Category: Knitting

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

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

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

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 yarn-overs 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

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, see left! 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 2×2 rib on the collar, 3×3 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

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…

Happy New Yarn!

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 desperate “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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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


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

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!

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 ‘Bilankent’ 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…

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…

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