Of boilers and butterflies

This week was the first of two weeks holiday from work and it's been rather hectic.

The week started with fitters from British Gas turning up to replace my ancient gas boiler with a new, energy efficient one. Naturally the mains gas pipe needed to be replaced and Monday morning started with an animated discussion about where the pipe was to be run. The gas fitter wanted to run it along the outside of the building at about head height, all the way around the house to my kitchen where he'd poke it through the wall.

I vetoed this idea, sticking to my guns, refusing to give permission and pursuing other routes until eventually the fitter relented. The final route for the pipe took it up the wall, under the bedroom floors, through the house and dropping through the kitchen ceiling. Once agreement had been struck work began and my house turned into a building site.

I've got to admit though, once the fitters got started they got on with it and were done by 1pm the next day! There was one incident in the shed involving a tin of paint but otherwise things went fairly smoothly. The worksheets the fitters had didn't match my invoices which left them a bit disgruntled, but since I had written evidence of what I'd ordered, they had no choice but to do as was on my paper work.

So all sorted and we now have heating and hot water once more.

This weekend is the first Maelstrom event of the year and quite possibly the only one Dave is going to make, so I've been left to my own devices for a few days. Saturday saw me head off to Stratford with Richard to visit the Butterfly Farm which is a five minute walk from the town centre.

The Butterfly Farm isn't huge, consisting of one large hot house and a couple of specialist buildings housing caterpillars, spiders and various insects.

Once inside the hot house there were butterflies everywhere, quite happily fluttering around visitors and landing on anyone who looked vaguely interesting.

Richard proved to be a great hit with the butterflies - here he is with a new friend and trying to take a photo...




For once, I took lots of pictures although only about half of them came out as the butterflies wouldn't stay still, were quite small and the light levels in the hot house were not great.

However, some of my favourites were these...








There were also a lot of birds in the hot house, all apparently chosen for their non insect eating ways.



And some very big carp.



Plus at least one iguana who was very curious to see what everyone was doing.



If you want to look at all the pictures I took, they can be found over at Picassa - here.

Stratford Butterfly Farm

A nice place to visit and one I could see me dragging Dave around at some point.

Not at all happy!

I've been making slow progress with my sock, having turned the heel and knitted the gusset, but I was dismayed to discover this...



A knot! In my self striping sock yarn!

Which means it's going to disrupt my stripes.

The sudden jump from white to pink, when that pink repeats in two patterns would be difficult to match up for the second sock and the fact that I only have a single ball of the yarn means I don't have much leeway for maneuvering.

This means this pair of socks will be fraternal rather than identical twins; the stripes will not match up at all. Those who know me, know how I love my stripes to match on both socks so will know this is something of a blow.

For future reference, the yarn in question is Wendy Happy (Ravelry Link). It's a pretty bamboo sock yarn and I fell for it a while back, buying several different colourways. At the moment I'm finding the name rather ironic. Knots in self striping sock yarn do not make me 'happy'... In fact they are very frustrating!

Ah well... Rant over.

Two steps forward and one back

Progress has stalled again on the decorating front, with a new problem uncovered this week...



You're looking at the top of the door frame which Dave began stripping the paint from earlier this week. If you look carefully you can see horizontal tracks running across it and rather than having a nice crisp door frame shape, the whole thing is rather crumbly.

We're thinking woodworm. Ancient woodworm, which was probably there before the many, many layers of paint were applied directly over the top, covering the exit holes the adult beetles would have escaped through. Oddly, the woodworm only seems to have affected a four foot section of the upright and only certain bits of it, leaving the majority of the frame untouched.

I've contacted our usual handyman who in turn has put out a call to his woodworking mate... we're waiting on a visit for a verdict, but I suspect that we'll need to replace the entire frame. Can you hear me sighing?

In other news, there has been some very slow crafting going on. For example, I'm close to finishing this cardigan.



This is my version of Doris Chan's Cinnabar cardigan, which has been waiting for sleeves for the past couple of weeks. I've added button holes to the top (hence the markers) of the band running up the front, so I'm hoping it will work as a maternity cardi rather than having to wait until I return to my more usual dimensions before I can wear it.

Naturally, since I need to concentrate on making sleeves... I cast on a sock.



These are intended to be something pretty for me and are plain socks, knit up in Wendy Happy, which is bamboo with the usual 25% nylon you'd expect in a sock yarn. So far I'm enjoying knitting this first sock, watching the colours play out is captivating me in the usual way and not having to really think about the pattern is a serious bonus.

So who knows, maybe I'll get it finished fairly quickly?

Decorating - slow progress

Still not much happening on the craft front, although it's only in part due to my ongoing exhaustion and lack of mojo. Instead, we seem to have spent most of our 'free' time working on decorating the spare room. Or rather, initially it was getting the room in a state where we could think about decorating it which is very difficult to do when it's full of miscellaneous stuff.

The first chore was to sort the stuff into stuff to keep and stuff to go out, then the latter into stuff for the bin and stuff to pass on. This took a long time. Not that we were delaying, but when you only really have weekends free to work on the clearing progress is slow.

Over the past week we've passed on redundant furniture via Freegle, with other bits and pieces to follow over the next week or two. On Saturday I took four boxes of some 250 books and another box of sci/fi magazines (some bagged and in mint condition) to the local Oxfam bookshop. Dave pre-warned the manager - who's eyes apparently lit up - and we gift aided the lot, so hopefully Oxfam will make a tidy sum out of them.

Books that I decided to keep either went into the attic or temporarily into the shed, pending movement to a more permanent location. This left us with a nearly empty spare room and so now the decorating has started in earnest.

Dave has discovered how easy it is to remove paint from woodwork using a heat gun and over the past two weekends, we've both attacked the multiple layers of wallpaper with gusto.

Dave in an action shot, up a ladder...



Ladders are out for me, so I concentrated on getting the wallpaper I could easily reach while Dave followed behind working either the more difficult spots or those that were high up.

On the wall pictured, the blue stuff is wall that I stripped back to a single layer of very well attached lining paper which has been painted. We both agree that we like the blue but that it's very dark for such a small room and would shrink the space considerably. On the wall above it you can see the original yucky brown wall paper which is rather like corduroy fabric to look at or touch. Under that was some floral stuff with dubious stains which we decided not to speculate on the origin of too much. The brown stuff came off easily. The floral stuff, not very easily at all. On two walls there's also a pale blue/grey layer which was also very difficult to get off, but we persevered with lots of water and elbow grease finally shifting it.

The blue layer we're left with is very well laid and on top of the plaster on most of the walls, so we've decided that it will probably do as our base layer for papering ontop of. Of course it will need tidying up, holes will need filling and several layers of PVA solution applied, but hopefully it will give us a sound base for our own layer of lining paper which we then intend to paint.

So progress is being made... Just very, very slow progress.

Of tidying, cars and old houses

The past few weeks have been busy, mostly on the home front where we've entered into a tidying frenzy, targeting the rooms upstairs. We braved Ikea and bought shelving, then dived into trying to sort out the mess that our two spare rooms have become.

After two weekends of dedicated effort, I think we're slowly making progress although there's a lot more to do yet. I'm now pondering what to do with about 250 to 300 books which are going out, not through choice but simply because I have nowhere to put them. Not to worry though, I still have lots of books left... Although it remains to be seen if they also get earmarked for the door on a later cull.

Next up are my stockpile of art supplies and my old study materials from my days as an OU student. My degree is still fairly recent history for me, so parting with them is going to be difficult but we don't have anywhere to store them so...

On a more positive, although expensive note, I bit the bullet and changed my car, making the exchange last weekend. I was thoroughly happy with my Ford Focus Estate, so I bought a direct replacement. Namely, I traded in my eight year old Focus for a three year old Focus.

Now, I did try to replace the car last autumn, approaching the local main Ford dealer looking for a suitable 3 year old vehicle, but was told they didn't have a single Focus Estate on the lot; they couldn't get one in and there was no call for them... They could of course order me a brand, spanking new one if I wanted? After I politely refused, the sales person then remarked that mine was the fourth enquiry after a 3 year old Focus Estate they'd had that weekend. Prompting my thought that if they stocked the cars, they might actually sell them.

Anyhow, I've spent the past few weeks lurking on Autotrader, looking for the right car. I'd used Parkers to get an idea of value, both for my own car and any prospective new purchase and about two weeks ago, I spotted a likely candidate. I contacted the dealer, arranged a test drive and with minimum fuss had agreed to buy a car.

I collected the new car on Saturday and so far, while I'm still getting used to it, I like it.

Last but not least, it was Dave's birthday earlier this week, so we arranged a day out on Sunday to celebrate. Our chosen location was the Black Country Living Museum and Richard has already written up the day on his blog.

The day was a cold one and using a camera meant taking my gloves off, which I was reluctant to do as I like my fingers where they are! However I did take a few pictures that I'd like to share.

The first one is the 'Tilted Cottage'.



The Museum is doing it's best to reproduce what life was like during the 19th century by creating a village from genuine period buildings which have been relocated from sites around the area.

The Tilted Cottage is one of many such buildings, but unlike most of the others it was subject to a lot of subsidence (Which is not uncommon in the area due to mining). Over the years, rather than collapse, the cottage twisted and tilted until not a single wall or floor is straight. According to the lady inside, when the cottage was rebuilt it took several attempts to rebuild it just as twisted as it originally was, but at the same time pass the modern building/safety regulations so it would be safe for people to enter.

They'd done a good job but I've got to say that I couldn't stand in it for very long. Just inside the front door was as far as I could go as the wierd angles on everything and the feeling of everything leaning in on itself was so nauseating that it made me feel sick. Dave loved it though and stayed inside long after Richard and I had retreated to the outside where we admired the steel collar around its outside that was keeping the whole thing upright.

Next up a range.



Now when I was a kid, which wasn't that long ago, my parents and grandparents had this habit of spending most of their time in the kitchen. In the tiny little houses in the museum, evidence was that this was where families spent most of their time too. Most of the cottages had at least one working range not too dissimilar to the one pictured and were dressed to represent family life. They made the tiny kitchen very welcoming if rather cramped by the time you included a kitchen table, benches, dressers, chairs...

And a baby's high chair.



Now this one isn't that different to the ones you'll find in the shops today. Although I'm not sure about the hole for the potty. It was convertible, going from a high chair with a tray, to tray flipped over the back, to a low chair to a rocking chair. A very versatile piece of family equipment.

And finally, because I thought it was atmospheric - I took some pictures of some barges on the museum's canal. I was particularly drawn to a sunken barge which hopefully you can see through the water.

A hat and a cowl

I finally got around to taking a picture of the second Darkside Cowl (Ravelry Link) which I washed and dried towards the end of last week. It's been sitting waiting for its photo shoot before I package it up and send it to its intended recipient. A little late for a Christmas present but at least it will hopefully arrive before Christmas 2010!



As before this is the Darkside Cowl by Sara Fama, Patons UK Wool Blend Aran - this time in charcoal. As the intended recipient is a bit bigger than Dave, I added 24 stitches to the count, giving 112 stitches to the round. I also knit a bit more, adding an extra inch to the length making it a total of 9 inches in all.

No shots of it being modeled as I don't have a suitably proportioned gentleman to hand. Ho hum.

Moving swiftly on, I made an attempt to revive my flagging mojo with a quick ish project intended to inspire. My thought was to make something for me and that it should be a relatively fast fix, so no time to get bored or to fall asleep.

After much deliberation, I chose the Bobbled Cloche (Ravelry Link) by Kathy Merrick from Vogue Knittings's Crocheted Hats, which is part of the "On the Go" series. As hoped, this was a fast project and after checking my gauge took less than a week to complete.



The yarn is Katia Azteca in a sort of mossy green, which was a little something I picked up in Penzance a couple of years ago. It's an aran equivalent and I had to go up to a 6mm hook to hit gauge, but once I did I was spot on.

Despite this, it looked like the pattern instructions were wrong - at least with my head in mind - as the first bobble row seemed to start way too early. So I added an extra 4 rows of working 'sc' even before starting the first bobble row at Round 23. I worked the rest of the hat as per pattern.



I think it turned out quite well and seems to match the picture that goes with the pattern. It's definitely Cloche shaped and I think the bobbles give it that extra something, but...

It's not me. I tried it on and while I think it would look great on a rounder face I just look a bit swamped by the brim. One to put down to experience; not being much of a hat wearer I don't actually know what kind of hat styles suit me. The only way to find out I guess would be to go to a hat shop and try on lots of hats while looking at myself critically in the mirror.

Ah well. I enjoyed making the hat and I'm pleased with the result... It's just failed the 'making something for me' aim somewhat.

It's cowled out there

Well, can you believe it's only a week or so and it will be February already? My time sense is really skewed at the moment and I'm having trouble believing that Christmas was only a few weeks ago... It seems like an absolute age, while at the same time I don't seem to be moving forward.

Christmas was good, quiet and uneventful, which was exactly what I needed. Due to feeling rather ill, exhausted and suffering a general lack of mojo over the past few months, I didn't give any hand made gifts this year. Other than the Humungous Doily of course, which was finished before my mojo departed for warmer climes and was greatfully received by my mother.

Knowing I wasn't feeling up to it and could barely find the energy to knit a few stitches, I even warned those who might expect such presents not to expect any... Then I relented and I knitted two presents.

I think my mistake was to knit two of the same pattern, both in manly colours (i.e. dull, boring, grey and so, so, mind numbing) as the intended recipients were of the male persuasion. The pattern in question was the Darkside Cowl (Ravelry Link) by Sara Fama.

Please don't get me wrong, there was nothing wrong with the pattern and I think the resulting cowls turned out very well, but knitting the same 16 row repeat, over and over for two man sized cowls, just about did for my flagging mojo. In fact by the time I was half way through the second one, I could only manage one row at a time before I started yawning. By the second row, I'd be nodding over my needles - which is not at all condusive to following a pattern.

In fact, I'm yawning now just recalling how I felt knitting these up, which is just not a good sign.

So mental note to self - this Cowl in a dark, manly yarn is not a good choice if your mojo is waning and should be paired with some other projects on the needles at the same time. Preferably something bright, colourful and not manly.

Ahem. Whinge officially over.

Here is Darkside Cowl number one.

I finished this one at the end of November but I refrained from blogging my eventual success because I immediately cast on number two which was intended for a regular reader of this blog. Now I'd intended to give it as a Christmas present, but no matter how I tried couldn't knit more than two rows in any one session and so I finally cast off about two weeks ago. No photo's as of yet because it has only just been washed... But I will post a shot once I have one.

The yarn here was Patons UK Wool Blend Aran picked up from Busy Fingers in Coventry. It's a high wool content (63%) yarn and Dave said it smelled very sheepy when I was working on it, which may not have helped in garnering my enthusiasm for the project. The only modification I made to the pattern was to add eight stitches to the round, making a total of 96 stitches at cast on.

Dave wasn't convinced when I explained what a cowl was and I don't think he thought a lot of the finished article, at first anyway. Dave is a traditional sort of a man and a scarf wearer of long standing.

Then the weather turned cold, snow started to fall and Dave discovered he could wear a cowl just about anywhere, doing just about anything. Now, this cowl is usually either around his neck or somewhere close to hand, so I think he's been converted. He did say though, that he's feeling guilty for no longer wearing the scarf I made for him for Christmas two years ago.

I ain't dead... Honest!

I know it's been well over a month since I last posted, but life has rather run away with me and I haven't had much of an opportunity to write or really do very much at all. Work is being it's usual autumnal, crazy self and as I get into the run up to Christmas it feels like I've barely had time to draw breath let alone find time to do anything creative.

In the past few weeks I have...

• Moved office - imagine lots of drama, missing furniture, bullying, amazing disappearing crates and general craziness
• Prepared for a major upgrade at work - still ongoing and I am counting down the days until I am done
• Gone to the LARP kit fair in York where I weakened and bought stuff
• Visited the Hobbycrafts/Crafts for Christmas show at the NEC where I bought lots of expensive gifts
• Gone to a Living History Fayre and bought stuff
• Gone to the Original Re-enactment Market where I was rather restrained but still bought stuff

In between all this, I haven't been feeling well and we've had a family crisis to deal with, so life hasn't been all it could be either. I've done very little knitting, crochet, sewing or spinning as I just haven't had the time.

The lack of time and stalled decorating (due to the general lack of time) means my sewing machine is off limits and some parts of the house are in more disarray than usual... Which are my excuse as to why I've bought the odd piece of kit of late rather than making it.

Personally I am waiting on Christmas because that's when I have a few days off and I'm really hoping I will have a little time to myself and that I will have time to relax. Then I intend to have a hot date with my spinning wheel... Such is life.

Birthday and something different

It was my birthday on Thursday and I am now a proud owner of a Sunflower Swift. How excellent is that? Not that I've had a go at winding anything yet, but I've been itching to dive into the stash looking for a suitable skein all weekend. Pesky housework and a steely desire to work on ongoing projects stopped me, but oh the temptation.

I've also got a good haul of books, all on knitting or crochet. Some are very old and are ex library stock from the Knitting and Crochet Guild. Every single book looks interesting and is full of things I'd love to make... Now if only I had the time!

Yesterday we made a rare trip the the Cinema and saw 'Up' which is a very, very good film which I highly recommend. It was a bit sad in places, but had a strong story, likeable characters and was very well animated. A good choice all round. We'd intended to go to Nando's afterwards, but on arrival we were told to expect a 30+ minute wait for a table, followed by at least a 45 minute wait for food to arrive. Dave and I were hungry cinema goers and couldn't wait that long, so we nipped around the corner to Pizza Express where we were seated immediately. I felt a bit underdressed but otherwise it was very good, the food was seriously hot (scaldingly so) and very tasty. Yum.

This weekend I also decided to follow on from turning my first handspun into something by having a go at a three ply. I'd spun up three bobbins of singles over the past month or so and this weekend I bravely decided to try to put them together...

Hmmm. It's not as easy as it looks.

Trying to ply three singles, with the same plying point to produce an even yarn rather than a two ply with a third ply wrapped around it, was very tricky. Keeping the singles evenly distributed in my hand was difficult enough, trying to keep the tension steady as they came off the bobbin was the seriously hard bit. And every time I had to let go with my back hand to move the plied yarn onto a new hook on the flyer, things would go to pot.

I was doing it though. Not necessarily very well, but I was doing it. And then Dave walked into the room and offered to make a drink. At that point, my carefully positioned fingers became all thumbs and I lost control of the yarn. It was like I just couldn't concentrate on even a simple question and still make like I maybe knew what I was doing.

In the end, I concentrated on making a real three ply, rather than trying to come up with an even and balanced yarn. Apart from a few places where it's obviously just wrong, I think I didn't do too badly...



Here the yarn is on the niddy noddy, straight off the wheel and to be honest it doesn't look that much different from the two plies I'm used to making. It looks like yarn and under tension it looks fine - still a little on the skinny side, but that's just my singles being thin to start with.



Here it is once I took it off the niddy noddy and before finishing. You can see that there is a lot more plying twist than spinning twist... Now part of that is down to the fact the singles had rested, so don't have the same spoingyness of a freshly spun single, so the stronger twist is always going to be in the plying.

I need to finish it now... Then I can see if it my first three ply may be considered a success.

My first handspun is now a hat

Last week was the first week of term and was predictably stressed at work, leaving me with little time or energy to think once I escaped the confines of the office. I was however thinking about crafting, especially when cycling to work... The weather has turned nippy and is in that in between phase, when it's not quite cold enough to wear a coat on the bike without risking some serious overheating... But first thing, it is cold enough to make setting off from the house in the morning decidedly chilly.

So last week I thought a lot about cowls or snoods. You know, the knitted (or fleecy) tubes that you pull over your head and wear around your neck like a scarf, but without the dangly ends, plus the added bonus that they can be pulled up over your ears if needed.

I thought about cowls a lot and as is customary my current thought is that I don't have the yarn to make the cowl I want. Now this is plainly ridiculous thinking, given that my stash is huge and ever growing and I'm trying to knit some of it up before it erupts from behind the sofa and buries us in mountain of wool... But the instant I start thinking about something I might want to make for me (rather than to give away) I immediately start thinking maybe I need more yarn. Perhaps I need to make time to go stash diving again to reassure myself that I do indeed have yarn and should pick something I already own?

Talking about knitting from the stash, I decided to make something with my first handspun, originally glimpsed in this post about the pain of a broken needle. Fortunately a replacement needle tip winged its way to me within two days (three cheers for Get Knitted!) and I resumed knitting.

This hat is a simple, stocking stitch slouchy hat pattern called Felicity, by Wanett Clyde. I picked it for its simplicity, not wanting anything complicated for this first attempt to use my own yarn. I'm working on the basis that the point of spinning is to produce yarn that can actually be used and rather than just knitting swatches, I wanted to make a something and here it is!



Since the pattern calls for a 'worsted' and my 2-ply handspun is more like a 'fingering' weight, I decided to knit held double throughout. After knitting a guage swatch, I cast on 84 stitches so the finished hat would fit my 56cm head without cutting off the circulation to my brain.

The pattern also calls for 4mm needles and then a switch to 5mm needles once the hat measures 3.5 inches from the cast on edge. I didn't want such a sudden jump in stitch sizes, so I switched to a 4.5mm needle after 3.5 inches, knit for approximately another inch or so and then switched to the required 5mm needle. I then knit for another inch, bringing me to the 5.5 inches specified by the pattern before starting the increases. After that I knit as per the pattern, with allowances for the higher stitch count.

This is a very easy knit, although I did have a worrying moment when I'd done all the increases but hadn't started the decreased and began to worry that I was knitting some sort of mushroom! Once I was working through the decreases, it all came right though and I'm very pleased with the result.

The most revealing thing about this knit was that my handspun knits like real yarn. It handled like yarn, it dangled like normal yarn and it behaved itself, never tangling or winding back on itself. I was amazed since I'd been expecting it to be difficult and didn't really believe that I'd produced usable yarn. In other words, my handspun is real yarn! I now stand corrected and can admire the end result.

The hat itself is not really in the colour pallete that I'd normally wear, but since this is Blue Faced Leciester in Humbug (from Wingham Woolworks) it is the colour it should be. In some lights it looks more grey than brown, but is in fact a light beigy colour with a subtle variegated effect. It definitely is not unpleasant to the eye and the handle of the finished fabric is very soft in the crown of the hat. The brim, knit on the smaller needles is very dense and I suspect will be very, very warm to wear.



So my first handspun, knit up and looking presentable.

The humungous doily

After the drama of last week's broken needle, which was promptly replaced by Get Knitted, this week has largely focused on getting ready for the AscendancyLRP tabletop roleplay and skirmish game this coming weekend.

There have also been several visits from British Gas who now apparently do annual electrical tests for Homecare customers as well as servicing gas boilers. Unfortunately, my house's wiring failed and needs a new RCD as the current one turns out to be too sensitive and is cutting out with only minor provocation. With the house's wiring being of unknown provenance and age, the fusebox is no longer in common use and so a replacement RCD is a special order... We now await the electrician's call to say its arrived.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I finished the humungous doily which came to an end abruptly after several nights of working on the last row, when I suddenly ran out of doily to crochet. Once I'd bound off it looked fairly impressive, but I waited to take any photographs or blog it until I'd had a chance to block it. On Sunday morning, with the weather dry if rather grey and non-descript I thought maybe I could dry it outside and so I decided to have a go.

After gently washing and soaking the doily in hot water for over an hour to make sure it was properly wet, I put it in a mesh laundry bag (the kind I use for delicates or containing fleece for scouring) and spun it on a low speed in the washing machine to get most of the water out. Then I set to work with my foam squares and three pots of quilting pins...



The Between Meals Centerpiece (Ravelry Link) doily is huge and is a combination of fairly dense crochet bands with openwork in between. I tackled the pinning by starting with the centre circle, then moving onto the middle circle, stretching the damp cotton out as I went. I placed the pins at wide intervals and then went around again placing pins between pins, so I evened out the tension. I put in another row of pins just inside the border, ending up with pins every two inches or so. The final row of pins stretched out the border.



Once I was done, I got Dave to help me carry the whole thing outside very carefully so the foam tiles didn't come apart. We left the doily sat on the bins to catch what sun there was, bringing it in again at dusk and laying it on the floor overnight to make sure it was absolutely dry before I removed the pins.

We did try propping the doily, still pinned to the mats up against a wall (something I've heard of folks doing on Ravelry) but while that looked promising initially, it didn't prove to be cat proof. The instant Charlie came in, he made a beeline for the huge doily and spotted the tiny gap between doily and wall. As I'm sure everyone knows, any tiny gap is always improved by the addition of a cat and Charlie is a cat who has no appreciation for the size difference between tiny and a rather large tom. He has wriggle power and a big head, a combination that has always worked well for him.

Fortunately, I saw the cat dart over the doily; was already moving as I saw him stick his head down the side of the mat made up of foam squares and caught the doily before anything catastrophic happened. Phew!

Monday, I unpinned the doily and allowed it to relax a while before laying it out on the bed to photograph it properly...







I give you my version of the Between Meals Centrepiece an original pattern from 1917. I managed to find it again on Annie's Attic, despite it having disappeared the last time I looked. There may be other sites out there that are hosting it if you hunt about.



My Between Meals Centrepiece was crocheted with Clea from Circulo Yarns, shell beige or colourway 7650. I used a 2mm hook because I'm a tight crocheter which gave me a final diameter of 32.5 inches or 83cm, which isn't far off the expected 30 inches reported on Ravelry. I didn't block this one to death, but I did stretch it out to dry although tension was minimal. Before blocking the Clea looked a lot more springy whereas after, it looks exactly like a huge doily should.

This is my first ever go at a doily and I deliberately picked the BMC because it was challenging but it really doesn't contain anything too difficult in the way of stitches. If you can follow American notation (rather than UK), can make a chain, slip stitch, single crochet, double crochet and treble treble (or is it triple triple in American?) you can make this doily. The most difficult thing is the need for perseverance as it takes a long time and those last few inches take forever, with time seeming to slow to a crawl.

The one drawback to the pattern is that it isn't charted, so if you need charts to work this kind of pattern you'll need to make one yourself. Fortunately for me, I'm not dependent on charts although I prefer to work with both so I can compare from written instructions to chart if I need clarification. However, there were moments when I certainly wished I did have a chart as it wasn't always easy to understand what the written instructions were trying to tell me to do.

There are also a couple of minor mistakes in the pattern, where the stitch counts don't work out and I had to fudge things a little. Silly me though, because I didn't note them down I just sort of got on with it... The other thing I'd advise when making up this doily is to read ahead. Understanding what you'll be expected to crochet into the row you're working is essential as is keeping an eye on the tension, otherwise you could find that you get to an end of a round and can't actually crochet the next row into this one, because you can't get the hook through the tiny, tiny little loops.

Overall, I really enjoyed making this doily although I still claim I do not have the lifestyle that supports the use of such frivolous pieces of lace. It took me two months, but I was working on other projects alongside it. I didn't get bored or lose heart and found the whole thing a fascinating experience. This is the first time I've worked something on so tiny a hook and that did give me tension issues at first, but over time I got the hang of it. Even though I have nowhere in my tiny house to display such things, I may well have to make another doily or two, just to prove it wasn't a fluke.



Finally, here is it again, this time displayed on a table at this week's meeting of Coventry Knitwits. The Britannia has dark wood tables in the bar which I thought would show up the pattern nicely. As you can see, the doily is so huge only just fits...

Feel my pain...

So I finished the humungous doily... It happened suddenly and without warning as I just ran out of doily to crochet, taking me completely by surprise. No pictures yet as I need to weave in the ends and do some blocking, but in the meantime my thoughts returned to my handspun.

I did a little swatching and decided on a 4mm needle, casting on last night so I'd have something to work on at the Knit-Wits meeting tonight. I'd been there maybe ten minutes when disaster struck.



You're looking at a snapped 4mm needle tip from a brand new, never before used Knit-Pro Harmony Options set. These were a present from Dave last year and I've not had a chance to try them out. I certainly wasn't expecting this set of tips to have such a short lifespan!

I wish I could say I was doing something dramatic or exciting with these needles when they broke but I wasn't. The needle snapped less than 2 minutes after I picked them up, only 4 and half rounds into this project - a very simple hat. Looking at it, the tip has sheered off where it joins the metal cuff and since this was this pair of tips' (and indeed the whole set's) first ever use, I'm thinking a manufacturing fault.

I am not impressed. :(

I was impressed with how the handspun was working up, held double it was looking quite striking and giving an even fabric... Unfortunately, I've been rather stymied by defective tools. Darn.

I've used Knit-Pro Harmony needles before, in DPN and circulars and I've never had this problem, so I really do hope this is a one off. Meanwhile, I've emailed the shop Dave bought the needles from, just on the off chance they're under some sort of guarantee.

2009-09-24 ETA
By way of a quick update, I had a prompt response from the shop where Dave bought the needles and they're sending out a replacement tip. So much kudos for good customer service to Get Knitted in Bristol. :)

A very busy but not so productive weekend

This weekend was marked by being 'bitty', as in I did a bit of this and a bit of that and didn't really seem to achieve very much.

On Saturday morning we headed over to the local Ford dealer to have a proper look at the new (ish) Focus Estate. I currently drive the original design and excepting the tendency towards developing an indoor swimming pool in the passenger footwell, I'm very happy with it. However, it is getting on a bit and I probably need to start thinking of changing it and so off we went. My intention was to look properly at the new body shape, to sit behind the wheel, play with the seats and look at how the changed shape has effected its loading capacity. I was just intending to look you understand.

Sadly I was thwarted. The dealership did not have a single Focus Estate on the lot and the lady I spoke to said she'd been there three months and this was the first time anyone had asked after one!!! I don't understand this as the original estate version of this car was and is very popular. I see them everywhere. *sigh*

The sales lady said she'd try to get one in for me to look at, so I left contact details and walked away. This does not bode well and shows why I hate car shopping.

That afternoon, I settled into starting processing the second fleece. This fleece is the muckier of the two, is really heavy on the grease and has a lot more guard hairs. I'll admit I wasn't convinced as I struggled to seperate enough locks from the main fleece so I could start scouring them. However, having washed that first sample, apart from the guard hairs I'm going to tentatively say that the locks are actually nicer than the first fleece. Very white and creamy, far less matting and it just looks better...

Or possibly, I've improved on my tearing off of locks and initial processing stage which means I'm producing nicer scoured fleece? Who knows, but fleece processing is continuing apace.

I did some more picking. That's it really, I picked fluff a little while I washed fleece but still don't have a huge amount to show for my work.

I've also started eyeing up my first handspun...

There isn't a lot there and it seems to take me an age to produce yarn, mostly because I get so little time to do any actual spinning at the moment. An hour a week ... sometimes... if I'm lucky... just isn't cutting it. The quality is variable too; I tend towards spinning quite thin singles with a lot of twist so this two ply is very springy, tightly spun and about the weight of a conventional 4-ply, in most places at least. In some places it's a lot skinnier than that, while in the odd place it gets a bit thicker. Controlling the drafting process is coming along, but very slowly because I'm not getting enough practice.

However, I'm getting an itch to try out my handspun and see what it actually knits up like. I wouldn't like to try crochet with it yet, as the yarn is very variable in quality and I think it needs the control that knitting offers. So, I'm thinking a hat. Maybe this hat. And maybe, if I held it double the two strands would even out the yarn?

I think some swatching may be required and soon, given that I'm on the last round of the humungous doily (finally and this last round is taking an absolute age). With this in mind, I loaded up my swift and wound two skeins into balls.

After two balls, each of approx 120m, Dave said he's going to have to buy me a real swift as he doesn't think he's up to the job. He was happy though because I made cake...

This is my first ever banana cake and it was very yummy; it didn't get a chance to cool properly before we started on it. Unfortunately it smelled too good and we just couldn't resist. I'm not much of a baker, but we had overripe bananas and so I thought I'd give it a go. Given how tasty and moist it is and not at all like how I remember my mother's banana cake, I'm going to call it a success.

Finally, we went to an art exhibition in Coventry's Canal Basin last night. Dave takes weekly lessons with Al Davison of The Astral Gypsy, so had an invite to see his work. The theme was Dr Who and the pieces on display were very good.

So a very full weekend, doing lots of things but not really centred around a single theme.

Hello and ... Socks!

Last night I found out that this little blog of mine has more readers than I thought it did, with quite a few ladies at the Wednesday's Coventry Knit-Wits get together admitting to dropping by. We also had a new lady come along, who said she'd recognised me from my profile picture. So to any unknown readers out there and my friends from the knitting group - hello!

The humungous doily continues apace and I'm now slowly working may way around row 51 of 60. When I say slowly, I'm hoping I might get this round done by the time I go to bed tomorrow night, which will have meant it's taken me about four nights to complete one round. That's the problem with this kind of project, it starts off really fast but as the project gets bigger progress slows down to a crawl.

The other problem is that I find crochet far harder on the hands and wrists than knitting. In particular, the left hand (which tensions the yarn and holds the project) is prone to stiffening up, while the right hand (doing the actual hooking) just aches after a while. I'm currently trying out a Clover Soft Touch crochet hook, courtesy of Jane and I've got to admit has helped quite a bit, even with the left hand which took me by surprise. I can only assume that less pain in the right hand means I'm not so tense and hence don't hold my left hand in a death grip.

Jane (who is ever industrious) will be requiring her hook back and so I'm looking to get hold of one of my own, but the smaller sizes of the Clover hooks seem to be harder to source. Get Knitted have them, but on the off chance I emailed the Knitting and Crochet Guild to see if they had them, but hadn't updated their website. I had a promptish reply from the lady who deals with the KCGTrading side of things who said she'd order them in for me! Kudos to the Guild for customer service and me I guess for trying to support them (being a member and all). I'll have to wait until the hooks come in before I can place an order, but Jane has kindly allowed me to continue using her hook for another week, so all is good.

No new photographs because I don't think the doily looks significantly different to the last one I took.

I do however have a finished project!

If you cast your mind back to July, you might remember that I started a pair of blue and green stripey socks, currently known as the Ork Deathskull Socks. Well, they're finished!



Not only are they finished, but I actually got the stripes to mostly match up, despite having a yarn crisis and only just having enough to finish the pair.



Personally I'm putting the problems down to the long colour repeats on the stripes. I started the first pair at the start of a 'green' phase, while the second ball started at the beginning of a blue phase. This meant I had to wind off all the blue to get to the next green starting point, and unfortunately this meant I ran out of yarn as I approached the toe! There was a serious 'Eeek' moment there as I like socks to match and I feared Dave may end up with one green toe and one blue one. Not a serious disaster and I'm sure he'd have loved them anyway, but it would have grated with me every single time I washed them. Fortunately, I had enough green left over from the first ball (just and I do mean, just) and was able to finish the second sock more or less in step with the first.

Phew!.

I give you Dave's Ork Deathskull Socks, in his favourite shades of blue and green.



This is a simple, plain sock knit to the guidelines suggested by the Yarn Harlot in her excellent Knitting Rules!. It's knit on 2.5mm needles to a tension of 7 stitches per inch - note my usual mix of imperial and metric in the same sentence. The yarn is Regia's 'Mini Ringel Color' in colourway 5220, which knits up pretty much as you see.

Dave loves them and is pleased with the colour and will be delighted to know I've blogged about them as it means he can actually wear them now. :)

And finally, because I rarely get to include a decent picture of Charlie as he normally comes out over exposed or blurry or is under (i.e. in) a bush, another pic of him sat under the lavender bush while Dave was modeling socks.

Being picky with fleece

This weekend has mostly been focused on fibre related activities. I did some spinning, but not enough to really make much progress. I washed the last of the first fleece. I worked a little more of the humongous doily. I knitted some sock. And I learned about 'picking'.

Picking fleece - sometimes called 'teasing' and others 'sorting' - is something I learned about from my spinning bible, a wonderful resource titled "Start Spinning" by Maggie Casey. It's the process of picking the scoured fleece apart, loosening the fibres and removing all the 'undesirable' bits. This prepares the fibre for carding, which in turn readies it for spinning.

Apparently there are such things as mechanical pickers which will pick the fibres apart for you, but I've never seen one and certainly don't own one, so I'm doing this manually.

After rather optimistically starting yesterday morning and thinking I'd have a nice bag full in no time at all, I've not made much progress at all. Maggie Casey warns "...A lot of people find teasing wool boring, and I will admit that I would never do it if I didn't get to spin the wool I had teased." And after having a go at this, I have to agree with the lady.

I sat down with a handful of wool and began picking through it, loosening the fibres by pulling them apart and watching the larger pieces of debris fall out. Then came the problem, all of the little, tiny pieces of unidentified detritus which seems to be embedded in the tightly compacted fluff. To get at it, you really do have to pull the fibre apart a few strands at a time and this takes you into a sort of timeless zone where whole hours disappear without you noticing!

Admittedly, I haven't spent the whole weekend doing nothing but picking but I've certainly returned to it whenever I wasn't doing anything more stimulating (i.e. not as mind numbing). I even got Dave to have a go, with him working through a couple of handfuls for me. After a good few hours work between us, we have maybe a third of small bag full of 'picked' wool.

Phew!

To show you the transformation - fleece starts out looking like this...



Once it's been washed and scoured, it looses the grease, becomes a lot nicer and softer to touch, but is still very compacted and full of undesirable bits.



After picking, the wool fibres open up and increase in volume considerably. They're fluffy, light and airy and don't really resemble the original form very much...



I'm impressed, but it sure is hard work and very time consuming. Dave and I were theorising that back in the day it would have been the kind of job that would be given to small children who have little nimble fingers. It isn't difficult, but requires persistence, a resistance to boredom and very good light.