheaty, more like the soft, spongy Ormo wheaten loaves than the nutty bricks of my childhood, but I was going easy on the soya bran for this experiment. Next time, though...

You'll notice neither recipe uses xanthan gum, guar gum, or powdered milk, which would be quite usual in GF baking: they provide the rubbery, gluey sponginess of, well, gluten. It's not actually essential that soda bread has this sponginess, though; it doesn't have that character even when made with wheat. But I did wonder why the second farl wasn't as crumbly as I'd expect. The first obviously got its extreme sponginess from the accidental egg overdose, but that wasn't the case with the second. Then I remembered: milk + vinegar + heat = casein plastic!

Mwhahahahahaha!

We interrupt the scheduled programme...

2009-08-16T01:24:00.009+01:00

...of joyous creativity to announce a tragedy.

At 8.00 this morning, the Clarice bag departed this world.

This beautiful, vibrant - nay, fluorescent creature went into the washing machine last night for felting. Sadly, this morning, it was found in a semifelted condition, almost completely bereft of Kool-Aid colour.

The only colour to survive, however slightly, is the one I dyed with Turmeric (yes, the spice. It's pretty good, no need for acid, salt, nasty chemicals - just spice and boiling water. Works for cotton too).

And not one photograph did I take before I put it in the washing machine.

So, what did I do wrong? I did a fair bit of research before going into this, and all of it suggested that Kool-Aid dyed wool felted pretty well. Slight fading but not too serious, more of an advantage given how eye-wateringly bright Kool-Aid can be. A quick whizz though my sources reveals no mention the optimal wash temperature, though: my machine was set for a boil wash, which, in retrospect, was probably too hot. It was stupid o'clock in the morning, I'd stayed up to finish it ready for felting, and I was overcome with the desire to have my widdle baggie-waggie first thing in the morning: not my best chemistry thinking time.

Back to the drawing board, then. I still want to make this, but I'll do some test swatches and try a few different temps first. I'd also like to re-jig the chart: Coss seems to assume square rather than rectangular stitches, and comes out very wide and short when knit up. It produced a lovely oblong shape for the bag, but the flowers were a bit stretched.

So, I return you to your normal scheduled programme with this cautionary bit of advice: don't wash your Kool-Aid dyes at 90deg until further notice.

ETA: When life gives you lemons, stick 'em down your blouse to make your boobs look bigger! I'm going to use the bag to learn to steek! and maybe needle-felt! Not that I see myself making anything that ever requires either skill, but I'd imagine you could do a zombie some damage with a felting needle...

Monster Post III - Rav Rave!

2009-08-03T12:49:00.006+01:00

This is me, wearing my February Lady cardi, ensconced in the First Class carriage, crocheting a mobile phone sock, on my way to UK Ravelry Day 2009! It's a bit fuzzy because the train was vibrating with speed, but it's the best of six or eight that I took, including a charmingly smeared one of my bum as a particularly sharp jolt knocked the camera out of my hand. Nonetheless, it is proof, if such were needed, of my attendance.

I abandoned Tiny Husband and the Mighty Offspring at silly o'clock for a Saturday morning, and tore off determined to arrive for the opening. Sadly, it was not to be. The bus to the centre arrived later and took longer to travel than I had allowed for, so all was in full swing when I arrived.

It was actually a little intimidating walking into the hall knowing it was full of fibre enthusiasts. I didn't dare take my rain coat off at first, for fear of people throwing tomatoes at me for my February Lady blasphemy. Or something equally irrational. I got a coffee and sighed over the lovely cakes I daren't even breathe around, and checked out the competition. But despite the tight confines of the entrance hall, everyone seemed quite jolly, pushing and shoving their way round very politely. I risked putting the raincoat in my shopping trolley (for, friends, I was on a mission), sucked in a fortifying breath, and tried a little eye contact. No tomatoes. Oh good. Then I saw Rooknits, who organises the knitting meet-up that I, er, occasionally attend, helping hand out programmes, and wearing - yes! - her own FLS. Completely different to mine, barely skimming her hips in a variegated purple Malabrigo, and just looking so much lighter. Mine is, you know, heavy. Cotton. A quick word, and I went to pick up some goodies, including a Rav badge.

I had not scheduled anything for the morning to give me a chance to wander round and soak up the atmosphere. On my way into the main hall, a couple of people stopped me to look at the FLS, and one took a photo. The Knitter magazine, which was sponsoring the event, had a photographer there taking pictures of individual knitters in their finery. I made sure to walk past slowly and ostentatiously, and they totally ignored my orange and black 60s-inspired take on the world's most popular sweater!! Which didn't improve my misgivings about it... And as if to add insult to injury, on my final promenade, the photographer's assistant - or the fashion director, who knows - dived shrieking towards me - and grabbed the woman behind me. Who was wearing an ill-fitting, sangria-vomit-coloured... sack thing, that she protested she hadn't even had time to finish seaming or weaving in on (which was very obvious) before coming to the event. It was a shambles, but the PA/FD just would not release the poor woman, dragging her kicking and screaming up on the stage and propping her up with threats and menaces as she tried to hide her face in shame inside the lopsided half-sewn collar... Maybe it was some hellishly expensive yarn - they always seem to look like some variant on puke - or a pattern by some high-flown designer. I clearly don't have good enough taste or fashion sense to tell. Maybe - no, undoubtedly - it would have looked better properly finished and blocked. Who cares - I was miffed, insulted, ready to throw the bloody FLS in the trolley, certain it was every crappy thing I worried it was (tacky, ugly, unflattering, laughable, grannyish...). Sometimes I am a very small person.

The hall was bustling quietly. Someone was doing a demo of spinning in historical costume, on a very large, very homemade looking wheel. I couldn't place the era, and don't know enough about spinning to identify any more than that, and was still feeling too shy to stop her and ask questions. There was a selection of fabulous felted hats, some military, on her stall, but sadly none for sale. The most amazing thing was a set of carders (?) that I didn't even see until I was leaving the hall later. Instead of bristles, they had large burr seeds attached! That just amazed me. Of course, what would you use before manufacturing gave you the option of inserted-bristle brushes? It's so obvious and ingenious.

I wandered about for a bit, looked everything, then headed out into the bucketing rain to wander round the stalls. The first thing to see was this adorable pair of alpacas. There were a few people, as I passed back and forth, who bemoaned the terrible conditions the poor little things were suffering in the rain. I inadvertently sniggered the first time I heard one, earning a glare, but really? They come from the Andes (full of alloo-ARRRR!), which is Spanish for 'some of the most extreme environmental conditions found on this planet': Coventry must be a cake walk for them. They certainly seemed to be coping with the downpour and the crowds with typical camellid insouciance, though of course they may just have been stoned on the comparatively oxygen-rich atmosphere.

I bought some alpaca fibre at another stall, lovely deep black stuff that I will one day pluck up the nerve to spin. However, I was really after Jameson and Smith's stall. I wanted to get a colour card (done, and then some - I think I got every colour card there!) and possibly some yarn. So I picked up 10 skeins in a lovely honey green, which I hope to run up in a Japanese pattern from Hitomi Shida's 250 Couture Knit Stitch Patterns, to which I treated myself on YesAsia. I also somehow accidentally walked off with some 1-ply cobweb in a lace scarf kit. No idea how that happened, or how that huge sack of Shetland spinning fibre came to be in the bag with it - if you've been paying attention, you'll know that lace and I are not mutually compatible. And my first response to thread is to whip out a steel crochet hook visible only under electron microscope - not big fat knitting needles! And it's PINK!!! Gooey, sickly, sugar-pink at that. Nonetheless, I cast on Meg Swansen's talk and did a respectable amount before having to rip back due the inevitable stitch-count issues.

In the afternoon, I attended a natural dyeing workshop, run by Debbie... Barton? Sorry, the name is gone. There, I went a little mental, discovering previously unsuspected enthusiasm for the Madd Colorzz as long as I was in charge of the dye pots. The result is the red and green ball on the right - the ball on the left is some leftover mordanted Jamieson & Smith jumperweight that we were told to take away. I dyed it a lovely deep gold with onion skins - not terribly even but mouthwatering. I mean that btw, I'm dribbling on the keyboard just thinking about it. I call them Rhubarb and Crumble respectively. There might be enough for a faux Fair Isle tam, but I'd probably best knit it from the top/centre down just to be on the safe side.

I also picked up some smaller size KnitPicks (now Knit Pro in the UK) interchangeable tips and longer cables to go with my kit, and some of their multi-coloured Symphonie wooden cable needles - not that I need them, or will ever likely use them, as I think the scoring on them would tear up the yarn, but I can't say no to a cable needle... Tried to get some Soak, but the only bottles left were scented and didn't appeal. Was sorely tempted by Poems of Colour, but it was sold out too apart from the stall copy. I did finally settle on The Opinionated Knitter, and got it signed by Meg Swansen!

Meg's talk was great fun. She read briefly a few extracts from her mother's books - mostly The Opinionated Knitter, which at this point I hadn't bought. I've always liked Elizabeth Zimmerman's tongue-in-cheek humour, and it translated well in the talk. Most of the talk was taken up with answering questions from the floor on any and all topics related to Elizabeth, Meg herself, Schoolhouse Press, etc. I hadn't expected any laugh out loud moments, but there were plenty. At one point, someone asked about the February Lady Sweater, and whether Elizabeth would have approved of this adaptation of the Baby Sweater on Two Needles (Knitter's Almanac). In her reply, Meg asked for all the people in the hall wearing a FLS to stand up - and at least 20, probably more like 30, stood up! I may have lost my stitch count at this point. All different colours and fibres, on all different sizes and shapes. After the talk, when I queued up to get my new copy of The Opinionated Knitter signed, Meg was very complimentary about my fitted FLS, and asked a lot of questions about how I'd done it (yes, I know I have to put something together about that). So, sucks to the The Knitter! Validation from the foal's mouth!

Monster Post II

2009-07-29T13:57:00.032+01:00

Let's see, a good long while ago, the father of the Monstrous Offspring's playmate at the childminder's asked me if I could make a replacement blankie for her. He is also the Head of IT at work, so I ain't gunna be p!ssing HIM off, with the state my laptop's in! I had a look at the pitiful remnants of her blankie, and there was just enough left for me to make out that it was definitely crochet, three long stitches together and a chain between each group, into which the next row's three stitches went. The long stitches might have been trebles, the number of stitches in the chain might have been 3 or 4 - the poor thing was too matted to tell. But I had a go at it for her birthday, and she was delighted. I was worried she would feel it was trying to take over, but she wrapped it round herself, twirled with it, was a butterfly, etc. Honour was satisfied.

I should really try to crochet more. It's starting to be a little ouchy on my hand, and that's not good. I may even have a project in mind...

Tiny Husband has expressed an interest in tie pins and waistcoats - now that his workplace has made ties optional for all but front of shop staff. Contrary beast that he is. So I made him a 1940s knitted waistcoat! The yarn is from a massive cone of natural 100% wool - Herdwick possibly - that I bought for nothing when I was still leaving the universe of dolly-mixture acrylic - didn't even know Herdwick was a breed! There's probably more than enough left for Louhi, once I get the courage together for such a long project - and a decent pair of gardening gloves: that stuff is rough! Currently, I'm making a Noodle Shrug for the bridesmaid, using this wool doubled.

This is all by way of diverting attention from the fact that I went on a big me me me drive recently. I attempted to make this for myself using some no-name chunky wool blend from LIDL. It was a very fast knit - all done, plus other knits, on our two weeks in Ireland - but it was just too. Low-cut. And there's just no way I was going to add even more bulk by wearing something underneath it to hide Pinky & Perky from a curious world. It awaits frogging and a possible rebirth as Owls. My Ruffled Collar Pullover continued apace, but there's only so much time I felt like devoting to ribbed mohair. Making considerable progress is my Clarice bag. No photos, but it is almost finished, which I am quite pleased about. I've only been able to work on it for short periods, as the multitude of bright bobbins tends to attract cat, son and husband, to the detriment of the work.

Then I saw these, and had to have them for my own. They are Penispoopcakewaffle Socks. Brainchild of one Wendy Moreland, it is a free Rav download, not available elsewhere I'm afraid.

For a time, this was all I had completed for myself to wear to UK Rav Day, and durned if I could find a pair of shoes, among the millions I own, that I could wear them with - even just a pair I could wheek off easily for showing-off purposes (why does that sound dirty now it's in print...). I had slaved and slogged into the wee hours many a night trying to finish off my Joan Crawford (in a black variant of the mystery yarn mentioned in the previous post) for the day, only to be defeated at the last by the finishing. Sew a hem on a jumper, will ya, Biddy Ann? Aye right. I ask you.

And then, the blindingly obvious hit me. Funny how often that happens. Some time ago, I answered a plea from someone about the infamous February Lady Sweater - or as thee, me and the cat would call it, bed jacket. Cardigan if you're being charitable. This is viral knitting as its finest. The Susan Boyle Youtube video of knitting. Now That's What I Call Knitting #6306 (which is the number of times it's been made so far, according to Ravelry) - you get the idea. It's the adult version of Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Baby Sweater on Two Needles. I first came across it a good while ago, being touted as suitable for a maternity cardi, and thought good luck to it. It's mostly lace, which is not something I'm dying about at the best of times. What with neither being pregnant nor having the prospect of pregnancy, not to mention having a very great hatred of the current fashion for looking pregnant (even though it worked in my favour when I was) I had no interest in the thing. But a plea went forth, and I answered it.

The whys escape me. I mean, it's not like no one out there had ever made one. Some people have made - well - quite a few. They're a bit like sock knitters: they've found what they were born to knit, and, well, they go to it with a will. Anyway, this is about me me me, so back to your normal service.

Her questions were quite complex, possibly made so by a difference of language, and in the end I had to cast on to check that my reading of the pattern was correct. For handiness, and because it was roughly the right weight, I started off with an apricot cotton - Paccia La Lana Cinzia - which I got in a fire (or possibly bomb) sale in Belfast about 18 years ago. I had tried doing things with it before, but nothing had quite worked. Undaunted, I plugged on with FLS to the point - at the end of the collar/start of the lace - where her questions ended, and was pleased to report that I was correct (as was she, just confused, but then this is about me me me. I don't know why I have to keep saying it). By then I had invested a substantial amount of time on the project; I thought I might as well use up this stuff after all that time in a box, moving countries with me.

Okay fine, I just couldn't stand the thought of ripping it out again.

So I continued. I soldiered on with the lace - it wasn't too hard, especially after I put 15 million stitchmarkers at every repeat. I could even do it without looking, managing half a row or so (there are about 85 giblillion stitches per row...) on the bus. Then I remembered I was doing a maternity tent - sorry, smock effort. Never a good look on one so sumptuously endowed as moi, and thanks to my recent success in vanquishing the Weed, I am packing a smidge more round the waist than I like. So not just huge jugs to make it sit out, but a muffin top to keep it from sneaking back in. By jaze sez I, I'll need to do something about this.

So I shaped it. Hah! Pheer my madd skillz. I narrowed it in to my waist, then widened it out again for my hips. Then along the way I thought, you know, for ages I've been longing for something a bit piratical, a bit Jacobean, something with booty and flounce and that certain Laurence Llewellyn Bowen sensibility - something with oomph and tra la and a fol de rol to set the cat among the curtains. So I SUPER-sized the hip increase for a bouncy little peplum, ha har! Then I added cuffs, collar and hems in a vintage Astrakhan I have about me, and some gold-and-black buttons I found in the market, and voila! The effect is not fitted, but semi-fitted: I can still wear a jumper underneath. Though part of me is tempted to unpick and re-do it, because I feel I didn't start the decreases early enough. But whatever.

I just about finished it in time to travel to Ireland, where I wore it almost constantly. The photos had to be taken that evening, before it was finished, or blocked or anything - you can see the ball of astrakhan balanced on my shoulder. I'm not sure now why it was so urgent, but it was. One day I'll get nice pics. Ones where I don't get exasperated by the photographer's fear of pressing a button on my very complicated camera phone while panicking over the location of the passports...

Next installment: UK Rav Day!

TTFN
K

Monster post

2009-07-29T00:32:00.013+01:00

It's gotta be. Nearly 5 months since my last post, and let me tell you I have not been idle.

The first report is of the Bob The Builder jumper, last seen almost two year s ago. Hallelujah, it's done. Good job I was making a big size - he's still got room to grow into it! Forgive the look of misery on his face - I was committing the cardinal sin of interrupting his viewing of Ben 10...

So what else? Ah Christmas. Scarves and smoke ring kind of things, mittens that I stupidly didn't photograph before they were handed over. Ah well. We went to Ireland for two weeks over Easter, giving Tiny Husband's HR person heart failure at taking so much time off so early in the financial year. Several gauge-swatch bunnies, Ava's pink hoodie and Adam's Trellis cardi were finally given to their intended victims - or not in the latter case, as it was not originally intended for Adam... I'm just too much of a flibbertygibbet with crafts. But I suppose it makes up for being so staid and dull everywhere else.

The Mighty Offspring also benefitted from a Fat Controller hat. This is the top hat worn by Sir Topham Hatt, the eponymous director of trains on Sodor Island and Thomas the Tank Engine's boss. I made this by laying out cash money - yes! coin of the realm! - for Dark Twist's Miniature Top Hat pattern, then promptly ignoring most of it. I used Rowan Big Wool rather than a worsted, because, well, I didn't really want a miniature, just a little'un for a little'un. I think there was some mad nonsense about felting it by boiling it, then plunging it into freezing cold water too, but I am here to tell you - do not waste your time on this pish. Throwing it in the washing machine on a boil wash cycle with a pair of jeans that have got a bit saggy in the arse is yer only man. All I got for that boiling and freezing nonsense is frizzy hair and chilblains, and the Offspring hiding in a corner with his fingers in his ears until Daddy came home. In a way, I'm sorry I didn't just leave it the size it was, because he looks so cute in it, an Artful Dodger - which fits his personality a lot better these days. The remaining yarn was made into a pair of felted slippers, which spend too much time on the run to be snapped on camera!

Two more pairs of socks, one a green and beige on-the-fly Fair Isle (and I must get a pic of these on him), the other a Spidey pair. I'm really becoming quite inured to arachnids, as I also made him a pair of my Mitts-to-Mittens with the Spidey pattern - though Gordon knows where they are now. Probably in his special superhero chest, wherever and whatever that is this week. The Spidey socks were the last pair I made using the 52st pattern, as I've noticed they're a bit baggy even on MO's feet. The green and beige were made using a 48st version, which is quite snug. At that point I kind of stopped with the socks, partly because he really had enough for now, and partly due to a misunderstanding. I did buy some socks (they were cheap), big enough for his feet which of course meant they came up over his knees. Not too long after, we were having this little chat about socks and shoes, and he told me he didn't like the socks I made him. Now, I didn't at first factor in that 'buy' and 'make' probably mean much the same thing to a highly-verbal three-year-old who nonetheless only has a three-year-old's understanding of the magical ways in which goods and services appear in his world. He has about ten lyrically-described birthdays a week - doesn't mean he's getting cake every day. Turns out he doesn't like the long socks, only the Mommy socks... I have started again, as I see some of his socks are a bit small now. More of which anon.

I also made him a woolly sweater, Crab Apple, based on Blue Garter's Twisted Tree Pullover - with the usually mods for not having the right yarn in the right weight, etc., etc. - do I really have to say this? The pic does not do this justice - it is one of the things I am most proud of making - utterly gorgeous, beautiful stitch definition. I dread the day when he's too big for it. In fact, I'm plotting how I can lengthen the sleeves and such to get a bit more wear out of it...

But the interesting bit is the yarn. I bought it out of the bargain bin at this market stall I go to. I'd seen other yarn like it before - similar weird rolled-up looking balls - but they didn't appeal. Many of the colours were drab, and they looked like they were the work of a particularly ham-fisted beginning spinner: I've done a bit of spinning so I know whereof I speak here - all twisty and lumpy and bumpy, only singles and the fibre looked rank - nasty old ropy cottony looking stuff. However, this one day, there were 2 balls whose colour just demanded to come home with me, a beautiful vivid sap green. And at 69p for 2 balls in the sale, I wasn't going to fight over it. Sadly, I had to get the brown because there was no more green, and I needed 3 balls in total, though I must say, it came together well in the end.

It was brutal to work with. I imagine knitting Brillo pad fibre would be easier on the hands. I switched from index to middle to ring finger flicking as blisters rose and fell, and even to my shame did the odd row Continental. I went through many times that 69p's worth of Norwegian hand liniment. My hands turned green - the dye just seemed to brush off the yarn! and every dozen or so stitches I'd have to stop, grab the ball, and dangle the knitting from it to de-tangle it - it was horrifically overspun. Then I began to notice it was FELTING. Well, sort of getting that another-go-at-90deg look about it, at least. Then there was the quantities of hay I had to dig out of it... Finally, when I wet it to block it, it looked like the dye was just going to leave it completely - it absolutely gulched out of it for ages. The odd thing is, the colour wasn't really affected - there's a few white flecks that weren't there before, but otherwise, it's the same sap green that drew me in the first place.

Then I went to UK Ravelry Day in Coventry a few weeks ago - a grand day out which I will make mention of - but anyhoo, I was tootling around the rain-soaked stalls, mindful of my budget* but determined at least to beard Jamieson & Smith in their, er, stall, and cop a feel of a few fibres that shall remain nameless (dirty, dirty qivuit), when I just ceas'd all motion. I posed myself a few searching questions and ascertained that something had caught my surveillance attention out of my peripheral visual field. There was a little hurried conferring with longterm memory, with visual memory loudly denying all knowledge and blaming everyone else, and then finally reading comprehension and categoric memory kicked in with a few facts that hitherto had not been going to the same parties, all whilst, unbeknownst to the cerebrum, the legs had wafted me towards a stall I had just passed.

And there by the hokey were some balls with the same odd rolled-up shape to them. Same godawful ropy stuff, in glowing colours - multi-coloured in this case, but I was too stunned to hold that against them. Ye see, all that mental conferring and confabulating - putting of straw and blisters together with dye runs and felting, and marrying that to a chance flicker in the corner of my eye on a rainy Saturday in Coventry - had already told me what I would see written on the gracefully hand-painted sign beside them...

Noro Silk Garden
£13.99

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Aha.

But it doesn't end there... I have poured over Yarndex and online Noro sites, asked questions on fan forums, gone to yarn shops and looked and asked, and I'm no further forward. Noro's not cornflakes - they don't make yarn for anyone else, and no one else makes yarn for them. It looks like it might be Maiko 105 colourwise - but Maiko is a new range, and I bought this yarn before Maiko became available! Anyway, Maiko's also supposed to be plied, not single. I've bought more in the interim (yes, even before UK Rav Day!) which has a different structure - 2 plies, evenly spun - but in colours that are closer to Cash Iroha, which is a single (not plied) yarn... So I don't know what to think - and neither does anyone I've asked. It looks like it should be, but it's not quite right... There's only a few 'solid' Noro ranges, and the colours I'm finding are oh so close - but the weight and the construction is wrong, even for discontinued colours. Quality control reject? Pre-production run that didn't get past the design stage? Did someone hit the saki too hard at the office party, and do the yarn factory equivalent of photocopying their bum? Or is it something completely different, that just happens to bear certain remarkable similarities? Employees trying to make a bit of extra cash on the side? Industrial espionage? Wool piracy?

Akk. I'm not used to putting in this much detective work and getting nowhere. Answers on a postcard?

TTFN
K

* I was rushed to hospital with a suspected heart attack in May! It wasn't - I have the heart of a GOD - but the health insurance policy gave me some free money for the two-day stay in hospital, which was my UK Rav budget...

International Women's Day

2009-03-08T18:12:00.003Z

Looking at the IWD history page, it's easy to think that we've come a long way, but in reality little has been achieved, and little has changed. Women like me who call ourselves feminists are reviled by other women. We're considered 'unfeminine' and 'unladylike' by women who sup pints, enter farting competitions, and would kick your head in for calling them a lady, and 'frigid bra-burning lesbians' by men. Part of this is our own fault. The movement I joined in the mid 80s was fractured and always had been - a loose agglomeration comprising at one extreme women who just wanted a fair wage and the right to get mortgages and credit in their own name without a male relative going guarantor, and radical types who wanted men locked up in concentration camps/castrated at puberty after providing a sperm sample/killed except for a few caged breeding specimens. We disagreed over matters large and small: was pornography/contraception/abortion rights/writing Ms instead of Miss or Mrs empowering, or just another monumental fuck-over? Was marriage/being a housewife/(not) liking sex a sellout of the sisterhood or a legitimate form of self-expression? We never defined our terms adequately. Even our leaders have flip-flopped about in their ideology. Saint Germaine, I'm looking at you.

I still have the NUS Women's Campaign poster from when I was Women's Officer in '87-'88. It is almost perfect, no dog-ears, only a few folding lines. I have cared for it and will never part with it.I want to be buried with it. Some of you may be familiar with it. It was written, I believe, in 1971 by Joyce Stevens, and I hereby cheerfully rip it off. I doubt Joyce will mind. Most of the links were found by googling a couple of keywords.

Because women’s work is never done and is underpaid or unpaid or boring or repetitious and we’re the first to get the sack and what we look like is more important than what we do and if we get raped it’s our fault and if we get bashed we must have provoked it [1] and if we raise our voices we’re nagging bitches and if we enjoy sex we’re nymphos and if we don’t we’re frigid and if we love women it’s because we can’t get a ‘real’ man and if we ask our doctor too many questions we’re neurotic and/or pushy [2] and if we expect community care for our children we’re selfish and if we stand up for our rights we’re aggressive and ‘unfeminine’ and if we don’t we’re typical weak females and if we want to get married we’re out to trap a man and if we don’t we’re unnatural [3] and because we still can’t get an adequate safe contraceptive but men can walk on the moon and if we can’t cope or don’t want a pregnancy we’re made to feel guilty about abortion and …

Because we still need campaigns against violence towards women ;

Because we still can’t be sure of keeping our jobs if we get pregnant ;

For Sahjda Bibi, victim of a so-called ‘honour killing’, not in some primitive shanty town in the Middle East, but in Birmingham UK;

For Hannah Koroma from Sierra Leone, victim of female genital mutilation;

For Hitayezu of Rwanda, dying of HIV/AIDS, unable to afford the drugs given freely to the Hutu militiamen who raped her;

For the unknown 47 women drivers of Saudi Arabia who still live in fear (I believe one of them was shot in the head by her ‘dishonoured’ father);

For Dr. Lyla Gul of Afghanistan, almost blinded by the Taliban religious police for travelling to work in a taxi without a male relative;

For L from China, adopted by A and G after being abandoned like tens of thousands of other baby girls;

And despite the fact that we are often our own worst enemies and that in living my life by my own lights, that I too have been less than kind towards the perceived weaknesses of my sisters, I am still proud to be a feminist

[1] myth # 3. Like those for rape crisis, all domestic violence websites and leaflets still have to repeat that “it’s not your fault”

[2] flip down to “Respect Women”

[3] or have some other daft monicker inflicted on us

Meme

2008-10-16T23:34:00.002+01:00

Your result for What Your Taste in Art Says About You Test...

Concientious, Fulfilled, and Spiritual

11 Renaissance, 3 Islamic, 6 Ukiyo-e, -21 Cubist, -22 Abstract and 3 Impressionist!

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life. Beginning in Italy, and spreading to the rest of Europe by the 16th century, its influence affected literature, philosopy, religion, art, politics, science, and all other aspects of intellectual enquiry. Renaissance artists looked at the human aspect of life in their art. They did not reject religion but tended to look at it in it's purest form to create visions they thought depicted the ideals of religion. Painters of this time had their own style and created works based on morality, religion, and human nature. Many of the paintings depicted what they believed to be the corrupt nature of man.

People that like Renaissance paintings like things that are more challenging. They tend to have a high emotional stability. They also tend to be more concientious then average. They have a basic understanding of human nature and therefore are not easily surprised by anything that people may do. They enjoy life and enjoy living. They are very aware of their own mortality but do not dwell on the end but what they are doing in the present. They enjoy learning, but may tend to be a bit more closed minded to new ideas as they feel that the viewpoint they have has been well researched and considered. These people are more old fashioned and not quite as progressive. They enjoy the finer things in life like comfort, a good meal, and homelife. They tend to be more spiritual or religious by nature. They are open to new aesthetic experiences.

Take What Your Taste in Art Says About You Test at HelloQuizzy

Momma gotta brand new bag!

2008-09-25T17:02:00.020+01:00

I do! I will!

I've been having a go at dyeing wool, using Kool-Aid (right, top) and food colouring and vinegar (right, bottom). I have loads of undyed 4ply which I am probably never going to use up otherwise. The plan is to double-ply it and knit and full (felt) myself a bag. I love Clarice Cliff so I just had to get a copy of Melinda Coss's Art Deco Knits when it came up on eBay. I've had it for a while but the designs are so 80s that I'll never knit anything from it. However, it would be a pity not to make something. So I thought bags. The first one with be a straightforward knit-up of a sleeve, but if/when I do more, I might try to mimic the shapes of Clarice Cliff's pottery as well.

I wound off approximately 2oz (50g), skeined it on the back of a chair and tied it loosely with waste acrylic yarn. I washed it in cool water with a little liquid soap, making up the dye bath while it soaked briefly. The Kool-Aid dye bath consisted of 2 sachets dissolved with cool water, in a microwaveable pot (I used a soon-for-the-bin micro pressure cooker) - except for the purple (top, far right) for which I used 4 sachets. The food-colouring dye bath was approximately half a bottle (20ml) of Supercook food-colouring and a good glug of Sarson's Distilled White Vinegar, in cool water. I didn't bother rinsing the wool clear of the soap - I read somewhere that it actually might help the dyeing process - and lowered it into the dye bath, adding more water to make sure it was completely covered. A good shuggle of the pot to mix it up, then into the microwave for 2-minute bursts - mine has a default setting of 750W - with 2mins rest between, when I poked it a bit with a whisk to keep it under the bath. For most, the dye bath was clear after about 4 or 5 bursts like this. I then left the wool in the depleted dye bath overnight to cool, though it only needs to reach room temperature. I washed the wool gently in cool water to remove any excess dye, and left it to dry on a radiator. I've double plied two already into pullcakes with my Daruma Home Twister (left).

The results of the dyeing were overall pretty fabulous, even if I do tootle me own flute. The colours on the whole are clear and vibrant, and I'm particularly pleased with the good, dense black, which I really didn't think would come out well at all. Instead, it's about the best of the bunch, much better than the pic shows. The food-colouring green is lovely too - a nice strong organic sagey colour. I'm very fond of the Kool-Aid turquoise (second from left), and the red (second from right) is lovely and pure too. The food-colouring blue is a huge disappointment though, all patchy. It was my first attempt at food-colouring dye: on some advice from tinterwebs, I soaked it overnight in the dye bath before zapping it. Damn you, tinterwebs! Once more you bring me wrongness! It was actually worse than it looks now: I cooled it, added more blue and, in a fit of poorly-remembered colour-theory madness, a splash of red and zapped it again. It's better, but it suffers from the madd colorz yet, poor fluff. Saying this, I could probably whip up a bidding frenzy of Wollmeisian proportions on Etsy with the foul stuff. Many's the fool would promise me their firstborn* for it...

Next time, I will make sure to loosen up the strands within the skein, and tie them VERY VERY LOOSELY indeed. So loosely indeed that they were virtually UN-tied. Even though I thought I'd got them loose enough, they still affected the dye penetration on the first batch. It doesn't matter much, since I'll be using them double-plied and then felting.

The Kool-Aid colours are, from left to right:
Orange and Lemonade (one sachet each) - light, bright orange
Berry Blue - turquoise
Lemon-Lime - bright sap green
Black Cherry - reddish-brown marroon
Watermelon Cherry - peachy pink
Tropical Punch - pure red
Grape - mid-purple. Not entirely successful.

Other craftiness: a forgotten pair of socks. Sue me. How many pairs have I done? These are claret, ribbed in the leg and down the top of the foot. And another pair, 5-row stripes in red and navy blue. And yet another: Tiny husband's Regia Bamboo socks are finally finished. And as if that wasn't enough, a dinky pair of ankle socks for Ickle Baby Cthulhu from the left-over Bamboo. The photos are crap. Don't know what's wrong with the camera.

I also made myself a fake Fair Isle tam. Not that I couldn't make a real one, but I saw the patterns and thought "Oooh!" and "An excuse to use some of that variegated Teddy Picasso** in the camouflage colourway that I unaccountably like so much, without people necessarily catching me out being hypocritical". So I went at it like a demented thing, so maddened by the promise of fiendish skultammery goodness that I didn't check stitch counts or anything, finished it in 24hrs - and promptly lost it to the offspring. Seriously. I spend ages working out significant and meaningful Aran symbols for a tam for him, and he won't touch it. I risk my mental health at the eight legs of monstrous yarn worshippers to make him a Spiderman hat that lies despised and cobwebbed in a corner until I give it to his friend Harryweb. Not to mention all the unbelievably cute little hats for which I don't even have photos, because they got chucked out of the pram! But let me even day-dream about a hat for someone else - TH's BS Johnson, my fake Isle tam, his Spiderman hat now that it's Harryweb's... - and he WANTS IT NOW. The bottom two pics are his response to mild suggestions that he give Mommy back her special hat.

"Ye can tak awa ma dignity, but ye'll nivver tak ma tam!!!".***

TTFN
K

P.S. I treated myself to a spinning workshop for my birthday!! Now, once I get a proper spindle...

* - What, precisely, is the attraction of the firstborn? Why does everyone want them? Why the elaborate schemes to get their mitts on them? I say this as a firstborn myself. Though perhaps the fact that no cannibalistic witches/wrathful gods/strange little spinning men wanted me makes me bitter. And envious.

** - This is the DK version of the chunky Teddy Colourama for IBC's 'special jacket'.

*** - Sunday Post Translation Services, Inc.

There Went The Summer.

2008-09-04T18:30:00.015+01:00

Er, well. That was a bit pants, really. July was okay - I even had the beginnings of a decent tan, and managed to get out and about with IBC to do fun Mummy and Baby stuff like going to the pool, etc., but then August came pouring in. I've just had two INSET days at school, with the students returning tomorrow, and I'm sitting here, shivering, in a thick jumper, with the heating on and the rain lashing down outside.

We didn't go anywhere. Despite best plans, we didn't really have the ready cash. I did get to Rhyl on a day trip though. It was a freebie, with a play-scheme attended by my chief bridesmaid's 9-year-old son. She had double-booked herself, so she asked me to go to look out for him. I was a little concerned about IBC's behaviour on a 100-mile coach trip, but he took his cue from the older boy and was very well behaved. He slept briefly both ways, which helped, although a surfeit of pop resulted in a fairly spectacular spew on the way home. Above left is a phone video of IBC and his pal on the beach - it was not warm! - and left is me, knitting a sock on the way to Rhyl.

I managed to finish all but the toe by the time we got back to Birmingham! It is the last of the blue and claret socks I'll be making for now. It's a Fibonacci-striped pair: this time I made the leg and the foot bed half an inch longer each, which allowed for up to 8-row stripes, with no fudging like the first Fibonacci pair I did in blue and yellow. One of the most rubbish pics I've taken with this phone. I've just started on a new series, this time in red and navy.

I've done stunningly little knitting over the holidays. I got an automatic spool-knitter, which I have plans for, of which more later. I did make some i-cord with it, about 1.5m, which was appropriated by IBC and has been pressed into service as a tail when he's playing cats, a tow-rope when he's playing truck rescue, Cranky the Crane's grappler thingy, a belt, hair, a necklace... Following IBC's sudden interest in Spiderman - causing him to purloin various beanies and pull them down over his head as Spidey masks - then pranging into walls - I made him a Spiderman hat in DK using the We Call Him Spidey pattern, a variant on Hello Yarn's Generic Norwegian Hat. At least he can SEE through this hat. Now: I HATE spiders. How much do I love this little boy? 8 spiders' worth, that's how much. And while I was knitting this, every massive spider in the world was attracted to me. I killed two 3-inchers. Seriously. It was like they were coming to worship. GY-Y-Y-YAAAAHHH!

So what have I done with my summer? Wellll... This:

Here Comes The Summer -

2008-07-24T08:17:00.010+01:00

Woo-ooo, Here Comes The Summer!

Hurrah for The Undertones! Thirty-odd years on, I still find myself singing this one at some point during the sultry hell that is the British Summer - usually while out frying eggs on the pavement.

School closed on Tuesday, after 3 days of end-of-years jollies for the kids, including school trips, the disco, and Sports Day, which was a Gladiators-style challenge between staff and students. I did not join in, partly because I wasn't asked, and partly because I had serious misgivings about the whole thing. Far too many opportunities for harm, given the nature of the little hoodlums. I did have several offers, mainly from the Yr 10 boys, to take me down. Ummm, boys - you do realise I'm Irish? 8 years military? and the body-building/power-lifting thing I did that 15 years on still has me looking like a drag queen in a frock? Frankly I don't trust myself to stand there and take it like a good teacher if one of them decided to assault me for real. So I don't put myself in that situation.

I have plans for the summer - swapping bedrooms with the Offspring, for a start. They are about the same size - his current room is very slightly larger. I did some calculations and figured out our furniture would fit better in his and vice versa, and since ours is further from the living room there'd be less chance of him being disturbed by conversation, tv, etc. I have to paint out the feature wall in our room and put a mural on instead (Thomas the Tank Engine?), then totally repaint his room for us. I've arranged to borrow an overhead projector from school for the mural - I just need to sort out printing a suitable image on acetate. Quite looking forward to it, though I've no idea how to keep IBC out of the way while I do it!

I wanted to say a few words on the subject of converting flat knitting patterns to knitting in the round. But I think I shall write a knol on the topic. A list of my knols are on the sidebar, just below my pattern(s) - please note, not all are complete!

So, dear reader, to knitting: the Hoodie for IBC is completed. He calls it his 'special coat', bless. And two more pairs of socks, one in the Aston Villa colour scheme, the other a simple claret rib with a stocking stitch heel, toe and footbed. The final pair in AVFC colours - a ribbed Fibonacci sequence pattern - are on the needles as we speak. After that, we get onto other colours, woo-hoo!

I have also completed the Presto Chango for my colleague. I made the 6m size because she told me her medicos said the baby would be about 10lb. I did speak briefly of my own experience of expecting a 14lb+ monster - multiple scans, hysterical midwives (my favourite knitting tape measure is the one dropped by the midwife as she ran out of the room shouting for an ambulance*), planned inducing, etc., only to pop a medium-sized 8lb-er, but she was not having any of it, she was having a big un. I held my peace as it was announced in briefing that she had had a 6lb 3oz boy... At least the Presto Chango will fit him - eventually!

I've since begun a second Presto Chango for my niece. It'll be different. I'm doing it more or less in the round, with lace sleeves, and the inserts will obviously be different too. No pics yet.

That's about it for now

TTFN
K

* - Max bump size at full term: 40-42cm. My bump size with 3 weeks to go: 48cm. Cue a fortnight of to-ing and fro-ing to the hospital, observation stays, more flippin' scans. I went a little crazy, as detailed in my LJ... starting here...

I made a new knitter...

2008-06-20T19:41:00.004+01:00

And here he is:

So proud of his work -

About a fortnight ago, my son, aged 2yrs 8 months, demanding to "do knittings". I grabbed the camphone, then got out an old pair of needles and my bag of scraps (priorities, m'dears, priorities). He picked the "lello woo" himself because it looked like Josie Jump! He's still asking for his knittings occasionally, though we've moved on to pink wool after an unfortunate potty-related incident with Josie...

As to my knitting, I have finished yet another couple of pairs of socks for my Blondy Bear. I got a variety of colours of 4-ply Teddy Enriched 25% wool in the Bullring and hope to make as many combinations as possible.

So far, I am tackling the light blue and claret shades, which are coming up at a gauge of about 12st / in. The first is the striped pair: just 4-row stripes, one of which is split across the heel. Both colours are held together on the heel and toe. I'm planning to make two more pairs in this colour combination, one of which is almost finished - again stripes, but in the combination AABAA BBABB. These are the strip colours of Aston Villa, a football club here in our fair city of Birmingham. A few years ago, The Villa were going through a reversal of fortunes - good or bad I can't say - and there was a slogan about it - again it may have been coming from disappointed fans or enraged supporters of other teams, I don't know. The slogan was "Sh*t on The Villa", from which I named this project "Socks on The Villa". I'm such a wit.

The second pair is in the light blue only, with a little mock cable running down the sides - k through back of 2nd stitch on left needle, k through front of 1st stitch and 2nd stitch and remove from l needle. The next pair will be in claret, and I'm toying with making them ribbed on the leg.

I have started a little jacket for him as well, purely because I fell in love with the yarn... And it's variegated!! Quelle horreur! Teddy Colorama Colour Keyed Chunky. Actually, I fell in love with the DK, then noticed the same colourways were available in chunky. It's a simply beautiful melange of greens, creams and browns, some long runs and some short giving stripes, spots and chevrons. Of course the gauge is all off. The pattern calls for 10st x 13r on 9mm needles, which would be too large for this yarn, which is on the low end of chunky. The ballband recommends 3.75mm needles (15st x 20r) - ridiculously tiny for chunky yarn. I’m getting 14.5st x 20r on 6mm needles. I also decided to Zimmermann it - knitting seamlessly. Except for the pockets which I didn’t stop to understand - they’re attached at the bottom as per pattern (but there’s a BO edge in the body), and at the top as per a sort-of 3-needle bind-off of mine own devising which isn’t BO but instead melds into the body. If I had taken time to understand the pattern I would probably have done some sort of pick-up and bind off to anchor the side of the pocket, and possibly a Fig-8 cast-on onto a dpn at the bottom to knit the whole pocket attached, which would have the added advantage of not interrupting the striping-ness of the yarn. Sadly, it was all on my snazzy new computer which decided to die, so I'm a little stalled until it's fixed.

Finally, for a colleague who's going on maternity leave soon, there's a Presto Chango, one of the cleverest ideas I've ever seen for babywear. The body is in blue Robin Bonny Babe Aran, and the insert(s) is (are) a mystery Aranweight cotton found in the Bullring. I just have to knit one more insert, for which I'm checking through my Aran pattern books. She's expecting a boy, and the pattern's lace insert looks a bit girly to me... Not that she's likely to put it on the child - from the sounds of things, the sprog won't see anything less than Armani. And that's just the nappies.

I had a clever idea, aka hints n tips, recently. Using i-cord to re-create the effect of Aran barleytwists if you don't do Aran knitting, or to create your own non-canon shapes and designs. Just make huge quantities of i-cord (a job for a child with a new French Dolly?), lay it out in the shape, then sew to the knitted piece.

Gosh I'm good.

Tra
K

Foot Loose! Fibonacci

2008-05-17T20:22:00.016+01:00

Yet another pair of socks for my mightily hoofed offspring. Ye gods I am bored with this sock business. The only thing they have going for them is that they are handy bus projects for my 10-minute commute. But I shall persevere until he has a reasonable supply - by which time he'll probably need bigger socks - because today, for the first time EVAR, he has been willing, nay, demanding to wear something I've made him - yes, these socks. Ripped from my hands as I tried to finish weaving in the ends, which is nice because it's not my favourite task, with shouts of "Mommy, put a socks on!" Guess they won't get blocked for a while then. He pootled around the house until bedtime, when he adamantly refused to have them taken off. Half an hour after we put him to bed, I looked in on him. He was sitting on the floor, facing the window, chatting to his socks...
Again based on the Lion Brand pattern but modified for gauge as described previously, these are the Fibonacci socks I mentioned. So what's Fibonacci when it's at home? Well, HE discovered a sequence of numbers where each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers, hence 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21, etc. So what? So, most flowers have a ‘Fibonacci’ number of petals. Fibonacci numbers also show up in the shapes of coastlines and clouds and other natural phenomena. Also, if you divide each number by the previous number, you get a result that is very close to the Golden Number/Section/Phi/Divine Proportion (1.618), whereby all sorts of The Weird And The Wonderful… ~Cue Twilight Zone music~. It's all terribly amazing until you realise that mathematics exists to describe the universe. So it's not exactly surprising when the universe just happens to conform with the maths, is it?

It is a little sad that this glorious stuff is too complicated to explain to kids who think maths is boring.

I have also - in two days! - completed a Valkyrie helmet for my cousin's daughter Anna, who is a cute chubby little Brunhilde. It's based on a Viking Girl Hat I saw on Ravelry. However the thought of forking over $24.50 for a kit had the predictable effect on my bowels, so I reverse-engineered it from the photos. I couldn't tell for sure if there were horns or wings on it in the photos, but as a Viking re-enactor, I couldn't in conscience put horns on it so wings they are.

I wanted a smooth, helm-like shape with no obvious decreases. To get this, I phase-shifted the decreases on each round (i.e., starting at the 1st stitch on one dec round, and on the 7th, 5th, 3rd stitch on the alternate dec round). The plaits are i-corded, though I thought about French-knitting them. In the end, though, I had the dpns in my hand, but the bobbins were somewhere in my knitting boxes...

(Modelled by my vintage fully-working Oopsie Daisy, with original outfit, for those interested in such things.)

TTFN
K

Addendum....

2008-05-15T19:46:00.002+01:00

Just for the cuteness.

Wondering why he'd gone quiet, I found Ickle Baby Cthulhu running around the garden in his daddy's hat.

Of course it then took about 10 minutes to get him to stand still for the camera...

BS Johnson, socks, and a hoodie

2008-05-11T20:07:00.029+01:00

What a boring title.
This afternoon was British Summer Time, so I forced my significant Creature of the Night out of his tenebrous cellar, blinking and meeping, into the lacklustre light to model his Bloody Stupid Johnson hat. But it was worth it: despite his wailing and chittering, and his frequent swinges into the shadows to check for tell-tale signs of ash forming on his pallid skin from the influence of the evil Day Star, the cables showed up well.
As for him - anyone would think I'd asked him to bathe, for sheeshs' sake. Honestly.

Also forthcoming, more pics of the Ba's socks. Not a lot to say here - they're based on Lion Brand's Child's Solid Socks pattern (you might have to register to look, though it is a freebie). Not having Woolease within several thousand miles, I've been using what I have to hand - DK in the case of the beige ones in the previous post (Robin DK) and the dark brown (Patons Fab) and red (mystery) pairs here, and 2-ply pure wool, double-stranded, for the striped pair. Even in the DK pairs, there have had to be slight alterations as none of the yarns are the same gauge - brown and beige were 24st per 4in, close enough that I could use the pattern sizes given, but the red yarn was 26st/4in, so I had to go up to 44st cast-on.

At this point I unvented a 50-50% rule for turning the heel - half the stitches are used to work the heel, short-rowed down to a quarter overall. It may not be pretty, or anthropometrically accurate, but it works. The blue and yellow striped pair had a gauge of 32st/4in, even with the yarn doubled, and follow this rule. I have a Fibonacci striped pair on the needles right now, blue and yellow in alternating 1,2,3,5, and 8-row paired stripes, with the final 8-row split across the heel in the other colour, then 5,3,2, and 1-row paired stripes down to the toe - though I've had to do 4 rows of alternating-stitch colour changes to make the footbed long enough.

That turned out to be more than I thought. I'm planning to make a few more pairs.

I also got round to making His Wee Nibs' Sirdar Bigga weskit. I've called it the Bookem Dano, as it is the Hawaii colourway (groan!). It took almost 2 balls. I hadn't intended to put buttons on it, but I think I might try a duffle set, with a loop instead of buttonholes. I've unplied the remaining yarn and am hoping it will be enough for the Berroco Kap with a bit of fudging. It's like the hat worn by Grandad Tumble, from the Mr Tumble series on cBeebies, which HWN loves, and I'm hoping he'll like a Grandad Tumble hat...

One last thing: my niece Ava's Little Pink Riding Hoodie, from Drops Design, using that weird pink mystery yarn I got in the Bull-ring. Quite a quick knit really, slowed down by my crappity attitude towards the sewing (~shudder~). The first pic shows it right side out, the second inside out, and the third is a close-up of the hairiest part of the sewing (~shudder~) around the armhole. Just to show that, actually, I am not such a crapilicious seamstress* as I fear myself to be. Go on, find a stitch. Yeah, you. See any? Do ya? DO YA? No.

That is not half bad for an awkward seam in a bulky, 6wpi yarn. I kind of mattress-stitched it from the right side, using a nylon-y fibre with cellophane strips which I unplied from the yarn itself. Y'see, I really can sew. I know all the moves. I know lingerie techniques lost before La Revolution. My homies called me Madame St Cyr down le 'Ood. I used to have a little notebook with beautifully stitched and pinked samples of my needlework. Exquisite, it was. Of course, for every charming little gingham sampliaire in it, there were twenty blood- and tear-stain'd rejects, pin-rusted and spraying pulled threads, lying in a bin somewhere...

Now I just have to screw my courage to the sticking place and line the blasted thing.

Ta-Ta
K

* - Having started the post with the Terry Pratchett-inspired hat, I feel I should probably point out that when I say 'seamstress', I do mean the female personages wot sew, not the ladies of negotiable affection...

ETA: I have Kool-Aid! w00t!

I should probably post more than once a month...

2008-04-21T14:10:00.022+01:00

My dad died a year ago. We were not close, and disagreed about most stuff. I don't recall him ever calling me by my name, and he certainly didn't know where I lived - not just that he couldn't remember my address off the top of his head: he didn't know what country I was in, let alone what city. He only began to warm up a bit when my son was born, the image of him as a child. There was no broken home or damaged relationship to explain this. He simply wasn't interested in his daughters. We were the waste product of having real children - sons. My sister lived nearby and was able to force some recognition out of him. In many ways I regarded him as a rather eccentric relative that I didn't see much. I was fond of him and recognised his good qualities, even though I knew they would never be applied in my direction. He was a good man, loyal to a fault, kind, tolerant and good with children. I wasn't terribly upset, just shocked when he died. Now mostly I'm angry at him for dying at only 69 and denying my son the chance to get to know him.

Mum is lonely since he's gone. She has a lot of support in her church, and always had a life apart from him, so she is bearing up well. But she doesn't have to run around after him any more - checking that he's taken his pills, has his wallet, isn't eating junk (he was a diabetic), etc. - and is a bit lost. They spent a lot of time together and they talked about everything under the sun. Except food. Dad could get her to stay off the subject of food for hours - I wish I knew his secret. She was on the phone daily over the anniversary weekend of his death, even though my brothers and sister were there for her. Not to talk about him - she didn't mention his name once, even when she phoned minutes before the actual time of his death. I can't have been much comfort, I just let her blather on.

Tiny Husband is in a poor way atm. He fell over in the car park at work a fortnight ago and wrenched every joint in his body and a handful of ribs. He had spectacular bruises from wrist to elbow on both arms but otherwise was okay (!). Then his calf muscle began to hurt. It bruised and swoll up about twice its size. He went to the Haemophilia Unit several times and was sent away because it was clearly a bruise, not a bleed. Finally they gave him Factor, crutches and 3 different painkillers including codeine phosphate, and an appointment for physiotherapy. It looked like it was working, but over the weekend it swoll up again: he spent Sunday at the unit, and had to go back the following morning. They didn't keep him in then on condition he went home and rested. So he lied to them and went to work anyway.

Today at work, he had Disability Awareness training on blindness - how not to be patronising towards disabled people. Though come to think of it, One is not sure how he can tell people are blind over the phone. The chap had the grace to look embarrassed as he delivered his spiel to the guy on crutches...

It's been a knackering few weeks. Emotional turmoil, and the bulk of the housework, shopping and childcare to do as well - TH is very useful about the place, deffo no Elektra complex in this marriage. However, I've managed to do quite a bit recently.

I'm just finishing a third pair of socks for Ickle Baby Cthulhu. They're just quick acrylic knits. His feet are very broad but not big, so it's a struggle getting his (shop-bought) socks on. I've been using DK yarn, but that's a bit bulky. I've some 2-ply pure wool I might try next.

I also made a Bloody Stupid Johnson hat for TH for our wedding anniversary. The pattern's not 100% clear here and there, and I goofed a bit on the crown. Also, the head band is supposed to be grafted but with the cabling that's just as messy as sewing it. So I did. It turned out fine, a bit better if anything as it's longer to the crown than it should be. Just like TH.

I really ought to have finished the Drops Hooded Ca rdigan from the Bullring mystery cotton blend for my niece, but decided it really needed to be lined. And that, as we know too well peeps, means sewing (~shudder~). More specifically it means finding something to line it with, which translated into a couple of weekends bombing round the Rag Market. Then a few more weeks umming and ahhing as I tried to figure out the best way to line it - before or after assembling the pieces? during, whilst sewing it into the seams? and when should I knit (and line) the hood - before or after or...? Oh the dilemma. Trilemma? - there are 3 options. See how I suffer for my art? Oh the PAIN!!!!!!!!

Cillian's Trellis Cardi is also finished, apart from tidying up the ends from sewing on the buttons. As he's now 15 months, this may have to become Adam's Trellis Cardi - depends on which size I made. Durned if I can remember. I also have a crocheted knitting-needle roll (OH! the irony...) almost done, just a closure to do. I also found this very, very old (well, from just after I restarted crafting) project lurking in plain sight on the Baba's bedroom floor: a rug crocheted from old sweatpants*!! My sister sends me these things even though she knows I don't wear them (?!?!). So I cut off the cuffs and waistband, slit them up the inside leg and one side-seam, then cut them up into a single strip about 1" thick, which I crocheted up with the thickest crochet hook I had - an 8mm I think. It would have looked neater if I'd rolled the strips so only the 'knit' outer was visible, not the fleecy lining, but PATIENCE IS NOT MY VIRTUE DAMMIT!!!!!!! The Ba used to lie on it for his kicky sessions before he was mobile - more comfy than the hardwood floors. Now he uses it to slide along the same floors, wheee!

What else? Plans for making a bunny from a swatch. Oh yes, and I'm now a Proper Ol Designer, Ravelry-accredited n evrathang! My totally amazing scrunchie pattern has been downloaded loads! LOADS! more than I thought it would be... both from my Ravelry Designer shop and from the linky on the sidebar here. Well, shucks. Thanks to all the lovely people who thought it worth the bandwidth. Srsly! Now I'll have to put some more up. TH has been on at me to write up the pattern for my Corset Cosy, and there's the neck-warmer thingy, maybe the toddler gloves...

More pics to add later!
Kxxx

* aka fleece-lined track suit trousers. Aka Fat Couture. Aka Oxfam-bin fashion for the woman who's given up the struggle with weight, pregnancy, baby puke, personal hygiene...

Lost my Mo...

2008-03-22T23:38:00.001Z

Don't even ax where my Jo's done gone...

The WIPs are progressing.

That is all.

Baa-Baa-BaBa-Baba-Baa-Bamboo, ~or ~ Joining the Sock Flock

2008-02-23T22:52:00.011Z

I is brekin mi duk.

I have #1 of a pair of socks for Tiny Husband on the dpns. They are from a Regia Bamboo kit I purchased from PurpleLinda, 10% off atm. The maddcolorz are befuddling my eyes a bit, but I have about 4cm done so far. The yarn feels nice, but the dpns included, man oh man, very loooong, very sticky.

The 100% bamboo Silk Slip now has 2 boobies, and I've begun the rib-band. It has two hundred and stupid stitches, so I am going to take my time!

I also have, on bamboo circs and in 100% mohair, a sweater loosely based on Irina Poludnenko's Ruffled Collar Pullover, published in February's Knitting magazine as Moonlight Cashmere Top. The gauge was fine, but I didn't care to trust the sweater to fit itself so I started at the bottom with 7mm circs for about 10cm, and switched to 6mm for 3 rows and finally to 5mm. I shall reverse the process when I need to expand for the bust. I have no idea whether I will ever wear this. The pattern is HAWT, and the yarn is HAWT red, a colour that looks particularly HAWT on me. However - it's mohair. The result might merely be hot, as in sweaty. And it's mohair. As in, adds a stone to my already overloaded arse.

Oh yes: and the bamboo circs, they do not like the mohair.

Really must try to get back to my WIPs, too. I have crocheted another leg for my amigurumi unicorn - just another 2 legs and ears, a horn, mane and tail to go.

This really doesn't belong here, but I'm venting anyway. I was perusing my local Freecycle (go join) posts today and saw yet another appeal for Playboy-related tat to decorate a girl's bedroom - pictures, lamps, duvet covers, etc. This really disturbs me. Since when has it been socially acceptable to allow your daughter to indulge a morbid interest in the seedy world of pornography, much less involve others in your lamentable parenting? If you're teaching your daughter that spreading her legs for the titillation of the smut-buying public (including her dad, uncles, brothers) is okay, then do it on your own - and take responsibility for the fallout from providing your child with her own Barbie Brothel.

Much as I want another child - no daughters, thanks. I cannot raise a girl in a society this sick.

K

The Staff of Life

2008-02-06T09:27:00.000Z

Or not, as the case may be. If you can't eat wheat, does that mean you're dead?

A departure from crafting. But not from creating...??

I can't eat wheat. I'm not coeliac, it's just IBS, but I do often eat gluten-free products for coeliacs. However, I'm violently allergic (projectile vomiting, as opposed to the flu-ey symptoms I get from wheat) to buckwheat, a major coeliac staple, especially in brown, high fibre and multigrain baked goods. For some reason, buckwheat is very occasionally listed by other names, including its name in other languages. I recently had a horrific experience thanks to Doves Farm's Plain White Flour, which lists buckwheat as 'sarrasin' - the French word. Oddly, they call it buckwheat on the Brown Bread Flour. Thanks, Doves Farm! Also, as I learned to my cost - or rather my mum's cost, since she'd bought the stuff in advance of my visiting - these days, not all coeliac foods are wheat-free: those clever clever food scientists have worked out how to remove the gluten from wheat, which can then be used to make gluten-free foods! Great for the coeliacs, not great at all for me. And tbh, the stuff looked as bad as the wheat- and gluten-free food.

Nowadays it's a lot better for me. At least now I can buy gluten-free food in supermarkets, rather than having to trek into the city centre to go to the big Boots, and food labels now list wheat in the short health warning section of the label. Of course they also plaster the shelves with Look! Gluten Free! signs. My poor mother (who ought to know better, she's a Trinity graduate, ffs) has been robbed blind buying special gluten-free apples, chicken, lettuce and sellotape for my visits. Recently though, I've been getting fed up with the stodgy fare available to me, happy as I am that it's there. But sometimes I want soda bread. Or a sandwich bread that doesn't need to be toasted (although I sound a rousing hurrah for Sainsbury's part-baked baguette). And I've never found anything, buckwheat-filled or not, that substitutes for the dense nutty brick that is the Irish Wheaten Soda. Thing is, I'm not a great baker, and I don't enjoy yeast baking. Stovetop cooking generally I'm fine at, and I've mastered roasts now that I have people to cook for, but the results from the oven are disappointing. My cakes, buns and breads don't rise well, although my pastry and biscuits are surprisingly good considering these are supposed to be harder to make. I used to have a very basic bread machine, but results were not great. When the element died, I didn't bother replacing it.

However, I've heard great things about the Panasonic bread machines, and there are now dedicated cookery books for gluten-free bread machine baking. I ummed and ahhed for a while over the price - £70+ - and then LIDL had a Bifinett bread machine on offer for only £25 which appeared to be more or less identical to the Panasonic in function. So I dispatched Tiny Husband to purchase one, and yesterday I gave it a trial run using Dove's Farm White Bread Flour ("sarrasin"-free!) and quick acting yeast, and the basic bread-making programme No. 1 as per the recipe for breadmakers on the Dove's Farm pack, selecting a medium-coloured finish.

The result was fabulous. A squarish well-risen, easily-cut loaf, moist, with a defined but not overly chewy or crispy crust. The centre is not dissimilar in appearance to the sliced pan loaves of my Irish childhood, Knutty Krust and so forth, with medium-sized air bubbles, but with a firmer texture closer to that of British pans (KK slices were sadly limp). It ate well straight from the oven, cooled with butter and with butter and jam, and toasted and buttered this morning. The butter sank in nicely instead of melting into a puddle on top to splatter my work blouse minutes before I have to lasso the baby and run out the door. A little crusty this evening, but I had left it out on the counter, uncovered, since I took it out of the machine.

I'm really impressed. Especially so since the programme I used wasn't even the gluten-free programme! The only thing that's inferior to the Panasonic machines is that there's no facility to add fruit or nuts automatically during baking, though you can set it to beep at the right time. However, this feature has only been present in the last two Panasonic models anyway. I'm looking forward to trying out other recipes - maybe even trying the pasta programme!

Fibre crafts wise, Cillian's Trellis cardi is finally done, blocked and sewn, and is only sans buttons. It'll need a re-block. Boobie #2 of the Silk Slip is almost done as well.

TTFN
K

Senior Moment

2008-02-03T15:58:00.001Z

Truly the brain is dying.

This is one of the first things I ever made, and the first I made for myself, after I started crafting again. I wear it quite often, too. Though I have to say it has not endeared me to shrugs - there's something about the 'frontlessness' of it that makes me look fat, pigeon-chested and middle-aged. Well, more fat, pigeon-chested and middle-aged than I actually am. Not that I'm pigeon-chested, I just have a very straight back, courtesy of mother, music and military, and larger than average boobies.

It is a fairly straight copy of the Noodle Shrug, excepting that I abandoned the yarn-overs as they were driving me bananas, in favour of using one 10mm and one 4mm needle. I've since discovered that I was doing the yarnovers the wrong way round (sensibly I wrapped the yarn over then under the needles, whereas in fact one wraps under then over the needle) not that it matters a hill of beans either for this pattern or for my sanity. The yarn is undyed 2-ply 100% wool, and the 'noodles' are a cream cotton chenille. I did not pay much attention to the instructions for these, I think they've worked out longer on mine.

A boo, frou-frou, and a big Bamboo

2008-01-27T21:45:00.005Z

Well, I didn't get to the wedding - by the time I got clearance from the school, it would have cost over 300 pounds for self and offspring, and would have involved travelling at stupid o'clock. So I took the day off anyway and spent it doing computery stuff. I installed a new hard drive (250g) in the old computer, discovering along the way that I didn't have a particular cable I needed. I also discovered there was no point in transferring the Firewire card to the new computer as it has an unconnected 1394 port in the front panel - it would cost a few pounds to install one. So the FW card goes back in the old computer. The old 20g hard drive is now in a portable powered fanned external case. May use it purely for music.

Crafting: clicky to my first pattern, for hair scrunchies, on the right sidebar! Though this is a bit of a cheat, to get myself linked on Ravelry as a designer - shh! don't tell anyone! I do intend to produce patterns but haven't got round to it yet.

It came through one of those D'oh! moments - when you realise the answer has been staring you in the face. I have very fine, flyaway hair. It needs to be restrained in a lot of situations - housework, work, nappy-changing, etc. The only product that will keep the hair in place is Brylcreem - half a jar usually does the trick, but it's not a look I'm keen on. Any fixings you care to mention - combs, ribbons, elastics, kirby-grips - either fall out, or damage my hair. The only thing that stands a chance of staying in place without snapping the hair are scrunchies. For some reason, though, the few that I can find are usually in hideous colours.

So I was about to throw out an old fuzzy black one, randomly wishing I could get more and thinking the fuzzy would make a nice scarf, when it hit me I could make the blasted things with fancy yarns... D'oh! Hence the pattern - crochet, if you're interested. On the plus side, since I'd got the fancy yarns to make scarves for myself, all the scrunchies have mysteriously turned out to be in lovely colours that tone with my wardrobe!

I have also put together a shortie scarf/ruff affair. I've found a scarf to be too long and gappy for some of my winter coats, and thought that a big-collared jumper would work better - only without the jumper... so I knit this collar-and-yoke thingy in Sirdar Bigga (Etna colourway), which I found unbanded in the Bull-Ring for 69p. It's a 2x2 rib on the collar, 3x3 rib on the yoke by picking up the bar between the paired knits and purls. Finished with a belt buckle from the same source.

Finally - another Bull-Ring bargain: pure bamboo yarn, unbanded, also 69p. They had the same stuff on the shelves. I thought I'd just try a little random swatching to see what it was like to knit with, then I saw Knitting magazine had printed one of Joan McGowan-Michael's patterns from Knitting Lingerie Style - Silk Slip. It's basically just a bra: you sew a silk 'skirt' to it. I'm almost finished the first cup, after a few modifications for my voluptuousness. The straps are supposed to be single crochet, but I think I might use the lace bit to knit thicker straps for comfort. I'm also uncomfortable about sewing (!) so the skirt may wind up being knitted too...

TTFN

K

I'm thinking of knitting a dress

2008-01-20T01:02:00.000Z

Let me backtrack...

I have a wedding to go to next week back in Ireland - assuming I get there: the school has had my absence request since forever, but won't give me a decision. Or rather, the deputy head, Mr Piggy McPigpig who doesn't want me knitting on the school grounds, won't give me a decision. At this stage, I might not be able to afford the flights (Rant over). This weekend is the only time when I can look for something to wear both for myself and Ickle Baby Cthulhu - thanks to recent family events, everyone has seen all my current dressy-uppies, and IBC's growth demands new frillies for him.

Being of a somewhat Mediterranean physique, I was approaching the shopping trip with trepidation. Britain is not a good place to locate suitable clothes if you're a busty long-waisted hour-glass type of gal, let me tell you. I'm three different sizes here - about 18/20 bust, 8-10 waist and 12/14 hips. In addition, to get tops that don't look cropped, I need to go for Extra-Tall ranges, but I have to go to the Petites section to get skirts and trousers with a waistband in the region of my real waist instead of my nipples.

Needless to say, I have very few dresses.

And trying on clothes is so much fun. I have had to be extricated from clothes more than once by the shop staff. That smock thing I tried, with the zipped placket. I zipped it up - and halfway up it stuck. Crushingly tight. Pinky and Perky jammed flat, hardly able to breathe. Interestingly, I could have made another top out of the excess material round the waist - if I had any talent with a needle - even though I was about five months pregnant at the time. I struggled with the damned zip til I was sweating and panicky and scared I was going to rip it, before crawling out of the cubicle to ask for help from a snotty stick-insect (who nonetheless had a very fat waist for her size, snerk), giddy with embarrassment. And the trousers. Though that really wasn't my fault - the zipper came off the zip when I was doing them up. But even so... Big old grey knickers of course.

I dropped in to the Bull Ring yarnshop as normal before commencing on the clothes shopping. Nothing too interesting - well, some Aran-weight cotton, but I restrained myself. However, I noticed a nice colour in the corner of my eye, a softish purple, similar to a wildflower that's frankly a bit of nuisance back home - grows everywhere and hard to eradicate, but pretty. Mum would know the name. Some kind of willow-herb. The yarn is a 20% wool yarn that I've got before - not great quality but cheap. I immediately started thinking "dress". I'd seen a knitted dress last week in Rackham's sale which had taken my fancy, but I hadn't bought it because it was a) Empire line - not so flattering if you're top-heavy, b) knee-length - never a good look on me, though higher or lower hemlines are fine, and c) Khaki green. Nothing wrong with khaki green - I spent 8 years wearing it professionally, it matches my eyes, and lends me a certain exotic mystique that most women get from black. In fact khaki IS my black, my standby. Black is more like my everyday. When I don't necessarily want people realising I'm gothick, I pull out the khaki. I even had a DPM ballgown, once upon a time. Yes, that's right - my Little Black Dress was GREEN. Wonder what happened to it?

But I digress. I just didn't want a green dress because I wanted something that I could wear to work later, and I have lots of green that I wear to work. Time to throw something else into the mix. So purple yarn. Lots of it, too: at least five 400g balls that I could see, surely enough for a dress. But again, I restrained myself. Seriously, 6 days isn't enough time to knit a dress, especially when I'd have to come up with a pattern. I've seen a few on Ravelry, but I'm thinking more Stephanie Japel Fitted Knits extended down into about mid-calf. Though I suspect the precise thing I want is lurking in one of my vintage knitting books - I'm almost certain there's a 1940's fitted New Look style dress there somewhere.

This set me on my way. Debenham in the Bull Ring had a 70% off sale on, and lo I found TWO knitted dresses, one cerise and short-sleeved, and one mock pinafore in black with a white 'under' blouse. The cerise looked hideous on - my biceps are too butch for short sleeves (thank you, IBC) and the colour was too bluey. So that left the pinafore. A nyim over knee-length. I also found a John Rocha boiled merino jacket in a nice muted cranberry which will look nice over it - something like this, but with 3 huge buttons and no stitch detail at all. Almost got a JR lace wrap too, but restrained myself. I am getting SOOO good at this! The fact that it was described as crocheted when it was clearly knitted helped. As was a JR scarf - well it was obviously crocheted but said knitted on one label, and crocheted on the price tag. Really John Rocha! You work in IRELAND for pity's sake! You should KNOW this stuff. Grannies on the bus should have beaten it into you by now.

Total cost 35 pounds. T'was only on getting it home that I realised it was a maternity dress... Oh well. That would be funny if we hadn't been ttc for the last 18 months.

Still, it will look hawt with my Pirate Argyle stockings, if I ever get round to casting on. Especially since I scored a pair of Demonia Bat coffin heels (PU version) for only 25 pounds to go with it!!!!

T'ra
K

No knitting or crochet of consequence occured recently. I have put in a little work on Cillian's Trellis cardi and Libby's unicorn, have almost finished a crocheted knitting needle holder (OH! the irony), and crocheted a couple of hair scrunchies from fancy fur and eyelash yarns. In khaki.

Troublingly, I actually paid cash money recently for Sirdar Bigga MULTI... Hawaii AND Etna... I have to go and lie down every time I think about this...

Totally OT

2008-01-06T15:37:00.000Z

My son, the love of my life, apple of my eye, drain on my bank balance, Has Gone Pee-Pee and Poo On The Potty for the first time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Admittedly, we have been talking to him about this for months as I'd hoped to get him potty-trained over the school hols last summer. But he was simply not interested. Occasionally he would come into the toilet with us and sit on his potty and have a little chat, but seemed to see it as nothing more than a convenient (sic) seat/stool for brushing his teeth at the sink.

Today, though, as I was busy sorting the laundry, I heard the ominous tinkling. Thinking he'd peed on the floor (I let him run around bare-assed due to a little nappy rash), I found him straddling the potty and staring at the stream in amazement. Of course, I made a big fuss about what a clever little boy he was, and texted everyone to let them know the glad news. And videoed him on my cam phone, and sent it to sis, gran, childminder...

T'ra
K

Ravelry...

2008-01-05T10:59:00.000Z

is tha best!

I have been completely obsessed with Ravelry, and have discovered new and useful things about it almost daily. ATM it's knitting and crochet, though I see little reason that it should not expand to incorporate more fibre crafts eventually.

But for the last couple of days, I've got nothing but timeouts on attempting to connect to the site. It's definitely up and running, according to the support people. I did a tracert and a PingPlotter and the problem seems to lie with 2 servers/routers (not too good on the lingo here), in New York and Boston. A little further research reveals that these two are notoriously 'lossy' - i.e., they lose big chunks of your data signal / request to view the site, and as a result the signal makes no sense or disappears en route. In addition, over the last few days WoWers using a similar route have been unable to get into, er, the game. Dungeon. MUDD. Whatever.

Now, I don't suppose there's anything I can do about this. But I have vague recollections - admittedly from sci-fi movies - that it should be possible to re-route your data. It is supposedly how hackers and other snarly geek types continue their nefarious work. They route their virusses etc through umpteen servers, bouncing back and forth in a manner that defies tracking. Evil warmongering teens do this to set off nuclear Armageddon while steel-jawed but slightly dim agents of peace try to stop them, and we are only saved by Mom pulling the computer plug out of the wall until DJ Jr. takes out the trash. But I can find nothing on this anywhere.

I'm slightly burgered here. I was about to post a free pattern of my own devising when this started and I just can't seem to get on with life, or indeed knitting and crochet since. I can't access Ravelry anyway at work - it's filtered out as a spamming site, if you can believe - so I can't even check if it's available there. I've placed requests in various places and am waiting to see if anyone else can get there...

Boo-hoo
K

Happy New Yarn!

2008-01-01T00:45:00.001Z

Er, Year...

Yarn's been on my mind recently.

Well duh...

I'm having a bit of a crisis..

I hates the coloured-up yarn... but... I have happily knitted up stuff in the coloured-up yarn, and loved it. This is causing my head pain.

I've also just bought these - unbanded mystery yarn from the Bullring yarne shoppe. Pink in shades from Baby to Crack Ho with flashes of toffee to keep it tasteful, and what initially looks to be silver tinselly bits woven in, but on closer inspection is tiny strips of clear cellophane-type material. Sounds ... DIRE. But actually quite nice. Something for Niece #1 possibly. The second a boucle in Browns, all the way from ecru to taupe. Woo! (Oh yes, in case I forgot to mensh, not loving the boucle slubby nubby stuff either). I shall make a camel from it (I am hoping to make a Noah's Ark and a Nativity scene this year), or maybe some sheep. I have also been deeply taken by this (scroll down to Liquorice). And today I almost bought a green, white and orange mohair in Rackham's sale - my father would be pirouetting in his grave, no mean feat for a man who made Triple H look petite. Sorry, petit. Hell no - I DO mean petite. Ma daddy was a MAN.

Admittedly, I'm thinking scarves, kiddie stuff, weird amigurumi toy stuff - where the maddcolorz either don't really matter or are absolutely essential to the project. I'd never do a sweater in the tricolour mohair f'rinstance (well, not for a grown-up. E.g., me, or someone my age or younger and more than, say, 10. My mum - maybe. If she acted her age). But I'd make myself a shrug in the pinky. And even contemplate a big ol' sudden-cold-snap-and-the-heating-dies cardi/jacket in the Liquorice. What gives, as our colonial cousins would say?

I'm struggling with this. Okay, first off, if we're talking animals (camels, sheep, etc), then anything goes for the effect. Kids, again, well the girlies love the spangles, and the boys haven't fallen into the Boring Man-Rut yet. Scarves - anything goes. They're an accessory, so you might want to make one scarf matching several different outfits - multicoloured is therefore good. Shawls and wraps, OTH, look nasty in multis*. Like you were using up all the leftovers in your stash - nothing wrong with that, just, well. But could you not make a Fair Isle at least? Make it look less like a desparate "oh shite, I'm running out of wool so I'll just make a Dr Who scarf type thing" project. Not that I'D EVAR use a shawl anyhoo**.

It's the Liquorice cardi that throws me.

So, let's approach this from the other side. Arans do not need maddcolorz. In fact, anything with a stitch pattern, even something as basic as basketweave, doesn't need maddcolorz. I go so far as to say knitted lace doesn't need maddcolorz, though I've only done one lace pattern myself. So, anything with textural or sculptural qualities should be done in one colour - not multi-coloured, tweed, flecked, handpainted, etc. If it's just acres of stockinette, go for it. If it's kiddy, or special- occasion like a shrug or do-it-all like a scarf - go for it. If it's for an elderly person - take your pick. Toys, intarsia, Fair Isle, it goes without saying.

That Liquorice cardi is still bugging me...

Ta ta
K

* Please note these are the opinions of the author, expressed after 6 beers, 2 bottles of wine, and a hefty brandy in the early hours of New Year's Day, and are not meant to be taken seriously as meaning anything. If you handpaint/dye your own yarn, The Author is deeply jealous of you and wishes she had a more co-operative toddler so she could do likewise. If you are enamoured of the maddcolorz yarn and never use anything else - well, so does The Author. Okay she does use other stuff and MAKES A BIG THANG OF IT, but she breaks her own rulez lotz tuu.

** I've been reading some interesting Ravelry threads on attitudes towards knitting, crochet, handcrafts generally. One thing that pops out is that all the handcrafts are associated with being poor, lower-class, etc. That's shawls to me. They're for people who can't afford proper warm coats, or decent heating in their homes (I include here home-made coats, and self-felled timber or self-dug turf fires - whatever). Afghans fall in the same category. People who need shawls or afghans to stay warm are people who can't (because of age or infirmity) or won't (because of laziness) provide the needful for themselves. I'm a snob.

Mistah Death and the Aran Blankie

2007-12-28T10:39:00.001Z

A while back I mentioned a rush job for Halloween, and then totally forgot to post about it.

Here it is! Based on Knitty's Jackyll & Hide pattern.

Hubby's workplace does a lot of charity work - in fact they're set up as a non-profit-making charity. He's done a 30-mile walk for charity with workmates, including the CEO who lent him suitable socks; once a fortnight he spends an afternoon of worktime helping in the Birmingham Children's Hospital school, and was their Santa this year; and he participates regularly and enthusiastically in their fancy dress / dress-down charity Fridays, as you can see to the right.

The cloak is borrowed, and the plastic scythe came from a charity shop. I didn't bother with the mouth as a) I had no time, b) it involves ~shudder~ embroidery, and c) hubby promised to do it then wimped out.
The yarn used (Ben Nevis Aran 25% Wool) is a bit rubbish* - very furry with no density to it - so I used it doubled on 6mm dpns and circulars. I had it in with the idea of making an heirloom Aran bedspread, over a long period, using 12in x12in 'swatches' whereon I would practice various Aran stitches that took my fancy - swatch 1, to the right, is a rather dense honeycomb pattern from a stitch dictionary which doesn't exist according to its ISBN. I reckon it would take about 42 such swatches - 6' wide x 7' long - for our double bed, maybe 63 or 72 for a more luxuriant look. Though a major part of the appeal of this is that it should be machine-washable, so I may have to sacrifice opulence for being able to fit it in the machine...
TTFN
K

'* - Cheap, and available in VAST quantities.

A quickie!

2007-12-27T23:10:00.001Z

Ickle Baby Cthulhu won't wear gloves. Whereas he has the wit to come in from the cold at home, travelling in the cold weather* can be a problem, notably the childminder run. As I don't drive (yet), this involves a trip across a straight-from-the-Urals windswept quarter-mile twice a day. It doesn't take long, 10mins or so at speed, but sometimes his normally toasty little hands freeze. Need I mention that he won't tolerate a Cozy-Toez(TM) or similar? Only his 'Bilanket' will do, a manky old third-hand ripped-up crib duvet with the stuffing hanging out to which he's taken a fancy simply because his little girlfriend at the childminder's has a blankie too (for the same reason, he also has to travel with Mooly Cow or Sleepy Hippo, and all attempts to separate him from his dummy are doomed. Peer pressure is a terrible thing. They even swap dummies from sheer lurve. And pink dummies can cause all sorts of misunderstandings).

I've bought numerous mittens, even attached them with string through his coats, to no avail. He cunningly manages to lose at least one in the 10-min journey. Now with the tantrums, getting them on him involves holding him down as he's howling No! No! No! and the ringlets slap into my face and the beefy little fists flail and the boots land in painfully intimate areas - let's just say I'm not winning this particular battle.

Daddy, on the other hand (no pun intended. Well, maybe), has his Purple Pirate gloves from a few posts back, and Daddy Can Do No Wrong. Not like boring old Mommy and her stupid mitts! He will happily wear one of Daddy's gloves for some considerable time, admiring the 'Piwate' and shouting "Yarrrh!" intermittently. So cunning old boring Mommy had an idea. A psychology PhD has some uses after all!

So Christmas Day evening, I cast on a pair of purple mitts for him, and finished them last night - two days! Based on a vintage pattern, with some mods. Okay, a lot. The cuff is shorter, the thumb is longer, and the top isn't decreased to a rounded cap. Instead, it is a 'finger muff', a portion of loose ribbing made with the larger size dpns used for the stocking stitch. This muff can be folded back for a fingerless mitt, or rolled up for warmth. The link to the free pattern with these modifications is available on the right, under Knitzsche's Patterns - please note the copyright notice is a bit stricter than the one for the Hair Scrunchies.

They're too small for the skull and crossbones motif on Daddy's gloves and I was in too much of a rush to modify. I had hoped instead to put in an intarsia Makka Pakka (face only!), but wouldn't you know it, I'm permanently low on boring browns in my stash. So I decided to Swiss darn the image using some chenille I have in cream, nutmeg, and black - not the taupe/beige/snoooooore needed, but close enough for a 2-year-old. Sadly I am piss-poor at eye-needlework. The darning did not work, possibly because the chenille was just too different to the DK - flat, ribbony and downright uncooperative - but more likely due to my sewing crapulescence.

So instead I was forced to ~shudder~ For-Real embroider the image on, backstitching 3 times across each stitch in the pattern. I would like to record that each stitch was lovingly crafted with a mother's blessings for her beloved only child, but it would be an infamous lie. Rather, each was filled with blood and cusswords the like of which would shame a sailor as I yelped and stabbed my way through the 47 piddling knit stitches of the design. The imprecations and involuntary donations continued through the simple 2-st smile and french-knot eyes. HOW do you stab yourself with a tapestry needle, I ask you? Once on the going in, once on the way out is how. Grrraaah!

So Makka Pakka only appears on one mitt. Tiny husband did me the good service of removing the tapestry needle from my self-inflicted stigmata and taking me to bed before I could put out an eye or circumcise something.

His little nibs was quite pleased. He even wore them for a long period, exclaiming over Makka Makka (as he calls it), and enquiring in hushed and worried tones as to Makka Makka's absence on the second glove... Ooops. I told him that that Makka Pakka had gone to bed (as it does! end of every episode) and that seemed to satisfy him.

While doing this I was reminded of how much I love working with dpns. Straight needles don't inspire this love. I need 30cm+ needles for most projects, but my forearms are so short I get little bruises on my biceps where the ends dig in. I've never found a comfortable, natural way of knitting that avoids this. Dpns are different. they're short, barely longer than my big man-hands. And I simply adore the juggling of the needles and the speed I can build up, way faster than straights. I feel the same about cable needles. I love 'em. I LOOOOOVE them. I have all sorts, shapes, colours, compositions, but sometimes I use toothpicks, broken dpns, matches, just to live dangerously. Sometimes I store the cable needle in a piercing. Sometimes I light the match. I know two (or 3-ish) ways to do cables without cable needles, all of which feel uncomfortable and inappropriate, and deprive me of the joy of cable-needle juggling. Hurrah for cable needles!

That is all.

K

* FYI, while we don't get the spectacular snowfalls of some parts of the world, winter night temperatures of -10degC (14degF) to -20degC (-4degF) are getting to be normal here in Brum. People die walking home from work because public transport shuts down.
** I never bother about rows per inch, preferring instead to measure and/or fit.

This WILL have HAS pics...

2007-12-19T09:42:00.001Z

~~Eventually... The pics are taken and awaiting upload from my phone.~~

The scarf is finished, ends woven in, washed and blocked. The rather stringy, fine mohair bloomed nicely - the resulting fabric appears solid until you look closely, allowing the lace flowers stand out well. The pics don't really do justice - I was hoping to hang it by a window so you could see the light coming through, but had to settle for laying it on white paper. I shall hand it over on Thursday rather than Friday as she has a do to go to and might like to wear it.

My sister's bag is boarded, lined and sewn up, and lacks only the fastening. The specs cases for Mum and MIL are finished too, including the label inside. These won't be in time for Christmas unfortunately. I won't even get them off until Saturday.

I'm also well into Libby's amigurumi unicorn - head and body completed to the start of the bum, and stuffed as far as possible. I still have a little time to work on it, as I won't see them until after Christmas Day anyway. I'm not entirely thrilled with the shape, as the head and neck extend more or less straight out from the body making it look more like a goose than a horse. Before I started, I did think it needed some short-rowing where the lower neck reaches the body - i.e., no building up of the back until the chest is in place. That would mean turning the work and working backwards. I can't see an amigurumi way of doing it, except maybe by making the pieces separately and sewing them together in the right configuration. There's a lot of shaping involved and correct stuffing is crucial.

ION, the deputy head was most distressed to see me knitting during break. Apparently I should be planning lessons. It has been pointed out that I am not in fact a qualified teacher, have no regular classes and therefore do not have PPA time, and am in possession of a contract that specifically forbids me from planning lessons (even though I DO, because there's usually no coverwork). So he gave it as his opinion that I should be doing anything but knitting. Possibly helping out in the canteen, or cleaning the toilets then.

No scarf for him!

If he had any sense, he'd be begging me to run an after-school club for the tards...

Kxxx

Three weeks till Christmas...

2007-12-04T09:17:00.000Z

And progress is... progressing.

I managed to get the lining and a fancy button for my sister's bag, though I really need to pick up some board to stiffen it (Yes I'm going with the button closure. Musing is what this blog is for too). The lining is quite lovely - heavy, turquoise with a pale gold sheen from a primrose weft (or warp. Not too sure of my fabric orientation). Although I haven't had time to inspect it closely, I would not be surprised if it was silk, or at least a good quality fake. Only £2 in the Bullring for about 2m of 60" width. Well chuffed. There may even be enough to line a skirt for myself, a little something I've been planning ever since I got the eau de Nil chenille, using crocheted squares from an old tablecloth pattern.

The covers for both specs cases are complete, all I need is to find the craft glue.

The childminder's scarf is almost complete, another 3 repeats to go. IBC has utterly charmed her and her husband by calling them by name, and demanding kisses. I suppose I ought to think of some wee thing to give his playmates there... I've swapped the scarf to my in-school project, and taken the Trellis cardi for Liz's youngest home where I have more time to complete it.

I still need to make a start on the unicorn for Lisa's daughter - in fact I need to get the chenille out and wind my pullcakes.

Santa went to Rackham's on Saturday and picked up IBC's tractor and trailer, wrecking shoulders, back and bum.

We've decided not to send cards this year. Instead we're sending ducks to Bangladesh, or possibly midwife kits to Burkina Faso - haven't decided. We may also substitute something like this for presents for the adults in the family, as it is SO difficult to buy gifts for most of them, in part because we just don't have the time.

Only 3 weeks!

K

Irish Crochet Christening Shawl

2007-11-27T22:40:00.003Z

ETA: Google Analytics tells me that this is my most popular page, so I'm editing it to add more information. IF YOU FIND THIS USEFUL, please let me know via the comments. IF THERE'S ANYTHING THAT NEEDS MORE EXPLANATION, let me know!

1) The FREE crochet pattern is here.
2) It's lace/thread/Irish crochet. That is why it is NOT wholly crocheted. If you are a lady (or lad) of leisure with servants and have nothing else to do but make a fully crocheted shawl in thread, commence crocheting before the pee has dried on your first positive pregnancy test, and you may finish a satisfactory shawl by the time your youngest grandchild graduates university.
3) It's a crochet trim / embellishment of a fake quilt base (see below). If you are 'Irish' American, this may be of interest to you - a way of celebrating both aspects of your heritage: the Irish crocheting part, and the American quilt-making part (my granny was 'American' Irish, born in Philly to immigrants who decided the streets were paved in the same old shite they could get back home, and left).It is a fake quilt because I do not sew. Especially I do not sew tiny flittery wee bits of fabric which for reasons best left to experts in terminal daftitude I have cut from a perfectly good bolt of cloth precisely for the purposes of sewing them back together (my mother quilted. Using saved scraps from torn and clapped clothing, etc. I cut such as this up and crochet cat beds and rugs).

When my sister and then my sister-in-law fell pregnant, I had the idea of making an heirloom lace crochet baptism shawl, similar to the kind of thing my grandmother made, but which vanished on her death. So I got the hooks and the thread - with immense difficulty, as craft shops had all but vanished and eBay didn't exist - and started. After a few months of tinkering, frogging and fruitless searching for patterns, I came to realise there were not enough hours for me to ever finish it. Bear in mind I was also working full-time and completing a PhD at the time.

The shawl never got made. It wasn't made for my niece three years later, or for my next nephew two years after that. By this time I was pregnant with my son, and I determined that he at least would have a handmade shawl. So I had a re-think.

By this time, handcrafts had undergone a revival. There were a few more L- and not-so-LYS, though the pickings for Irish crochet were mighty slim. EBay had finally been invented, and there were online patterns.

Even better, I had remembered an altar cloth I made for my uni chaplains many years ago - must get a pic of it up - and had some new ideas. I knew IBC would be christened in the arse-end of winter, so would need something more substantial than lace. So I thought I'd make a quilt that was trimmed with lace crochet - well, initially I was thinking of making a sort of sleeping bag/papoose affair, but my sewing skills aren't up to it. Now for the original post...

Just remembered this - my son's Christening shawl.

Sewing: It's a raw silk sandwich with a filler of thermal curtain lining (interfacing - the thickest I could find). The silk outer was sewn first in a rough oval, leaving just enough room to poke in the filler, then finished. The filler was then sewn in place by sewing through both silk and interfacing about 1/2" from the edge. I then machine-stitched a pseudo-quilted diamond pattern over the centre by running parallel lines of stitches across from one side to the other, then another set of parallel lines at about 75deg to the first lot.

Crochet: At the crossing points of the diamonds there are 3D Irish crochet roses, and around the outside is a chain made of Irish crochet rings looped together in the making.

I must try to get a better picture sometime.

K

Christmas Bag

2007-11-26T08:55:00.000Z

Finished the first Christmas bag (for my sister), but it still needs to be lined. Also the instructions call for a fancy button, but I'm leaning towards a couple of plain satchel fastenings.

Also some pics of double-knitting, which I larned masel on a trip to Ireland recently. It's just a practice piece. I've put together some designs for baby blankies, one of which is just on the needles but there's no urgency to complete.

I have also decided to make spectacle cases for Mum and MIL - both occasionally wear glasses and are always losing them. So I got some cheap cases at the weekend and have already knitted a cover for one in Paton's Lush in Autumn, a bright red-yellow-purple mix. Try losing that. The second is half-complete. I may do a mobile phone cosy for SIL.

My friend's daughter has become fascinated by unicorns. And guess what pattern appeared in the last issue of Crochet??! Must start pull-caking the chenille. Wish I could remember what size hook I used last time.

And it turns out Friday is not a training day as I'd thought, but a real, honest-to-goodness day off!! So I'll go into town and get some supplies at the Bullring - lining fabric, fasteners, maybe craft glue - and probably Abraham's Santa present.

T'ra
K

New work

2007-11-13T09:25:00.000Z

Since the last post, I started my first ever lace knitting project, began the Christmas knitathon, am not substantially further on with the Bob the Builder jumper, and went back to Ireland for a night... It was about the right length of time for a visit home!

My big baby brother turned 40 at the end of October, but the surprise party was on the 10th November. And surprise it was - he's been like a wasp since his actual birthday because nobody made any fuss, just the odd card and well-wishing, a small token present or two. Organising the party was no mean feat for his wife, as he has been off work with a broken arm for the last few weeks and was underfoot every time she tried to write an invitation or make a phone call. But he was completely fooled. The only tricky bit was that they had to send him into the North on the day on a series of pointless but "urgent" errands, and of course I was coming down from Aldergrove to Kesh, along any route he might take, staying with my sister who he might drop in on for a cup of tea... Any other guest seen travelling down could be explained, but why would I be coming over to Ireland in secret??? It was a good night, there shall be YouTube evidence of the big man DANCING as soon as YouTube deigns to co-operate, and Mum was looking more relaxed, younger and less strained than she has done for years.

I don't think we're fully aware yet of the toll on her of caring for Dad in the last few years. None of us knew she had to dress him, for example. I knew she was bathing him, but thought that was just back-scrubbing where he couldn't reach - ffs TH does that for me! It seems he was more incapacitated than he let on to anyone. The unravelling of his life continues.

So, to wips: the lace scarf was inspired by a cone of black mohair (or fluffy string) I found dumped outside a late neighbour's house. How grue is that?! She must have been a machine knitter, because there were other bits and bobs - including pieces of knitting machine - lying about, obviously fallen out of bins and not picked up by our delightful and hard-working binmen. The scarf pattern is merely of 8x6-petal flowers with a garter-stitch border, nothing exciting. However it has been frogged about 6 times to date: I have only managed to do 3 rows of flowers, and one of those has only 7 flowers on it. The next row would have had only 5, as the total number of stitches had dropped from 64 to 44! I have no idea how this happened. It's not as if I'm not well used to textured patterns. It's not like I can't count! I checked and rechecked and double-checked the pattern, the number of stitches on the needle, counted and re-counted the pattern stitches off and checked again that the fluffiness or the yos weren't 'creating' stitches - and still I either had too many stitches or too few at the end of each row. The only row that work out right is the one where the Offspring was torturing me for walks and purpo juice and cuggles. If it ever works, I'll give it to the Offspring's childminder.

The knitathon is just to make little token gifts for Mum, my sis, and my MIL. Last year I made a skinny scarf and gloves set in eyelash yarn for them - the gloves were actually purchased black fleece jobs, but I knitted matching eyelash-yarn cuffs for them. And didn't take pics - pity, as it was quite effective. This year, I saw an interesting pattern in Simply Knitting mag. Weeell, pattern. Anyhoo. Tis a baggie. Supposedly, a bedroom cushion (does anyone really have these things, unless they're selling the house?) which doubles as a nightwear holder (again, does ANYONE use these things?), which presumably provides the cushiony goodness, otherwise you wind up with a nightie case and a teeny cushionpad lying on the floor. There's 2 yarns, and something goin on between them. Naturally, the two yarns are only available on the second moon of Tau Ceti 6 during the bicentennial eclipse, but only to quadripeds. But I got some Patons Lush (surprisingly soft) to substitute for the sparkly yarn, and for the other I've quadruple-plied some thin chenille from the stash. That's looking good, like sari yarn. I'll make up two versions, one in blues on eau-de-nil chenille, and the other in autumn colours on wine chenille. I figure I'll just give them, they can use them as they want. In my sis's case, (blue/eau-de-nil version) I hope she will use it to pick out colours for her bedroom in the new house. Please God. Anything so long as next visit I don't have to wander around saying how well I think donkey pink, terracotta and putty beige go together (*shudder*).

On Bob, I'm about halfway up the helmet bit on the front, having begun working flat from the armholes. Ho hum. Erm. That's about it.

And I should be Ravelry -bound in the next couple of days!!!

T'ra
K

Ravelry update:

You signed up on October 19, 2007
You are #46355 on the list.
510 people are ahead of you in line.
10365 people are behind you in line.
79% of the list has been invited so far

I've joined the Ravelry waiting list....

2007-10-20T11:36:00.001+01:00

There are 14659 people are ahead of me. I'm #46355 on the list!

I'm also on loads of Yahoo! groups, which I mostly don't read, like

antiquepatternlibrary - fantastic resource of out-of-copyright patterns and books (if you have any, consider contributing), or just eye-candy and craft-porn, as you wish.
brumstitchnbitch - Birmingham UK, that is. Mostly an announcement site.
Crazy_Knits - for newbies and the more adventurous.
CrochetLace - for lace makers who like to include crochet in their lace projects. Covers crochet lace from many countries, but most especially Ireland and Romania.
double-knitting - Make seamless tubes (glove fingers, socks, etc.) on two straight needles. Knit two socks simultaneously on one set of double-pointed needles. Knit a reversible two-colour blankie/dishcloth.
FFCrochet - Lively, friendly, helpful free-form crochet (think doodling with yarn) group, with some of the top fibre artists in the world as members. Love it or hate it, it's amazing
incrediblesweatermachineclub - Another very helpful group, for the Incredible Sweater Machine/ISM/USM, EZ Knittr or Bond. And one day I WILL set mine up and get going.
Irish_Crochet_Lovers - This group is dedicated to the creation, care and collection of Irish crochet. Learned this from my granny as a child, though it's a bit of a mystery where/how she learned - it was mostly taught by Roman Catholic nuns but she wouldn't have had any contact with that route! I still do a bit now and again, but I'm too impatient and goal-oriented for this kind of work.
knittycontributors - Maybe one day...
knittyreader - An announcement site for upcoming issues.
nezumiscrochetclub - Often quiet, this group covers any type of crochet-from Filet, Hairpin, Tuisian, Hairpin, Broomstick, Irish to Granny Squares. Less daunting than ICL, where the RC Nuns theory runs strong...
wool_soaker_group - Quite chatty and friendly, dedicated to making wool soakers for use as diaper covers (nappy wraps) in all forms: knit, crochet, fabric, recycling other materials, etc.

I'm also a member of AranKnits and Ethnicknits, but too recently to pass comment...

I give you...

2007-10-19T17:31:00.001+01:00

... the Glory that is Begotha - the Gothic Aran!

Also known as a black mystery-yarn sweater with a bit of cabling and moss-stitch. Still, TH is happy. He's had it on a few times since, but usually whips it off as soon as he comes indoors because "it's so warm", so even when I've had the camphone there's been no opportunity to snap it. Yesterday, though, he came home early and I cornered him in the back garden and wouldn't let him in till I got the pics.

And here it is, photographing well for black thanks to our wintery sunshine - the stitch detail shows up beautifully. The turtleneck collar is 2x2 rib, over about 76st I think. Clumping a little at the sides because of TH's simian posture and his habit of mugging for the camera, but otherwise a lovely fit for a nine-stone hank of string.

Sadly, TH is not looking his lovely best. His workplace organised the staff flu jabs yesterday, and he had a bad reaction - hence the early homecoming. We were supposed to be going out to a work do of mine last night, babysitter organised and everything, but in the end I went alone, leaving him with his head down the loo, loving spouse that I am.

Apropos of space-filling, and pointedly ignoring a certain 2yr-old putting in some practice for the Toddler Olympics (All-Out Tantrum event), here's the Bob the Builder sweater thus far. There's only 3 or 4 rows of 'face' left before I get into the helmet, and the first 4 rows of the logo on the back are in place - not enough to photograph though. And yes, those are nappy pins - I use them to hold the nyims* of yarn not in play. TH's aversion to washables - odd given he's happy to be coated in all manner of shite from disintegrating disposables - left me with a surplus. The hair is done in a knit version of bullion stitch for a curly look ... that was the plan, but we shall see.

The second pic shows the reverse: all in all, quite neat; most of the tails are on the (inside) left, due to the way I am knitting on the colours (i.e., leaving a long tail to be knitted on the next row). Hopefully this will be tidier in the making-up stage. I really do not enjoy putting garments together, and tbh I would not be dying about picture-knitting/intarsia if it wasn't for seeing the picture appear row by row. Such a pity knitting in the round and intarsia don't go together...

WOOT! TG4 is on the Idirlíon!! Ros na Rún here we come!!!

T'ra
K
Oh for Pete's sake - Aran? Irish? black? Begorra? Begotha? Catch up peeps...

* - a mangled anglicisation of the Irish mion (m-YUNN), meaning a very small amount, what can be held in the palm of the hand with the top finger-knuckles straight and fingertips touching the mid-palm.

Hurrah!

2007-10-12T11:31:00.001+01:00

The Gothic Aran is finished!

Apart from one thread inexplicably left hanging from a sleeve, it is done, laundered, and tried on by a very chuffed hubby. Back-to-front at first, being himself, but ye gods what a fine fit when it was on. I short-rowed the back of the collar as prescribed in EZ, which was rather nasty with the moss-stitch panels, but what a difference it makes. Fits him like a glove. Pics later, once my camphone is recharged.

IBC's Bob the Builder sweater is well under way. I'm putting the face on the front - it's up to the mouth atm - and the logo on the back, which I haven't got to yet. The sweater shape is reversible (front same as back, not inside-out reversible), so it would be nice to have a different view on each side. I'm knitting in the round again. I read somewhere that intarsia couldn't be done in the round, but didn't get why, since Fair Isle is traditionally knitted in the round. Now I do. Duh. Wool ends up at the wrong end of the knitting. I've got a partial solution which cuts down on the bitties of yarn hanging at the sides: leave a long tail when starting a new colour, that can then be used to knit the next row. In the case of the outlining black yarn, the tail may be enough to complete all stitches required.

And I've started a little something for Halloween - rush job, special request from TH. Fingers crossed...

Update

2007-10-04T23:47:00.001+01:00

Not a lot to say, nothing completed.

TH's Gothic Aran proved trickier than anticipated - not disastrously so, not even challenging really, just fiddly around the collar. It worked in the round, which is good, but TH's broad shoulders and slender frame mean that while the front and back are completed to the base of the neck, I need to knit up the shoulders another inch/inch-and-a-half to reach the same point, nibbling off stitches from the front and back as I go. Oh yes - I decided late on to go for EZ's fake raglan method of reducing the yoke, which looks well, despite some very awkward fudging when the decreases started cutting into the moss-stitch panels. Now this shoulder problem is turning it into a combined EZ raglan/saddle sweater.

But this is what comes of taking a pattern for an aran, running it according to another intended for Fair Isle, then changing mind 3/4 of the way through and finishing via a third for a plain sweater, discovering that the final bit needs to be fudged via a fourth (also plain), all the while using an unidentifiable yarn and a needle size not recommended in any of the patterns - and therefore a totally different number of stitches. Hey ho - at least I did swatches this time. I do get TH to try it every so often on to check the fit (so far, perfect).

I do feel that I'm working in the true EZ spirit though, winging it and not being scared. And occasionally lying down in a darkened room to recover.

I have also made it through the ribbing and into the body of IBC's Bob the Builder sweater, and have done the charts - modified one of Bob's face to fit better on the sweater, and made another of the Bob logo, though I think some surface embroidery is going to be necessary to get the detail in on it. I'm also very taken with the idea of a knit or crotchet BtB 'hard' hat... Hmm. When am I going to get my stockings made, I ask you?

The Drops that broke the SIL's streak

2007-09-23T12:10:00.000+01:00

This is the little set I made for my nephew. The only negative point my SIL made was that it was a pity it wasn't bigger because he'd grow out of it too fast. But look at the folds at the waist, and the cuffs are rolled up. Mind you, look at the socks. They must be four-year-old's socks, poor kid.

In the second photo, it looks like the collar's loose enough to go over his head without opening the buttons. The hat I made in a hurry, so I didn't put the pattern on it. I was already in Ireland, and had to make it overnight. It'd have taken a couple of days if I had put the pattern in. It's a long rectangle, seamed up the back and across the top. It should have pom-poms, but I made i-cord horns at the corners instead.

He's such a sweet child. He's very interactive - tries to get your attention and then burbles and babbles at you with a serious little expression on his face as if he's trying to hold a conversation. Mum says if you sing to him, he yodels and crows along until you stop!

Tiny Husband's sweater continues to knit up fast. The body and one sleeve are complete, and on a long circular needle ready for the EZ finish, and the second sleeve is well underway - 23r in, 100r to go. I laundered the two swatches I made from the yarn, one wash at 30deg only, one wash at 30 deg and tumble dry at 90deg. No effect, except maybe a very slight felting at the cast-off edge on the second, without shrinkage. Unfortunately this leaves me none the wiser as to fibre content. I was veering towards thinking it was wool again, as I read somewhere about one-plied wool that was intended for felting, but I doubt even superwash wool would survive being tumble-dried until, well, dry. Hey ho. So it is probably synthetic.

I just had another great idea for a sweater for my son. When I was pregnant we called him Ickle Baby Cthulhu (Destroyer of Waists, Bringer of the Nappies of the Elder Gods, etc.) or IBC for short. It was quite a theme. We even found a little line-drawing of a Cthulhu in a nappy, which I used as an icon on my pregnancy blog, and a plushie Cthulhu was the first toy we bought for him. So I spent most of the day making a Cthulhu chart for a little sweater... To add to the Bob the Builder (yarn purchased) and the Thomas the Tank Engine sweaters already planned.

And sod the baby socks. I want THESE. I've already fed my numbers through the Hourglass Knee-length Sockulator - though I'd rather have over the knee, maybe stockings? Something to scare the kids at school with...

Bwahahahahah!

2007-09-19T21:27:00.000+01:00

According to mum, SIL is delighted with the Drops Norwegian set I sent her, and the ba hasn't been out of it since! She was thrilled with the colours and the pattern, and was particularly floored by the label.

Pics to follow once mum sends them over...

Hubby's sweater grows apace. I have the body completed to the EZ seamless sweater join-up point, and one sleeve almost done after a bit of a hunt for 6mm dpns - I had to settle for 40cm circs in the end. I also had to adjust for TH's elongated torso, as he's 6'1" but his chest's barely 36". I've decided to do the collar as a polo neck, so he can roll it up or down as the weather dictates, and I'll probably have to twiddle the decreases so they don't interfere with the Aran panels. TH can't wait to get his Goth Aran!

I've also begun the calculations for a version for my son - I think the panel plus 7st to either side will be big enough for his wee chest. don't know about the sleeves yet. I've also found a Bob the Builder chart which I might try on the grey marl background, and a Thomas the Tank Engine one currently under consideration. So that's four ideas for him so far, including the Drops!

My own pinwheel cardi has stalled because - aaargh! - I'm running out of wool. As it's vintage, the chances of getting any more are pretty much nil. And it's RED, so I'll never match it... So I have to finish the sleeves, see how much wool is left, then unravel or devise a trim to suit.

And God help me, I want to knit socks...

Designing!!

2007-09-12T17:28:00.000+01:00

This is my first attempt at designing something from scratch!!! Details are sketchy below, as I want to market this in some form, either the item itself or the pattern based on it. So be warned this is copyright to me, do not copy, or attempt to recreate/sell or otherwise use the details here for personal gain: this is simply a record for information only.

Though that should be from scratch-ish, now that I think of it... the sleeves from elbow to wrist are the same as those of the shrug I made my sister - using needles of different sizes to create a lacy effect. However, with this the lower sleeves start wide, and are reduced towards the elbow. There's ribbons threaded through at the elbow.

The top however is solid, small needles throughout, with stitches increased towards the middle and then reduced towards the opposite sleeve, where the large needle is re-introduced and stitch number is increased towards the wrist. In the centre portion, a circle for the head is removed by placing stitches on a small circular needle to be knitted up later as a collar. Mine is Dracula's cloak-shaped, with points that stick up round my head, but I have plans for other shapes, including a Scottish Widow's hood. I also have plans for a tight-sleeved (possibly gloved) cyber version in fluorescent colours and stripes, and possibly an open-fronted all-lace one in some yummy Astrakhan wool.

The inspiration is shown in the second photo. Us gothy types can suffer a degree of discomfort as a result of our dress, especially when the weather is too mild for a heavy coat but still chilly enough to require some covering over bosoms and arms. I could see a less ornate version being suitable for wear over strappy summer tops for those barbeques on a breezy summer twilight. It's not really a poncho, too short even for a cropped sweater - it should not obscure the delightful outfit below it: about nipple-length is right.

I call it the Corset Cosy (TM).

Ay thenk yew.

More hats and a scarf

2007-09-12T09:22:00.001+01:00

Back when I started knitting again, I went on a bit of a hat-making frenzy - partly because hats are quick projects, partly because Ickle Baby Cthulhu was fast growing out of the many hats we had - indeed, many never fitted in the first place. I don't want to sound like my SIL, but IBC's head is HUGE! Thank God for c-sections. He's not even 2 yet and all his little sunhats this summer were age 6 sized. Otherwise he is but a sturdy 12 to 23-month size.

The first ever hat I made for him was Lion Brand's free pattern Strawberry Patch Cap. I did check most carefully for equivalent-sized yarn - Lion Brand is not to be found here - but I did not do a swatch, haha! I rarely do, naughty me. I do try to match up the right needle-to-yarn size unless I'm going for a particular effect, but it's easier to knit a bit of the pattern, see how it's going size-wise, then frog if necessary and knit a different size given in the pattern (assuming I'm actually following it that religiously) - so if my 36in chest size sweater is coming up a 40in, I knit up the 32in size instead. Easier than faffing about with gauges. Obviously the 32in pattern is going to be shorter, but I always measure it off on the wearer rather than rely on the pattern - on the few occasions when I've done swatches, if I got the stitch-gauge right the row-gauge would be skew-wheef. Elizabeth Zimmerman recommends ignoring row-gauges and measuring your work for the intended wearer as you knit, and who am I to argue with someone who made a living knitting?

I used red and green acrylic DK from a pound shop. It was soooo sweet, though TH didn't approve - it's okay for IBC to wear a leopardskin fun-fur hat with horns, made by one of TH's friends, but wearing a hat made by his mummy might give him a complex, it seems. Or wearing a cute and eminently suitable sailor suit to a wedding. Bah. Sadly, IBC tipped it out of his pram and it's never been seen since, so this is the only evidence of its existence. Quite Tyrolean I thought.

The next one was a Knitty pattern called Baby Tart. As I had green DK left over from the Strawberry Patch Cap, I did the "pie" bit in green, and used some black DK for the "filling", as sepals and berry. I call it the Blackberry Cap, or the Blackberet, hnurh, hnurgh, hnurh. I had real bother with the pattern for the bobbled berry filling - maybe it was having to look in 3 different places to work it, but it didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Not one I'll be repeating, I think. TH again not appreciative of my artistry, and IBC ungratefully had a growth spurt before it was done.

I also crocheted the Pompom Hat from Craftown, in black DK with a red stripe around the hatband. However, after a couple of tries I abandoned the pattern and constructed it by measuring off IBC.

Last October I started working at the school, leaving IBC with a childminder during the day. This entails wheeling him across an exposed and windy area in less than clement weather twice a day. Anorak hoods wouldn't stay on, and throwing hats out of the buggy was tremendously entertaining, so I hit on the idea of making a balaclava. After quite a search I found a straightforward one on knitlist. Naturally I made it up in basketweave stitch rather than the stitch pattern recommended, just to be awkward. It was amazingly easy to make up, and IBC can't whip it off - result!

It left a bit much of his face exposed, and, since I had some black and green DK left, I made a second one. This I made a bit longer in the head, and with longer ribbing round the face. Also when I picked up the stitches for the ribbing round the front, I used the same short-rowing technique for the top flap of the balaclava to build up the 'chin' section to cover his mouth and nose. The ribbing kept this piece elastic enough to pull down if it wasn't too cold, which was an unplanned bonus. The black and green pattern was supposed to look like dragon scales, but this was not so successful... TH attempted some dry wit by suggesting I knit him an armalite to go with it.

I've since made a purple version, with purple ostrich fancy yarn twisted along with the yarn for the ribbing round the face only, for a little girl his childminder also looks after - her favourite colour, and she and her mum loved it. No photos though. The ostrich yarn fluffed out really nicely, like the furry bits on the hoods of those snorkel anoraks all the kids used to wear when I was young. Er. Definitely -er.

So to the scarf. Made in beige (MC) and turquoise (Contrast) ostrich yarn for the ex-manager of the Hub Hazelwell when she left for her new job. Quite simple, just with a hole in the middle about a third of the way along, done by just knitting up the first half of the stitches to the desired length, breaking off the yarn and rejoining it to the remaining stitches, knit up to the same length, then just knit across all stitches as normal to the end. You don't even need to put the non-worked stitches on a stitch-holder, just leave them on the needle. In fact you could be making trouble for yourself, transferring ostrich yarn onto and off stitch-holders. Don't do it. Mommy says so.

To get ahead, get a hat

2007-09-11T21:42:00.001+01:00

A few posts ago, I mentioned a matinee set I made for my niece. Specifically, how closely I followed the pattern for the beret, or bunnet as it's called in my erstwhile neck of the woods, because I wanted to make one for my son. This was motivated by the fact that he kept slapping my niece's on his head and running away, shrieking "Hat! Hat! HAAAAAT!" and giggling. So, dear reader, I did.

I guesstimated the number of stitches based on some rough measurements and memory, just made sure it had the requisite 7 segment swirl on top. I made it up in the same Blue-faced Leicester wool I used for the Aran cardi - which I still haven't found.

For the stitch pattern, I used a single-repeat Tree of Life motif from Shelagh Hollingworth's book, interspersed with a motif of my own devising (with a little help from Alice Starmore to get it started), repeated 4 times round the underband. My motif was an infinity symbol - an 8 on its side - which is a symbol I've always liked, with the forever and ever, amen. Nice combined with the Tree of Life too. For a bit of interest, I put bobbles inside the loops of the alternating two infinities to represent the point singularity at the start of the universe, just to continue the science theme. T'was only too late that I realised the result looked like boobies!

Around the edge, I put bobbles at 7-st intervals. I'm sure I had a deeply symbolical reason - I had for everything up to then! but it escapes me now. All I can think now is that it gives the bunnet a Henry VIII look... Over the top, I did two stitch patterns, both from the 1988 edition of the Complete Stitch Directory, one called Bee Stitch, the other Honeycomb Stitch. They weren't a great fit into the space, but look okay. Actually, it looks a bit mediaeval, so perhaps I did have a Henry VII theme going on. Reason for Beeing? The Destroyer of Waists has recently become obsessed with flying insects, known collectively as 'Bzzzes'.

I've googled for these two patterns but what comes up is not them - and I'm not certain the Amazon book referenced will contain it, as mine is an older edition by a different publisher, so here goes:

Bee Stitch: Worked over a multiple of 6 st, plus 5. Row 1 & all odd rows (WS) - K. Rows 2 & 4 - P. Row 6 - *P5, K into next st 5rows down, unravelling st in the rows between#, repeat from * to #, end with P5. Rows 8 & 10 - P. Row 12 - P2, K into next st 5rows down, unravelling st in the rows between#, repeat from * to #, end with P2.

Honeycomb Stitch: Over an even number of stitches. Row 1 & 3 - K. Row 2 - *K1, K into next st 1row down, rpt from *. Row 4 - *K into next st 1row down, K1, rpt from *.

I like that they both use the same principle of knitting into an earlier row. There's something very fractal-ly about that, similarities across different scales, leaf growth on trees being governed by the same principles that create fjords, etc.

On top, I added a tassle rather than a pompom, carefully set to sit sideways as in the pic. Inside, my new Subh Milis label!

And of course he refuses to wear it...

Begorra

2007-09-11T14:02:00.000+01:00

Back at work again for the last week - snowed under due to a Maths teacher's sick leave and the dopey Yr 11s not sorting out their work experience - and before that a fortnight in Ireland which was anything but restful. Every time I go home I come back swearing I'll never set foot there again, and then I forget how awful it is and go back.

It wasn't too bad when I was single. Going "home" meant being shunted around parents and siblings living up to 50 miles apart, cross-border. Lots of travelling by car. Fine if I had no plans of my own. Things got more trying when I left to live in Birmingham: then, when I came "home", I also wanted to visit friends, sort things out at the bank, etc. The former caused my family to throw a collective fit - why was I bothering to come home at all if I wanted to see other people? The latter rarely happened, and business had to be sorted out by post and the one branch my bank has in Birmingham. Then I met Tiny Husband. Foolishly brought him home one Christmas to meet the family, on condition that we were left at the coach station on the 27th to go to Belfast to meet his family. We finally got away on the 29th, driven up by my pissed-off sister, having spent the intervening time on the farm where there's no phone and no satellite cover. TH's mum was frantic.

Now, with the ba, it's a bloody nightmare. It's not safe for a city baby who doesn't realise that tractors AREN'T just big toys, there's never any food in any of the houses we go to (probably all eaten by my big fat rellies), and I'm not even consulted about where we're going to be dumped, as when my sister walked off and left us on the farm overnight with no bottles, one nappy and no clothes after taking us for a "short visit".

Really, never again - not without a car, and preferably a hotel reservation.

Although on the plus side I did larn maself how to double-knit, and put together some patterns for blankies, with a little help from Jessica Tromp, of which more anon.

While in Ireland I handed over the Drops Norwegian sweater and hat to new nephew Adam, 6 weeks. Stupidly, I didn't take a photo to put up here, but I plan to make another for my wee man, so that'll have to do. I did it in blue (MC) and yellow (2nd) 2-ply laceweight, with a 4-ply natural as the third colour. The laceweights I doubled and re-plied with my Daruma Home Twister, a fabby gadget. Okay, I could live without the re-plying function, but I love those funky fat centre-pullcakes. The sweater looked terrible while I was knitting it up, very cottony-ribbony and cold, but when I wet it for blocking, the fibres bounced up, almost felt-thick, yummy.

Adam's mum will not let him wear it, of course. I made the 6-month size, so it should fit him in a month or two, but SIL is obsessed with proving her children are BIG. The older boy, at 7, is wearing teenage clothes, although keeping the clothes on him involves rolling up hems, rolling down waistbands over belts and wearing 3 or more layers of t-shirts etc to fill out the massive sweaters she has the poor boy in. He looks like a badly stuffed scarecrow. He's certainly tall, but not teenage tall - maybe 10-year-old height. So undoubtedly I'll hear shortly that the sweater was too tight to go over Adam's head (despite one shoulder being a button-through). I sent her over a 6-12month outfit when Adam was born, which "dudn't fut hum" as a newborn. Yeah, right. Madwoman. I told my sister to tell SIL if she didn't want it, to send it back to me because I could sell it for $75 on Etsy, heh-heh.

I've also - finally - been inspired to make Tiny Husband a sweater. We've been together for five years, so it should be safe enough! I'd selected the pattern yonks ago when I was thinking about trying Aran knitting again and wanted something easy to start with - but then went and made something more complicated in the meantime. TH is of course gothically-inclined, so the usual wools in naturals, creams and beiges were out. Not that he wouldn't like a white Aran sweater, but he'd just never have occasion to wear it. So the hunt was on for something darker.

I bought some grey wool off eBay, but when it arrived it was a marl (*spit!*). Fine for him, he'll wear grey and navy at work, but - quite apart from my fear and loathing of the coloured-up wool - I just don't think marls work for Aran. The beauty of the technique is in the sculptural stitchery: the wool is just the vehicle, and shouldn't detract attention by being interesting in itself. Would Michelangelo's David be quite such an eyeful in a mottled green marble? No. I said NO. Peasants. I also got some Welsh Black (aka brown), but it is very rough. Hairshirt rough. I may Aran something from it yet but it requires further thought. I'm still on the look-out for navy or dark blue wool, although just looking for the evilness of blue hurts me in the core of my soul. The sacrifices one must make for love...

However, few months ago I bought some mystery wool in the Bull Ring. No bands, but cheap and with a very pleasant hand to it. It's one single ply of many filaments, very thick, soft and warm, but lightweight and slightly fluffy. I thought it might possibly be wool, maybe a merino or something, but as soon as I've decided it almost definitely is wool, it starts looking synthetic, like what polar fleece would be like to knit with. It's coming up chunky, 14st to 10cm - the moss-stitch panels look like bobbles! It isn't pilling as I knit, which is unexpected if it's synthetic.

And just for fun I decided to muck about with the pattern - as usual. I've been reading Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Without Tears and was inspired to try knitting it in the round without seams, apart from a bit of grafting under the pits. It'll mean a possible rethink of the neck - how do I continue the Aran with the decreases? but I wasn't too thrilled with the plain collar any way... So I shall keep this updated.

The free knitting machine is lacking a carriage. But, hey, it was free. Doubtless the universe will see fit to send a carriage my way eventually, in that really unnerving way it does from time to time, just to make me think someone IS actually watching me...

Squeee!

2007-07-26T11:44:00.002+01:00

I've just been offered a chunky knitting machine! It was one of three being thrown out by a school, along with all their hand-knitting needles, crochet hooks etc. Someone rescued them and offered them on Freecycle. Freecycle is great. Go join your local group! Give and receive!

It's a Brother KH260, which is as rare as hens' teeth. So rare that the only times I've seen them for sale they've either been £2-400, or they're undervalued on ebay (still too much for me at £80) because people just don't think to look for them anymore.

The others on offer were a Brother KH836, which I already have, and an Electroknit KH940 which I could have killed for, but I didn't want to be greedy... Well, I did, but I was nice about it - it went elsewhere though. Repairs on the Electroknits can be difficult to impossible as they are, y'know, electronic - motherboards n stuff - so maybe it's as well. They are even more difficult to source than the chunky machines - I can only recall seeing one, an earlier model, going for US$950 - eep!

What I don't get is why none of the original manufacturers has spotted that these machines are all still really popular, still selling for around the original list price. Or indeed someone else with the knowhow who could supply the market with parts, and manufacture new ones. The only company still making knitting machines is Bond America, with the Incredible and Ultimate Sweater Machine (they do more than just make sweaters - I've done crochet-thread net curtains on my ISM), but being Bond AMERICA they're not well represented in the UK. Loads of people are getting into knitting now, discovering machine-knitting, and tearing their hair out trying to get into it....

Must now try to figure out how to get to Longbridge with no transport, when I'm supposed to be getting packed to go to Plymouth tomorrow morning...

Na bPirátaí!

2007-07-25T23:42:00.000+01:00

I mentioned a few posts back that I made my hubby a pair of purple fingerless gloves. He had had a pair, given to him by a friend, but they'd fallen apart. He's not really a gloves person - doesn't like having his fingers covered - but his hands do get cold, and he loved these smelly old raggedy things with a passion that struck me as inappropriate and slightly icky. I did want to knit something for him, thinking sweater, scarf, but when I asked what he wanted (because that's the kind of thoughtful, caring spouse I am), his little eyes filled with tears and in a choked and pleading voice he asked for some new purple fingerless gloves.

I momentarily considered thrashing him within an inch of his life, but he knew not whereof he spoke. I'd never knitted gloves before - not even mittens. And he wasn't to know that he'd just asked for the most complicated item in the Big Book Of Things What Am Knitted (TM). I didn't even have a set of dpns! Or, ahem, a pattern...

And so began the great Fingerless Glove Knitting (or indeed crochet) Pattern Hunt of 2006. Now we need to define our terms here. Gloves - at least to me - are hand coverings that have individual finger coverings. Mittens have a communal finger covering - socks without heels, but with a thumb covering. Describing gloves or mittens as fingerless is therefore an oxymoron - both by definition must have some kind of finger-tube. Unfortunately the English language lacks a handy (sic) adjective describing a partial finger - odd, really: people do lose parts of their fingers as well as complete digits. Oh alright you could say knuckleless gloves, fingertipless gloves, fingertip-and-middle-knuckleless gloves - distal-medial-phalangeal abruption gloves if you will, though I think they only come in latex - but these lack a certain something in the tripping off the tongue department. This linguistic paucity leads me to a rather awkward assumption that the term 'fingerless' in connection with gloves or mittens is not to be taken literally as meaning there is no accommodation for the digits. If that is the case - no finger-tubes at all - then we are talking hand-warmers, which I have since discovered are also known as wrist-warmers.... Either of which may or may not have thumb-tubes, either full or partial...

Really, peops. There are times when I wonder if I have one of these SEN problems. Often I find I have no idea what people are talking about. But I also have the same experience with printed material, and that's not my brain going wonky: people do not seem to know how to communicate anymore. Or maybe I've undiagnosed Asperger's Syndrome...

I kind of settled on Kim's Sockotta Fingerless Gloves in the end. It seemed like a good basic pattern to learn from, as much as to use - I do like to get a rough mental pattern to work from for any future projects, like a chickenwire framework that I can figuratively bend and pull into the right shape. The first attempt was a disaster - I knit up the biggest size as Tiny Husband has large hands, and the glove was humungous! I used DK yarn, which might knit up to a larger gauge than Kim's Sockotta. Second time around, I made up the smallest size, and that worked pretty well. I went for the tighter 1x1 rib for the wristbands though, because hubby's wrists are quite fine, and did the finger-tubes in the same rib. The other major change was with the placement of the fingers: Hubby's little finger starts further down his hand so I branched off earlier for it, then knit another 5 rows up before starting on the rest of the fingers. I also used dpns rather than circular needles as prescribed in the patterns.

To jazz them up a bit, and because Hubby has recently become obsessed with pirates thanks to Johnny Depp et al., I added a skull and crossbones motif to the back of the gloves in reverse stocking stitch. It's not wildly look-at-me obvious - a grown man in bright purple gloves is bad enough - but there is a nice stereogram effect, like Magic Eye pictures. I got the motif chart from here.

Looking back, I might make the wristband smaller next time, because it has stretched quite a bit. Maybe fewer stitches, increasing on the first stocking stitch row, or using smaller needles for the rib. Though if I recall correctly, the dpns were pretty small anyway - 2mm, 2.5mm? I don't know if I can find any smaller. I'd also probably try a decrease just at the rows below the fingers, as the ring finger especially is very loose for him - big long hands, but dinky wrists and slim fingers.

And then again, I may try adapting the Broad Street Mitten...

Tra fn
K

Eyelash Shrug

2007-07-20T09:07:00.000+01:00

My sister was invited to a rather posh wedding a while ago. She really had nothing suitable to wear - she lives in trackies and trainers and has virtually nothing else. Over the years of trackiedom she'd also lost all sense of glamour, colour, shape, etc and had a hard time finding something to wear. She hadn't even tried on clothes in the shop in about 9 years! Since her evil ex took over her life and decreed that any attempt at looking nice clearly meant she was trying to pick up other men...

In the end she found something that tbh sounded like a trackie dress - i.e., thoroughly lacking in oomph. More phmoo really. Blackish-brown, straight-fitting (which means loose on her), nothing interesting in the way of pattern, fabric, embellishment.

About a week beforehand, she was complaining on the phone to me that she was worried that it wasn't 'grand' enough for the bash, wondering if she should go out and look for something else. And I had an inspiration. I had some lovely glossy black eyelash yarn that I'd bought intending to make myself a shrug, but I hadn't got round to it. Without saying a word to her about this, I figured if I really went for it, I could make it up over the weekend, post it on Monday, and she'd have it Wednesday at the latest. I got off the phone as fast as possible, mumbling something about her not being an important member of the wedding party or anything, who was going to notice what she wore, yada yada. Whipped out the needles and yarn and cast on loosely - Long-tail Cast-On works for me.

The pattern is based loosely around one that I lost yonks ago, no idea where I got it in the first place. It is however burned into my brain for all eternity. Well, sort of. Start by casting on 34st, increase 1st on BOTH ends of every 3rd row by making 1 (M1) into the second st from either end, until there's a total of 50st. Then continue straight for the required length, and start decreasing (k2tog the 2nd and 3rd sts from either end) on every 3rd row until there are 34st left, cast off. See? easy peasy.

I do not, of course, remember the yarn weight, needle size, gauge... But shrugs are flexible! That is the beauty of the things! They do not HAVE to have wrist-length sleeves, they CAN be a bit skimpy, so even if you totally foul up the gauge, or don't have the measurements of the recipient, or any of the millions of other things that can go wrong, it doesn't matter!! A shrug in its simplest form is just a wide rectangle, long enough on its long side to go across the recipient's back - but if it isn't, just borrow a bit off each sleeve so they're shorter. It doesn't matter. I do have one handy hint though - if it's to be a surprise gift, you can get a rough idea of the right size by finding out how TALL the recipient is. The distance from fingertip to fingertip of outstretched arms is equal to height. Knock off 6-8in for the length of the (adult) hands and you have an idea how long the shrug should be from cuff to cuff.

For example, I'm 5'6", with biggish hands, roughly 7in.
5'6" = 66in, minus 2 hands at 7in each (14in) = 52" from wrist to wrist.
Anything shorter than this is fine for a shrug.

I think it was a simple lace pattern - yarn-over between stitches on one row, drop the yarn-over on the next, repeat till you're fit to be tied with boredom - but, obviously, I is not jiggy wit da boredom. As the groovy young things say. And the effect of any lace stitch is wasted with eyelash anyway, as the fluffs hide everything but the 'hole'. So I used one 10mm needle to simulate the yarn-over rows and a 4mm needle for the 'drop' rows.

Wow! Two top tips in one post!

I only did the lacy bit up to approximately the elbows, then switched to two 4mm needles for the section over the upper arms and back, then back to the 10mm and 4mm needles for the other sleeve. Suspended bind-off gives a nice loose edge for this project. Sew up the lacy section of both sleeves right up to about 1-2in of the non-lacy middle section. The type of sewing up doesn't really matter, as the fluffiness of the yarn disguises the neatiness/tidiness of the stitchwork - I've even crocheted up the sleeves on some of these shrugs and it's not noticeable. Then, to tart it up a bit, I threaded a length of 1in black ribbon through the top row of holes in the lace and tied it in a bow opposite the seam - the bow is then on the outside of the arm. Finito!

Sister was thrilled with it, and got loads of compliments at the wedding. So much so that she went all Hyacinth Bucket and told people that she had a "little woman" run it up for her! and no, she didn't really want to say who, or how much her "treasure" charged. Mainly because she had no idea how much something like that WOULD cost, although I think she was alarmed at the figures people were suggesting, to try to winkle the info out of her - "was it more than £150? that's what X charged for my twinset last year and it wasn't this nice", etc. (Sis and I are both frequently alarmed by what people will pay for clothes that aren't anything special. The tight-fisted gene is a terrible curse sometimes). She even got asked if the entire ensemble was run up by her "little woman"!

Not bad for a Primark outfit and a few balls of yarn from a poundshop...

Catch-up

2007-07-18T09:44:00.002+01:00

My beloved big-baby brother occasionally sends Mother off on holidays - his sister-in-law works for an airline so she can arrange cheap flights. Last year he sent her over to me for a while. Very sweet of him - he is a lovely person - but Mum is not a good guest. We don't have a car, and Mother is the sort who would drive to the loo if she could get the car indoors. She's also from a generation of women who never set foot in houses of ill-repute (pubs to the rest of us), and cinema, theatre, etc., is out as she has the attention span of a goldfish with ADD so anything longer than 30mins stops making sense to her. Not to mention her inability to tolerate silences, which must be filled at all costs - this extends to the afore-mentioned cinema, theatre and indeed tv once she's lost track of the plot. She once kept me on the phone for 4 hours and 23 minutes on a Saturday afternoon despite my frequent requests to go and do my shopping, laundry, visit the toilet...

All this would not be too bad if her conversation were interesting - and it could be: she is an intelligent, well-educated person with an interesting life. However, her conversation revolves around soaps which I never watch, and food. Specifically, everything that has entered her mouth and the mouths of all her acquaintances within living memory*. I have IBS and cannot eat wheat, buckwheat, sweetcorn, rye, oats, and cabbage, and since I fell pregnant I've had severe heartburn when I even think about cream, bananas, smoked fish, cheese, citrus fruit, fruit salad... Guess how much I like talking about food. She doesn't ask how I'm doing, and could not tell you one thing that I'm interested in, because I don't get to talk to her, I am talked at. I usually tune her out and just go "ah-ha, mm-hm, oh, dear", and get on with the dishes, marking, having a bath, whatever.

So she came over for a week or so in the summer. I took her shopping a couple of days, once into town which was maddening - 20mins to get to the bus stop 50 ft from the front door? We got as far as Boots before the shops shut - and once along Stirchley high street. One of the shops we got to was a cheapie shop that sells remainders from catalogues. I've got some good stuff there in the past - leather trousers for £10, a suit for £5 - though they generally have a bigger range of 18-plus size clothes. Anyway, she got a lovely swirly patterned skirt and, after a lot of persuasion, a pink suede jacket, both of which looked gorgeous on her.

A while after she'd gone home, I saw some fancy yarns on sale, so I made her 3 scarves, all in pink. The first, at the top is pink and white ostrich yarn, which I made a keyhole scarf out of - there's a hole about one-third of the way in that you can loop the other end of the scarf through, done by knitting half the stitches on the needle up to the required length of the hole, then put them on a stitch holder and breaking off the yarn, and knitting the other half of the stitches to the same length, then joining the two sides together and knitting to the end. I found this yarn very hard to work with. It seemed to lose a lot of fluff - even though it's not fluffy as such - which got into my eyes and nose and irritated them.

The yarn for the second scarf, in the second and third pics, was like bunting! A long string, with little square 'flags', in a range of pinks from palest off-white to a deep plummy purple, at roughly one-inch intervals. Although choosing the needles was tricky - the band said 8mm - it worked up quite easily on one 4mm and one 10mm, to enhance the lacy effect.

The final scarf, in pic 4, was in pink-and-white eyelash. It's just an ordinary rectangular scarf, nothing fancy. I really liked working with this: it flowed well, and produced a lovely furry effect, though counting the stitches was difficult. I've acquired a huge stash of it in a variety of colours, of which more later!

All of these were knitted when I was still working nights at the Hub, hence the model - a very scary Angel left over from the Christmas display in the church next door!

Tra fn
K

* - Really. The menu from the wedding of the stepdaughter of a cousin of her next door neighbour but one, which was not attended by my mother or her neighbour, was the object of one of our recent telephone conversations.

Beginnings...

2007-07-17T09:34:00.001+01:00

I thought I'd mention what got me back into a crafty mode, after what is uncomfortably close to 20 years.

In 2003, my last academic research contract came to an end. Having been in the game for 10 years, I decided to focus my job-seeking on the lecturing market. I got lucky on one of my first applications, a junior lectureship at a former FE college turned uni. I started the induction process, which had to be done before an official offer of employment was made (yes, I know it's daft, but the college had been run by the council, council rules apply).

Then, everything went quiet - no response to my emails or phonecalls. Three months later, I was still waiting for the official offer. By which time I was on the dole, and Tiny Husband had been forced to propose marriage. Finally, I threw a hissy fit over the phone, demanding to talk to the Head of Personnel. Complained loud and long until she promised to look into it.

And two weeks later - after another few phone calls - I got a standard letter of rejection in the post. The type of letter sent to applicants who aren't even getting an interview, not to someone who's gone through almost nine months' worth of interviews, shortlisting, visits AND an induction process, to work in a department that's already badly short-staffed. No explanations, no apologies.

And a wedding to pay for in less than 2 months*.

Now, I should have chased it up, but I didn't. 9 months - more, if we go back to the application closing date. Paying for travel to the 2 interviews, tour of facilities and 2 or was it 3 induction meetings. A substantial phone bill from ringing and emailing (I was still on dial-up back then). ARRANGING MY WEDDING IN P**SING APRIL TO SUIT THEM!!!! It had all been too much and I was sick of it. **A pox on all their courses**. So I decided to forget it. They never re-advertised, so I assume the uni refused to release funds to cover my first year's salary - it happens. The experience did coalesce my feelings about research as a career - less secure than acting, less pay than a binman... So now I'm in school-teaching. Better pay, better prospects, better pension, more security, better hols. Or should I say holidays, full stop - never took any as an academic.

So... paying for a wedding. I looked at my finances and reckoned I could squeeze another £2,000 out of the equity on the house without crippling us. I'd already - foolishly - ordered the wedding dress (that's it in the side bar pic), at a head-spinning cost of £650. Though for a one-off designer made-to-measure, that's not too bad. My sis offered to cater and pay for the food, a friend offered to make the cake, another did the photography, I cashed in my Airmiles for the honeymoon - the total cost to us of the wedding, including honeymoon and a new digital camcorder for the ceremony, was around £1,300. And I could have done it for £6-800 less, if I'd gone for a cheap dress and borrowed a camcorder.

A major saving was on invitations. I didn't see any I liked, and they were all ridiculously expensive, so I thought I'd try making them. I got gold-coloured cards and envelopes, printed off the inserts, and made bows for the front. They didn't look 'special' enough, so I got some gold wire and gold and red beads, and crocheted daisy-like flowers to stick on the front. Fooled everyone - no one believed they were home-made!

Having a few left over after the invitations were sent out, I hit on the idea of making my own jewellery. I made a necklace and earrings using the daisies, with 'springs' and hand-wound metal beads - they're just visible in the userpic on the side. I also made some hairpins which aren't visible in the userpic, using spring-bound beads to attach the daisies to bamboo chopsticks - red and gold for me, plum and gold for my bridesmaids. Tip for bridesmaids - give them the material and let them make up an outfit that they know they'll wear again. One of mine, who's Asian, made up hers as a traditional embroidered salwar kameez; the uber-goth bridesmaid did a goth thang with hers; and my sis made a loose jacket and skirt, which she's worn to work dos and weddings since. Unlike most BMs, they all looked fantastic, because they'd all chosen designs that suited them, rather than me forcing them into something I wanted - luckily the colour worked for all of them!

So there you have it - how I got back into crafting. I'm currently making wire crochet flowers for a friend to put on a bag she's felting - they're silver, and more chrysanth-y than these. Wish I could do more jewellery but Ickle Baby Cthulhu is too interested in all the sharp little tools... He barely leaves my knitting alone as it is!

Tra fn
K

* - Yes, the bride's father is supposed to pay for the wedding. However, while my father was possessed of many fine qualities, they did not include fiscal generosity.

Aran Cardi

2007-07-16T23:20:00.001+01:00

I learned Aran knitting at primary school from the redoubtable Mrs Anderson (just retired last year, and replaced by my cousin's daughter, Miss Anderson, no relation!). It was a bag, satin lined, quite nice as I remember. No idea what happened to it, probably a victim of fashion's tide, Aran being considered a bit naff, what with the island itself being just off the coast. Oh the cruelty and folly of youth! When I think of the dosh I could have made, as a 'native Donegal craftswoman working in the traditional oeuvre' I could weep. I haven't gone near Aran knitting since, until I realised how gorgeous it would look on a certain little fat blonde princeling...

Knitted up over Christmas, using for the first time a pair of bamboo needles from a set purchased from China via eBay, and some lovely Aran-weight undyed Blue-faced Leicester wool. I cannot for the life of me remember where the pattern is from - probably one I downloaded via Knitting Pattern Central - but the skills learnt in St Anne's all those years ago came flooding back. Before the first repeat, I was able to abandon the paper pattern and continue from memory and feel - okay it isn't the most demanding pattern, but even so. I was chuffed to find something I could do really well. I'm a good knitter, better crocheter, but this was so... automatic, instinctive.

Sadly, this is the only pic I have of His Nibs in the cardi (Note to self: do not send colourblind husband to buy buttons). Not only had he outgrown it, but foolish Tiny Husband put it in a cottons wash (Note to self: stern laundry lecture to Tiny Husband). It hasn't shrunk too badly, but has felted a bit - not that this is a disaster in traditional all-weather fishermen's wear, of course. I should dig it out and palm it off on my niece, I think. Nephew's mum would not be impressed at being given an oul secondhand shrunk thing!

Tra
K

The cuteness...

2007-07-16T20:51:00.001+01:00

As mentioned in the last post, I also have a new niece, born at Easter. I was in Ireland at the time, and made sure to be the first person to see her apart from her parents, even though this meant getting involved an undignified race with my 65-year-old mother. Remarkable turn of speed for her age - I was impressed by the way she skipped over the bin and vaulted the pill-trolley I threw in her way. I foiled her at the end, thanks to her Luddism - the hi-tech security door to the maternity unit posed no difficulties for me. But it was worth it - living in Birmingham, I never get to see these babes till they're acne-riddled strop-monsters.

There was a certain bittersweetness to the occasion too. My reason for being 'home' at all was that my father died suddenly a week earlier, at the incredibly young age of 69. He was a huge, powerful man, apparently glowingly healthy all his life. In his later years, he developed diabetes which did not respond to treatment, and had heart problems of a fairly non-specific nature. Through it all, though, he had never let up. My mother and brother could not convince him that he could not still do the work of a 20-year-old. At every opportunity he would be out on the farm, checking 'his' cattle, making sure my 35-year-old brother knew what was what and generally driving everyone scatty. Not that he wasn't useful - when my brother had an accident that almost lost him a leg last year, my father stepped into the breach (with a little insignificant assistance from other brother) and kept things going - but he did not need to push himself anymore.

Ultimately, it was that attitude that killed him. Some cattle got into difficulties due to methane escaping from a slurry tank in one of the cattle houses and my brother called for help to move them. Dad basically got too worked up, trying to move these 2-ton brutes practically by hand, and collapsed. He was dead before he hit the ground. Mum, my brother and other brother's wife did CPR until the ambulance arrived, but there was never the slightest indication of life.

The last day had been a good one. All his grandchildren - except my little boy - had been down on the farm with him, and they'd spent the morning following him round like little ducklings after a mother duck. Then after lunch they all tumbled into my parents' big bed for a nap together. All of them adored their big Ganda, and he was daft about them. He was so looking forward to seeing his two new grandchildren, unable to decide if he wanted girls or boys. It's one of my big regrets that my son will never get to know his Ganda. He is the most like Dad of all the grandchildren. We thought we had plenty of time to move back, but there's never any time.

So I made this little matinee outfit for my niece. I'd brought needles (of course) but no yarn, and despite the importance of the sheep industry on our door step, there's darn few woolshops about. So I settled for 100% acrylic Robin Bonny Babe Aran in pink and white. The pattern, which I stuck to quite religiously - go me! - was one from an unknown magazine, which I'd bought on eBay: two outfits, the coat and bonnet I made up, and a sweater and Inca-style hat which I thought I'd make up for my soon-to-be nephew as and when, though I've changed my mind about it, as that sister-in-law is a bit odd and probably would not see the cuteness, so he's getting the teddy from the last post and a rather ordinary Norwegian jumper instead. And maybe a hat, I haven't decided.

The reason I was so rigid about the pattern this time is that I really really wanted to figure out the mechanics of making the beret. The coat is no biggie, bored the tits off me tbh, but having got a copy of Alice Starmore's Celtic Collection, I was keen to try some Aran-y stitchery on a beret for my son*, and I thought I could see how to adapt her designs. But this depended on getting the pinwheel technique into my head first, so I could do it in my sleep like my balaclava pattern*.

It's quite straightforward though, starting with the rib for the brim, increasing to a multiple of 8 stitches for the under-band, then in a reverse of the Pinwheel Sweater pattern, decrease every one-eighth of the total stitches on odd rows, working a plain-knit row on even rows - i.e., if you have 120 stitches total, decrease 1st every 15 stitches on Row1, plain knit Row 2, decrease 1st every 14sts on row 3, etc.

So here's the finished product, modelled by my vintage Ideal Giggles (who still wriggles AND giggles, in original orange-and-pink hotpants and shoes, for those who are interested in such-like)

Tra fn
K

* - to appear later!

Yet another teddy....

2007-07-16T19:18:00.001+01:00

Having become an auntie again twice, I've been knitting like crazy. My big baby brother and his bride presented me with a dark-haired niece at Easter, and my baby-baby brother and his had a (second) son 10 days ago, also dark-haired - I mention hair as we're all blondes who've married dark-haired people, but the first 4 babes are all blonde, and number 5's initially-black hair has faded to dark blonde at age 2. What happens with #6 and #7 is anyone's guess right now.

The most recent CP is a teddy for my nephew. It started out as Lion Brand's free Scott the Bear, but, urm. Due to a combination of a printer out of ink, a 21-month old who likes pressing buttons (especially off-buttons on computers), and deciding I wanted some things to be different anyway, Sprot the Beer is not entirely as indicated. Who needs a stinkin pattern anyway?!

He is made with a TINY amount of multi-coloured yarn of unknown composition for the head and body. I think it is self-patterning sock yarn, though I have no idea how it came to be in my stash, it just was, being offensive and vile*. The black yarn is almost certainly wool, of a strange, ply-less, slubby nature, which I bought unbanded to make a sweater for Tiny Husband, as he has had nothing since his lovely purple pirate fingerless gloves (which reminds me, I really ought to get another pair on the needles for winter, possibly with a mittenly 'hood' for his fingers), and the white is some acrylic left over from my new niece's matinee outfit (of which cuteness, later).

The idea for the stripes is that newborns can only see light and shade - a lot of newborn toys are only black and white as a result. But as colour vision develops randomly, through accidental firing of the retinal photoreceptors which eventually - and amazingly quickly - tune in to specific colours, I always think it's best to combine colour and stripes to a) help the process along and b) prolong the interestingness of the toy.

I don't think he's suitable for munching on, but as a slappy toy he'll be fine. The head and body more or less follow the pattern, but I made the legs and arms longer so they would flop about more as nephew bats it. There's no tail, but I chain-stitched a length to tie him to an arch. Also finished off with my new craft labels from GB Nametapes, very reasonable and a quick turnaround. They read "hand made by Subh Milis" in olive green on a cream background, with a teddy symbol to one side.

Subh Milis (sue milish) is the title of a poem by Séamus Ó Néill, an Irish (not Gaelic, please!) writer from (now) Northern Ireland. At 8 lines, it's practically a haiku in Irish literary terms. I learned it in primary school and it's stayed with me since. Even as a child myself, I recognised the evanescence of youth expressed so sparsely in the poem - I suppose it's why I've spent so much time refusing to grow up... Here it is in full - the translation just doesn't do justice...

Bhí subh milis
Ar bhas-crann an dorais
Ach mhúch mé an chorraí
Ionam d'éirigh,
Mar smaoinigh mé ar an lá
A bheas an bhas-crann glan,
Agus an lámh bheag
Ar iarraidh.

There was jam
On the doorhandle
But I smothered the vexation
That rose up in me,
Because I thought of the day
That the doorhandle would be clean
And the little hand
Missing.

Tra!
K

* - I don't even like flecked/tweed yarn. If I want colourful, I'll do Fair Isle, intarsia, etc. Liking sploodgey colours on the same yarn evidences an advanced dementia at best, or hopeless sociopathy in the case of hand-dyeing afficionados. The stuff looks like a migraine made string-like.

About time I put something on here....

2007-05-05T14:07:00.000+01:00

Hello!

This is an heirloom teddy I made for my niece.

I took a basic pattern I found in a craft shop and added a skirt with a pocket and hanky, socks, shoes, a flower and hair. The pattern was in dc throughout, starting with 6 or 8 dc in a looped chain, then increasing one dc every 1 stitch in row 1, every 2 st in row 2, etc, until you get the right width, then continuing straight until the length is right and decreasing in reverse to the increase. Before it closes, stuff the part with a suitable foam (I've used old stockings/tights before but these might not be so good for kid's toys) and then finish. The ears are just a body shape, done up to the end of the increases, then folded and shaped before attaching.

I used a chenille yarn for the furry bits, and thickish crochet thread for the clothing. I did a bit of shaping on the arms to suggest paws by decreasing on the row after the main increases ended. The eyes and nose came from another craft shop, and the mouth detail was satin stitch - about the only embroidery stitch I can do.

To do the skirt I crocheted a chain into the body, then crocheted off that in rounds. I increased slightly at the bottom to get the flare, then did a scallop edge by crocheting 5tr into every third stitch at the bottom.

The hair was sewn onto the shaft of the dcs along about a quarter on the head, then knotted to form 2 'hairs'. Once it was all in, I combed it into shape with a wide-tooth comb, trimmed the ends and tied it with the bows.

The flower was a simple loop chain with 10dc in yellow, the petals in red by *slst into dc, 4ch, ttr into same dc, 4ch and slst in same loop, 2ch, skip a dc, repeat from *. It was sewn into the paw using the tails of the cotton. The shoe laces are just chains tied into bows.

I called her Goldilocks when I was making her. I always felt uncomfortable about the Goldilocks story, because there was no comeback on her for breaking and entering, willful damage and theft. Getting turned into a bear seemed fair! However my niece has decided she's a princess bear so she's now called Lady Di...

The project got me interested in amigurumi. I've been looking around for free patterns - don't want to buy unless I'm sure I want to do it - but haven't found anything inspirational. Most of them seem to be globular things, with no detail except what you can add with different coloured yarns and embellishments like eyes. Not enough challenge there! And I just don't see the cuteness value they're supposed to have.

I'm quite pleased with the way the shaping worked out. I'd love to try it again, if I ever get time. I have an idea for a very sultry Jessica Rabbit type bear for a friend,where I could really put shaping to work - maybe try shaping joints using a technique not unlike turning heels on socks. Needs some thinking about though.

Tra fn

Knitzsche