I just love my LYS. The ladies who work there are often knitting the most amazing things while they staff the till, and this window is just fab. It's an allotment, with the caption "Knit Your Own", above a display of a carrots, beetroot, sweetpeas (my favourites), and more! I love walking past this shop with my toddler as there's always something more to see in the display. Well done, ladies!
Oooh, I'm so pleased with myself! Finally, a finished object to share. I've been taking this to my local Crafternoon for what seems like ages. In fact, last time, although I was at the sewing up stage, the ladies looked rather surprised to see that it was still going!
I can't seem to remove the first picture, so you get two of it in all its glory! Greens and blues don't photograph terribly well, so the colours are greener in real life. I'm so pleased with how it's turned out. More on my Ravelry page about (veery minor) changes I made to the original pattern. I think this will be great for my daughter, over leggings or on its own while the weather is nice. Now, what to knit next??
So, the Sirdar knitted tunic is SO nearly done! This is despite me sewing the sleeves on to the wrong sides ... Still, despite me changing needles to a smaller size, it's still huge for my daughter, so there's no hurry. I'm really looking forward to seeing her in it. Though it certainly isn't cheap to knit, I am loving the Sirdar DK cotton so it's been very enjoyable to work on. In fact, variegated yarns must be en vogue at the moment, as several of my knitting group are working with similar yarns. In contrast to some, the colours in this cotton have worked out spread quite evenly through the knitting, giving it an even appearance too. Lovely.
Love, love, loving our local wool shop, too. Here is their knitted allotment!! Vegetables, fruit, sunflowers, bees - it's ace.
Excitement! A friend dropped off a huge bag of knitting patterns the other day, which she'd seen at a church sale and scooped up at speed for me. Of course, many are the vague 1980s patterns that no one really wants - but some are ACE! I need, need, need to see my toddler in one of these!
I particularly love the one with birds on in the top photo, so I think I'll buy the yarn for that, then drop some heavy hints to mum about knitting it... But the 60s style cardigans with those lovely colours are also lovely. What a good haul!
I *have* been knitting, in amongst the working, driving and toddler-wrangling! I'm writing this in a precious, free moment while Small is at nursery. This is my latest project:
I usually avoid any yarn that is variegated or flecked, but this is just gorgeous-it's a tight cotton and the colours go so well together. I had worried that this kind of mercerised cotton would be too shiny for knitting a garment, but the shop where I bought it had a top knitted up in the 4-ply version and it was beautiful and not too shiny at all. This is going to be a tunic dress for Small, the "Rosina" tunic dress from Ravelry by Libby Summers. I've already put some notes on Ravelry in case anyone is thinking of knitting this.
I also managed a quick Easter basket which I finished on, er, Easter Saturday!
This is from a free pattern from the Let's Knit website and it was a quick crochet project in double crochet and DK yarn.
It's been so hard to find time for blogging, though I've kept up with reading other people's blogs! Still, I'm hoping that now I've got a bit more time to myself, I'll feel like it's a 'current' blog. So, thank you for reading, and more very soon!
Yes, I do get some peace and quiet sometimes! I was lucky enough to be given a subscription to the delicious Pom Pom Quarterly this year and I loved it. The patterns are trendy without being alienating and they're so well styled - on people of all sizes, with tattoos, hair dye - real people who look like you'd like to be friends with them. Although I must admit I haven't made any of the patterns yet (but when does that stop us buying pattern books?!), I really, really would make lots of them. I see on Ravelry people have already made several which look great, so that makes me more likely to try! I do find women's patterns so frumpy, so this magazine gives me hope!
Hmph. Although my last post featured a lovely shawl very near completion, I *still* don't have a triumphant FO picture. I just didn't have enough wool left to complete the shawl. The pattern definitely states that it needs only two balls, and I checked I'd used the right needle and done the pattern correctly. A quick check on Ravelry showed that the pattern was fine BUT that someone else had found a ball of this yarn (Debbie Bliss Fine Donegal) to be too light and too short!!! This had never occurred to me as a possibility. So I followed this knitter's example and emailed Designer Yarns, who distribute Debbie Bliss in the UK. No reply to my email, so I then rang them. Things got a bit better at this point and they immediately sent me a replacement - same dye lot etc. In vain I waited... and waited .... and Royal Mail admitted they've lost my parcel! They've been pretty hopeless - although my local post lady has been helpful, the office have been dire. I have had to chase them twice, only to be told that 10 days might elapse before they even ring me back! How hard can it be to keep track of a parcel?! Not impressed with this at all. They've advised me to ring the company back and the company are to make a claim against them for a replacement.
So I rang DY again and they're sending me another one - only now, they don't have the same dye lot. I am SO hoping that this turns up....
I must say that this saga has put me off Debbie Bliss a bit. The balls of wool are about £12 each and I think there's a huge difference between making a shawl for £24 and for £36; I'm glad I didn't just go and buy another ball.
So, all my Bank Holiday knitting plans were thwarted. I've had to start a quick baby cardigan instead, but hopefully the shawl will eventually be done. It's autumn, now, after all, and I want to wear it!
Well, nearly. I have got this far:
Phew! I am really enjoying knitting it, although I have to concentrate quite hard on the lace rows (each RS row; WSs are all purl) and I can't take it to my knitting group. Oh, or even really watch TV... I am also rather worried that I'll need a third ball of wool - which, at £11something, is a bit of an expense. It's Debbie Bliss Fine Donegal Tweed and a pattern from the accompanying book - gorgeous, but not cheap. The pattern does specify two balls, but I have a way to go to 21 stitches remaining... Anyway, we shall see. I am so looking forward to wearing this in the Autumn - and, dare I say, that looks like a realistic goal?!
In other news, I have been listening to The Archers. Now, I appreciate this isn't news for the majority of the Radio 4-listening population, but I've never got into it. However, now, it falls at just the right moment when I come downstairs after the hustle and bustle of a busy/lovely/tiring/long day parenting. So I am catching up on all the characters and drama of it all. And the omnibus seems to be just nicely soporific if I'm woken up in the night. Yes, I'm turning into my mother.
One of the many struggles of motherhood is avoiding all the pink, ruffly, cutesy girls' clothes. I have nothing against a bit of pink, but there are some really ghastly clothes for girls out there. I have been trying to find some little knickers to go under dresses but they are all pink and covered over the back with ruffles ... Then I looked in an old knitting book (Knitting for Children by Louise Daniels) I was given by my aunt, and - hey presto! Lovely knitted baby knickers. My mum is knitting them up, and here they are, so far!
Hurrah! The seldom-felt joy of completing a knitting project. This is a cardigan for my daughter. This is the 1-2 year size which will hopefully be a good fit. The yarn is much nicer than it looks here - it's Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino in a lovely pale green. The cable effect pattern is a trick achieved with slipped stitches, so it was much easier than it looks - perfect.
Green is a colour she wears a lot, as I try to avoid too much pink, or ghastly clothes with lots of slogans on them.
Next project: a shawl for me! I haven't ever made a shawl, so this will be interesting ...
Well, it's been a while I've had time to knit. A friend had a new baby recently (by recently, I mean in November!) and I wanted to make her something. I'd recently made these little bootees for my own daughter and they're so useful - she has them as slippers and wears them in the car, in her sleep suit and at home. They're not at all fiddly to put on, and not too girly. Lovely. The yarn is Rico Baby which I hadn't used before but it's really nice. Soft, but not floppy, and the fleck is beautiful because there's plenty of the greenish shade. Can you tell I'm really pleased with them?! I wish I'd bought some more yarn though as I'd like to make something else in it.
Other than that, life is rather hectic with a Little One! We are having fun, though - swinging on swings, swimming and playing. It just doesn't leave a lot of knitting time :)
Well, I haven't written this for a very long time. This has been because of a huge, lovely change in our circumstances: the arrival of our daughter! As you can imagine, we have had a total change of lifestyle and I am finding I have much less free time! Still, I did do some lovely baby knitting before she arrived:
I've just updated my Ravelry page on this tank top (Sirdar 4420). It's a good pattern, not too tricky and it looks good. It's nice and stretchy, too. The only drawbacks are the the shoulders are quite wide for a small baby and I found the decreasing for the V-neck quite tricky as the numbers of stitches weren't written out row by row - you're left to "continue", which I found rather hard! Nevertheless, the Jarol yarn is lovely and she has been wearing it over sleepsuits in the mornings so it's been getting plenty of wear - and washing!!
I also made this blanket, from the fantastic book by Nikki Van De Car, What To Knit When You're Expecting:
This was obviously a very easy knit. I did it in cheap Aran and it's knitted up really well and is getting lots of use. The patterned border makes it more interesting to knit but the stocking stitch part is also nice and quick. There's lots in the book I shall also make, and I see there's a toddler book, too.
Nikki blogs here: http://www.whattoknitwhen.com.
Phew! I hope everyone's having a good weekend. It's lovely to be back!
I was excited to see a new novel by American novelist Anita Shreve. She's written more than fifteen novels and I think I've read them all. So, last week, I read The Lives of Stella Bain - mostly in the garden!
The novel is set in the aftermath of World War I, and Stella is a military nurse and driver who finds herself in London one evening, with no idea about how she got there, or what she is to do next. She throws herself at the mercy of an English couple, and they help her to investigate who she is and where she is from.
Once you get past the slightly unlikely extent of the help the English couple offer Stella, this novel is unusual and gripping. The Edwardian fascination with psychology clearly interests Shreve, as does the way the war affected the women involved. Like many of her books, The Lives of Stella Bain charts the journey of a lone woman in an unknown place. Shreve covers a lot of ground here in terms of Stella's past as well as her plans for the future. Like so many novels now, Shreve uses the present tense pretty much throughout, and somehow this suits Stella's character, as she can only really live in the present, knowing next to nothing of her past. This is a good read - interesting and unusual. It is a shame that this novel will probably be read by a predominantly female readership as it has male characters as well, and leaves readers with plenty to think about. However, if you've never read anything by Shreve, start with the superb novel, The Pilot's Wife!
I stayed up late last night to finish Sadie Jones' fourth novel, Fallout. It's a fantastic read and I know I'm going to be evangelical about it for some time! It's set in the 1970s, chiefly in London, in the world of theatre start-ups. The novel is convincing about this world, where theatres are not the gilded globes seen to the audience in the plush seats, but the day-to-day grind of rehearsals, builders, management and ticket sales. Jones' characters are (nearly all) principled arts-lovers, whose work matters - and this virtuous stance leads to some of the best drama in the novel. I don't want to give too much away so I won't describe too much about the main characters. Suffice it to say, Jones writes so skilfully about her characters' actions, feelings and motivations that the prose is breathtaking at times. She captures particularly well that way in which a mood can sour or a glance can intrigue - tiny moments which have a huge reach in a person's life. It's also a very dense, substantial novel with well-drawn, believable characters around the main four: their parents, other theatre folk, a husband - so that Jones' world is fully and convincingly peopled. If you read Jones' first novel, Outcast, you might remember how very bleak it was (though excellent); this is not as bleak - there are moments of exhilaration and love - but Jones equally doesn't shy away from writing about disappointment, failure, or regret. Sadie Jones was on Women's Hour recently taking about this book and it has also been serialised on Radio 4, and it deserves to do extremely well.
Well, this weekend was brilliant. We went off up to the huge skies and heavy downpours of North Norfolk and I went to the Shoal of Ganseys exhibition at the Sheringham Mo museum. I wasn't sure what to expect as I'd never been to the museum before but I had a brilliant time. For a start, there was no one else in the museum at all! I'm not usually so antisocial that I only enjoy things when there's no one else there, but it did mean I could have a really leisurely browse and take all the (people-free) photos I wanted, without feeling rushed!
The main part of the museum, the ground floor gallery, is home to huge lifeboats - oh, and knitted bunting to honour the gansey exhibits:
The operations manager, Philip, told me about the history of the building and talked me through how they came by the exhibition: partly lent by the Moray Firth Gansey Project, then supplemented with their own local exhibits and patterns. The Moray Firth project looks excellent and you can find out about it here: http://www.gansey-mf.co.uk .
In each huge lifeboat, jumpers are displayed from Scotland, Norfolk and the North of England. The majority of them are jumpers which are worn and holey, which adds to their charm. Then, upstairs, there's a tech point with links to the Moray Firth project and - gasp of excitement - a sample box with patterns from all around Britain knitted up for reference. I thought of Louise of @CaithnessCraftCollective as there was a Caithness sample, as well as this local one:
There's plenty about the history of the gansey, and the information boards go well beyond the basics. There was a really heathy and welcome focus on women's contributions to not only the knitting itself, but the sea-faring life of coastal towns, as well as photos of the 'herring girls' who knitted some of the jumpers, without patterns. I particularly liked the idea of the 'knitting sheath' - a kind of implement to make your knitting portable! It hooked to your belt and had a hole for the needles to sit in. I'm sure there'd be a market for these today! The bulk of the jumper could be pinned to your own belt so that it didn't hang, heavy, on the needles as you sat on the sea wall, or walked around the town:
There's a case of local patterns, too, as well as plenty of description of the different designs and what they symbolised: rib bars to suggest marriage and children; lightening and hail stones; diamonds.
I would heartily encourage anyone to go and see this: it's a fascinating, thought provoking exhibit with lots to see. It's on til the 10th September and you can find out more about it here: www.sheringhammuseum.co.uk.
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