Library Girl Knits!

I spent the last couple of nights going through my stash to work out exactly what I have and listing it on a spreadsheet. I haven’t even finished and I have 55 different yarns (although some may just be different colours of the same range, but I don’t mix colours really). Gah. I still managed to fit them all (just) into two plastic lockable crates though. I REALLY need to make some room…

[runs off to knit things]

[Update] I have just under 13 kilos of yarn. And that’s before I even consider the future projects box and the box that holds the chunky yarn that won’t go anywhere else at the mo… Luckily many yarns have a project attached. I just need the time!

Here is the formula for a bad garden.

Previous owners leaving loads of crap+another previous owner doing a bad concrete job on a steep hill+not wanting to do work in garden cos it still looks awful after you’ve cleaned it all up=the following piccies.

Yeah, it’s bad. Or rather it was. Here is another formula.

Bad garden+some manly burning of garden rubbish+lovely friend with lovely pro gardener partner+one day and a bit (interrupted by some thunder storms, but mainly glorious)=yummyness.

In a very short time (the day and a bit was interrupted regularly by thunder, shopping for more supplies, accidentally visiting the Next sale while shopping for more supplies, getting a take away, drinking beer, sleeping, watching Country File with the ever fabby John Craven), the garden was weeded, the rubbish left by the last owners chucked in a skip, plants trimmed, moved, planted up, new plants purchased and planted in previously undiscovered soil, a moss house designated, conifer chopped down and two huge conifer trunks dug up, patio slabs replaced (having been removed by the council checking drains, and never put back properly), weed membrane put down, bark chippings scattered, potted up plants moved to new lovely places and plans made for purchasing more plants to leave in pots and a some chairs and a table, and the pub visited for a late lunch and some lager and lime. Oh, and Sue and I did some knitting too. Well, she knit the Mason Dixon baby kimono, and I crocheted some more scarf squares and made loads of mistakes cos of gossiping/getting distracted by Country File discussing Winnie the Pooh and the original setting for the 100 acre woods (somewhere in Sussex if you are interested and if I remember correctly). We had a lovely time, or at least I did. And I can’t stop looking and loving my new garden arrangements. See the garden shed? The previous owners had for some reason had the door facing that greenhouse and the wall (the greenhouse belongs to our neighbours), so that it took up loads of stupid space. All it took was turning it so that the door opened towards the steps (the right in the pic of the shed) and suddenly we have enough room for a full table and chairs set up there.
For those who are interested, our garden is mad. The reason the pics look down onto the patio is that we live in a steep hill. The lower level of our house has the front on the road, but the back is built into the hill, so we have no garden until you get upstairs. Our patio doors are next to the bedroom doors. The bit outside the patio doors has always been relatively well kept because we wanted to be able to see nice things, but the patio round the side of the house where the conifer was and the composter is kept was just a place to hang the washing really till it got nice plants the fence improved. And that’s also why you see the roofs in the left of the first picture – the top of the garden is actually skirting the top of our roof and you could jump from the edge to the bathroom extension if you liked. But I don’t think you would want to… We also have this strange little middle bit inbetween patio level and top level that we use as a path, mainly because it leads to next door’s beautiful top level garden. And you see that wall on the left of the shed? The top of it is where next door on the other side have their top ground level… It is pretty damn steep, but those walls have been there for a loooooong time so we are pretty safe 🙂 Now that the garden is actually attractive, I will be more willing to look after it, and I’ve already weeded, and done it after coming back from work! Gasp! Hoorah!
After all that, I suppose I better not add any more pics for now 😉 But I have finished at last the first sock for my colleague after what seems an age. The scarf is almost long enough, and I have lots of exciting new books. So you’ll just have to wait for a bit for some knitting content, while I go admire my garden and the new Clematis I got the other day that isn’t in the pics and hope that the weather holds out for when DB’s parents come over to see the new aceness.

No pics today I’m afraid. The power cuts continue to come sporadically and have done on and off for a few weeks. Apparently there are local problems – you just get a recorded message when you phone the hotline, but it doesn’t seem to be the supply problems economists etc went on about last year. Soooo, that means that I have to produce blogging I can do on notepad offline, and emailing is out the window because I can’t read what I want to respond to :/
Anyway, to make things more interesting without piccies (expect a pic fest if power improves this weekend), I have a few stories to tell. Power cuts have left DB feeling a bit lost for what to do with himself. He’s a total techie, so everything he enjoys doing is linked to his puter. He’s also very into Alfred Hitchcock, so his research is done on the web, he gets DVDs sent from all over the world (including occassional review copies from the distributors) and he has his own wiki and site with quality comparisons and stuff. Take away the electricity and he can’t do any of this at all. Yeah, he has a few books, but that isn’t the same. I, on the other hand, revel in the peace the power cut gives me. Yeah, I worry about the milk going off and that kind of stuff, but I like being able to take advantage of the time to craft and read. The gifty scarf is growing merrily, and I reckon I’ll have made enough squares to finish it this weekend (maybe 7 more). I’ve also played with joining the squares with single crochet and worked out that I can make a nice flat side and a bumpy side by doing that without having to do pooey sewing together. And what is extra fabby is that I may even stick to the one skein rule in doing so (or maybe get a couple of metres from the second skein). I’ve also been having fun with something very silly indeed – a paint your own money box of Mr Bump from the Mr Men 🙂
I’ve also fallen in love with two very very beautiful inspirational knitwear design sites – probably only new to me, but still, I can spread the love… First up is Constance Eyre, who does some truely gorgeous machine knitted garments. They have a classic look to them, but with a little bit of an edge. Yummy. Second is the also beautiful and inspirational site of Ink Boutique who are much cheaper than Constance Eyre, and a bit more edgy, but only sell up to a medium (yeah, even I could afford one of their knits as a treat). The latter site has also got me thinking about designing something myself – the stuff I like on the site is mostly made up of simple lines with something a little subtle or unusual, like the slash neck tank with a flower belt running through the hem, or the empire line t-shirts with ribbons running round the neck. Something like that could be easy to create using a pattern and just adding a twist… Double yum.
However, this had to happen at the wrong time didn’t it. Regular readers will know I’ve been having problems pinning my tutor down, resulting in changing my masters submission to November. Things are now moving again, and I suddenly have a ton of work to do, and fast. Poo. But a good thing too. I might actually finish the bugger off this year 😉 Studying and knitting aren’t too bad together, but studying and doing complicated knitting that you are making up yourself does not make for a good pairing. Do me a favour and remind me when I’m done that these sites exist and have cool things that I might be able to make. In the meantime I’ll have to stick to stashbusting and gifting and using really nice easy patterns.
Oooo – almost forgot! I finally got some more sock needles from Pavi Yarns, and bloody quick they are too. And they wrap things up in tissue paper. I like it when companies do that. A small touch but enough to make you feel like you are important to them… I got some yarn and a book too, but I’ll post more on that another time. Now the electricity is back on and I want to read instead of looking at a puter screen.

So hot it broke the BBC weather website. Eek!

That’s one hot day…

I hope I can get this out ok – our electricity has been going off sporadically all weekend 🙁 So forgive me if I owe you emails etc. Anyway, the latest AL challenge is an interesting one. We have to photograph our lace in ways we might be able to use it as it is now. My knitting funk is ongoing (more on that later), so mine is not progressing quickly, or at all at the moment!

BUT, it does have some use, in ermmm, a special way…

As a tutu for a mouse:

Or a scarf for a phone (although it is a little short for poor little Beryl the phone, but it is summer):

Or, if I go away and forget to take implements of oral hygiene, maybe I can use it to floss:

Well, I’ve just finished weeding the path to the front door (actually, not finished, more like removed the worst of it till the rest grows up), having got back from the Holmfirth trip. Did I get any needles? No. They had no sock needles at all 🙁 Did I get anything? Maybe… Mum got her yarn, and I got a bit of yarn action myself – 2 balls of DB Baby Cashmerino in a lovely rich dark purple to crochet an Animeko from, and 2 books that I won’t mention in case I jinx my plans. I was sooooo good and restrained. I wanted to buy alpaca, DB Cathay and lots of really bargainous sale yarns, but didn’t. Hoorah!
The lack of sock needles also means that I’m forced to work on other things in progress, which I suppose is a good thing 😉

That’s not just how I feel right now, it’s also a statement. There was an accident with Pomotamous. I’d turned the heel, finished the gusset decreases, and was transporting my little baby to and from work happily until last night, when I pulled it out the bag to find the lace side of the foot missing a needle. I frantically picked what I could up, but stitches are dropped next to yarn overs, and I couldn’t find where to pick them back up. So, my poor little baby is no more 🙁 And I need a new set of dpns. I have no idea where that needle has gone either :/ Poo. Mum’s coming over to buy more yarn from Holmfirth this weekend, so I’ll see if I can get some needles there, but mine are bamboo and are ace and lovely, so I hope I don’t end up ordering off the internet and having to buy yarn to pad the order out…
That would be awful.
In the meantime, I might pick out a different sock pattern and different yarn. I know I want the Poms in LL now, so I’ll save it for when I’m ready again. I’m sorely tempted to break out the cashmere sock yarn from the stash… Woof.
In other brief news, the argyle sock pattern has now been downloaded over 200 times 🙂 My stats program is playing up a bit and reckons there has been no action at all on this site for a week, when there clearly has, but at last count, it was about 215. Hoorah!

A haiku on Lead or Follow

Knitting lace is hard
With Lead or Follow I should
Follow, but I’m lost…

Well, not as bad as that, but blimey, the yarn is a little more delicate than I’m used to. And it feels a bit strange compared to the fibres I’ve used before (I have no idea what it is incidentally. It was just cheap and there in front of me to buy). It moves slowly at the moment. The heat and commitments with friends means that something requiring this much concentration has taken a back seat too many times.

And so, I present to you, my progress on Lead or Follow, just to qualify the reasoning behind the haiku above (that’s a pencil at the bottom to give you perspective)…

I’m getting a sweat on, and I’m a little scared. I’ve been wondering what to make for my One Skein pal for a while – I want to make it something that they will use, wear, and hopefully love. I figured a scarf, while a bit obvious, is a good place to start, but make it special. First I thought of scribble lace, but that isn’t really OS. Then I figured I’d use my new skills with crochet to make something I’ve loved looking at for ages – a gorgeous scarf in silk mohair in a Rowan magazine, but try out my Habu Mohair Silk Kusa, but I’m not sure if it will work. Not because of the yarn or the pattern, but purely because my skills aren’t really very good 😉
So please take a look at this and tell me whether, with blocking and a few more squares stuck together, I can make a nice light, gifty scarf. Also, with it being squares is it best to block them individually and pin them out before sewing together?
BTW, the yarn is just gorgeous…

It is far far far too early to be writing this on a Sunday. What on earth am I doing?

Well, I’m up and about so I might as well be sorting this out 😉

Ok, so the rest of the weekend was a bit surreal. By Saturday night, Sarah and I were probably dealing with sunstroke and booze related psychosis. We started talking to each other in a bizarre accent that was somewhere between German (or rather bad nazi accent from bad TV movies) and Italian for no apparent reason. Actually, Sarah started it. So there. Sarah has this thing going on in her head that creates strange incidents, and also attracts very strange people to within 10 feet of her. She’s just set up a blog to celebrate this fact, but I can tell you that on her way to Sue’s on the train, there was a man dressed in England shorts, a bum bag, and a t shirt that had a picture on of a guinea pig that said ‘In loving memory of Molly’, carrying a box. When he went to sit down, he practically threw the box on the luggage rack, and warned the lady he was going to sit next to to watch out as, even though guinea pigs may not fall out of the box, poop and straw might. Nice. Her blog mentions that when she went into Subway and asked for a cheese sandwich, she was asked if she wanted cheese with it.

Knowing these tidbits will go someway to describing what our Sunday was like. Sunday was ace, but one of the most surreal experiences I’ve had in a while (keep in mind that normally hanging out with Sarah does induce surreal experiences, and we don’t meet up nearly often enough). Sue took us to Oakham to the village fair in aid of the Make a Wish foundation. We knew we were in for something a bit unusual when we saw there was a Ghostbusters themed treasure hunt there. It was a stunning day – the hottest we’ve had so far this year (which may not be saying something, but lets say high 20s and the UK don’t go together very often). When we arrived, there were guys dressed as stormtroopers and Smiths, but the Stormtroopers were a bit odd – they had those kind of visor things (more like Vader’s helmet), and were wearing white wellies… In spite of the wellies, they were making a great effort. One guy was waiting at the traffic lights to cross over the road, but while he was waiting, you could hear the radio thingy on his helmet changing his voice, and he kept saying ‘move along, move along’ to the traffic. The guy on the our side of the road, when the lights changed, started talking to someone in a car, asking him if he’d seen any droids…

Here is Nic, gangin up with a stormtrooper against me. The gits.

We walked round towards the castle grounds, and when we got there, the place was full of sci fi super heroes, but with a twist. Trinity was there, with more Smiths, and the poor lass was wearing a black PVC trenchcoat (she must have been sweating cobs). Batman was there too (also in black rubber), chatting away to Trinity (or was that chatting up?). There were the Ghostbusters, naturally, but not 3 of them. Not even 4 of them. We counted 6. Quigon Jin was there too, with Obi Wan and Amidala, and thankfully there was no sign of bloody Jar Jar. There was also a powerranger (don’t ask which one, but he was discussing his special power of the extra man-arm with a Smith. A tad dodgy when there are kids around, but I suspect they’d questioning his packet anyway in that lycra), and some random guy dressed in army fatigues with a floppy black hat and a gun, and we couldn’t think who he was trying to be for the life of us.

Here we have a lovely pic (sorry about the quality guys) of Quigon having a bit of a fight with a Ghostbuster.

It was a really good laugh to go round, watching the kids asking them all for autographs, and the Ghostbusters chatting to the kids on the Make a Wish podium. We did decide though that it wasn’t the kids getting their wishes brought to life, but the guys in costumes. The charity apparently does a lot of work to help people dress up as sci fi characters from films and fulfil their wildest dreams by standing around at a fair and chatting each other up while signing autographs. Hooray!

After that, we went to Rutland Water. It’s a beautiful place, a reservoir with some wildlife reserves around it. When they flooded the valley, the ended up, in typical local council style, destroying a village with some historical buildings, but they kept the church as a monument and museu,. About half of the church is now underwater, so it’s quite a striking sight when you come through the trees to see it.

It’s a really beautiful place, and the weather was just gorgeous, so we went on a boat trip and I ended up with sunburnt arms, and that little red nose. Whoops.

Finally, we headed back to Burghley, and went to feed the deer. The does are pregnant and pretty skittish, but you can feed the bucks by hand – they are pretty used to the attention, and hang out around where the cars park under the trees. When they saw Sam coming, they recognised that he’d be brining goodies, so moved towards us, and all you do is hold your hand out like feeding a horse, and they just lift the food really delicately off your palm. They’re antlers are like velvet too at this time of year, so you could stroke them while they fed. Just beautiful creatures.

After that, I had to get the train back home 🙁 What a bummer. I know you can’t live like that all the time, but living there would help after work 😉

Time for some gratuitous knitting content.

First up, the gifty things I got from my lovely mates 🙂
Sue bought me Knitting on the Road and Spin It (and the very wonderful Jeanette Winterson’s Lighthousekeeping) 🙂

Shirls got me some cloisonne containers in the shape of kimono wearing girls 🙂

And Nic got me some Body Shop Vanilla stuff, and some vintage yarn 🙂

In there is some german baby yarn which is incredibly soft and cushy (the white on the left), some Sirdar Alpaca blend (the big ball of lilac), and some Tivoli slubby cotton (the white and orange on the right) that is so vintage it’s untrue 😀

My mates are so cool 🙂

So did I get any knitting done? Not much – it was too hot. But I did do some sewing up when I got back, and ended up with this. I’m not impressed.

It’s the Debbie Bliss Astrakhan cardi from Vogue, minus the cashmerino aran cuffs and collar. I decided not to include those because I couldn’t get a good colour match, and I also wasn’t really impressed with the collar, particularly with how it would probably look on me. It’s ok. I’ve warmed to it since I made it, but when I first tried it on, I sent a text to Sue asking if she knew anyone who’d want it… That may have had something to do with it being very hot, and the cardi being very warm. It may also be to do with it being a bit too big, and the bulk of the wrap in compensating for the size makes it a bit, well, bulky!

It might be a nice cardi when it’s cold again, but still, it isn’t a masterpiece. I’m surprisingly ok with boucle thing, but the yarn isn’t easy to count rows/stitches with, so watch out. It’s also impossible to sew it up with itself, so you need to find a good colour match and just hope that you are sewing the right stitches together seeing as you can’t see them. It could be worse, and it could be better.

Which leads me to one last thing. I’ve hit a knitting funk. I’m not sure if it’s because of the heat recently, or whether it is just me, or the projects I’m working on, but I have very little knitting motivation 🙁 I’m not making anything rubbish – the lace scarf, a moss stitch scarf, socks for someone at work, Pomotamous (which are finally going well and look cool). So what do I do? I add to the pile and try something else – another OSW now that the weather is gorgeous, but work is freezing with the air conditioning thing (are shrugs still ok to wear? I’m not the most fashionable girl, but shrugs are such a funny thing sometimes). But I’m ok. I’ll surge through it 🙂 I can finish the OSW today probably, especially after getting up so early, which might help a bit.

And these might help too 😉
Aileen sent me a little surprise birthday thing 😀

It’s Sandra magazine, Interweave Crochet magazine, and a hank of Kilcarra Tweed in the most gorgeous red with flecks of blue. Yummy 😀 Here’s a close up.

And I got a package from my One Skein Secret Pal too 😀 A ball of Rowan Cotton Tape in a tasty apple green-yellow. Yum 😀

I’ve already got a pattern for it – a little crochet cap, which might also get started today in the grand funk thing. Hoorah!
Ok, I better shut up at this point, or I might break your puters…