Blimey, a(n) F.O.!

So what with the little chap, and the cleaning and the food providing, and the working, and the festival, and the melodeon sitting there making me feel guilty and the everythingelseIhavetodo my knitting time has been considerably eaten into compared to pre-motherhood days.

The thought of taking on  a huge project (like the husband sized jumper I have promised - I even got yarn samples from New Lanark Mills!) is truly a bit overwhelming.

So, as a kind of warm up (heh!) and prompted by the Knitty surprise in the ‘Fall’ 09 issue Idecided some Just One More Row arm warmers were the order of the day.  ‘Tangy’ seemed just about right, I wanted a bit of brain work, and, Oh, I do love a cable! I did have to mark the 12 stitch repeat though, the ’staggered’ nature of it was a little confusing. Here’s the result:

Knitted in Jaeger Extra Fine Merino Aran (very, very sadly discontinued) on 4mm needles, in Wineberry.

I have quite big hands, but the Aran meant  I cast on only 48 stitches and I ‘one more rowed’ until I had 11 rows at the finish. The Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off is, actually, brilliant. I think these took about 3 hours each, so a quick fix – and the knitting mojo is back*!

Despite the aforementioned husband finding the idea of ‘handless gloves’ tremendously amusing they actually do keep a person quite warm and I’ll keep wearing them whatever sniggering takes place.

*This is actually rather worrying, since I found out the other day Ms Fyberspates trades approximately 20 miles away from my stash…

Six Months Later…

So, I have discovered (though I had always suspected) that being a working Mum is actually pretty knackering. So that’s mainly why I’ve been not here since May!

But, I managed to get myself a job in a very nice place, with a lovely team, and it’s very good to not have to drive 50minutes to GiantCorporationWhichCannot Spell Ltd in the wintery dark and rain. It still takes me nearly an hour to get to work though. We seem to have The Morning Routine more or less sorted and it’s not too stressful.

I’ve found some time to do some knitting (updates later) but have hardly bought any yarn for ages. I taught myself the basic Tunisian Crochet stitch last Friday. But I’ve barely found time for doing  music, and the garden looks like a (cold, wet) jungle.

There are other things going on too and I shall update more often from now I hope, even if it’s sneakywritingatwork in tiny type lest someone creep up on me…

Waiting for the plumber…

So, here we are waiting for the plumber.

The plumber is supposed to be here ‘between 12 and 2′ so as I write this he has ten minutes before he’s officially late. But my point is (sigh) why can’t people make proper appointments any more?

It’s been one of those days. I finally decided I couldn’t live with the four mistakes I made in the (very simple) lace edge to this skirt in Boho Baby Knits. I had done about 3/4 of it and just kept going when I went a bit wrong – always in the yarn overs which make up the twirly bit on the top edge. And then when I looked at it again they just stuck out like a sore thumb. So I ripped out and started again. I am not sure the 14 month old giftee would even mind or notice, but I would know….

In other unravelling/recycling news I now have 7 skeins of some Debbie Bliss something or other (its very soft and squooshy) which used to be a baby sleeping bag my Mum made for Alex and he has now outgrown. It wasn’t really heirloom material, this item, so it’s going to be something else. On the other hand this Bushmills tin has been one of my sewing boxes for about 20 years, so that is an heirloom!:

And it’s raining, and I haven’t been out to put coffee round the lettuces, so I hope the slugs’n’ snails are eating elsewhere today. At least they won’t get this basil which went in the bean tins during the Bank Holiday Weekend Gardening Frenzy. I’ve always felt a bit snooty about bean tins for plant pots since it seemed a couple of years ago they were in every glossy magazine shot of a trendy city garden you saw – but they look nice, I think.  The avocado stone? no action there…:

So does yet more basil (it’ll be pesto galore, you should see the greenhouse!) and coriander in these olive oil tins, I’ll be planting lots of this on, never fear:

The trick to these deep tins is to put lots of packing in the bottom so you don’t use loads of compost. As we redid the kitchen two years ago we still have piles of polystyrene the appliances were delivered in, so I use that for putting in plant pots and so on. They won’t take it at the tip so it’s about the only thing it’s useful for.

Been a bit quiet round here of late…

…and I’m not sure why. It’s not like I’ve been madly busy, in fact the complete opposite.

I have spent quite a lot of time staring into space and wondering when the jobs market might pick up. And I’ve come to the realisation that I am a persaon who needs to be very busy in order to achieve anything, and that I need to have some structure to may day other than when the little chap might wake up (or not), I need to make a bigger daily decisions than whether to watch Gilmre Girls at 11.55am or 3.3opm. It seems I am a ‘the more you have to do, the more you will get done’ kind of girl.

I haven’t been totally idle though, I have a rather smashing looking vegetable garden, and here is the NEW GREENHOUSE:

I’ve spun up the majority of the jacob I’ve had for…two, ish…years, and some of the hairy herdwick (goodness knows what I’ll do with this, I’m thinking messenger bag at the moment, there will be 400g of it eventually):

And on Sunday I made a baby sling for the little chap (who is now quite a large chap, but not yet on his own two feet, quite) to sit in and which will save my arms from hideous strain if I just need to pop in for a pint of milk, or something:

I look wierdly baggy here on account of floppy trouser issues. A slight diet would do me no harm though! The blurredness was his fault The sling was made from remnants and  this pattern here, and in making it  I learned how to do a French Seam too.

Lascala

Here’s about 1/4 of ‘Lascala‘ by Hanne Falkenberg. It’s very lovely, but it takes AGES to kint. However once I got my head round the chart I’ve been bumbling along quite nicely. I was stopped in my tracks at the start as the kit came with a ball of yarn missing.

What’s more, the yarn comes with no ball bands on it, so I had been sorting it out into its labelled plastic bags (I do this when I have lots of colourwork to do, and it keeps it all neat) for about half an hour when I found nothing that answered to the name of ‘Chestnut’. So I called the lovely people at Kangaroo and they sorted me out with the missing ball, without me having to send the whole lot back and get a new kit .

It’s a 16 stitch repeat pattern, with slipped stitches and a border, knit in two halves and joined together:

Here’s the border, you can knit it with or without a fringe. I always like a fringe!:

Front, it’s such a lovely herringbone pattern:

And back, which also looks nice and neat:

Otherwise I have been growing stuff, there is barely an empty windowsill in the house. Here we have tomatoes, lemongrass (just out of shot), poppies, some salad and the stuff not yet appearing is weld, woad and basil (old seed, but I decided it may be worth a try anyway):

When the greenhouse arrives next week (woohoo!) I hope we can get the sill back. But it depends on the weather of course.

It’s been a bit hectic here…

…because I have been doing this:

http://www.oxfordfolkfestival.com/

It takes a year for us to get  it all together, but the fortnight before is always a bit horrendously busy busy busy. Then we actually have the festival and it’s all so worth it.

Coming up later; greenhouse foundations, and hopefully an update on the shopping bag.

And so many thnaks to Almost Mrs Average for awarding me an award! I am dead chuffed )

Boing

Spring is here, it must be. The sun is shining, I’ve had to open the sliding door to get some of this sparkly air in, and I can’t see my screen unless I close the curtains.

I find January and February a bit of a trial to get through, to be honest. I tend to hibernate – all I want to do is sit and knit and watch rubbish on the telly, for some reason it’s usually programmes where gnarled blokes are working in horrible circumstances (current favourites are ‘Ice Road Truckers’ and ‘Trawlermen’). Then I go to bed at ten p.m. and read something reasonably intelligent and literary to stop myself feeling guilty for watching rubbish on the telly.

But, at the end of February, this starts to happen:

The snowdrops appeared by magic, but these crocuses I put in two autumns ago, and just left them. I suppose they are multiplying, which is great:

…and the tiny irises are beautiful too:

There are dwarf narcissi and daffodils as well, but they are only just in bud. I am looking forward to seeing the dancing host  in the next couple of weeks.

I also managed to get some seeds in this year (all I managed to grow for last year was Alex, but I think that’s a good enough achievement really). This is the scene on the windowsill this morning:

Summer will be here soon. Let’s hope it’s a good one.

Bag of Tees

I started what I’ve christened ‘The Bag of Tees’  today, with a band of purple stuff, the history of which is as follows.

Originally born as  a white vest top from People Tree, it then became a purple vest top (after I’d spilt things on it and it had to be dyed to be wearable, I never learn) but then it started looking a bit sad and saggy due to pregnancy wear, and now it’s be the top bit of my bag. How eco friendly am I (apart from the chemical dye, sigh) and also Fair Trady!

I cast on about 60 stitches:

I even kept the label fastened on from its days as a vest top, so I’ll be able to recall its history once it’s a bag.

I’ve done two rows of ribbing (because I bet even T shirt material stocking stitch curls…). I’ll carry on knitting round and round until I get to an OK kind of depth, and then I think I’ll start to do a ’star toe’ decrease to get the bowl shape at the bottom. I’ll also decide at the end if I want the RS or WS to be the outside of the bag…not sure yet.

The good thing about doing it in the round is that ’round’ is also bag shaped (for the style of bag I’m making) so I kind of know how big a mouth it’ll have:

I need to carry on, and also need to cut up some more clothes.

Yesterday, of course, PANCAKES!. In fact we had pancake enchiladas as there were leftovers to use up, and nothing is better for a leftover than a tin of tomatoes and some cheese sauce. Most of my pancakes were pretty good I think:

BUT some were Mutant Pancakes from the planet Dribulous (the most annoying thing is that I KNOW how to do it properly!):

I mean, what on earth is THAT? !!

Not a top any more…

A few weeks ago Almost Mrs Average, of the brilliant Rubbish Diet, asked us to suggest credit crunching eco-friendly tips (you can see them all here). I suggested people make thier own bags out of yarn they make from old cut up T shirts and the like. Not only eco friendly but, if they’re not already a knitter, they get to learn a new and useful skill!

Now I think I’d better take my own advice…I’ve got loads of old pre-pregnancy vest tops and the like which are far too short or me to decently get away with any more, and they’re also a bit too worn out to go to charity shops for sale. So I’ve started to cut them up to make ‘yarn’:

They get chopped in a spiral, and hopefully the seaming is strong enough not to come apart. If it does then either the knitting will keep it together, or I’ll have a little sewing to do:

Here are two balls of yarn, I do need more I know!

Now I have to decide what kind of bag I’ll make, I’m veering towards a sort of rounded bottom Kenyan bag like this:

(image from http://www.sakaad.com/store/ where there is some very lovely stuff!)

I’ve had one for years (which was brought back from Kenya as a gift about 20 years ago, and is still going strong).

I’m thinking of knitting it in the round, probably using the magic loop, and then making the handles from plaited Tshirt fabric. I shall make it up as I go along…

Setesdal Mittens

I’ve been knitting these for, oh, about two years (I am on a bit of a finishing up trip!).

Rather delightfully the flecked pattern is from something called a ‘luskofte’, or lice jacket. Yes; LICE. JACKET (!). Traditionally they are black and white but I did these in green and sort of grey/white. And I tried to forget about the lice but it’s now in my head.

They are from Folk Mittens by Marcia Lewandowski. The book has loads of very intricate and beautiful mitten patterns from all over the world, and a bit of history at the front as with all the Interweave ‘folk’ books (which satisfies the unsatisfied academic in me, a bit!).

Yarn: Rowan rowanspun DK (don’t ask which shades these are, it’s been a while and I am ball band less – it’s discontinued I am certain).

2mm needles:

I really am quite pleased with them especially as the charts made my eyes doolally. Actually that was just the star (and I love Norweigan Stars) the lice speckles were easy enough once I got going.

I wonder what other ufos I have lurking about the place…