Jaywalkers at last

We've been having a spot of bother with drunks of late at the Town Crier, which is the pub where our Wednesday night knitting group meets up. The past few weeks, we've drawn unwanted attention of one kind or another, almost as if the boozy-er patrons think we're some sort of entertainment the management have laid on.

Last night we had a couple of potential new members to the group and I hate to think what they thought... And of course, dealing with drunks is not exactly something any of us are keen on, most of us being quiet types at heart. This is a recent development and an unwelcome one. I mean, sure, we've had the odd encounter with the tipsy - we are in a pub after all - but they used to be few and far between, now it's beginning to feel like a regular thing.

All of this means it may be time to move again. If we did decide against using a pub again, what are our options? Where can a group of knitters gather of a midweek evening and not be harassed? Our requirements are simple enough, we need light, minimal stairs, toilet facilities and refreshments should be available... Time to put on the thinking cap methinks.

Moving swiftly on, a finished object that I would have posted about last week had I not been locked in a classroom without internet access.

These are my finished Jaywalker Socks (Ravelry Link), designed by Grumperina and knitted in Regia Design Line Kaffe Fassett (colourway 04259).



Aren't they pretty?

I'm very pleased with the way they finally turned out, but it was a long, hard road getting there.

After reading dire warnings about problems with fit on Ravelry, I swatched for this pair of socks before starting. The pattern calls for 2.25mm needles, but I used 2.5mm to meet the stitch guage.

The first sock I knitted was far too big at the cuff and so, it was ripped out and I started again. This time I knit the cuff on 2.25mm needles, using a K1b,P1 rib rather than a K2,P2 rib as specified by the pattern. I switched to a 2.5mm needle for the main body of the sock. My hope was that the smaller needles and the K1b,P1 rib would pull the cuff in a bit so it clung to my calf the way it was supposed to.

As you can see here, it worked a little at least.



What you can't see is that I pulled the rib up just before the photo was taken which is why it's sitting right. Having worn these socks, I can attest to the fact that the rib doesn't stay like that. It falls down... Fortunately, the main pattern itself is clingy and keeps the sock up - meaning that you don't actually need a rib on the cuff and that it's purely decorative rather than functional. If I make these socks again, I'll drop the ribbing from the cuff, other than maybe a few rows just to get the edge stabalised and past that wrestling with a hedgehog stage common to casting on with DPNs.

The rest of the fit wasn't great either. I didn't have problems with the heel being too tight (something which seemed to be an issue for others) and there is no problem putting the sock on. If anything, I'd say the heel flap is marginally too long, but not enough to make the sock unwearable.

The other worry was that I'd run out of yarn. Due to the chevron pattern, you need a good few more stitches per inch than normal which means that the yarn has to travel further to complete each round. This in turn meant that the sock was eating yarn at a prodigious rate and was the other reason I ripped out that first sock... At the rate it was going, I couldn't guarantee I'd have enough yarn for the pair. My second run through, I shortened the leg of the sock by two inches to compensate and finished each sock well within 50g of yarn.

I also reworked the numbers for turning the heel as the numbers didn't work for me, but that was pretty elementary stuff, so all good there.



In all, it's a very pretty sock, I love the chevron affect and I particularly love how it worked out with this yarn/colourway. It's not one I'd say never again to, but I may need a few months recovery before I'd be happy to give it another go.

Quick update

Last week was spent locked away in a little room, absorbing information about the httpd daemon, which didn't really leave much time or brain power for anything else. I did see the internet briefly; twice at lunchtime for a few minutes at a time as a wireless hotspot flickered into being as the wind blew in the right direction and once for about half an hour at home as I dealt with necessary bills.

Incidently, am I the only one who went into shock after receiving her gas bill this quarter? I was so stunned by the sum being demanded I checked gas used against last year, only to find that we've been really good and nearly halved the amount we've used, but the bill was up by approx 75% on the same period last year. Ouch!

But I digress.

Friday, freshly released from training, I packed Dave into the car and headed to Murton Park for the first Ascendancy LRP event of the year.

We were lucky with the weather as it stayed dry throughout, but it was very cold at night and even with my four season sleeping bag and six blankets, I couldn't get warm in bed. The gas cans for the stove were problematic first thing in the morning as it was too cold to get any decent pressure, which meant it took half an hour to boil water for a cup of tea!

Fortunately, once the sun got going the day warmed up nicely to the point where I reached for the sun block.

The hut we stayed in was in the process of being refurbished by the volunteers who maintain Murton's dark age village. They'd already replaced a lot of the boards and added a huge loom, as yet not set up but just leaning on the wall. The couple working on our hut showed up around nine in the morning to work on the fence and garden and didn't go home again until it got dark. They also had the cutest ferrets with them.

The event itself was based around a diplomatic meeting so was relatively low combat, which is always a good thing as Murton Park doesn't lend itself well to full skirmishes. None the less, there were combats, including a dawn raid on a 'neighbouring encampment' or the on site Roman Fort at about 10:30am which equated to dawn in LARPer time! Lots of new plot was introduced, which was good for there were a lot of first time players as well, so they didn't have to rely on a lot of background knowledge.

Which about rounds up the weekend I think.

Spring and new acquisitions

This weekend, spring appears to have arrived and I hope it's here to stay! Brighter mornings, the sound of birds chirping away, the squirrels are risking their lives playing chicken with the cats and the rhubarb is sprouting.



I just had to post a couple of photo's of my favourite felines enjoying the morning sunshine... First up, Missy who is taking in the delicate fragrance of a stick.



And Charlie who as usual has taken a more casual position on the whole spring thing, lazing at the bottom of the steps.



Yesterday we headed over to the Re-enactors Market in Ryton-on-Dunsmore for round two of the fabric hunt. As before, we were on the hunt for a suitable fabric for a bright yellow frock coat and a naval jacket, both to fit Dave. This time, while there was nothing for the frock coat, we did score some nice red wool for the jacket so that's a win.

I also found a wheel on the Mulberry Dyers stand.

Sadly, they'd forgotten to pack the flyer but after thinking about it for a bit, I arranged to go back today and try it out.

The wheel in question is a much travelled (and a bit battered) Ashford Traveller, with a single treadle rather than the two which seem to be standard these days. While she wasn't as smooth to use as the Traditional I'm currently borrowing, I put a lot of that down to being under pressure (I had an audience) and tension issues on the wheel herself. She did spin OK, I just wasn't very good...

To cut a long story short, I bought her and spent a good part of today oiling and then tweaking her tension, before...



By three this afternoon she was spinning fine and with good old familiar Blue Faced Leicester, I was home free. The original tension was way too tight for me and once I'd swapped to a different ratio, she wasn't snatching the fibre faster than I could draft it and we got on soooo much better. I'm a very happy bunny.

I've also been working on the borrowed wheel and have nearly a full bobbin of BFL to show for my efforts...



I'll give it a few weeks to transition across to my wheel and free up the bobbin, then I guess I'll return her with many thanks. She is a good wheel and had I seen a Traditional rather than a Traveller yesterday, I'd have snapped it up there and then.

Slippery needles and cobweb woes

Last night, I headed out to knitting group as usual where we were having a spinning workshop. I took along my ongoing spindle project, the merino I started spinning back in January which has been a bit neglected since the arrival of the borrowed wheel (which is still great, I just need more spare time).

I was wielding the camera, so no pictures to prove I know how to use a spindle, but I was relieved to see that my hands seem to know what they're doing now. In fact, if anything, I'd say my drafting has improved dramatically in the past couple of weeks, possibly due to successful drafting at the wheel.

This weekend is also an anniversary of sorts, with the Re-enactors Market or TORM coming around and marking my first attempts to use a spindle, one year ago!

At home, I'm still working on my lace project. I finally finished the centre panel, comprising the main part of the shawl and I happily started the border, sensing the end was in sight.

Sadly, I'd underestimated how difficult and fiddly it is to knit a border onto a shawl in cobweb weight yarn on fat needles. The pattern isn't difficult, it's just a few stitches but getting the length of the shawl untwisted, preventing the still attached circulars from tangling and stopping the cat from grabbing the whole mess is proving tricky.

Worse, I was sabotaged. After struggling to do the first five repeats of the border, I put the shawl away very carefully, only to get it out the next evening to discover the DPN holding my stitches had somehow detached itself from the shawl...

No lifelines, far too many yarn overs and cobweb yarn made the stitches hard to see... I couldn't even be sure how many stitches had accidentally ripped themselves out, so there was no choice but to frog the whole thing and start again.

The lessons I learnt from this were to continue using lifelines in the border, no matter how silly it might seem. And to implement 'stitch stops' in the form of a couple of hair bands on the DPNs to discourage the live stitches from leaping of the needle while the project is sleeping on a shelf.



A close up of the border pattern as it stands with a little contrast... Here you can clearly see lifelines and hair elastics attached to the DPN.



I'm currently standing at eleven repeats of the border down one side, a week and a half after starting knitting. There are four sides to this shawl, two with twenty eight repeats and two with twelve repeats, plus another six at each of the four corners. Somehow, I don't think this is going to be done any time soon!

Blocking does happen

I've just sat down and updated my work diary, mapping out my life until the end of December and it's scary stuff. Add in personal commitments, such as trips to the Knitting and Crochet Guild, holidays and Woolfest, along with the odd spinning guild meeting and LARP related event and it looks like I'm one very busy lady again this year. I'd made a deliberate effort to free up some time this year, but it seems that as quickly as I make spaces in my diary, other things leap in there to fill the gap. Bizarre.

Saturday, Dave abandonned me for the weekend as he headed off to Nottingham for some ork related fun at Games Workshop, otherwise known in our house as the WAAAGH!!! (already documented by Richard).

Dave, for those who do not know him, is rather ork obsessed and he's spent the past couple of months on a painting marathon requiring me to pass comment on a multitude of shades of green as I've admired ork after ork that has been waved in front of me. I'm hoping the orks are out of his system a bit now, as there are weapons in the shed that need latexing, masks that need painting (and undoubtedly more latex) and plotting that needs to be done!

With Dave off engaged in his war game, I was left to do what seemed to be a huge amount of housework in his absence. I also set to tackling the outstanding pile of paperwork, which I'll admit had got out of hand. I was firm with myself and the chores, plus paper pushing got done... I have a fine collection of papercuts (which sting mightily) to prove it!

All this industriousness on my part meant that I didn't have much time to do fun stuff over the weekend... But I did try to deal with a couple of hurdles to 'finishing' that have been hanging over me.

Weeks ago, in the middle of January, I started to crochet a pair of mittens. I actually finished making up all the pieces a while back, but as the mittens are worked in flat pieces and then sewn together, they've been waiting for me to get my act together.

Before I can sew them together, I need all the pieces to be approximately the same size as it kind of helps to match up the edges, which meant that blocking was essential. I've crocheted the mittens in a superwash wool, but wasn't taking any chances and with the brief showing of the sun on Saturday, decided that now was an ideal time for wet blocking.



This wasn't a particularly onerous task. I filled a wash basin with warm (not in any way hot) soapy water using a liquid wool wash and gently placed the mitten pieces in the water. I left them to soak for about half an hour then removed them from the soapy water, replacing it with similarly tepid clean water. The mitten pieces were left in the clean water for another half an hour, then I put them on a folded towel. The towel got rolled up and I stomped up and down on it for a while (a great stress reliever) to get the water out.

I keep hearing about using the spin cycle on the washing machine for this and when I graduate onto sweaters/jumpers, I may well opt for technology rather than stomping, but for my little mitten pieces, stomping was good.

Once I'd got most the water out, I pinned the mitten pieces out on foam boards stretching them so they were all about the same size. Then I put the boards outside to dry.



Sadly, the sunshine only lasted for Saturday but the pieces were dry by Monday morning. I wasn't taking any chances though and left them pinned to the boards until yesterday morning.

Now I just need to persuade myself to sew them together.

A not so successful shopping trip

Yesterday we headed over to the Living History Fayre at the Warwick Exhibition Centre and I was very good. I did not buy wool. Nor did I impulse buy an example of every lucet on sale, or pick up any of the spindles I spotted for sale. I even resisted the charms of Wicked Woolens (AKA Sally Pointer), albeit only by pointedly telling myself that I haven't knitted up any of the yarns I picked up from them in November...

I did look at books and was very taken by the range of Janet Arnolds on sale, plus various other primers on how to make historical costume and stage costume.

A few years ago, finding books on costume or with sample patterns was hard going but there seem to be quite a few out there now, even if you only see them at specialist events with very focused booksellers, such as Felicity & Warnes (who incidentally also do a very good range of crochet, knitting, lace, beading, millinery, bags and general needlework books). This was the first time I had seen so many of the Janet Arnolds in one place and were I actively making much costume at the moment, I'm doubtful I would have resisted.

Dave and I were on the look out for fabric. Dave has been after a new frock coat for his Maelstrom character for ages and as we were heading to the fayre, he told me he wanted a new naval jacket for Ascendancy as well.

Sadly we were out of luck.

We did find some pillarbox red fulled wool which would have been perfect for the naval jacket, but with only just over two meters left on the roll, there wasn't enough.

The frock coat was proving to be more difficult. It has to be in exactly the right shade of canary yellow. Not too creamy, not too pale, not too green or too lemony, nope it has to be bright yellow, possibly hinting towards orange but definitely not orange. Can you hear me sighing?

Suffice it to say we looked at yellow fabrics and none of them would do.

Previously, Dave has eyed up a piece in my stash but I didn't have enough of it for the style of coat Dave was asking for. He did spot and try on a yellow frock coat at the Historical Costume Company, but it was too pale and washed out, as well as looking a bit worn for what Dave had in mind. What I did note was the cut and style, which was very different from everything Dave had described as wanting and therefore completely changed how much fabric might be needed. I pointed this out to Dave, saying that we may have enough of the previously eyed up brocade only to be told it was a bit creamy.

Imagine more sighing at this point.

All of this meant that I came away from the fayre without fabric and we'll have to wait for TORM (The Original Re-enactors Market) in a couple of weeks to try again.

I did buy some ginger and whiskey fudge (yum) and some traditional gingerbread from Angela's Pantry. Dave bought some epaulets and that was it! Admittedly he did try to buy other things, but they were either the wrong colour or far too expensive for his budget.

I also helped Richard to buy a hat.

Who knew!

Saturday morning I abandoned Dave and headed off to Coventry's Spinners, Dyers and Weavers Guild for their monthly meeting. This time, I took along my spinning wheel to ask the ladies at the guild to look at it for me.

I've had this wheel since May last year, but I've not really made much progress with her. I have managed to spin on her, but it's a bit hit and miss for me - although Christina borrowed the wheel last summer and reported that she 'rocked', so things obviously came together for her. With such a glowing report from Chris, my continued struggle to spin has becoming rather disheartening and the act of spinning very frustrating. I decided it was time to get another opinion and the combined vast experience of the guild seemed to be the place to go.

Three ladies had a look at her for me and their prognosis wasn't good. Two ladies tried spinning on her, neither of them getting very far. One lady even went so far to blurt out that it was 'awful' after struggling to get anywhere for ten minutes.

The verdict was that while the wheel was lovely to look at and well made, the spinning action of the wheel wasn't smooth, but juddery. They said that the wheel doesn't turn smoothly on it's axis and has a distinct wobble as well as moving in an elliptical fashion, possibly because the uprights are twisted. The double drive was a problem and adjusting it didn't seem to help, while it would spin it took in the single too quickly making it impossible to get enough twist in it and meaning you need to draft very quickly or the single snaps. These dear ladies tried, but what they were saying matched my own experience and proved that it wasn't just me being not cut out for spinning on a wheel.

The prognosis was that it really needed to be taken to a spinning wheel expert for some serious TLC. I had tales of how some wheels are tempermental and only work for specific people (explaining why Chris got on so well) while some perfectly good wheels will not behave when certain individuals go near them. Choosing a spinning wheel is a very personal thing, so I am told and sometimes a wheel chooses you - which sounds awfully like a cat to me!

In some ways these words of wisdom and advice were a relief to hear but in others, disappointing. After all those months of struggling to get anywhere, I was hoping the guild ladies would wave a magic wand and the wheel and I would suddenly be on the best of terms.

Sadly, it was not to be so.

My wheel sat in the room, surrounded by dozens of other spinning wheels all whirring away while people tutted over my poor baby and then a lady called Alice offered to lend me a wheel. Needless to say I jumped at the opportunity and yesterday morning (Sunday) I headed off to collect my soon to be borrowed wheel.

Alice had got the wheel, an Ashford Traditional, out and dusted her off ready to use. She showed me how to set her up, demonstrated how a wheel should turn on its axis... i.e. no judder, no wobble, no up and down movement, it should just go around and around. She showed me now easy treadling should be (really, it should be) and then, sat me down and told me to have a go.

I picked up the fluff she put in my lap, a piece of washed, raw fleece rather than the tops I'm used to, with a much shorter staple and drew through the leader with some trepidation. I started the wheel, it rotated... In the right direction, never once trying to reverse itself for no good reason... And I treadled, smoothly, no problems as I allowed the leader to start moving through my hands...

And then I put the fluff near the leader, joined it as if I'd been doing it all my life and started to spin.

And that was it. It worked. My hands obviously knew what they were doing. I was drafting without problem and perfectly spun single with just the odd bit of blobbiness was feeding through onto the bobbin.

I was shocked!

I knew I could spin on a spindle, but it now turns out that after month after month of struggling, I also know how to spin on a wheel but my results were so poor that I hadn't realised it. Half of spinning is muscle memory, that is your hands need to learn how to draft and hold the fibre, how to keep the tension in the spun single and how to stop the spin travelling into your fibre store... And my hands know how to do this. Who knew?!!!

I took the wheel home and some hours later I repeated the experience and in less than one hour I'd spun this...



Compare it to this...



My most successful single spun on my wheel in about two and a half hours. If you compare the quality of the single, the one from my wheel is no where near so well spun or even as the one from the borrowed Ashford.

There was no battle. No fight with the borrowed Ashford. I just sat there and spun. Who'd have thought it would be so easy?

Cycling craziness and crossed stitches

Today got off to an auspicious start with not one, but two incidents worth remarking about as I cycled into work.

The first heart stopping moment came when I was cycling through the back streets and a BMW swerved to a halt in front of me. Having skidded to a stop and wondering what he was playing at, the driver in question wound down his window and asked if I knew where the football ground was. Apart from having been guided far off route by his SatNav, I'm not sure of the etiquette for scaring a cyclist witless by nearly running them off the road because you're lost.

Directions politely given, I went on my way only to encounter a crazy woman in a motorised wheel chair who tried to run me off the pavement as I walked my bike past a particularly busy bit of road. I'll admit to be momentarily confused when she started weaving her chair from side to side across the pavement as she approached, before the penny dropped and I realised that she was trying to force me to step off the pavement, into the road... In front of oncoming traffic.

Ignoring the fact that I was on foot, pushing the bicycle, which made me a pedestrian and legitimate user of the footpath, what this lady was doing was dangerous in the extreme. If she had managed to force me into the road at that point, I'd not be sitting here typing this today.

So a word of warning, watch out for excitable lost men in BMW's and crazy women riding motorised wheel chairs, they're the kind of danger the highway code doesn't tell you to look for.

Back in the distinctly less stressful world of crafting, I've been continuing to play with Tunisian Crochet.

Next up for me is looking at crossed stitches and here we have a sample of Front Crossed Simple Stitch (FxTss).



The idea here, as with crossed stitches in standard crochet, is to work the stitches in pairs, working the second stitch and then the first stitch, so they cross over. I've crocheted this swatch in a DK weight wool using a 6mm hook and since the foundation stitch is a Tss, I'm working the front loops throughout so there is a bad case of curl going on here. It's pretty though and the the resulting fabric is dense, with the stitches pulling in from the sides narrowing the swatch quite a bit compared with previous samples done on the same number of stitches.

I was feeling adventurous, so I decided to try this again, but this time I extended the foundation stitch to see what would happen...



Extending a Tunisian foundation stitch means adding an extra chain once you've worked the stitch. i.e. you put your hook through which ever bit of the previous row you're picking up from, yarn over and pull through forming the standard foundation stitch... Then yarn over again and pull through a single loop, creating an extra chain and lengthening the foundation stitch you've just made.

In this case, I've made a swatch of Extended Front Crossed Simple Stitch (ExFxTss). I've no idea if this is featured in the excellent Encyclopedia of Tunisian Crochet as I made it up on the spur of the moment, based on the previous swatch. Extending the crossed stitch gave the piece more drape, eliminated curl entirely and changed the pattern from little 'x's to inverted 'v's.

I like it.

Finally - it's been published by the Beeb, so that makes it official - knitting is good for you.

Youpunkeroo and lazy, crafty Sundays

Saturday morning I made my way over to Coventry's Canal Basin to check out the new shop called 'Youpunkeroo' that I talked about in my last post. I was met at the door by the owner, a lady called Lisa who recognised me from my avatar picture.

It turns out that Youpunkeroo is a craft workshop and drop in centre, rather than a shop exactly. The idea is that you turn up and try out crafts, with Lisa and her husband on hand to teach you the basics. Website is here and blog here.

Thursday nights is craft night, intended for knitting and other needlecrafts but Lisa said they had the pottery wheel going last week as two ladies wanted to have a go. The group meets from 7pm to 9pm and it's currently free, but a nominal charge (or kitty) may be introduced to cover tea, cakes and heating, depending on how things go... Which sounds fair enough to me.

Good luck, Lisa - hope things go well for you!

Sunday, I drove over to Helens for a 'lazy, crafty Sunday'. The venue was originally Helen's house, changed to Lorna's house and then back to Helen's house at the last minute. Personally, I wasn't confused because I only know where Helen lives, so I was going to drive to hers and then follow her :)

As it was, I arrived first so got my pick of spot on the comfy sofa. I had tea and did some spinning. There were crisps/chips and excellent dip and Lorna's famed 'wet chicken' soup which sadly never got sampled. Then there was more tea, cupcakes and knitting as I started on the second (third) Jaywalker to match this one which I finished last week.



Good company and a pleasant afternoon, doing needlework - what more could I ask for. It also turned out I knew more about how to fix knitting which has gone wrong than I thought I did, even if the knitting in question was defying the laws of physics and knitting!

More Tunisian crochet

In the past few days I've heard news of a new craft shop which opened up in Coventry's Canal Basin last week. I've been messaging back and forth with the shop's owner on Ravelry, who says it's open Wednesdays, Fridays and weekends. The shop's called 'Youpunkeroo' and is aiming to be a sort of workshop, with drop in and do as well as group sessions and classes. She's also starting up an evening crafting group on Thursdays, starting this week. I haven't checked the shop out as of yet, but it's on my to do list.

Knitting has been continuing apace, with the Jaywalker sock accompanying me on our trip to the Royal Armouries on Saturday. It didn't get much of an airing though, only coming out so I could knit a row or two in the evening. The first sock is finished and fits. I'm still not 100% happy with it - the ribbed cuff is more decorative than functional for example - but I've decided that it will have to do as I'm not sure I'd have the heart to rip it out and start again. If I did, the Jaywalker may never happen and the yarn would be reknit into a different sock. It is a pretty sock, which is why I've persevered so far, but there are limits to how many times I'm willing to rip out and reknit the same sock.

An ongoing theme since Christmas has been Tunisian Crochet, which is what I wanted to write about today. I'm still slowly working my way through the book (Encyclopedia of Tunisian Crochet) Dave bought me and having great fun in the process.

I decided that rather than continue crocheting little squares, I'd up the stitch count to 30 and make slightly bigger pieces, which I'll keep and eventually join together to make a blanket. This is by no means a quick project and I'd expect to keep plugging away at it throughout the year as my fancy takes me.

I've worked through the standard foundation stitches and skipped the more exotic or unconventional ones. Then I started looking at combining standard crochet stitches with Tunisian foundation stitches.

Remembering that the book is written by an American lady, it talks about using Double Crochet with Tunisian foundation stitches. Double crochet (our Treble) is a stalwart of the crochet world and gives a lighter, less dense fabric than is typical of Tunisian foundations. It's executed by forming the Tunisian base row in the normal way, then working forward along the row crocheting through your chosen foundation loop, but doing a DC (tr) rather than a SC (dc) and failing to pull through the last loop (so the stitches accumulate on the hook as normal). The result is a very loose top to the stitches when you do the return row, reminiscent of broomstick crochet/lace - which can distort the work with each successive row.

To get around this, I took one of the suggestions from the book and alternated rows of DC with standard foundation rows...

This for example is a sample of alternating rows of Tunisian Simple Stitch (Tss) and Double Crochet Tunisian Simple Stitch (DcTss).



I've gone up to a 6mm hook for this in my ever continuing quest to conquer the curl and looking at the fabric I think that's about as big as I should go for the yarn I'm using, which is a superwash wool in DK. The recommended hook size for this would be 4mm, so that's an increase by four sizes! It still doesn't lie flat, but the bigger hook combined with the taller stitches is giving a fabric with more drape to it, so I reckon that if worked into a blanket and after a bit of blocking it might flatten out.

Next up, I tried the same thing with a Tunisian knit stitch. Again, I've alternated rows of Tunisian Knit Stitch (Tks) with Double Crochet Tunisian Knit Stitch (DcTks).



The photo doesn't do this justice and it's actually quite pleasing to look at. The main problem I had was keeping track of the stitches with this one and I took to counting at the end of each row. Somehow I was regularly managing to decrease which wasn't what I was after at all. What this sample did do was teach me how to read the work which helped no end in spotting where a mistake was once I'd figured out that I must have made one!

Finally, I had a go with the same thing using alternating rows of Tunisian Purl Stitch (Tps) and Double Crochet Tunisian Purl Stitch (DcTps)...



This one lays flat without any trouble at all. It also ends up with very distinctive rows of purl bumps across the front - not exactly unattractive, but very obvious. With this one, rather than having problems with accidentally decreasing, I was increasing! Working the back loops could be quite difficult on the DcTps row, with the extra stitch height pulling on the previous row and distorting things so it was hard to see where I was supposed to put my hook. Bearing in mind I haven't read how you deliberately increase (or decrease) I think this is something of an accomplishment!

A day out up north

Yesterday we were intending to go the Foreign Fields, LARP Fayre in Bristol but unfortunately it was canceled at the last minute by the venue's Health and Safety people. With all the snow and ice, they decided it was too dangerous for the event to go ahead and pulled the plug. This caused quite a bit of disappointment in our household, especially since it's Dave's birthday today and the trip was part of his birthday plans.

After a bit of head scratching, Richard suggested we go to the Royal Armouries in Leeds, which Dave has been angling to visit for a while. I briefly weighed it up against a Butterfly Farm and a Sealife Centre, but lots of swords, guns and armour won out. So yesterday, we headed off to Leeds along with Richard and Nat - after carefully scrutinising the weather forecast, which promised the day would be cold but fine (it was) with no expected snow (they were right this time, thank goodness).

The building didn't look like much from the outside but once we reached the stair case and looked up... All I can say is wow, I have never seen so many guns, swords, bayonets, knives, maces, armour and miscellaneous weaponry in one place, let alone hung from the wall as it was.

So started a day of looking at more and more weapons and absorbing information about the history of warfare. It was a long, bloody history and the european section made me feel rather sad as it does seem we've spent a long, long, long time working out the best way to kill one another. Thought provoking, sobering and very interesting stuff.

After lunch we headed into the Oriental section (the birthday boy's choice and a good one) which was more of a feast for the old eyes. Impressive diorama's had been set up like these...







And can you imagine this War Elephant charging towards you?



I was particularly intrigued by the craftsmanship that had gone into making the items on display. Faded and worn they might be, but each piece of armour was as much for ceremonial purposes as anything and were works of art in their own right. Each piece was carefully decorated while the armour was covered in heavily embroidered and beaded fabric, so that what you had was clothing which happened to contain armour.





I'd have liked to have seen more costume on display, but that could just be my costumer's eye needing to be satisfied. I did take lots of pictures, but the lighting and position of the cases meant that if you took one photo, you also got reflections of everything else nearby.

It was good nonetheless, although by the end of the afternoon I was exhausted, not just from all the walking around but from information overload.

To sum up, the museum is definitely worth a visit and don't expect to see everything in one day. Pick which exhibits you'd like to see and plan accordingly. If you like history and have an interest in events which shaped the world we live into today, I think there'd be something here for you.

When we were done, we headed back to Richards before going out for a bite to eat. I think we may have bored poor Richard when we unexpectedly started frothing about our time in the Cam. While the bureaucracy may have sucked the life out of it for me in the end, there were definitely good parts about the game before it all went sour and last night, the good memories flowed. It hasn't been mentioned in our house for years, so I've no idea where all the enthusiasm came from but gosh did we froth. Sorry Richard!

The journey home was very quiet and I do mean very quiet. The M1 at 11pm on a Saturday evening is not usually busy, but last night there were sections of the journey when we were the only car on the road. When other traffic did pass us (I'm a slow driver who observes the speed limit) it was one or two cars and that was it. Wierd. Perhaps the snow had scared all the other drivers into staying at home!

Snow!

As I near the end of a week which has been dominated by the weather, I thought I'd post the obligatory picture of our garden buried under a respectable amount of snow.



The last time I posted a picture like this was nearly two years ago and if you compare the two photographs, taken from the same spot, they do look remarkably similar!

Snow has been the focus of pretty much everything this week as the white stuff has been falling on and off since Sunday. Things have kept going, until today that is when the local Councils started to run out of Grit, which means they've taken to rationing it.

This is bad.

Coventry's council and the highways agency still have grit, but they're prioritising which roads to treat.

This morning, none of the side roads had been treated, or at least none of the ones I drove over had been. Fortunately, most people seemed to have stayed at home - as evidenced at work by the number of empty desks, closed cafes, nursery and cancelled lectures on campus today - so the traffic was light, but if it hadn't been, I dread to think how bad the roads would have been.

Still, I made it in to work. Albeit very slowly and tentatively, all the while warily watching out for children dicing with death as they sledged on plastic sheeting down the slippery, ice/snow covered roads I was trying to drive over.

Hopefully, things will be a bit clearer come the time for the journey home tonight. I shall be watching the forecast closely.

No surprises in London

The temperature has dipped again, reminding us it's full on winter out there as it's been snowing on and off since yesterday lunchtime. Reading the news, it looks like London has pretty much ground to a halt, so perhaps last week and not this week was the time to be on that training course.

The trip itself was OK I guess as these things go. My hotel was in Tower Bridge, while the training centre was just around the Corner from Bank tube station. I hate traveling on the tube, so I hiked over and back each morning, with each journey coming in at just under two miles... Which all went towards canceling out some of effects of living out of a hotel and restaurant all week!

I got lost quite a bit too. This is the first time I've been on a training course where I haven't also had a streaming head cold to deal with as well. I was surprised at how much more alert it made me feel and willing to wander around the streets of London when the class was done. Nothing spectacular, I just sort of explored looking for any worthwhile shops really; Dave tells me that despite my efforts I missed a book shop. :(

The course itself was pretty much as expected. There were only six delegates, all experienced sys admins and the course material was heavy going, with some sections rather like pulling teeth. The instructor was very excitable and obviously enthusiastic about his subject, which (for those who like to know these things) was the Solaris OS. I was on a 'delta' course for experienced systems administrators, i.e. a course to highlight what has changed in the latest version.

As planned, I took the much lamented Jaywalker sock with me to plough on with in the evenings, making a couple of changes this time. I cast on on 2.25mm needles and did a K1b, P1 rib for the cuff which will hopefully pull it in a bit. Once past the cuff, I returned to my 2.5mm needles for the rest of the sock. About half way down the leg (which I've knit considerably shorter) my fingers were incredibly sore, so as an experiment I switched from the metal needles back to my Clover bamboo DPNs at which point the going got a lot easier. Having knit this sock leg twice on metal pins, it seems that I've adjusted enough to the pattern that I can cope on my much blunter bamboo's. This meant much relief for my poor fingers.

Nothing to see at this stage, but the sock returned from London at approximately the same point I ripped it out last time and I've worked on it some over the weekend, so that it's now past the gusset and I'm knitting down the foot towards the toe.

The moment of truth when I try it on will come at some point soon... Unless of course I get distracted by lace in the near future.

Training course

This morning has mostly been about gathering the things I need to survive for a week away from home, as I'm heading off to London later this afternoon for a training course. I've mentioned this to a few people already and it's interesting how their first reaction is to tell me which sights I should visit.

Sadly, there won't be time for sightseeing. Technical training courses, or at least every single one I've ever attended, tend towards full days in the lab absorbing as much detail as possible.

Come the evening, I'll be exhausted and my plans involve nothing more complicated than me, a sofa and a sock. Admittedly, the sock in question will be the Jaywalker, who's first incarnation met its demise this week, so I've no idea how successful my attempts to knit will be, but that's what I've got in mind. I've even cast the sock on again and knit four rows in readiness.

I'll not be taking a laptop with me, so that means no internet access for the week, which of course means no email and no Ravelry. I can survive for a week without the internet, but it normally involves being under canvas so this will be a novelty for me.

Anyone who speaks to Dave while I'm gone, be nice to him. He's in sole charge of the cats, who're bound to run circles around him for the duration.

In other news, I got my spinning wheel out yesterday afternoon. It did not go well.

I'm sitting here trying to explain why and I can't. I set it up with an empty bobbin and spent a good while practicing treadling, which was fine, but the instant I attached a leader, it all went wrong. First it wouldn't draw in the leader. I adjusted things so that it would. Then I found that if I held the leader, which should store the spin preventing it from traveling up the leader, the wheel stopped dead. As far as I could tell, there was no spin in the leader at all and no amount of adjusting or repeated attempts seemed to help.

I persevered for maybe an hour and a half, then gave up and got my spindle out which gave me predictable, reliable results and reassured me that I wasn't completely rubbish. However, either the wheel is misbehaving or I've forgotten everything since the last time I used it back in November.

Back to the drawing board, methinks and time to read those books Dave bought me for Christmas called 'Start Spinning' and 'The Whole Craft of Spinning'.

Hot and cold

We can now enjoying the benefits of having running hot and cold water in our kitchen once more, as the handyman showed up as scheduled to replace the tap with a shiny new one. We have actual water pressure when we turn the tap on now and last night Dave spent most of the evening marveling about how quickly the sink fills up. The whole job took a couple of hours and was without drama's other than me discovering the tardis like properties of the cupboard under the sink. I seem to have been collecting dusters, and sponges in there, so many that I had my doubts I could get them back in again when it came to putting things away.

While the handyman was on site, I quizzed him about woodburners (which he didn't know anything about) and escorted him to the end of the garden, to get his opinon of the area behind the shed. This is the forgotten end of the garden, currently hidden by the shed but a traditional dumping ground for rubbish by the previous owner and it seems, our neighbours. We spent a good six months clearing about half of it several years back and I'd like the rest of it cleared, not least because it would discourage said neighbours from thinking they can throw anything they like there.

The handyman stood there looking a bit flummoxed until admitting that he couldn't see any other way to clear it than to do it manually by hand as he wouldn't be able to get a small digger in there. His verdict was that there was at least a couple of skips worth still buried in that patch and it would take a lot of effort to get it out. Hmmm... Not exactly what I wanted to hear.

In other news, I think I'm about to rip out my Jaywalker sock and here is a picture of it, showing my progress so far - just for the record.



I'm not happy with it. I miscounted the stitches somewhere in amongst the increases and decreases that make up those chevrons and for the life of me I can't see where. On top of that, the sock is eating yarn at an alarming rate and I don't think I'm going to have enough left to complete the sock. If I do manage it, there is no way I'll be able to match up stripes because I won't have enough length to play with and of course, because of the mucked up stitch count I'm doubtful the colour bands will match anyway.

Then there's the fit at the heel... Having been warned that the Jaywalker is notoriously tight, imagine my surprise when the turned heel and gusset actually appears to be a bit loose! Not much mind, so maybe knitting it with the correct number of stitches will correct it. If not, perhaps I need to knit the foot in the next size down.

The final nail in the coffin - having tried the sock on I'm not happy with the cuff which doesn't seem to fit at all. Rather than cling nicely to my calf, it just sort of hangs there loosely and is clearly too big for my leg and I don't exactly have skinny legs. Years of walking, vigourous exercise and being a fairly active adult mean that I have muscles in my legs even if I don't have them anywhere else.

I could persevere and hope I have enough yarn to finish the sock, but I'd know it's a bodge. I'd know that cuff doesn't remotely fit even if it is covered up by my trousers and I don't intend them to be house only. If I go to the bother of knitting a pair of socks, while they don't need to be perfect, they do need to at least fit vaguely and be wearable.

So my plan... I'm going to rip that sock out and start again, this time casting on the cuff in the next needle size down. Once I'm off the cuff, I'll go up a needle size for the rest of the sock. I'll shave an inch off the length of the leg too, which should hopefully give me a little more confidence that I'll have enough yarn to finish the sock.

Perseverance, I has it.

In the spirit of cheering myself up and looking for a quick project, I cast on my first intended Christmas present of the year...



It's going to be a mitten...

Spinning progress

I'm still waiting for the promised thundersnow I heard the DJ talking about on the radio yesterday morning, but so far there's been no sign of it - although it was very stormy last night, which made very glad to be indoors. Richard pointed out a day or two ago, that this time last year we were camped out in a drafty shed in York, mad, mad, people that we are!

With no camping this weekend, I headed off to the spinning guild yesterday for the second time ever. Coventry's guild meet every third Saturday of the month and I'm still having difficulties in adjusting to the fact we're in January, while at the same time Christmas seems six months ago, so would have missed the fact the guild was meeting at all, if Claire hadn't reminded me.

The ladies at the guild were pleasant enough and I had a couple of prompts to bring my wheel with me next time, which made me feel kind of guilty since I haven't touched it since November. Being at the guild did mean that I got on with some spinning on the spindle though and I'm beginning to make some noticeable progress now...



This is one of Violet Green's superwash merino's in a pastel sort of mix, which appears predominately pink in the roving form, but here it looks more minty blue. I've got used to the shorter staple length and I'm working it quite well, especially since I'm able to spin without using the park and draft method now. I'm still horribly slow and the single you can see in these photographs represents between three and four hours worth of spinning.



I tend to only spin for short periods on the spindle, certainly working for no longer than 30 minutes at a time, so spending well over an hour spinning yesterday was a rare treat. My spinning is coming along though and I can see definite improvement in the consistency of the single I'm producing and my technique seems to be working for me, so I think I shall persevere.

One thing that struck me while watching the other ladies, was how easy and relaxed they make spinning at a wheel look. One day, maybe I'll manage that kind of serenity, but for now the spindle is far more soothing than the wheel as for the most part, I can control what it does rather than having the distinct impression that it's got a mind of its own!

Tempting the kitchen fates

I think I may have tempted the kitchen fates last weekend, by posting a picture of a dishcloth in repose on the sink. We've been experiencing reduced pressure in from our hotwater tap since Christmas and on Wednesday morning, the tap gave up completely. Turning it on, no matter how fully, did not mean you'd get any water.

Oh well, thought I... I've got that Homecare cover thing with British Gas, which includes plumbing and drains. I'll give them a call and it will be sorted.

Ahem.

The very polite gentleman on the other end of the phone wasted no time informing me that Homecare does not cover what they consider to be 'endpoints' of the pipes - which include the stopcock and the taps. In fact, he couldn't even send around a plumber and charge me for the privilege as they just didn't offer it as a service.

I am not exactly what you might call impressed.

I did not have my agreement, complete with the small print, to hand and so I had no choice but to thank him (equally politely) and start looking for alternatives. Suffice it to say that when I come to contract renewal time in a few months, I'll be looking at the cover provided and that small print very carefully and may well investigate other cover providers.

All of this means that currently, we are without hot water in the kitchen which is proving to be very inconvenient. I've contacted the handyman who sorted the fence for me last summer and he'll be around on Monday to replace the tap, which is great...

But part of me is still annoyed that British Gas' Homecare is not everything I thought it was.

Tunisian dishcloth

This week back at work has been hard and a shock to the system after a couple of weeks off. The cold hasn't helped - having to leave the house in sub-zero temperatures and returning in the same, has not been a good experience. And did I mention, I'm back on the bike? Cycling in freezing temperatures is not pleasant either, with the cold giving me a headache by the time I get to work and my sluggish calf muscles even succumbing to cramp one evening. Cramp when trying to ride a bicycle is not to be recomended!

One side effect of being gainfully employed is having less time to do things for me and hence having both less time to write here as well as having less to write about.

That said, I did make this...



This is a new dishcloth for the kitchen, which I needed since the last one of the last batch I made is in a sorry state. The last dishcloth I made was knitted, this one is made using Tunisian Crochet. I simply cast on (I need to check if there is a proper technical term) 30 stitches and did Tunisian Purl Stitch (Tps) until I thought the cloth was big enough. I added a simple crochet border to finish off.

The whole thing took me a couple of hours, which I thought wasn't bad since I'm pretty new to this whole TC thing.

At the moment I'm still making swatches, but I'm trying to get my tension a little more even and experimenting to see what I can do about the curl. I want my crochet to lie flat.

I'm also thinking that what I may do is start to crochet larger swatches and keep the swatches as I make them. I'm thinking that when I have enough, I could sew or crochet them together to make a sampler blanket.

This was my excuse to buy more yarn on Saturday when we made a very quick visit into town as we were expecting a visitor in the form of Dave's dad. I had a list and tackled it efficiently rather than ambling around town allowing Dave to browse at will. Dave complained that he kept losing me, as the instant he took his eyes off me I was gone.

Our hurried trek around Coventry yesterday revealed how many empty units are there now and just how many of the smaller retailers, along with bigger chains are gone. Some have vanished in the past few weeks!

Something to beat the chill

I'm still shivering away in Coventry where temperatures outside are struggling to get above freezing today. We've had snow showers on and off since Sunday and while none of it has really built up to significant levels, the light dusting of the stuff has frozen in place, giving Coventry a pretty wintery look to it. Any standing water or puddles have frozen solid and reported temperatures are down to -8C at night now.

The only reasonable way to respond to all this coldness was to cast on a sock.



This is my first 'patterned' sock, following Grumperina's Jaywalker pattern (Ravelry Link) and knit up in the Regia Design Line I picked up from Web of Wool back in October.

So far, the colourway is all I'd hoped for. It's colourful, bright and cheery, showing up the Jaywalker pattern beautifully.

My only problem is that I found the pattern increases and decreases difficult to do on my normal Clover bamboo needles which have quite blunt tips. To overcome this, I switched to some more pointy metal DPNs, but I'm finding them very hard on the hands. They don't flex as much, are 'harder' when I hold them and I'm finding that repeatedly pushing the tips back (to move the stiches into place so they can be knit) is making my fingers sore. There must be a technique to using pointy metal needles, but at the moment I don't have it.

The upside of this is of course, that I'm currently unlikely to sit for hours and hours watching the colours unfolding in front of me... Meaning the lace is still getting the odd look in (234 rows and counting) and I'm still hankering after the hook - so much so I may need to do a crochet project or two soon.

More tunisian swatching

I guess I should start by wishing any who read this a Happy New Year - I hope that so far, 2009 is working out for you.

For us, the new year started with Coventry plunging into the deep freeze. As anyone who knows me could tell you, I do not cope well with cold at all, so when temperatures drop to an alleged -7C I shut down. I can have the heating on at full pelt, wrap in many layers, wear copious amounts of wool on my hands and feet, but I'm still going to be freezing. Take those mitts or socks off and you'll find my hands or feet are like ice! I dread to think how I'd cope if I lived in a truly cold country...

When not paralyzed by the cold, I've been pottering around the house doing the housework and becoming reacquainted with my spindle. But when the cold hits I've resorted to sitting bundled up on the sofa, hugging a hotwater bottle and crocheting or knitting.

On the spindle at the moment, I've got the pastel merino I bought last year from Violet Green. Progress so far is slow, as my hands seem to have forgotten how to spin and the merino handles very differently to either Blue Faced Leicester or Grey Swaledale. It's draw length is notably shorter for a start, which meant that the first time I started working it, the spindle kept crashing to the floor.

Now, after a bit of practice and relearning how to use the spindle, things are slowly coming together. I did consider taking a photograph, but to be honest the pastel colours are very muted once tightly spun into a single and I'm not sure I could do it justice. In the end, I decided to work it a little more before I try to take a picture and see if I can play with the contrast levels a bit.

When unable to get quite so active, I've been making more Tunisian Crochet swatches as I continue trying out the various standard foundation stitches.



Here we have the Tunisian Simple Stitch (Tss) which is also known as Afghan Stitch, Tricot Crochet or Knit Stitch. This is usually the stitch meant whenever a book or pattern refers to Tunisian Crochet, or gives a simple overview of the technique. It really is quite simple to do and works up speedily, giving a grid like effect (which apparently Victorian ladies used as a base for their cross stitch).



Next up, the Tunisian Full Stitch (Tfs) which produces a dense, lofty fabric which is very, very prone to curl. On all of these swatches I've used a 5.5mm hook with a basic DK yarn, so that's three hook sizes up from the recommended hook and as you probably see from the photo, this swatch wants to curl up really badly.



Finally, the Tunisian Purl Stitch (Tps) which is the flatest of the basic foundations - note it's just sitting on the table without me needing to spread it out so I can see the stitch pattern. The fabric itself is dense, but not as lofty as the other stitches. It does have actual drape and while I find the hook gymnastics needed to form the stitch really awkward, I like the effect.

Back to work tomorrow and therefore back to real life, computers 9 til 6 and no where near so much time for playing with yarn.