In which I finally complete some knitting ...

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 ...

 

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Finally, I get time to knit!

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 :)

 

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Although I've been quiet, I've been knitting!

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!

 

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Reading in the garden. Time well spent...

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!

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In which I basically wait until I can read Sadie Jones' 'Fallout' again

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.

 

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Smug summer crochet

Now, I'm rather pleased with this. I wanted to make something in cotton, but I'm not a huge fan of garments in cotton yarn. Then I had a browse through Susan Cropper's book, Vintage Crochet, and saw patterns for those crochet pot covers with little bead things on them which keep insects from falling into your cup of tea... or wine glass! The pattern is by Emma Seddon and she edges them with vintage buttons, rather than beads, which I really like the look of. Mine has buttons from a charity shop so they're not at all expensive to make.

I used DK Sublime Egyptian Cotton, which comes in a 50g ball (115 yards). I should think I've used about half of it - there's quite a lot of crochet in there! Two possible problems: one is that the buttons don't move as easily as beads would long the yarn. This matters because you thread all of your buttons onto the yarn before you start the crochet, so you have to shunt them along rather a lot before you get to the final row when you actually incorporate them into the stitches. This is just a bit of a pain - the end result is worth it, but I did spend rather a long time moving buttons along. The other problem is that, although I religiously counted the buttons onto the yarn, and followed the pattern as closely as I could, I still ended up with two too few buttons for the number of scallops I had when it got to the last row. So, somewhere along the way, it's grown.... I counted the spokes in the first couple of rounds ... then felt a bit lazy and just left two scallops without buttons hanging from them, one on each side. And, for this, I'm fine with that!

I'm now beginning another one in blue. My first one was the "Tumbler Cover" and the blue one will be slightly larger, I think, and is called the "Milk Pitcher Cover". But really, both fit rather nicely over a wineglass:

So, should it ever be nice enough to sit outside, sipping wine - I'll be ready!

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A Shoal Of Ganseys

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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