useless beauty

I have almost finished my shawl

2012-02-29T09:17:00.000-08:00

And yet, because it is a circular shawl, all I can show you is a slightly bigger white lump.

I cross out my completed rows ~~in a mad obsessive manner~~ carefully

And, not even that much bigger. Because, as it is a circular shawl, you finish the middle bit quickly and then the edging essentially takes you The Rest Of Your Life. You labour and slave for days and nights, heedless of the passage of time, heedless of the play of clouds, sunshine and shadow, outside your neglected window. Your hair grows. The skin under your eyes darkens. Cross-eyed and frantic, you sit with your fingers working independently of your conscious mind, your body twitching frenetically. Lo! You have knitted a row and added a mm to the diameter of your shawl.

When people say to me, gosh, knitting, I am not sure I would have the patience, do you know what I say? I say, yes, I agree, I am not sure I have the patience either, I shall give up the whole thing and do something easier. Indeed: come on, Andrew Lansley, bring me your white paper or your green paper or whatever it is, I am sure I can draft you out something that will be acceptable to the BMA, Nick Clegg, that woman who told you off, hardline conservatives and popular opinion as evidenced in the Daily Mail and Loose Women, and it will only take me half an hour before dinner and will be easier than knitting this damn shawl.

Entirely hypothetically, if I ever wanted to think about collecting 2 skeins of different-coloured sock yarns to knit a Cladonia at some possible point in the future, does anyone have any ideas about where might be a good place to look?

You could have your choice of men. But I could never love again

2012-02-26T04:34:00.000-08:00

I wanted to let you know how I was getting on with playing my guitar. I have started having (very occasional) lessons, i.e. I have had my first because when I got my job I decided I was now RICH despite the fact that I spent my first wages before I had got them on shoes, and it has been helpful. If you remember, I was trying to learn well enough that I could play in public and then, I don’t know, I was going to cross that off my bucket list and go and swim with dolphins or something. Well, readers, here is the exciting news: I do think that if I carry on practicing (I have been reasonably consistent) that I might be able to play in front of other human beings at some point (or perhaps a rather critical cat to start with?).

My guitar with Partner's bright yellow scarf which my mother very kindly knitted for him entirely in single rib because yellow is 'the best colour'. Partner loves his scarf and says everyone remarks upon it in shops and this is true, I have witnessed it happen

I mean, I am not good, but, I am having fewer Father Ted My Lovely Horse moments, so, I don’t know, I shall carry on a while longer and see how I feel. I have a repertoire now. I can play the following:

Jolene
Where Did You Sleep Last Night
Delia
That Johnny Cash one about the ink turning to red and I pray you don’t look at me, I pray I don’t look back
Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door
That Leonard Cohen one about Joan of Arc (if he was fire then, oooooo, she must be wooood…)

What a busking session that would be, hey hey? And I’ve got an outfit ready for if I ever get to play in public, because clearly that’s the most important consideration:

Vintage eighties. Sequinned all over. Put me near a light source and I'm just like a disco ball, a sarcastic disco ball

I shall tell you some things I learned from my lesson, which was a lot of fun. (My guitar teacher is very nice. He said, normally he had trouble getting people to sing: he did not then continue by saying, but you, I cannot get you to shut up, but I think that was the strong implication. I suppose you have to be tactful if you are a freelance guitar teacher. He said I had ‘the kind of voice that people would want to listen to’, so, in the absence of that actually being a direct insult I have decided to take it as encouragement. It makes life easier if you take that approach to things. Obviously I haven’t told him I knit, though, as that might mean he would refuse to teach me any more.)

This is the first thing I learned, and, if you are an aspiring guitar player who knows nothing, like me, you are going to find this very useful: you can take your guitar to a guitar shop, and they will file down your frets, sort it out generally, and make it easier to play. It will cost you about £20 (if you live in Cambridge, Strings on King Street will do it for you, I have already been in and chatted so I have done the groundwork for you there). My brother Dan who is a very good guitar player has done this to his own guitar, and I can vouch for the fact that it has made it much better, but, I did not realise you could pay someone to do it for you and that it is standard. So when I organise myself to get that done it will save me a lot of blisters,

The second thing is, barre chords are difficult to play and you are not a failure if you cannot play them at an early stage in your career. I blame Russ Shipton for this, because he slips in barre chords practically on the second page of his learn to play guitar book and it made me get quite depressed. But apparently they are just difficult and it is fine to work up to it,

This song has a line in it (you just kinda wasted my precious time) that I was going to say to Partner if we ever split up. We just never did though (also I might have to shave my legs if I was looking for someone new) so I told him instead, and he agrees that it would have been a very cool moment

And the third thing is, if your song requires a barre chord which you can not play, just play half of it as if you do not play the lowest string it makes the shape your hand has to make (technical term) much easier. It sounds fine! Sing a bit louder over that bit! Because, remember this: if you actually become a technically proficient guitarist, as Dan says, you end up like Eric Clapton: and who wants to be like Eric Clapton? Or you end up doing horrendously boring guitar solos and everyone looking at their watches or sneaking off to the bar. So, it is fine to be a bit crap, as that is in the spirit of anarchy, improvisation, the Sex Pistols, and so forth. So if you will excuse me, I shall now go and work on my ironic anarcho-punk feminist reclamation of Jolene (do you know what I think? I think Jolene didn’t give a stuff about Dolly Parton’s husband. I mean, is there anything in that song that indicates Jolene has actually even interacted with him? There is not. I think Jolene was just hanging out, doing her thing, thinking, I don’t know why that blonde woman over there keeps giving me the stink eye. Never mind. Because I, Jolene, I have other stuff to do).

In which I discover I am Not Quite The Thing

2012-02-22T09:00:00.000-08:00

So, had to share this one with you, especially after my previous post. As you know, I’m experimenting with different crafts/ arts and seeing where it takes me, and I was at my art class earlier (next week we’re doing reflections and I’ve got to take a reflective object. If anyone can think of anything interesting that I can get in my bag and which will save me taking in a spoon, I’m all ears).

(Middle one mine) - this is an appropriate pursuit for the middle classes (although I suspect mine was a bit bright)

I was chatting to a couple of other women in the class at break time. Now. Cambridge, as a place, is in many many ways very lovely: I meet lots of really nice, interesting people, there’s always lots to do, and it’s somehow a place that’s very open to new experiences and new ideas. And then, very occasionally, I meet people who are snobs *cough* Partner's ex-girlfriend *cough*. It doesn’t happen very often, but it does happen sometimes that it is made very clear to me that I am Not Quite The Thing. Since I am by now fairly sure that whatever The Thing is I am probably having more fun not being it, it just makes me laugh a bit but yes, had one this morning, whoosh.

Knitting this would not be an appropriate pursuit for the middle classes. I might just as well start watching The Only Way Is Essex, wait, oops

So, we were chatting about how long we had been painting, and I said, cheerfully, that I had only just started, but that I did some other creative stuff and it was quite a different experience; to which they said, what, and I started off on my litany of all the mad things I do. ‘I knit…’ And readers, I got no further. One of the women said ‘Knit?’ in a tone just like Lady Bracknell and the handbag (really, she did), and looked at me just as if I had marched in and announced a liking for polyamory and then mooned at her. ‘That’s right’ I said, cheerfully, because I am quite hard, also if anyone ever tries to outsnob me I have the killer blow: because, I can always say ‘and my partner is a medieval latinist of international repute’ and that is the kind of thing that works in Cambridge. ‘I knit’.

The woman visibly quailed, because clearly this is not something you should mention in the hallowed presence of Oils. I warmed to my subject, because, I do not take offence at people unless they actually insult me deliberately, as sometimes people are just a bit gauche. I didn’t have long to wait, though. ‘Yes’ I said, with a smile. ‘I knit very intricate lace designs [look. People. Allow me some poetic license, also, never put yourself down in front of people who are waiting to do it for you] and fairisle. It’s very interesting and creative’. ‘Well’ the woman said with a small horrified laugh. ‘Knitting is not something I would ever do’. ‘Really?’ I said, politely. ‘Normally people tell me about the lovely things their grandmothers used to knit’ (they do normally tell me that). ‘Well’ she said, as if I'd actually dissed her family. ‘Knitting isn’t something I or anyone I know would ever do’. ‘What a shame’ I said, politely. ‘Because knitting is so incredibly fashionable these days’ at which another woman backed me up that actually everyone these days was knitting. ‘Well’ the first woman said. ‘I don’t know about that. I wouldn’t care about… [tinkling laugh] fashion. I shall go and continue with my painting’.

O the silkiness of Natural Dye Studio Precious! But, this would be anathema to the Serious Artist. Having this yarn is worse than watching TOWIE. It is actually as bad as getting Vajazzled. It is directly morally equivalent

Readers, I am polluting that class with my shallow knowledge of craft (and fashion), and all I can say is, it is a good job I did not announce my intention of tie-dyeing a quilt panel this Friday, because, it may well have knocked that woman out, and who wants the moral dilemma of whether or not to have a go at CPR in a draughty church hall? I’m afraid I am going to continue with my class, though, because it’s a lovely atmosphere (no, it is), and the teacher’s great.

But, next week, I may be wearing my Jaali.

An Interview with Jo, Arts Therapist

2012-02-22T08:35:00.000-08:00

So, readers. I have been thinking recently about art, craft, differences or not differences, and what the function is of both (because, I am a diehard utilitarian. I am essentially the Mr Gradgrind of the craft world), and, when Jo Ash, who is an arts therapist in Cambridge (you can get in touch with Jo through her webpage here), kindly agreed to do an interview for me, I thought I would explore some of the thoughts I had been having. So I hit Jo with all my questions in a beady-eyed fashion and she was a very interesting, thoughtful interviewee. Thanks for doing this interview for me Jo!

Jo, still looking cheerful even though I'd made her do my questions

1/ What art forms do you encourage people to use in your sessions, and what are the most popular?

We use a variety of art forms – painting and drawing, clay, musical instruments. On my placement in Fulbourn I see clients in an amazing room with a piano and drums, but normally we don’t have access to instruments quite like that! – Puppets are very popular, also I use a sand tray (placing things in it), and postcard images. I also sometimes use drama techniques, and movement and body work. Clients can bring in stuff that they think would be helpful – for example, clients often bring in music.

Choosing postcard images is very popular – clients often have some shame issues around creating art. They’re told at school that they’re bad at art and that stays with them. So clients choose images that represent a part of them, and then we talk that through.

[I asked Jo if anyone had ever wanted to express themselves through fibre crafts, and, interestingly: no-one ever had. I’m wondering if it’s because knitting (for example) isn’t a very immediate medium: not only does it take you forever to, say, express your irritation at someone by knitting a giant circular shawl with skulls on, on the final chart now, but, you have to learn how to do it first. But, I don’t know, and I imagine this varies for people].

2/ Do you find people have an initial resistence to expressing themselves through art?

People definitely do – particularly the clients I’ve worked with. Everyone’s a little bit apprehensive to start with. Often it’s because of their background – they’ve grown up thinking they’re not a very creative person. People might also have difficulty around being spontaneous and playful. Therapy is often about facilitating play. The power of using arts is that it has the potential to get straight to the unconscious, and that’s very exposing. There can be lots of transference from the client to the therapist. [We discussed here as well a bit about the fear of facing the blank canvas, or blank whatever: how perhaps the ultimate fear is that as soon as you make a mark you reveal your unconscious, and it’s not good enough. I realised that this is actually a difference between craft and art for me: with craft, I don’t have the facing-the-void problem. I just don’t have it. I don’t know if that’s an issue of media, what I’m expressing, or my own preconceptions, though].

3/ What types of issues do you find respond best to art therapy?

It tends to work well with exploring different aspects of the self, therefore, it’s useful for people with a fragmented sense of self. It’s good for people who are perhaps feeling flat and stuck, and want to live to their potential. I’ve also used it on people who are psychotic, although not all therapies are effective in that case: for example, where normally I might get someone to create an image and then journey into it, I would only do that if someone had a secure footing in reality. Music tends to be useful for psychotic patients: it gives structure.

4/ Do you think some people are intrinisically more creative?

I like to think that everybody is creative, although it might be more in some people’s temperaments – but there is also creativity in other things. There is creativity in living a good life, for example, not getting stuck in old patterns, and having the capacity to be in the moment. Art can be used as a kind of rehearsal for life, and if people have taken risks in the art relationship, they can then transfer that over to life.

5/ Do you think there is a difference between craft and art?

I started off as a textile artist, and I like the idea of fusing craft and art. It’s all about the aesthetic for me: if craftwork moves me then it’s the same to me as painting. I think the intention in creating the work is important.

6/ Do you think art and a well-balanced mental state necessarily go together? [I’m going to analyse myself now. I think this question is expressive of an anxiety that you lose some part of yourself through therapy and/ or becoming functional. Not to worry though, I think I’ve some way to go yet].

I think there’s a lot of romanticism about creativity and genius, and how they can come together, but I think in actual fact sometimes the more in touch someone becomes the more that layer of doubt and neurosis is taken away. [Jo explained she had undergone lots of therapy herself, as this is mandatory for anyone acting as a therapist to clients, and I shall now spare you my rant about how This Should Be The Case In All Voluntary Sector Professions Involving A Client-Professional Dynamic, although, I did not spare poor Jo: anyway, this had helped her a lot in confronting feelings of ambivalence towards her own art, e.g. the idea that she had to do art obsessively for it to count. I do think there’s a very strong cultural idea about the Mad Driven Artist which is actually worth unpicking if you think about it because also it’s generally post-1820 or whenever].

7/ What was your experience of working with Kids Company?

I worked in a couple of primary schools for Kids Company – it was inner-city London, and could be quite challenging. There were some difficult psycho-social issues, and people were quite resistent to therapy – it wasn’t in their culture. There was a lot of shame about admitting you might be struggling. It was very enriching though – clients enrich your practice – you learn a lot from them. Often people have very traumatic early beginnings, and it’s quite inspiring to see how they work their way through them.

8/ Tell me about the art you do!

I paint in oils – I do abstracts with a figurative dimension. I’ve exhibited with Changing Spaces – I used to have a studio when I lived in Leeds, but I don’t have one in Cambridge. I need to get back to it!

Thank you Jo! You were a lovely interviewee, and you gave me lots to think about. I am off to ponder what I am expressing and how, and I am also going to think about unhelpful Artist Stereotypes I might be holding on to. I am actually sitting here wondering what art forms I gravitate to naturally if I am actually trying to work through something emotional, and, I gravitate to writing and music (not saying I do either well, but, those are the ones I go for, and I shall be telling you about my adventures in guitar playing in a future post). And, interestingly, it is writing and music that have been difficult for me over these last couple of years. You see: lots to think about. Thank you again Jo and all the best with your practice and your painting!

Nice Knitalong you may wish to do

2012-02-20T04:56:00.000-08:00

Just quickly popping in to point you in the direction of Chrissy at Stitched Together's beautiful shawl which she designed. Chrissy is hosting a knitalong for this shawl on Ravelry, and if you take part in the knitalong you get a pound off the shawl pattern (details in the linked post).

Obviously I'm not doing enough things generally (HA!) so I shall be taking part, and I'm rather excited. I've even bought some expensive (for me) yarn (and here's a hint: it isn't Noro). My paypal account squeaked in protest, but my hands have stopped shaking now so it's OK, and I may show it to you when it arrives. If you're looking at this and thinking, no, that is too complicated for me, I have seen the pattern and it looks perfectly doable, so, if you've done any lace at all you should be absolutely fine (or if you haven't, but, you're adventurous and dogged, you should be fine too). The only slight difficulty is that unless you use a cobweb weight yarn, you will probably have to buy two skeins of laceweight, but, you will definitely have enough left from the second skein to make a whole other shawl (perhaps it is just me that worries about these things?) - anyway, if you are wanting to knit a very pretty semi-circular shawl this may be the time to do it. KAL begins on 5th March, so get googling for laceweight and limbering up.

And I hate everything about you

2012-02-19T03:59:00.000-08:00

Readers, this is a very serious post. I need to warn you.

It is possible that you may be sitting around one day without anything immediate to fill up the part of your brain that deals with urgent issues. Perhaps the bath is not leaking for a change and you do not have to regrout it. Perhaps Partner (or, your equivalent) has not got flu/ a phishing email that is confusing him/ something he wants to tell you about a realisation he has had about literary intertextuality. Perhaps the state of the house would not actually cause the man who reads the gas meter, should he perchance call by, to inform the council, so, you do not need to clean it. Perhaps you have sorted out peace in the Middle East, the Greek Default, and have already told Mr Cameron not to be so silly re: NHS reform.

At such a dangerous moment, the following thought may pop into your head: what I need to do, you may think, is, start knitting a cardigan in laceweight yarn. I know! I shall use Noro Sekku! Then my cardigan will cause people in the street to stop, throw their hands up, and say the following: gosh, is that a handknitted cardigan or is it actually Vintage Missoni which may have cost in the region of £450? My goodness, by knitting that cardigan not only have you astonished me with an innovative and quirky yarn/ pattern combination, you have assisted in the reclamation of knitting as a cool thing and not something only partaken in by 45-year-old virgins with too many cats [actually that sounds kind of attractive as a lifestyle to me, does it to you?].

Do not do it. NORO SEKKU IS ABSOLUTELY AWFUL. Look, I try to be nice and constructive on this blog, but, truthfully: it is unusable. It is overspun (apart from the bits that are not spun at all). Parts of it come apart in your hands. It has knots. It sticks to itself and knots up and you have to unravel it all the bloody time. If your hands are at all rough (and look. It is February), you have no chance at all. If you have bought a skein, I would advise you to do the following: dig a large hole in your garden, bury it, come inside and drink gin. Or, use it to tie your tomatoes to stakes. Me, I shall be finishing my cardigan as I am a masochist. But you, readers, you still have a chance: you can save yourselves. Put down the stripy laceweight yarn. Put it down and walk away slowly. I would rather watch a Loose Women marathon on TV than ever use this yarn again. And do you know what? You can actually buy Loose Women DVDs! I have seen them in Poundland! (But: don’t buy one of those either).

I won't keep doing this

2012-02-13T09:02:00.000-08:00

As we march together along this long, paint-stained road that leads inexorably to a huge canvas of a cross-eyed labrador. (Although. While I was buying my Value white spirit in Tesco - I know - the woman on the till asked me if I was painting 'a wall or a picture', and then we had a long conversation about her grandmother who used to paint wonderful paintings but stopped when she got married in 1904. So there we go, you see, art/ craft: uniting women across generations. Get out there and be visible with your craft and remind everyone of their grannies.)

Remember when you had to take your film in to be developed? No-one took pictures of coffee then

Inspiration. This was on the coldest day so far this year. (Yes, that is instant coffee: if I drink real coffee I get overexcited). Look at the steam! Our house is always freezing. I think we have a ghost. In fact, actually I've heard him.

The perspective is not, actually, all wrong, because it is an Interpretation

Work in progress. I'm waiting for it to dry and then I'm going to do more detail and make the colours brighter (advice to aspiring artists: buy a shedload of Titanium White!).

When the things you make have more exciting lives than you do

2012-02-13T03:11:00.000-08:00

Happy Monday! (Says she, brightly). Before I go out to try to start the *^%^%^& car and swear impotently, because, as you will have intuited, my life is non-stop glamour, just wanted to say a big thank you to AC Engineered Knits for showing my rainbow bag that she bought on her blog. It’s a funny feeling (in a good way) to see your things popping up in other places. You feel like saying, hey you rainbow bag, what are you doing over there with your new horizons. Anyway, thank you AC, I am delighted. Also wanted to show you my skirt I made from recycled tshirts:

Not naff. What could you sew, Partner? Nothing

Partner has just wandered past this and called it ‘wonderfully naff’. Partner has no proper comprehension of the Recycled Garment Revolution. I made it from tshirts I got from local charity shops and it’s constructed with kind of a-line panels and godets (I made the pattern, that’s why I sound a bit vague. I never know what you’re supposed to call things). I’m thinking the same shape in different weights of fabric might look interesting. I’m even wondering about felted wool. I shall have to go back and have another look in the hens’ teeth section.

Always use stitch markers. That's my advice. If only there were Stitch Markers For Life

And this is my shawl I am (still) making (arsenic and old lace). You can’t see anything: all you’re going to be able to see until I finish it is slightly bigger white lumps on a needle. I’m up to the teeth of the skull, and, because I Just Don’t Like long rows it’s a bit of a challenge (only psychologically), but I shall definitely finish it (says she, grimly). One thing I will say: if you’re thinking of doing a circular shawl but you’re worried they’re too difficult (I mean, you might also be worried you haven’t got a million hours of your life to spend on one but let’s pretend that’s not a problem), this is an excellent one to start with. I haven’t found any errors in the pattern so far, it’s well explained and intuitive (just pay attention to the bit about moving stitchmarkers – that’s the only place I really cocked it up so far).

This is the chin and teeth of the skull. I can't understand how I can be a person who enjoys something as fiddly as knitting lace. I am having to readjust my self-image

Circular shawls aren’t difficult, but the bit on double pointed needles at the beginning is a bit of a faff, because nupps on dpns and yarnovers inbetween needles is fiddly (if you’re a diehard magic looper it might all be much better for you: just start off on a 100cm needle perhaps and gradually your stitches will fill it? I don’t know). Anyway, I press on, and I’ve worked out that if I do a couple of rows a day I’ll have it done in a month. So everyone give a shout on 13th March and hopefully I should be able to proudly display a giant impractical shawl with skulls on. Skulls on! I’m going through my second adolescence.

(Hopefully it’s better than the first one, though. One word: Bros. In fact, two words: Bros. Acne).

Learning to paint with oils

2012-02-08T05:50:00.000-08:00

OK, quick blog post (I say this then I end up rattling on forever). I did my art class.

I'm pretty sure this makes me an Artist

And do you know what? It was so much fun. I had a great time. We were doing landscapes in the style of David Hockney (the cynic in me says that is because beginners would have a better chance at doing a David Hockney landscape than, say, hyperrealism, but then again, what’s wrong with being realistic and practical about things? Excellent choice of subject, Tom the oil class teacher) and because I am always late, underprepared, slipping on ice and generally crap, I had not bought a picture of a landscape to work from. But I dug out my camera which is always on hand in case a big hairy cat walks past and vogues, and I used this one:

It is a bit dark, yes. I like a challenge

First I did a couple of sketches with oil pastels. I will say to you honestly that when an oil pastel was put into my hand and an A4 sheet of paper was placed in front of me, I felt inadequacy and fear. I think my fear is of producing something that is recognisably a drawing, but is crap, and then not knowing why it is crap so not being able to improve: just being overwhelmed by crapness and despair. I swear bad art actually hurts me physically, I am too delicate for this world. (I have identified Partner’s biggest fear, too. I have shown him these photographs I am going to show you and he said immediately: ‘promise me we will never have to do Cambridge Open Studios. People will all come and look at me.’ I don’t know if Partner has dreams where he is resitting his A-levels naked*, but obviously he fears exposure which you would not think since he is never wearing any clothes.)

And now we will draw a veil over this whole misbegotten episode

So this was my first sketch and it was indeed crap and I did not know why, and I felt sad and inadequate, especially as the woman sitting near me appeared to be producing a Constable. But I looked at it again and I thought: too much going on, composition doesn’t flow, I shall try again. So I did a simple line sketch and I felt a bit happier.

This was the Purple Ronnie of oil pastels. Oils pastels are not my metier

Then I started with my oils and a canvas and that felt much better. For those of you who may wish to have a crack, this is what I have learned so far: you only need to buy (no, I know, thrifty oil painting, I am so predictable), titanium white and some primary colours (blue, red, green, yellow) as you can mix colours from that (I used for my painting blue, white, purple, yellow, green and brown and various mixes thereof). You can apparently get cheap canvases from The Works although also check your local friendly art store (I don’t just say this because I work in one) as they will have a range (and will cater to students so they won’t all be expensive. The words to use are ‘student quality oils’). Oil paints are not cheap, though, so, I don’t know, start off by painting a ladybird? Or a zebra? Anyway, this is where I ended up at the end of today (this is just the background and some tree trunks, I will put the detail in next lesson).

No cross-eyed labradors. I'm going to put branches on the trees and everything

I wouldn’t say it was good, exactly, but I don’t think it is unspeakable and I am not ashamed. Also I can face finishing it. For the next lesson I am going to get some of my own paints, and I may also get a small canvas and have a bit of a go on my own beforehand, I shall see how I go. Could this be a new way to disguise the woodchip? We will see.

* Partner has just walked past and told me that he has got A-levels in Latin, Greek, Ancient History, and Latin Verse Composition. You see at my school they encouraged you to be well-rounded, but at Partner’s clearly they didn’t.

Feeling inspired

2012-02-07T10:49:00.000-08:00

It's snowed here in Cambridge, so I slip along nervously with my big boots on, while cats watch me contemptuously from the tops of dustbins (look, big grey hairy cat! You have four feet! I have but two! I shall not be intimidated!).

A new dawn of inspiration. I have to get up early now, you know. And I'm not a lark. I'm an owl

While it's all cold and frozen outside, though, inside (thematic link! link coming!) I feel more fired up than I have in a while, and I've got a few new projects on the go (pics will have to wait till I am near them in daytime). I've been drafting a skirt pattern to make from recycled tshirts, and today I went charity shopping and actually got some tshirts that will work for it, and, thrillingly, a 100% lambswool jumper.

I'm collecting wool jumpers to make one of these coats (buy the pattern - it's a good pattern), and she suggests that you do your first coat with woollen jumpers that you've washed on a hot wash and felted a bit. Well. I don't know where your local charity shops stock the 100% wool jumpers, but in mine they're normally on the rail next to the hens' teeth. Yes. You will recognise me in the charity shops of Cambridge because I'm the one rifling through the endless sea of George at Asda acrylic, muttering, bloody bloody hell. But no matter. It is a long term project and now I have three jumpers to use (one from today and two of mine that have seen better days. No they don't match. It will be fine).

This skirt is actually rather cool in real life. Reconstructed black jersey, wrap, contrast stitching. However every photograph I have taken of it is JUST HORRENDOUS. It is like those postcards of motorway bridges. Why can't I have an aspirational house that does not have a green carpet or piles of Partner's boxes? Why can't I live with a man who doesn't have boxes? Are there such men? Why have they passed me by?

And I'm going to an art class tomorrow. We are going to be doing an oil painting in the style of David Hockney, this has nearly finished Partner off as it is possibly the most amusing thing he has ever heard in his life. If you remember, I was going to go to a life drawing class but then I thought further about things, and I thought: what am I most inspired by? Nakedness or Colour? (I know what that says about me. Self knowledge is a terrible thing). So, David Hockney oils it is initially, and then I may do life drawing later, as I am exploring Different Expressive Media. My mother has put her order in for a drawing if I do ('can I have something to put above the fire, Susie, although, if it's a naked man could you do his back rather than full frontal as I don't want to be having to explain when Beryl and Roger come round'). I've been thinking a lot about art, craft, the difference (if there is one), and about experimenting with different art forms to Express Myself. Partner is hoping any new modes of self expression will not take up a lot of room or cause him ever to have to leave the house or talk to people, however, I am afraid we are just going to have to see where the Muse takes me. I have to say, it is not likely to take me to a Royal Academy exhibition, but I am also trying to deconstruct the idea that you have to be good at things to try them. I shall be bad at things, and I shall be liberated.

(So when I show you oil paintings of wonky houses or slightly cross-eyed labradors, you may want to work up to being kind about them while I work up to being bad and liberated. We'll get there. It will be fun).

12 things for me

2012-02-03T12:00:00.000-08:00

So, I made a skirt but now it’s too dark to take a photo of it so I’ll have to show you in the next post. Here’s a nice photo I took of some trees instead (we’re freezing our bums off here, I don’t know about you).

There were a million squirrels running about. Squirrels haunt me, they haunt me

I started this year with a Secret List which I’m wondering whether to share or not, because I just have this feeling that the minute I make it official I won’t want to do it any more. There were a flurry of things around the internet in December about 12 things for yourself in 2012, (you could have a look at this flickr group here, or this group on Ravelry), so I made a list of 12 things (well, 12 things and a bonus) I would like to make for myself. Since I’ve now made one of them and am about halfway through another I might give you a small peek (I don’t think you’ll put me off, nice readers, I just worry as soon as I commit it to pixels I’ll go off the idea!).

Also, I have now spent all my wages in advance on a pair of deeply impractical shoes. So, all these things will be made from string and an old bedsheet

Anyway, making things for myself has made me think about a couple of things. The first one is that when I make things for myself normally I tend not to value them, or, not quite not value them, but, I don’t mark them out as being of value, if that makes sense. So I don’t always finish things perfectly if they are just for me, and I wear them around the house and with hoodies. I wondered, though, with the 12 I’m (possibly) making: what if I finished them all nicely, sewed labels in, and wore them as if they were expensive designer pieces I’d bought from a shop, i.e. with accessories and makeup, gasp? How would that feel? How would it affect how other people saw them? So I am going to try that just as an experiment,

And the second thing is something that has always been an issue with me: I don’t want to make the things that it would be useful for me to have. I can’t tell you how strongly my taste in handmade things tends towards the dramatic, the one-off. What would be useful for me to have in my wardrobe is 3 more navy blue tshirts, a pair of trousers that fit, and a couple of fine-knit v-neck sweaters. Do you know what, though? I’ll just make what I’m interested in making, I’ll buy the plain things from TK Maxx if I need them, and we’ll see what happens. What use is a navy tshirt anyway without a huge circular shawl with skulls on to set it off? Exactly.

On shawls, shoes, and (Marks and) Spencer

2012-01-30T11:23:00.000-08:00

OK. So someone pissed me off sufficiently the other day that I got 2 charts of my shawl done and one and a half repeats of a third, and I am motoring on.

You can't see much, it's all scrunched up. It is a shawl though

I mean, I’m not sure it’s a sustainable situation, because, what will I do next time that person pisses me off? Knit a bigger shawl? Start a lacy car cover? On the bright side, I am now in a position to tell you that this shawl is nowhere near as hard as it looks, although the central bit on double pointed needles is a bit of a challenge and I had to unravel it once. But I was propelled forward by the force of, Grrrrr. So that is my advice to you, dear readers, if someone in real life ever pisses you off too, make lemons into lemonade and sublimate your anger by knitting something large and complicated, preferably with skulls on. Because not only can you then be smug in the knowledge that the person who has annoyed you would not be able to do the same in a month of Sundays, but also you can imagine jabbing them with your needles. Knitting: keeping people sane and not bitter since 1463 (or thereabouts).

I have a thrilling new job, go me, where I have to dress in black, so I have been looking for black shoes. Because, at the moment I am wearing some very cool ankle boots for work which are covered in silver studs, but I am worried I am following the letter not the spirit of the dress code (I am so crap at dress codes. All my instincts are off). I don’t wear black normally and I don’t have many shoes (I have been wearing either Birkenstocks or Uggs for two and a half years, you can do this when you are self-employed) and let me tell you, going into Marks and Spencer to attempt to buy some was a bit of a shock. Now, I am not going to diss Marks and Spencer because I actually think it is ok, and also my mother will ring me up and tell me off, but I am going to say this. You know how Marks and Spencer do that special range where it is all polyester and blouses, and looks like the clothes they wore on Ever Decreasing Circles? Well, for some reason, the Marks and Spencer in Cambridge has got rid of all its stock to concentrate on that range, apart from some Jeggings which they have placed carefully in a corner. Polyester pleated skirts! (Not like the ones that sold out in Jigsaw!). And those extra-wide fitting black shoes which lace up and make you look as if you have bunions even when you don’t! Which look as if they’re expecting to be worn with American Tan tights! Where has the Limited Collection gone, hey hey, Cambridge Marks and Spencer? That is what I would like to know. Have we in Cambridge been judged and found wanting in a sartorial fashion? And if so, why is this, because I would like you to know that I myself have read Vogue at least within the last 6 months and know all about colourblocking.

Anyway because of this shock I failed categorically to buy shoes from a shop (I know there are other shops), although I have ordered some online which may or may not fit, so I will have to wear my dodgy studs for a little while longer. Luckily I managed to get some skin tight black trousers quite cheaply, so now it will look like a deliberate aesthetic choice, albeit not really an appropriate one. Does the dress code say, inspired by Ozzy Ozbourne albeit a few pounds heavier and with odd bits of leftover wool attached? I think until my new shoes arrive we may have to pretend that it does.

Shiva's Shawl

2012-01-25T08:37:00.000-08:00

This week, I am thinking about destruction, transformation, letting go, Shiva, the Tower card in tarot, that kind of thing. And I can't concentrate on knitting any of the sensible, useful things I've got on the go, because I want to knit this, which really does tie in quite well. So, I've bought the pattern and now I'm off to wind the wool.

Hold my jacket, readers. I'm going in.

These fragments I have shored against my ruins

2012-01-23T11:53:00.000-08:00

I have been ill this weekend (nothing exciting) and haven't felt like doing anything demanding. So I whipped out my embroidery that mum bought me for Christmas.

I haven't done the back very well. But it's a cushion! No-one will see!

This is going to be a cushion cover. It has this flower pattern at all four corners. You do it in cross stitch and french knots, and it has the little crosses already printed so it is, and I mean this in a good way, satisfyingly mindless and lots of fun. You don't have to think, and that was what I wanted, sitting huddled miserably on the sofa under my rainbow blanket.

In a way you could see anything where you follow a pattern/ guidelines as uncreative. Knitting pattern, sewing pattern, recipe, anything (and, just to get on my hobby horse one more time, this is basically the argument Germaine Greer uses in The Female Eunuch to show that all the things women do are rubbish and they should be doing something more exciting. Please don't make me dig the book out and quote properly).

A rook, basically just hanging out near the jobcentre

In another way, the presence of a structure doesn't mean the loss of creativity: it means creativity has something to use as a jumping off point. I see your argument Germaine, and I raise you Jacques Derrida's concept of différance. Besides, are we going to tell someone staging Tristan und Isolde that it's just telling people where to stand and picking a few frocks, and there's no creativity involved because someone else had already written it?

So I plough proudly on with my cushion cover (and thank you to the person who left me a comment about Sublime Stitching a while ago - I had not looked at their designs for ages and I like them very much. I am considering buying the sugar skulls one but I have not the first idea what I would embroider it onto. We don't have embroidered anything in this house. Pillowcases? A tablecloth? Answers on a postcard).

How Aunty Kath unwittingly fed my addiction and now we are all doomed

2012-01-21T11:41:00.000-08:00

You may not know this about me, but, I have a weakness for patterned ceramics (no, really).

Look! It's the Frankencrochet squares! I made a cushion for the kitchen! (Pine cones also courtesy of Aunty Kath)

When I say a weakness, I mean they make me twitch and reach out greedy grasping hands. I just love patterns. When I was young and we never had any money (violins), my mother would not let me buy anything with a pattern on because she said I would have to use it a lot and I would get fed up of it. Well mother, despite the fairisle cardigan incident where I do concede your point, you were wrong wrong wrong, and if you had let me buy that duvet cover I wanted in Atkinsons in Sheffield circa 1987 I imagine I would be an actuary with a labrador and an Aga by now. I love all pattern. I love modern Scandinavian. I love mid century modern. I love brown and orange 70s clichés. I love Denby Arabesque. More than all of those I love Orla Kiely. When I decorated the kitchen last year on 3p, a spit and a polish, I felt I was morally justified in buying new mugs and I wanted Orla Kiely ones. Readers, the moral anguish I went through trying to justify to myself the cost of those mugs. I calculated the cost many different times with my translucent blue calculator. I compared prices. I googled. I ebayed. I decided in the end it could not be justified and I bought coloured ones at a quarter of the price from John Lewis and I was almost content.

You see how the colours work together? I really really don't need to buy any more of the AMAZING PRINTED MUGS. Please stop me

Then at Christmas, Aunty Kath bought us two Orla Kiely mugs. Two mugs! I carried them home with pride and delight. What I should say to you now is, look how well those mugs go on the shelf with my coloured John Lewis ones which tone very nicely. Now my patterned ceramic itch is scratched and I will never want patterned ceramic mugs again but will be content and will turn my mind to higher things. I will read George Monbiot columns in the Guardian to the end and not give up half way through and make biscuits. This is what I should say. The unfortunate truth, however, is that Aunty Kath has, however innocently and kindly, provided the Patterned Ceramic version of Crystal Meth and now I want More. More! It is like Toblerones to Alan Partridge, Curly-Wurlies to the Vicar of Dibley, men who have married their own horses to Jerry Springer, turtles to that strange man on Emergency Vets. I cannot be trusted. I cannot leave well alone.

And actually, Aunty Kath also bought us that toaster

I convinced myself I needed a ‘special new container to put the herbal tea sachets in’. Readers: I did not need it. I wanted it. And now I find myself googling Orla Kiely mugs once more, in case in the year since I last looked they have fallen in price to 50p each, or in case there is a special offer of 80% off which is only available to, say, people who have successfully lived with medieval latinists for more than 10 years. They have not. There is not. But I do not think I am strong enough to resist buying another couple. So many wonderful patterns! {Twitches}.

I may need lots of little ceramic containers to keep all my spices in?

Besides, I just know that if I just collected a few more mugs I could give it up. I know I could. I just need those mugs first. And we’ll pretend I never even looked at the cute little red jugs because honestly where would it end? Rehab and embarrassment. ‘Hello. My name is Susie. I’m a mugaholic. I started off not being able to decide between patterns, and now we can’t get into the house and I’ve had to sell next door’s cat on ebay to fund my habit.’ Tears, outstretched arms. ‘I’m admitting I need help.’

Marimekko do mugs as well. I’m just putting that out there. Please someone, stage an intervention.

Crocheted glass (and you thought Wollmeise was hardcore).

2012-01-19T11:18:00.000-08:00

OK. First wanted to say, thank you to Craft Corners for featuring me in their best of the web – go and have a look and admire how I am not very good at writing a blurb about my blog ;-), also the other blogs featured do look rather nice (one of them makes lingerie! I have on occasion made my own knickers but I have to say to you that mine are functional rather than attractive like that).

Second, I wanted to share with you an artist I discovered while I was in Derbyshire at New Year. I was sitting in the B&B one night, feebly eating a ginger biscuit and flicking through a little book on local artists and I thought, wait, can that really be… crochet rendered cunningly in glass? So I wrote the website address carefully down in my diary and checked when I got home and yes. This is Catherine Carr glass, and she makes the most beautiful things.

They are made from a recycled glass product and she actually crochets the glass. Her granny taught her to crochet (and these are her patterns!) and it’s a way of honouring her grandmother and keeping alive craft traditions, and also celebrating the history and skills of women workers in northern textile mills (Derbyshire is a big area for textile mills and if my dad had a blog he would tell you all about it). They’re based on pineapple crochet patterns, which I really like, and the skill involved in crocheting them out of glass must be amazing (my crocheting doesn’t look even like this when I’ve done it in wool and blocked it, thinks she looking ruefully at the cushion cover she has just finished).

I think these bowls are really wonderful, and I have added them to my mental list of things I will buy next time I have spare money, although that will probably also have to be, spare money and a table/ sideboard to display them on. Therefore, spare money, a table/ sideboard, and a house big enough that all flat surfaces are not immediately colonised by Partner ambling along with a pile of papers. But if the stars ever align and circumstances come together I would just love one of these bowls.

Thank you very much, Cathy, for letting me show your beautiful work. Next time I am in Derbyshire I will see if you are in any exhibitions near me and come and look (don’t be scared). Do have a look on Cathy’s website as it is all very impressive and there are many more pictures - for some reason I'm having trouble uploading today.

OK. Back to spring cleaning (I know it’s only January. I’ve been clearing out the cupboard under the stairs. Do you know how many empty jam jars we had got? I could have opened a shop. A very boring shop. This is what happens when you aren’t organised, you acquire duplicates, then 3 years down the line you end up on Hoarders in a room full of unopened boxes from QVC. Lucky I’ve nipped it in the bud, isn’t it?)

Frankenknits number 2: Frankencrochet

2012-01-15T10:37:00.000-08:00

If there's anything better for using up scraps than granny squares, I've yet to find it.

No, I know I don't deal with the ends in the most efficient way. I'm happy being faintly crap

This may be a cushion for the kitchen, I don't know. I'm making them from ends of yarn that are too small to sell on ebay and that normal people would just throw out. But I might get a cushion out of it! And I thought it would give me practice joining squares in any case, before I tackled the throw. (I'm in a granny square loop! Help! I may never get out!).

Quick babbling about etsy shop, ++ a coupon code with a great big discount

2012-01-11T10:58:00.000-08:00

OK. You may or may not know because I have been neglecting it a bit over the last few months, but, I have an etsy shop, yes I do, and in it I put stuff I make and it is lots of fun (I mean, for me it is). I would like to say, I have a kind of focus on modern patchwork, but first I need you to just translate that in your mind so it doesn't sound pretentious.

The middle bit isn't creased in real life. Why does it look like that in the picture? I am rubbish

Anyway, in the spirit of getting-everything-going-for-2012 (don't worry, I'm going to stop this soon and slump back into my habitual torpor ;-) ), I want to start building up new and exciting stock for my shop. Which gives me clearing-out-current-stock fever (look, this happens to me in January - I'm currently emptying the house of ALL THE THINGS), from which you may profit, if you wish. I have a coupon code for you - INWITHTHENEW - and if you enter that when you checkout anything from my shop, it will give you a massive and never-to-be repeated 40% off the price of anything in the shop, all of which items I promise you are lovely (well, I like them!), and it will also mean I can get some things moved out of our spare room and then I might one day be able to see the floor. And then another day I might work up to hoovering it (or possibly not, to be honest).

Now, I don't want to bore you on my blog too much with stuff about the shop, because I imagine you mostly come here for the cats and the drawing naked people and stuff like that, why would you not. So can we say, if you're interested in new stock, coupons, discounts and general UBD (Useless Beauty Designs!) news, could you email me on uselessbeautydesigns [at] googlemail.com and just say Subscribe in the subject line (you don't have to say anything in the email unless you want), and then I'll put you on a mailing list and you'll be the first to know. (Apart from Partner, and he isn't very interested). I can promise that the chances of me spamming you are zero. Zero, people. Newsletter once a month or so, and I definitely won't pass on your address.

Now. Who else has an etsy shop? If you leave me a link I can come and spy on you and add you to my contacts (don't be scared. I don't bite).

First WIP Wednesday (for me) of 2012

2012-01-11T04:51:00.000-08:00

Right. This is my first WIP Wednesday post of 2012, indeed I have not done one for a very long while. As ever, thank you to Tami for hosting WIP Wednesday, that triumphant union of alliteration and a great meme idea, and, if you go to Tami’s blog you will find lots of other posts, and who knows, you might find inspiration or a new favourite blog.

I am afraid this post is just going to be a great big pictorial splurge of everything I am currently making and my random thoughts about it all. (Although, just think, we may have a WIP in the future which is a drawing of The Erotic Line, wouldn’t that be exciting. I have looked through my stuff this morning and I have found a sketchbook! God knows how I have acquired a sketchbook, but that is making it all look much more promising. I could frame my sketch if I did one, and put it in the living room! Anyway on with WIPs).

It will be ugly, but, it will go through the washer

First, a confession. God. After everything I have said, everything I have written, etc etc, in the darkest days around November/ December I became seduced, like a thunderbolt, by the Lizard Ridge Afghan, and I bought a couple of balls of Noro Kureyon to try out a few squares. Now I really, really, don’t want to sound like I’m damning this pattern with faint praise, because, I’m really not. It’s a beautiful pattern, simple to knit, really effective, and the Kureyon looks just beautiful – I think I can hand on heart say I love every one of the billion or so projects on Ravelry. But I got half way through one of the squares, and I thought, what the hell am I doing? I hate short rows, and I’m going to end up with a great big hairy blanket I can’t wash very easily (Kureyon isn’t going through the washer on a wool wash any time soon, trust me on this one) and £150 lighter. Because however much I might have told myself I was spreading the cost over a year – and I was – that’s how much it would have cost. And I had a slightly tragic evening where I made a mental list of what else I could spend £150 on, from the gas bill to raised beds for the garden and a new bra that doesn’t make me look like Brunhilde (or, you know, ALL OF THOSE THINGS AND ENOUGH LEFT OVER FOR A HOT PIE,) and it became clear to me that I would rather spend £150 on almost anything else than wool for a blanket I would have to handwash and keep away from Partner, who spills. So I am going to sell the leftover wool on ebay and pay for a yoga class – hooray! And I have dug out my granny squares, and I am going to make a blanket I will be able to drag into the garden and sit communing with nature under. Cost of blanket so far = £0. All from leftovers (although I’m sure I’ll need to buy a few balls at some point).

Gosh, is it an accurate representation of the New York skyline or is it a knitting needle case

This is a patchwork needle case I designed and made – with embroidered stars! I’m hoping this is going to be published somewhere so perhaps forget you’ve seen it for the moment ;-). There may be more embroidery on this blog in the future. In fact I may even drag out and finish my Subversive Stitching cross stitch which says Bite Me, as I gave up on it because it seemed daft, but now I have heard Penny say Bite Me on the Big Bang Theory so I know what it means (I think it means, like, Sod You or something).

Quirky contrast stitching! You eat your heart out, Phoebe Philo

OK, this is going to be a skirt (this is my design). My other thing I have been thinking is, when I make things for myself to wear, I don’t always finish them and value them properly. When I make things to sell or for other people, I weave all the ends in, sew in a nice label etc etc, go the extra mile, but, for me, I whip it out from under the sewing machine and start wearing it with my oldest jumper with holes in to take the rubbish out. So, what if I made a few things for myself and finished them carefully, label and everything, then wore them as if they were expensive designer pieces, i.e. ironed, and styled, with accessories? Just to see if it felt any different. And this skirt is my first experiment. OK, it looks odd now. I shall show it to you again when it’s finished and we’ll see what it looks like then. I’m making this from leftover black jersey and tshirts which would have been donated, so cost so far = less than £5 (I had to buy new overlocker thread), although I may have to buy some fabric for a waistband, I’m not sure.

2mm needles. You could take an eye out with those, you know

My Odi and Amo mittens! (These are my design too). They got neglected in the Christmas knitting, but, I’ve dragged them out again, and I’m halfway done with the first one. I think I’m going to have to do something to highlight the ampersand (on the front - this is the back) a bit better, but, when I’ve testknitted my first pair, I shall see what I think (I’m trying to avoid stranding three colours. I’m not going to manage it). I shall keep you updated,

Do you know how much fun it is to try not to twist a 288 stitch cast on? It's no fun at all

And, my Anne Kingstone vest. This is a new WIP. You may remember (you don’t have to. I don’t make you take notes), last year a mail order company sent me a dead cockroach (by mistake) and gave me some compensatory hush money, which I spent on a knitting kit which I had a bit of trouble ordering but got eventually? (I don't necessarily recommend this as a method of affording yarn, but sometimes the stars align). Well, this was the kit, and I have started the vest, which is A Great British Knit, which used to be the Knit Camp Vest but which understandably Anne has renamed (if you have not discovered Anne’s patterns, she has got some really nice ones, you might want to have a look). I am on the corrugated rib at the bottom, and it is quite slow going so far but I am enjoying it. I will be honest and say that I think my chances of knitting this thing successfully are not high – I am mostly worried about gauge, and I am suspecting I will get 10 inches in and have to unravel the whole thing and restart with a smaller size, and that will be a Hideous Performance and I will be very sad and depressed. But we’ll see, and I don’t know unless I try, and there’s no rush, is there? And I’m not going to get a wonderful quasi-ironic nerd-chic woolly tank top with sheep on unless I knit it myself, am I now? I mean, the new Boden catalogue has just come through the door and I could check, but, yeah. I’m pretty sure there are no fairisle sheep in it. (Flexes fingers). Perhaps I should just knit it, see what size it ends up, then either lose weight or put it on to fit: altering my own gauge, so to speak. That might be a better option for all we reluctant swatchers.

OK, going off to do useful things (ha). Do have a look at the other WIP Wed participants, and enjoy the sunshine!

Things that are utterly misconceived, 2012 edition

2012-01-10T12:34:00.000-08:00

Occasionally I think, hmm. I should get out of my rut. I should do blue-sky thinking (that's a link for my photo)

There's blue behind the cloud. Look more carefully

And I should try something new.

I am kicking around the idea of trying 12 New Things In 2012 in a wild, feel the fear and do it anyway kind of vein (bearing in mind that I think I am being adventurous when I go to a different Co-op, so please don't be expecting things that you yourselves would think are exciting. You have to lower your excitement threshold here so it is almost on the floor).

One of the nice things about living in Cambridge is that there is always something going on so I am in a good place for trying new things. I have been out today and I have been snapping possibilities.

I am sure Hoopla Impro are very good, but improvisation is what they will make me do in hell. Then they will bring on the black granny squares for me to sew together

This makes me want to say something flip but I can't think of anything. If I'd done an improvised comedy workshop I'd be able to, though

Readers: I cannot do comedy improv. Please don't make me. For those of you who have seen The League Of Gentlemen, Legz Akimbo casts a terribly long shadow, also I used to hyperventilate in Drama lessons at school. And I am not sure I fancy a talk about anti-capitalism. It is bringing back terrible memories of the time I attempted to do an MBA and found myself in a tutorial on branding saying to everyone imperiously, what, have none of you read No Logo? (I don't have an MBA).

So, I wondered about trying a life drawing class. I have looked at the website and I could do it on a Monday morning. I have to be honest and say that my current finances would naturally propel me more towards being the life model than paying to draw the life model, but that may be a New Thing too far. We might have to work up to that one. Perhaps next December. Oh God, can you imagine seeing the dimples on your bum rendered in 20 different versions of pink pastel? I would have to be knitting quite a bit more lace to get quite a bit more self-esteem before I attempted that.

So what do you all think? Should I try a life-drawing class, and report back? I thought I might go for The Erotic Line one at the end of January, as then I wouldn't have to engage with colour and also presumably I would only have to buy a pencil. In fact, I might already have the right pencil! And then I wouldn't need to buy anything at all. Or do you think a life-drawing class on a Monday morning in a community centre in January sounds as if it might be a bit awkward generally? (Goosepimples. And I can't draw, in case you were wondering).

What do you think? Would you be interested in a report if I did it? Because I could probably brave embarrassment, dimply bums and penury for the sake of an anecdote...

A Rave From The Grave

2012-01-09T06:56:00.000-08:00

I'm procrastinating trying to translate some measurements for a quilted Thing into metric so it can go in a magazine (I can only quilt in inches, I'm monolingual) so to take my mind off things, I was thinking. Rachel over at Growing Things And Making Things did a really nice post about her year in review, and I thought of doing one, but then I got a bit sidetracked (I managed to thread my overlocker, I lost Partner's favourite bootleg tape, I was mobbed by pigeons, Stuff Happened). So instead I thought I'd show you my favourite post I did last year (I mean, show you again - you've already seen it once).

I'm not sure this was anyone else's favourite post, but look. It rhymed. It amused me. It was part of the 'try something different' day of Blog Week, and I remember quite a few people doing really good posts that day, so if you search by the tag in the title (the funny letter thing) you will get lots of other posts on the same kind of them and you will probably find some fun things, and then we can have more Raves From The Graves popping up! (Are we having another blog week this year? Says she with interest, fluttering eyelashes at various people).

Do any of you other bloggers have a favourite post you did from last year? Post yours! (It's alright. We can do retrospection in January, it's in February we have to snap into line and look resolutely forwards).

When I am rich...

2012-01-07T02:53:00.000-08:00

I will not need truffles, champagne, luxury leather goods or adoring acolytes drinking sloe gin from my stilettoes. All I will ask for is the joy of never having to put together a flat pack anything ever again.

Because our house is very small and has a lot of books and mad knitted/ crocheted/ quilted items, to keep things under control I have decorating rules (no, honestly, I do). So we have: white walls throughout, beige curtains throughout, and Sculptural White Light Fittings throughout. The other advantage of all these things is that they are cheap, i.e. there is a limit to how much you can pay on a beige curtain even if you are getting it from somewhere posh (I am not). Anyway I bought a Sculptural White Light Fitting by these people at a vastly reduced price on Amazon and it nearly broke me.

Not quite a bud, more of a hot mess

I thought I would have to box it up and send it back to Amazon with a note saying, I am returning this because I am just not clever enough to put it together. I thought I had served my apprenticeship with the ones I put together from Ikea but clearly this was not sufficient. Please in future add the minimum intellectual baseline one would need to meet in order to assemble this item to your listing, as I think this is vital information and would prevent Fury, the chewing of white plastic, and swearing at loved ones.

No, that is what it's supposed to look like, I checked

Anyway I got there eventually. I think it looks ok. I'm not sure how secure it is up there, but we'll be fine unless I have to change the bulb before I've recovered emotionally. That might make me a bit grumpy.

Also an NB: Tink at Master of A Thousand Things is having a giveaway to celebrate her blogiversary - you might want to go and have a look - it's a skein of yarn from Candy Skein, and it's open for another week or so (go Tink! And congrats on your blogiversary!).

Frankenknits

2012-01-05T03:31:00.000-08:00

I'm not going to suggest to you that I think this is pretty.

Actually I do think this bit is quite pretty, it's the rest of it that's questionable

But it is the first Finished Thing (TM) of 2012, so I'm putting it on here. I seem to find myself, readers, with a bit of a stash of yarn that has built up, mostly leftovers from projects, stuff that was misconceived, that kind of thing. And I hate having leftover yarn hanging about in bags! Hate it! So, in an occasional series of Frankenknits, I shall try and use it up over this year in useful objects. Because, this shawl may look bright and mad to you now

OK, yeah, but, imagine this: hot night with a breeze, outside an expensive restaurant, white vest top, tasteful gold jewellery, silk palazzos. Better? And now I've got the shawl, I just need the rest of it

But I think it will be useful in summer for sitting outside (in fact, if you remember my post on how to wear shawls, I am envisaging this shawl in the first of these scenarios). In any case, it is more useful as a shawl than it was in the partial skeins of Kureyon Sock and sock and mitten that didn't quite work and which I have unravelled. And there is enough left to go in a pair of Frankenknit socks at a later date. Go Frankenknits! Where normal aesthetic rules do not apply and Thrift is our watchword! Like the turkey leftovers of knitting!

(Pattern is the Holden Shawlette - it's free, and very easy, good if you want a first lace project and also simple enough that it won't look too mad with variegated yarn - I did a couple (2) more repeats of the lace pattern, and I think this is a decent size shawl).

OK, off to pick up the dustbins. It's windy! Is it windy where you are?

Throws I love, reprise

2012-01-03T11:16:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to add a throw to my previous list of Throws I Love - look at this one, isn't it amazing.

Look at the colours! Amazing. Photo/ project by franknjim i.e. not by me, I am not sure I am clever enough at crocheting for this yet

This is the Cathedral Rose Window Afghan, and this lovely version is by franknjim on Ravelry, thanks franknjim for letting me use your photo! The pattern is available here, and it's actually based on a window in Notre Dame, Paris. This means that my mother, who went to Paris with me this year and has also been telling me how she has not got a crochet throw, ought to start work on this one immediately. If I might recommend Stylecraft Special DK, mother, and a 4mm crochet hook, and we will all admire the finished article when you send me a photograph. I would have thought you would have had it done in a couple of weeks and it should certainly take your mind off your labyrinthitis (poor mum has got labyrinthitis, it's very nasty. What she needs is a good complex crochet project. Cures all ills).

Here Be Dragones

2012-01-03T10:12:00.000-08:00

Picture heavy - apologies for those of you on slow computers like me!

Partner and I are back from the wilds of Rural Derbyshire where we have been visiting my family.

The genuine Bakewell Pudding is a bit of a shock if you're not used to it. I've existed solely on refined sugar since the middle of November so I'm fine

We stayed in a very nice B+B down the most unspeakable road I have ever encountered. I am a city driver right to the bone: I can park in tiny places, I can gesture at taxi drivers, I can navigate a one way system, I can do U-turns on a pin and I can do emergency stops when big fluffy cats decide to wander across the road aimlessly. I do, however, like there to be flat tarmac, a line down the middle of the road, and lights (you know, every mile or so). Our B+B was across a moor. Apparently 5 minutes from my parents’ house and the whole thing turns into Wuthering Heights, who knew. Luckily Partner (who does not drive) was able to keep up a helpful and encouraging commentary during our slightly tense journeys, which were made even more exciting by my having a sinus infection which brought on a migraine and meant I could not see properly. ‘It’s all fine, Susie! I don’t know where we are but we can’t have gone far wrong! Gosh that fog came on rather suddenly didn’t it, perhaps put your fog lights on? Oh, they are on. No, it’s fine, I can see at least a foot in front, keep going – look, it’s lifted a bit! Now I can see a 50 foot drop on this side, ooh, that’s pretty – no, don’t worry, there’s a small dry stone wall here so you’d hit that before you went over, and I don’t think 50 feet would kill us anyway – oh, ok, there’s no wall here and it is quite sheer, just keep over that side a bit, you’re absolutely fine – look, it’s the fog again! Do you know, I don’t think it is fog, I think we’re actually driving through a cloud!’ Sympathetic face: ‘You seem a little bit tense, Susie – are you alright? Now, come on. It’s not as bad as that time we got lost in Suffolk’. (Actually it wasn’t as bad as that time we got lost in Suffolk. I thought I might never get out of Suffolk).

A cloud on a hill. It looks pretty now, imagine driving through it at midnight when your navigator's hyped up on Homity Pie

Anyway, I have unclenched now (almost), and I am going to show you my Stuff I Made before I move on with the new year. I have a list of Stuff I Am Going to Make in 2012 but I will reveal that later (I mean, don’t lose sleep. I just enjoy making lists). Now, in this after-Christmas time of year, normally there are slews of people on message boards whose Homemade Gifts Have Been Dissed. This serves as a pairing to all the articles we get before Christmas about How You Should Not Make Homemade Gifts Because They Are Crap And Cheap And No-one Wants Them. Perhaps the former recipients write the latter articles, I do not know. However, I am very sorry to disappoint anyone who was hoping for some scandal, because, everyone was very nice about my homemade things and I think they liked them! So, thank you family for being open minded and not making me have to do a blog post about How Handmade Is Not Always Appreciated (hmm. Connection?), even when I presented you with glittery fudge. This is what I made:

Look, I hadn't pulled it straight. I was knackered

Can ya tell what it is yet? It's a graphic equalizer!

Dan’s crocheted throw, using this pattern from The Gingerbread Lady. It's a graphic equalizer! It's ironic retro cool! In crochet! Readers, this damn near killed me. It was not the crocheting, it was not the sewing together: it was the black yarn. If I ever do anything in black again, I will do it in July, or, I will do it when we have paid an electrician to wire up high-intensity halogen spotlights which will all be trained on me while I sit on the sofa crocheting and watching repeats of The Big Bang Theory (please all go and watch The Big Bang Theory if you haven’t seen it already. I keep asking Partner if he has ever met anyone who later went on to write American comedy because Sheldon is so like him, and he says, no, but he is a bit worried about one of the characters in The Archers).

Look how nice and soft it looks, like the ears of a friendly Husky

Aunty Maureen’s candle flame cowl, ends woven in, go me with my tubular bindoff and cast on, go me x 100.

Socks to wear while feeding chickens or chasing Ginger Cat round the back of the radiator

Aunty Kath’s colourful Noro socks. Aunty Kath says she is going to have a pedicure before she wears the socks, tell her she does not need to bother! (Also, Aunty Kath, forgot to say: wash on a wool wash, dry on the radiator).

Come on Kirstie Allsopp, let's see you make some mittens with gnomes on them, lady

Pixie hat and mittens for Dad. Pixie theme for reasons we will not go into,

With recycled buttons. Never let me see you throw away a button! Hoarders be damned!

And cabled socks for mum (mum, you will have to handwash these, sorry).

++ I made little food hampers with blackberry vodka, chutneys, coconut ice, and glittery fudge, which was useful, because when we were driving backwards and forwards Over The Wild Moor, I was reassured that if we broke down we would be able to survive for a week although we might have had a bit of a sugar rush and been quite drunk. But now we look ahead to 2012. What will it bring? (Apart from the credit card bill?). Will it bring crafting success, money, the ability to do a provisional cast on, the ability to thread my overlocker without tears and the aid of Pat from Sew Creative down the road? Or will it bring miles of black acrylic and despair? Which will it be?

Onwards, onwards into 2012, and let us find out!

Contains artificial colours. Hooray

2011-12-27T08:34:00.000-08:00

Oh hooray, it is after Christmas and now I can actually start SHOWING YOU the things I make again, rather than just referring to them obliquely (although, all the mad things I was knitting/ crocheting? I don’t actually give them till New Year. So in the New Year we will do a big post where I show you everything, then we will move on emotionally and I will never mention it again, especially the granny square project after which I am considering counselling. Receiving, not giving). Hope you all had a lovely Christmas – we did, thank you very much, and I have eaten possibly my own weight in Christmas pudding (I think I am the only person in the world who actively likes Christmas pudding). Also I pulled a cracker and got a mini compass and I am delighted, as now I have discovered that when I watch TV I am facing True North. I wonder what that means in terms of Feng Shui?

Anyway. I made coconut ice. I made this because my mum likes it, so I thought at least it would have one fan. I knew though if I made it I would end up with a vat of it and it would take up all of the fridge, and thus it proved.

I fear I am exposing my lack of good fridge management

But I think it looks rather attractive.

It's actually rather nice. Probably because it's made almost entirely of SUGAR

You are probably thinking, how has Susie got it to be that attractive pink colour? Surely it must be through some kind of organic, natural means, possibly involving distilling essence of beetroot, or stewing plums, or combining cinnamon and turmeric or something similar?

You can see where I cut my finger. That's because our breadknife is so blunt I have to practically stand hitting the loaf with it and sometimes it gets me on the rebound

I am worried I am going down a bad path, as you can buy these paste food colourings for about £2.59 in Hobbycraft, and they give you a wonderful, intense colour. It is a far cry from having to mess about with a tiny bottle of cochineal, just a few drops of this and you get a proper, decent pink. Also they sell all sorts of unusual colours like turquoise and orange. I am sure they are very bad for you. But look at the nice pink! Think of the dramatic things you could make! (Bad path. Stop me now).

And I made a cowl for Aunty Maureen. I am 99.99% sure Aunty Maureen does not read my blog, but, Aunty Maureen, just in case you have a laptop of which I was previously unaware, please look away now, thank you.

I'll weave the ends in before I give it to her, it won't come with a bodkin attached

This is the candle flame cowl, and is a free pattern on Ravelry, here (easy, quick knit, doesn’t use much yarn, recommended!). I made it from some Malabrigo Worsted which I bought and knitted earlier in the year (it was a shrug), but, the shrug made me look truly terrible, so I decided to unravel it and use it for presents. I learned tubular cast-on and cast-off for this project (you could just do a normal one though if you wanted), so I felt that someone ought to come round to my house and present me with a knitting medal when I had done. In case you are ever tempted to try tubular cast-on and cast-off: for some reason, when you are transitioning from 2x2 to 1x1 rib (i.e. when casting off), you have to twist the stitches the other way (by picking from the front) to when you are going from 1x1 to 2x2 (i.e. when casting on, when you twist by picking from the back). That means nothing to you now, but wait, if you ever do tubular anything you will encounter the same problem I did and then you will think, wait, didn’t I read something about this at some point? On that blog where she clearly has no idea of proper fridge management and is harassed by cats and Hare Krishnas? Unless you are an expert already in which you will have read that and thought, God, she knows nothing. That is obvious.

Close up of stitch pattern. Nerd = me.

Anyway I do not know if Aunty Maureen will like it, but at least it will be an additional layer of warmth for when she is roaming in the early mornings, walking Jasper The Very Wiry-Haired Dog. So I am sure it will come in useful. And what more could one ask of a present? (Considers coconut ice, thoughtfully).

An Interview With The Gingerbread Lady

2011-12-21T11:34:00.000-08:00

OK, I have an interview for you, this time with The Gingerbread Lady.

Killer bunny egg cosies. Let us all pause to appreciate the mind that conceived this idea

Now. I try not to be prescriptive, but I am going to have to insist that you read The Gingerbread Lady’s blog because she is very funny, and not only is she a fine crocheter and knitter who actually gives you helpful things like patterns (you see, not like me, although if anyone ever needs a map of Cambridge with all the liveliest cats marked out I’m your woman), but she alerts we crafters to little-known dangers. Who knew about the Yarnpire before the Gingerbread Lady did her exposé? And I am exactly the kind of person who would be targeted by a Yarnpire {looks at Partner suspiciously}, so I feel this is vital for me to know. Who knew about the horrors of the exploitation of the mermaid and her fluffy buttocks? I see the Gingerbread Lady as a brave investigative journalist, braving the frontline of the crafting world to bring us the stories, not shying from controversy, and also updating her blog often enough to stop her mother complaining, which as many of us know can be a challenge. (And for those of you/ us in the throes of Christmas knitting, let us just revisit this post from Knitting and Crochet Blog Week and weep quietly with self-knowledge). Anyway, the Gingerbread Lady agreed to do an interview for me so we could explore some of these issues in more detail, for which I am very grateful. Take it away, Gingerbread Lady.

***************

1/ How do you manage to crochet big things with hundreds of motifs and then sew them together without killing people? Multiple times? Have you achieved a higher level of zen than me, and if so, how can I achieve it too?

An example of the kind of thing she has made that would finish me off

I tend to like patterns that involve a lot of colour changes (had you noticed?) and I like choosing the way the colours work together. In fact, to be honest, sewing hundreds of motifs together doesn’t particularly bother me. [Note from me, you see: higher level of zen. Off I go to study my book of Hare Krishna mantras, perhaps the ones at the end deal specifically with crochet. Ommmmm…]. Maybe because I tend to crochet larger projects in panels, so I have a sense of satisfaction when I get one panel done - I look at each panel as an individual piece and then try to work out how it’ll look as a whole. Essentially, it’s like a massive jigsaw – but with an element of unpredictability. If I were the kind of organized person who worked out a colour chart beforehand (and I’m not. For the Réalta blanket I had to reverse engineer the colour placement from photos in order to create the chart that comes with the blanket), I would work out a harmonious colour scheme and work faithfully from it. I don’t. I take clashing colours as a personal challenge and try to bend them to my will with a 5mm hook.

The short answer to this question, though, is that I was probably Amish in a previous life. Mr Gingerbread and I recently watched a documentary about the Pennsylvania Dutch and, midway through, he turned to me and said, “You really want to move in with them, don’t you?” Sadly, I do. I would not be scared by the thoughts of hand-sewing a bazillion-piece patchwork quilt. And I would rock canned tomatoes like nobody’s business.

2/ I love your Yarnpire series (although I was a bit worried at the implication in the first one that it wasn’t, in fact, a good idea to seek out smouldering men with an aura of misunderstoodness and then try to fix them, as you would be surprised how many of my relationships this casts into doubt). How can we, as yarncrafters, recognise a Yarnpire before it is too late and we discover them in flagrantis, nibbling ecstatically on our Malabrigo semisolids?

A very good question indeed, Young Susie. Essentially, we female crafters have to be on guard at all times. There are some telltale signs, though: you mentioned the aura of misunderstoodness. This is a crucial element of the Yarnpire and if you break it down, you will notice that the general misunderstoodness is highlighted in physical form by several key elements, e.g.

… floppy hair

Biologically-speaking, floppy hair in men seems to unleash some wild rush of helper hormones in women. They see the floppy hair and they become overcome by desire – and it seems to be a freaky mix of a desire to ravish them and mother them at the same time. Hugh Grant cashed in on this trend in the 1990s and Justin Biber seems to be doing so today – quite frankly, I have to put his success down to the floppiness of his hair because I can’t see any other reason for it. Elvis Presley had a controlled floppiness in the form of a gelled quiff, which went down a treat with the ladies. But please note: Elvis also had two other crucial Yarnpire elements, namely

… the ability to raise an eyebrow quizzically and a tight-lipped sneer

Which are terribly important. They project a kind of stand-offishness which does not repel women but rather makes them want to pelt the Yarnpire with their cashmere-soya mixes. Clearly, as a woman, you presume that the Yarnpire is struggling with his inner desire for your person, when in reality he is mentally inventorying your entire stash and trying to decide what to eat first.

… and a cloak.

Superman. Zorro. The Phantom of the Opera. The blondie elf from The Lord of the Rings. All men that clearly project a need to be fixed by the lurve of a good woman.

A handy guide for you to print, cut out and keep in your purse because you never know when one will strike

3/ This is the controversial question. Obviously you’re the intrepid blogger who exposed the plight of the mermaid, inhumanely harvested for her bumfluff, and I think that really got the Bumfluff Issue put firmly on the eco radar. But there does seem to be a lot of emphasis in contemporary yarncraft on‘valuing your work by using the best materials’ which sometimes seems to me to exclude anyone who is on a limited budget or who wants to make something enormous. What do you think, and what are your favourite yarns to use?

When I marry my next husband – a floppy-haired, mealy-mouthed, be-cloaked millionaire – I will make sure that my 2-metre by 1.5-metre blankets are made of mermaid bumfluff. In the meantime, I’ll stick with acrylic for my bigger projects. There’s a place for every kind of yarn and I’ve been known to use everything from 55c acrylic from the local supermarket to €20 silky merino. [I wish we had 55c acrylic… I wonder if they have it in Aldi?] What I don’t like is the snobbery involved: I hate the pretentiousness and the speshulness of crafters that try to devalue others’ work and – boomerang compliment ahoy – elevate their own work based on their yarn choices (“I mean, acrylic might be good enough for you, but I personally only work with merino because, well, I tend to knit more high-end stuff.”)

I don’t have a favourite yarn, but use a lot of Bravo Schachenmayr (our standard acrylic yarn) for blankets, and have an extensive collection of beautiful German sock yarns that utterly belies that fact that I cannot knit a sock for love nor money.

An extremely sensible use for sock yarn

4/ Colour. You like it. I like it too. a/ Does your mother like beige like mine does, and, if so, do you think we’re enacting something terrible and Freudian, b/ what inspires you to put your colour combinations together?

No, my mother has no special leanings towards beige. Or, if she has, she has kept them hidden. Like me, she tends to be type of person that attracts fluff and stains (we pose a particular kind of attraction for liquids), so we’ve never been able to wear beige or white without inadvertently creating a camouflage pattern with a cup of coffee and a wayward chocolate éclair.

What inspires me to put my colour combinations together? Contrariness, mostly. I just pull out a dozen skeins and wonder what on earth they’d look like if I crocheted them all together? Often they are so spectacularly ugly that they veer back up the scale towards ‘interesting’ or ‘compelling in a weird way’. This is very exciting to me and one of the reasons why I can endure sewing together 150 tiny motifs: I have to see if it’ll work. At the moment, though, I am working on a very demure crazy patchwork blanket in subdued autumnal tones with – guess what? – lots of beige.

Not beige!

5/ Various people keep writing articles, don’t they, about how a/ handmade is naff b/ crafting is unfeminist, and we all grind our teeth and go and knit/ crochet something or bake an ironic cupcake just to be awkward. Is this an attitude you’ve ever encountered in real life, and how do you think the public perception of crafts has developed generally over the last few years?

You know, this is something I’ve been thinking about recently because I’ve found it to have changed dramatically in the space of the last 12 months. It may have to do with the fact that (apparently) I’m getting older and my crocheting/knitting no longer seems at odds with, say, my astonishing youth (= because it’s gone.) Whereas before people used to raise an eyebrow and make some comment about all the free time I seem to have, nowadays more and more people admire my ability to knit and crochet and finger my stuff enviously. It might have to do with the recession and the media-wide brainwashing that we all ought to returning to a simpler and slower time (a simpler and slower time that includes high-speed internet, Twitter and smartphones, of course). Not that I have a problem with that: I think it’s great that programmes like Kirstie’s Handmade Britain have hit such a mainstream nerve. It makes me feel dead cool – decoupage? Yeah, I’ve done it. And papier maché? Puh-lease, I can whip up a bucket of wallpaper paste faster than you can say “Rip up newspaper”. As for the dark needle arts? I a yarn wizard, people.

[Note from me, Dan and I were saying recently that one of the best things about getting older is suddenly you can do whatever you want without worrying what people think and this is true. When I was in my 20s I was cool and was a Secret Crafter, now I wander round Hobbycraft with pride thinking, hmm, mosaic placemat kit! Excellent idea! And stay in at night reading recipes for Things To Do With Elderflowers].

6/ I imagine everyone and their dog says this to you, but, your blog is just hilarious. What motivated you to start blogging, and what’s your favourite thing about it?

I used to – and still do – contribute to various crafting forums (fora?) and December two years ago, a post I’d written provoke a number of responses from people asking me to start a blog because I was “so funny.” This is not really how I see myself. In fact, I think I must seem like a very serious person, because one of the things I’ve heard a lot over the years is, “You know, you’re actually quite funny!” -delivered in a tone of shock, kind of like, “Galileo, you’re right: the world is round!” However, I am very easily amused and am entranced by the ridiculous. That’s why I like your blog, actually, because I suspect that you are, too. [thank you ;-) ].

My favourite thing is the fact that you build up a relationship with your readers, you recognise names and read their blogs to learn about their lives. It’s very … nice. When I first started blogging, it felt like I was shouting into an empty room. I am still immensely flattered that people other than my parents read my blog and I still feel almost shy when someone leaves a comment.

7/ What other crochet bloggers/ designers do you admire? Show us some crochet porn. (I mean metaphorically - let’s not google that, though).

This is going to make me sound horrible and snotty, but I don’t have a favourite crochet designer. I’m more interested in looking at other stuff, non-crochet elements, for inspiration. For example, Arabian tiles or Celtic knotwork. I also love the crossover from other crafting areas: I think I’m going to buy one of Kaffe Fassett’s quilt books for Christmas (Happy Chrimbo to me!) because I think there must be a way to recreate something as beautiful as his quilts using a hook and some sock yarn. It’s just a hunch; we’ll see how it pans out in the New Year.

***************

Thank you very much, Gingerbread Lady, for being interviewed: I think we all learned something there. I’m forced to reveal now that although Partner does not have floppy hair (because I cut it and I can only do the one style), he does have a sneer, and, in his youth (we have an age gap), he was a punk, and he wore a big black cloak and a dog collar (the leather studded kind, not the vicar kind). So I am extremely worried, and I think I am going to have to monitor the situation. I had better keep reading the Gingerbread Lady’s blog.

OK. Off to deal with the recycling, oh the glamour. Happy Solstice everyone!

Beset. On the Solstice.

2011-12-21T10:22:00.000-08:00

I don’t know if you think I make this up but I don’t.

Looking at you looking at me looking at you

Just after I had taken this photograph after going into town earlier (I do understand this is odd to start with, going round photographing cats), this cat bounded across, leapt onto the dusbins, miaaaaaowed me over, stood up, put its paws on my chest and licked my nose. And this after I had fended off a Hare Krishna nun with a gold nose, although not very successfully, as I now have a copy of the Hare Krishna Mantras and she has the last of my cash which I was wandering off with to buy lunch with from Greggs. It all worked out in the end actually, though, as the mantras are very interesting and I got a pastry from M&S while I was buying spaghetti sauce and put it on my card.

I must say though, I was a bit worried about that Hare Krishna nun. Looking at the expressions on the faces of the people doing their last minute Christmas shopping, I would say it was only a matter of time before someone said to her, Hare Krishna nun? That sounds a good idea. Let me get my handbag, and before she knew it she had not a donation but a grim-looking woman in Boden sitting at the communal table trying to get drunk on green tea, shouting, thank the Absolute I never have to look for another pair of socks for Uncle Jeffrey or cook that bloody turkey. I won’t take part in the chanting, thank you, but could someone nip out for a bottle of cava and show me where the TV room is so I can watch Eastenders.

Anyway. I wanted to say thank you very much to Julia and Omlair who have awarded me blog awards, thank you very much, ladies! (Aunty Kath tells me off via my mother if I say that, so can I assure you I mean it in a postmodern ironic but appreciative kind of way). And also to say that tonight is the Solstice, the shortest day, so we are sloughing off the old oh hooray, and welcoming in the new, which is why my thoughts are turning to Resolutions. As next year is 2012, I had a couple of ideas. Firstly, some people on Ravelry are knitting 12 things for themselves in 2012 (group here if you want to chat about this with people who do not photograph cats), and I thought that might be a fun thing to do although I would be splitting the 12 between knitting and sewing. And my other idea was that I would quite like to do ‘a brave or different thing every month’, possibly something involving leaving the house, gasp. So for January I thought I might do some mad kind of exercise class, for Feb I thought I might go to one of the millions of talks they have in Cambridge, Dan has promised to take me to a particular club night, I appreciate that none of these things sounds very wild initially but who knows, by October I may be bungeejumping. I’m afraid I have to do my anecdote here. My mother once resolved to do ’60 different things in a year’, and had a book in which she wrote them down. She checked her book after about 9 months and it contained the following entry:

1/ Tried a different kind of pants.

So I am worried this would be where I would end up. Anyway, we will see. Happy Solstice everyone, I wish you a merry sloughing of the old and seeding the new, and remember to be ware of cats as they seem to be particularly lively at the moment…

Christmas Tree decorations are what happen when you're busy making other plans

2011-12-18T10:55:00.000-08:00

I have put up our Christmas tree in time for Yule. When we were growing up, my brother had a favourite Christmas Tree ornament, which was so hideous I am surprised it didn’t give me nightmares. It was an orangutan made out of a coconut shell, so it was all hairy, and it was about 3 times bigger than all the other ornaments and had a thick bit of rope to hang it on your tree with. I can’t remember where Dan got his monkey from (someone from my family will ring me up now and remind me), but every year my mother refused to have it on the tree and every year Dan would sneak it out. I myself once had a really attractive Christmas tree. We have a black tree, and we had special posh white LED lights from John Lewis, and a silver and purple ornament theme, and I did not allow anything on the tree which was not glass. It looked great. It was brief, but it looked great. Well, the next year the lights broke and I had to drag out my multicoloured ones from Woolworths which are 15 years old, and Partner had become rebellious because apparently ‘none of his favourite ornaments had been on the tree last year’. Yes! To my horror, a coconut monkey situation had developed without me realising. I have been trying to sweep it under the carpet ever since (‘Oh, I don’t know where Naked Santa is’), but I knew I was doomed when Partner picked up something quite unspeakable in a shop in Islington this year and sent me off to the counter, stating that ‘we buy one new ornament every year! It’s a tradition!’.

And we had to take our time selecting 'the one with the bushiest tail'

I think it is supposed to be a cat. It looks to me like a flying fox, but, Partner checked the label. It seems to be made out of a brush, honestly, I am having flashbacks to the monkey. I thought in for a penny in for a pound this year, and so the other ornament you can see just behind the brush-cat is a fake mink ball I bought from Habitat many years ago when I thought we could have Iconic Modern Design Integrated Into Our Lifestyles. Partner was confused when I brought it back.

Partner: Is it supposed to be a testicle?
Me (gritted teeth): No. It’s a furry ball. It’s an ironic take on the Christmas bauble. It’s from Habitat.
Partner: Only I thought, you know trees are phallic symbols, so I thought you were decorating it with testicles.
Me: It isn’t a testicle. (doubtfully). It’s modern. It’s fashionable.

I think I am just not very good at trees. But the brush cat and the testicles (there are three) honestly pale in comparison to Naked Santa. I actually am a bit ashamed of Naked Santa who Partner bought from Woolworths one year when I was too tired to do Christmas (aaand that was my first mistake). I can’t imagine how Naked Santa got through the planning meetings (‘we’ve got a new design! It’s Santa, but he’s kind of like crossed with a cherub, so he’s naked with a winning expression, but it’s OK! His beard covers everything!’).

And this, in a nutshell, is why Woolworths closed

I mean, there are no words, are there? I just hope no-one looks too closely at our tree. Since I was having Brush Cat, Naked Santa and the Three Testicles on the tree this year I thought, why not have Prague Pig as well. So here he is.

Now there's a sophisticated Christmas ornament

Prague Pig is from Prague (as his name suggests). I don’t know why pigs are festive in the Czech Republic – perhaps you eat them at Christmas? And I don’t know why I was walking round Prague one July thinking, never mind the castle and all the restaurants serving 30 different varieties of dumpling, what we need to put our energies into is finding a mad ceramic Christmas ornament. Anyway somehow I came home with Prague Pig and to be honest I like having him on the tree more than I liked the one amazing year when my tree looked like one from a magazine. I had better go now as Partner has just wandered off stating his intention to rearrange the tree to create a kind of a tableau where ‘brush cat is chasing Naked Santa’. I may have a soft spot for Prague Pig, but I am drawing the line at that. I have my purple and silver glass ornaments, and I know how to use them.

'Twas on a starry night

2011-12-13T10:49:00.000-08:00

Two sparkly bullets I dodged recently:

1/ Did not buy sparkly gold hotpants from TopShop even though I was drawn to them like a moth with questionable taste to an artificial-fibre flame.

I'm slightly ashamed to say that I have got shoes which would go with these

Although I could probably get into these hotpants with a wing, a prayer, and a very small lunch (look, I'm not suggesting it would be pretty, only that it would be physically possible), where would I wear them? And how much would I have to drink before I felt quite convinced that sparkly hotpants had been a good sartorial choice? And what would that lead to? And how old is too old for sparkly hotpants? (for all of you who are thinking, 17 or indeed 5 is too old for sparkly hotpants, I would like you to know that I once wore a tutu – a proper tulle tutu – to work when I was a senior manager (i.e. at the stage I should have known better). It looked good. I wore it with a fitted tank top because I think if you’re going to wear a tutu you need to keep your top half streamlined).

2/ Embroidered a star on a certain something (which I shall hopefully have finished to show you soon) without screwing it up.

Best to do it on fabric where you can see the threads, that's my Top Embroidery Tip

I have always been nervous of trying embroidery because I thought it would be hard, but, actually, it is not (I mean, obviously the star is not complicated, but, you know, I conquered my fear of embroidery floss and everything). I always like that really seventies kind of satin-stitch embroidery, so if it turns out I am able to go near a bit of floss without hyperventilating I may experiment with combining it with patchwork. We shall see.

I promise I won’t ever embroider hotpants. Well, I won’t embroider hotpants and then wear them out of the house.

Throws I love

2011-12-12T11:49:00.000-08:00

OK (gathers thoughts). So, first, I wanted to say, thank you in particular all for the lovely thoughtful comments on my last post, I really enjoyed reading them. I sometimes think we have reached a critical tipping point on this blog and now the comments are better than my posts, unfortunately for you all though this does not put me off, and you will have to put up with my ramblings about cats (and what a cat I have for you today) and the black squirrel for a while yet. Secondly, my poor brother Dan has got a bad tooth and his face has swelled right up, this is what I can gather from talking to my mother although I cannot hear her very well as she has labyrinthitis and can only put me on speakerphone as if she puts the phone near her ear it makes her dizzy and she falls over. So could we all shout together, Dan, get well soon. Thank you.

Readers, I have throws on my mind, and in my perambulations around the internet I have found a couple of really pretty ones which I wanted to show you. Thank you to all the people I bothered who have given me permission to show their throws! I have a slight ulterior motive which I will declare now, and it is, that all these throws I am going to show you would look fabulous if you made them in Stylecraft Special DK. So if you have spent all your money on Christmas, not been thrifty like me (oh, ha ha) and unravelled things to knit socks for your mother, rest assured you are only about £25 + cost of pattern off from being able to produce something enormous, bright, and utterly, utterly unique (and possibly cheaper if you buy it from here or are cunning). And Stylecraft Special DK is always the same colour wherever you get it from, so you could spread the cost over the year, or, £2 a month! (Stylecraft don’t pay me. I just like it. The colours are so intense they glow. Look, you know me and subtlety).

First, a throw by that Dominatrix of Modular Crochet, the Gingerbread Lady. Pattern here.

Photo by the Gingerbread Lady. I want a sexy stone wall to drape things on (I wonder if they'd arrest me if I draped my stuff over one of the colleges? I wonder if I'd be got by a Proctor?)

Realta means star in Gaelic, and I think this throw is stunning. Let me just advise you from current bitter experience that if you are going to join black crocheted bits together, I would do it in July’s bright sunshine, not the half hour we get in December (7 rows down. 5 to go). Not only am I in awe of the Gingerbread Lady’s pattern writing and colour combining ability, I am also in awe of her eyesight. I think this is the kind of throw where you could really play with colour combinations and backgrounds.

My next is a free pattern, from Tangled magazine, which I had never heard of but is definitely worth a look: Bullseye. Lovechild’s is my favourite version (and thanks to Lovechild for permission to use the photos). I just love the way she’s used the colours on the grey background, it really sets them off:

I actually really like that headboard as well

And so does a certain other creature, proving again my law that where a huge complex crocheted/ knitted item is, there will a cat be. This cat is called Mr Darcy, and with this picture and that information I feel Lovechild has essentially won the internet.

It is a truth commonly acknowledged that a cat in possession of a hugely furry underbelly must be in want of a crocheted throw

I loved this version of the Sunflower Afghan – I think this is an absolutely beautiful throw.

Partner has instructions to stop me ever crocheting a throw again. Every time I show him a pattern for anything he looks nervous and says, but would you have to crochet squares?

I am not an advanced crocheter, but this is on my list for if I wake up some time next year and think, hey, I have not embarked on a ridiculously huge epic project for a while (look, this is going to happen, indeed it will probably happen around March). This is KaliKong’s project (and thanks, KaliKong, for permission to use your photo) and I am very jealous of it! Pattern is here. I could also see this in really seventies-style oranges, browns and beiges.

Now let me show you a throw from a duo whose designs I really admire, and if you have not looked at their other designs please go and look now, gasp, and then return. This is by Pat from Woolly Thoughts, and their website is here (and here are some more Woolly Thoughts illusion designs on Ravelry).

I want this throw and I also want an empty room with tiles

This is the loveheart throw. (Do you have lovehearts in America?). It’s an illusion knit, so, if you look at it full on you don’t see the pattern but if you look at it askance you do. I have dipped my toes into the waters of illusion knitting in the past (the alien illusion scarf from Stitch 'n Bitch) and, although the patterns are complex, the actual knitting is not difficult so long as you don’t mind following a chart (I love a chart). So this throw would be very doable. I couldn’t resist showing you another Woolly Thoughts design, this time by Steve, although it is not strictly a throw (a small throw perhaps? Or knit a big border?) – the Marilyn Monroe illusion.

Knit your own picture! I think this is great

Isn’t that just amazing? I love this pattern (pattern here) and it’s on my list of things to get when I have a bit of spare knitting time (I would do a cushion to start with). Not to bang my drum, but I actually think a really bright neon colour of Stylecraft Special DK would work particularly well with this. In fact, I believe that if Andy Warhol were around today and had taken up knitting, Stylecraft Special DK is what he would be using. Indeed, I am sure of it. I hope that encourages you.

What are your favourite throws?

(I am thinking now, Partner is actually a fellow of a college, I wonder if we could just nip up when I have sewn my epic thing together and drape it over their walls for a few artistic photographs? They have got some nice walls. It is not as if he is much trouble generally, he does not go to high table or bother the porters unduly. I may broach that one when Partner has opened his Chardonnay. I would be like Kaffe Fassett with his quilts but with slightly more dubious legality).

Celebrating Susiemas/ Redefining Yule

2011-12-07T10:01:00.000-08:00

OK, I am afraid it’s looking a bit like we’re not going to be able to escape it. Very soon it will be Christmas, and Christmas does bad things to good people. I myself blame the John Lewis advert, which I think is a subtle plot to make anyone who does not have a middle class family who all like each other feel bad about themselves, and which this year is even worse. The Christmas Pressure madness does different things to us all: for some of us it makes us crochet epic things until we get a crick in our neck which makes us look like Quasimodo: for my mother, it makes her embark on a Quest to Rediscover The Spiritual Side of Christmas.

Light in darkness, quod est demonstrandum

This is a challenge for my mother as she is, how shall I say this, utterly Godless: however, in past years the quest has taken her to carol services in various churches, the nadir of which was when she forced other members of my family to attend a carol service in a chapel which was smaller than their front room, and where everyone had to hug each other afterwards. There was also the incident at Midnight Mass which we do not discuss. Luckily, this year I am here with my one-size-fits-all, spiritual-yet-secular guide to the True Meaning of Christmas which will enable you not only to not have that nagging feeling as you stand in M&S bitchslapping a woman in a cardigan over the last vol-au-vents that you ought to be doing something a bit more uplifting, but which will also enable you to celebrate Christmas in whatever way you choose. Want to hole up all on your own with a bottle of vodka and the cat? That would work. Want to spend every night from now until 2nd Jan in a feast of Rabelaisian excess culminating in you climbing Reality Checkpoint without your pants and hooting? Perfect. Here we go.

Right {cracks fingers}. The thing that happens at Christmas/ Yule/ Winterval, whatever cultural or religious associations you want to lay on it, is, that it is the darkest part of the winter, and the time when the sun is reborn at the solstice, i.e. the days get no shorter and indeed start to get a bit longer (OK, that bit is a bit pagan, but bear with me). Now we all have central heating (although a lot of us now have fuel poverty as well so, you know) this might have lost its emotional charge, but, really, we are one scant generation away from when central heating was not standard and we spent all winter being really cold.

I don't believe there's anything more Christmassy than a reindeer in earmuffs

In my Northern childhood I remember (violins) frost forming patterns on the inside of the window when I got up in the morning. I remember having to stand over the tiny portable heater to get dressed. I remember having a ceramic hot water bottle (I can’t believe we couldn’t afford a rubber one, but, there you go). It was the kind of cold we only feel these days when the boiler breaks or we can’t afford the heating. Just think what a cold, hard, painful, long grind the winter would have been in days gone by, nowadays we worry about the central heating drying out our sinuses or making the cat a bit static, before, we would have been eyeing up Granny hacking up a lung and wondering if she would get through until March, and, if not, who else had the skill to reroof the hovel. So in those circumstances, the light coming back – the spark of life of the new year, the first day the sun went down later rather than earlier – would have been a cause for marvellous celebration. In fact, the festivities might have propelled Granny through it a bit, rather than everyone sitting being miserable and cold.

So what you are celebrating at Susiemas (oh, come on. Let me try to start a cult if I want to) is, the return of the light. In fact it is more than a celebration, it is an act of faith. It is a shot in the dark. It is an assertion of light and joy at the most miserable time. It is saying, although this is the darkest time of the year, I believe that light will return. One day it will be summer. And I am calling back the light in a metaphorical way with tinsel, candles, parties, nice food, or, by sitting on my own with a bottle of vodka, whatever way you want. Now, isn’t that better than all the depressing cultural overlay? You can celebrate however you want! Sod the turkey! Sod the Eastenders Christmas Special! Sod getting drunk on sherry and fighting off questions from Great-Aunty Mildred about why you aren't married yet/ your children aren't like the John Lewis one/ how you failed to become an actuary! Sod giving people chocolates and then getting them back next year with one of the chocolates eaten! (Yes – this did happen to my mother). I myself celebrate Yule, so, we call the sun back by burning a candle (that is the spiritual bit), and I am also going to get up at dawn to greet the new sun (I believe dawn to be at something like 7:45 am, though, so don’t be too impressed. And I’m going to greet it by sitting on our bench drinking a cup of coffee, I’m not going dancing about skyclad). Let’s have new traditions! What do you do?

Yarn shops in London - a guide to a (very) small selection

2011-12-05T07:52:00.000-08:00

Partner has now finished Full Term, and it is a tradition that the weekend he finishes we go to London. It is a tradition because we have done it twice, and, if Partner ever does anything twice it becomes a routine and he wants to do it Forever. Sometimes out of the fragmentary chaos of our lives I do not notice that I have unwittingly formed a pattern, but, Partner always knows: and this can lead to him becoming confused and despairing and saying things like, but, it is the 15th of the month! We always have sausages on the 15th of the month and you are asking me if I want a cheese sandwich! – Anyway, on the first weekend in December we go down to London and I look at wool and have buns and mooch round the nice fabric shops in Soho and stuff like that.

Add caption

We went to Loop in Islington. If you are heading up to London looking for wool, and why wouldn’t you be, Loop is a really nice shop, but, and I am going to try and not sound as if I am damning it with faint praise when I add this qualification, it is generally too expensive for me. I have this unfortunate cash register in my head, which will not allow me, except in very special circumstances, to spend more than £20 on a project, and so I think it is best for all of us if I get my yarn elsewhere. But, if you are in the market for some luxury yarn (I don’t think Loop sells the yarn it sells more expensively than other places – it just sells really nice expensive yarn), this is a lovely place to go, and it also has an excellent selection of books and magazines. Partner says however that he cannot believe people don’t get stuck in the door (it is a very strange door) so if you are claustrophobic or prone to getting stuck in things, do bear that in mind.

The shops nearby are nice as well. Some of the wares I would feel happier integrating into my house than others…

£15 for all the sets? Why didn't I buy them?

And why would you not want disembodied legs adding to your decor?

This is the tweed fabric that, in an ideal world, I would make my Chanel-style jacket out of.

That's right! The bright one!

It is £55 a metre, so the jacket (sans lining/ buttons etc) would cost £110, which is not bad when you think what a Chanel jacket costs, but, yeah. Luckily there is a man who comes to Trumpington village hall who has cheap (but very nice) fabric so I am going to try him first.

Yes, it was as nice as it looked

Cake in the British Museum. One day I will go in the British Museum and actually look at the exhibits. I believe some of them are quite old, I don't know if you've heard the same?

There is a yarn shop called All The Fun Of The Fair just off Carnaby Street which is actually really worth having a look in, because the two times I have been, I have got bargains.

So much nice stuff. I promise you there's yarn too. I bought some of it

OK. You look me right in the eye and tell me that you don't admire a shop which hangs giant balls of acrylic aran on the railings outside as a decoration beyond all things

Once I got Colour Style and a skein of fingering for £5, and this time I got two balls of Austermann Merino Lace in a lovely gothic purple for less than £6, (then in the Bead Shop near Covent Garden I got a bag of seed beeds to put on it for less than £3). It’s a tiny shop right at the top of Kingly Court, but if you’re passing, really, do go and have a look – they’ve got a real variety, laceweight, sock, chunky, allsorts, and also cute knitted things and other bits. Also, it’s only a step away from Liberty, so it’s in a very useful area (and there are lots of places for tea in Kingly Court). And then you could walk through to Soho and buy tweed! – or you could go and look in the pagan shop near the British Museum and have a bun in the London Review bookshop – OK, I’ll leave you alone now.

Squirrel guarding his territory. No-one have any fears with regards to British Wildlife as my extensive experiments indicate they can very much look after themselves

And I even escaped the Feisty Squirrels and made it back to Cambridge in one piece to think about what I can knit with my laceweight and beads. At the moment I’m thinking Frangipani with the top bit beaded, but I don’t know, so if anyone has any suggestions, don't be shy!

Secret Stuff for Christmas

2011-12-01T12:32:00.000-08:00

OK, first things first. I seem to be on a lot of mailing lists, so just in case you haven’t seen these: Vogue Knitting are having a $2.99 sale on patterns until tomorrow (Friday), and Sew Direct are having a half price sale on Vogue sewing patterns. Could someone please go and spend a lot of money at one of these, as I have bought two Vogue sewing patterns which I can’t afford, and I would like someone else to share in the guilt (for a Chanel-type jacket and a princess-seam dress with a fitted bodice and a flared skirt, thank you for asking. And for any of you UK people who live near London, you can get really, really fabulous Chanel-style tweed at one of the fabric shops in Soho – I can’t remember the name of the street – it’s near the market and the dodgy sex shops. It’s really dear - £50 a metre+ - but you don’t need loads, and think how dear a Chanel jacket is. So if you’re confident you can turn out a jacket with the arms sewn on the right way, which I am not yet so will be using something much cheaper to start, you might want to bear that in mind).

Now I just wanted to show you a couple of things I am working on, but, they are presents, so you have to click to see the rest of the post, and I am trusting my family not to click. Family: you are on your honour. OK? Don’t click. Because when you open your strange bizarre Frankenstein-style items this Christmas, you at least want it to be a surprise.

I found a mural, I photographed it, that's just the way I roll. Why would you paint a mural in a back alley? Should I paint one on our house?

Right, rest of you. First, the epic crochet blanket IN PROGRESS.

Set off perfectly by the flowery duvet. £17.99 Habitat sale 6 years ago, not one button left, no wonder they ended up in administration

I made a diagram. It's just like making a quilt. But with yarn!

Yes! It is nearly finished! It is The Gingerbread Lady’s Equalizer Blanket and I remain secure in my initial conviction that this is very cool. This is for my brother Dan. Partner keeps saying how lovely it will look when Milo the not-wolf is wrapped up in it, but Dan, if you are reading this which you are not, you can wrap Milo in it as much as you like because it is acrylic and it will go through the washer and outlast both of us. When I took this photo yesterday I had only done one orange square, now I am nearly done on the oranges. I could not get turquoise acrylic so I am using purple but I think it will be ok. I would like to warn you that if anyone says ‘har har yes but now you’ve got to sew it all together’ then I will be compelled to come round to your house and poke you in the eye, and if you have got a cat I will brush its hair the wrong way, take a photograph, put it on Flickr and start a meme. I will track you down. So please bear that in mind.

Ends to be woven in obvs I do not gift them thus

Hooray for mad colour combinations! I think Aunty Kath will look very fine in these when she is chasing Hairy Ginger Cat around the back of the sofa and collecting eggs from the chickens

These are Noro striped socks for Aunty Kath. I am a convert to Noro Kureyon sock yarn because although it is appalling when you are knitting it, when you have washed it it is actually really soft. There are actually three socks in existence, because when I knitted the first one, the leg came out double the normal width. I do not know what I had done but something had affected my tension so much that the sock is Ungiftable. So these socks were a bit more of a performance than socks normally are because they have the Sock equivalent of the Madwoman in the Attic lurking, never mind, it can stay with the Unspeakable Mitten in the Cupboard of Shame.

I see the end in sight for Christmas knitting. I see it approaching rapidly. Next week I am going to sew. (And eat buns).

The stole and the Sump Pipe: how a project changed my life

2011-11-29T11:07:00.000-08:00

So. I don’t know if you remember my City Stole. Do you remember my City Stole? I tried to get a good outdoors shot for you, but, look! Look how windy it is! It’s windy all over the UK today I think, and now in Cambridge it’s raining, but I’m here on the computer with a nice cup of tea so I don’t mind.

This was the point at which I nearly had to rescue it from next door's garden

I thought when I finished my City Stole I might not wear it much, because I thought it was too long, but it turns out, it’s the perfect length, and I’ve worn it loads. It looks dramatic if I wrap it round once, and it’s just long enough to wrap round two times. The thing I wanted to tell you about it, though, is that this (portentous music – dum dum DUM) – is the stole that changed my life. No, I’m serious. It has changed how I think about things. And I shall tell you why.

Photography tip number 1: try not to do it in a gale

Those of you who are experienced/ adventurous knitters will be looking at this and thinking, hmm, a few yarnovers. That is not hard. And you are right: however, while I was knitting this stole, I was conscious that there was a point in my knitting career when I would not have been able to knit it. I would have become confused. I would have given up. There were points towards the beginning where I had to unknit quite a bit, and I managed to get back on track: once, I would not have been able to do this with lace. So while I was knitting it I was conscious that my skills were better than they had been at a point in the past. And as you can imagine, that was cheering.

The magic, however, was in the persistence necessary to knot this stole out of three long balls of string (I speak metaphorically). All my life (violins), I have had trouble sticking at things. I do not do sustained effort. I do one-off flashy feats of intense amazingness that are sufficiently amazing to compensate (almost) for the sustained effort issue. I think it is also fair to say that nothing in my life has ever particularly encouraged the development of sustained-effort skills, whereas the one-off flashy feats have always been rather popular. And this, readers, is not a great way to live. Because, there are many wonderful skills that one might wish to have, but without willpower and sticking at them through the tedious bits, the bits where you feel you are worse at it than when you started, the bits where you question why you are doing it anyway, the bits where you feel you’ve messed it up so much it isn’t worth finishing, you aren’t going to acquire them. And this is what this stole did for me. It showed me I could finish something and love the end result, even when the steps along the way are non-flashy and routine. It was an act of faith. It linked routine effort to result for me. It showed me I could stick at things. It showed me (violins swell to a crescendo now) I could change. It was like meditation: meditation in wool. I mean, where it got me was crocheting a million granny squares, but, look: I would never have been able to do that before the stole. Before the Stole Which Changed Everything.

I swear they wait and jump out at me. It's actually a bit alarming. Perhaps I'm just attuned. I hope I never start seeing goblins

The other week our washer broke and leaked water all over the kitchen (bear with me, this is relevant!). A John Lewis man came and patronised Partner terribly, because apparently we should have known we had a blocked Sump Pipe, then he charged Partner £60 for the privilege of being patronised and left. When I came home Partner told me he had been patronised, and did we ought to have known about the sump pipe? And I said, I was not going to feel bad about lack of sump pipe knowledge, because, I could knit lace and I was convinced the sump pipe man could not: and so as far as I was concerned, he could stick that sump pipe right up his bum. And then I rang John Lewis and told them off, and they refunded me £30. Because no-one is patronising a person who has knitted a City Stole (and if I had finished the epic granny square project I could probably have made them give me £60). You see, it is almost like having self esteem. I think the stole is magic. That is my firm belief.

Do you have a Project That Changed Your Life?

On my travels again

2011-11-27T10:39:00.000-08:00

So last week I was in Derbyshire (I get about, don't I? One day I'll buy a travelling bag without a hole in the bottom. Actually I might just sew up the hole, that would be cheaper). People! It was frantic! The crowds!

So, apparently there is a mountain next to my family's house, I discover this now after 25 years

The traffic jams, and having to wait to get along the roads!

Mind the cows! I want to be a farmer. No, I know I'd be rubbish

God. It was just exhausting. We were constantly on the alert.


I may come and give you my paw, or, I may agitate for a dried pig's ear. I've not decided yet

That's what it's like, though, when you're at the very epicentre of commerce, the cut and thrust of trading, where prices are set and fortunes are made.

Label on a crocheted blanket on Chesterfield Flea Market. No, it didn't have a price tag, and no, we didn't dare ask. Because I might have said, don't talk to me about extraordinary tasks. 108 granny squares! 51 black ones!

Chesterfield main street, scene of many happy youthful shopping trips. Can you see the crooked spire on the church? This is because the Devil sat on it, true fact

The only thing to do in this kind of situation is to try to snatch a few moments of relaxation over a Festive Chocolate Mince Pie.

Dad's pie. We all tried it and it was surprisingly nice. I would make a mince pie as normal but replace some of the flour with cocoa powder. In fact I might do

Because it's hard, this itinerant life, but someone has to do it.

Dan (brother), Milo (not a wolf), and I, with all our accessories bought from shops, shamelessly

Hope everyone had a good week and I shall be back and rambling soon. (Were you missing your passive-aggressive granny square updates? You know you were. Although, Aunty Kath! I've knitted you a Christmas present! I may not get to anyone else's, but, now there's one for you!).

Making your own chocolates

2011-11-21T10:06:00.000-08:00

I am indebted to Denise of Knitting Kitties for initial encouragement and advice which set me off down the path of confectionery making; and at the moment that sugary path is leading to chocolates.

CHOCOLATE!

These chocolates are supposed to be for my brother Dan whose birthday is this week, but, Dan, I am not sure I fancy my chances of getting these out of the mould in one piece and then lugging them up on the train, so I apologise in advance if I don’t manage it. (I would like at this point to commend my brother Dan, who is excellent at hoovering up culinary experiments and indeed was the only person brave enough to drink my sloe gin. Also he once ate an entire slab of fudge without cutting it up into bits first).

An unmoulded chocolate with a shamefully scruffy bottom

Although I am not sure about these ones, in general, chocolates are not that hard to make. Isn’t that useful to know? I have only experimented with a few fillings so far, but, actually, all you need to know is the principle and then you can make the rest up, and I am going to explain that to you now (although I also have this book: Miss Hope’s Chocolate Box, which is actually very good and inspiring and has the recipes I have been using. Also it is very funny, and I do recommend it). Then you can make chocolates for everyone for Christmas, and they will all think you are showing off and will go in the other room and drink sherry and talk about you. Get her, they will say. And the Guardian will write articles criticising you and all your kind and the horse you rode in on, although, all I can think is that if that man who wrote the article could see my giant bag of crochet squares all the same colour it might actually kill him and then where would we be.

So. To make chocolates. You need to buy a flexible silicone chocolate mould. I bought mine from Lakeland Plastics for £5.99, and I got one with a lot of holes in, because then I thought I could make a lot of chocolates at a time (working there on the basis that the more chocolates the better). You can make different chocolates in the same mould and whip it in and out of the fridge, so you don’t need to have a lot of separate ones unless you want different shapes (if you make them all the same shape, you won’t be able to tell which flavours they are unless you do some plain and some milk or attempt marbling or something).

Try not to be distracted by any shameless black squirrels who come to nibble your nuts (ignore the scruffy garden. Look at the posh fence!)

First you melt chocolate and coat the mould. You do this by breaking your chocolate up into small bits (a 100g bar is enough for about 8-10 chocolates, allowing for mistakes and eating some with a spoon), and microwaving it on full in bursts of about 20 seconds. When it is mostly melted but some of it is still solid (in my microwave this takes about 60 seconds), you take it out, and stir it till it is all liquid. This is called tempering. Then you coat the moulds with a teaspoon, not too thickly. If you get gaps and can’t fill them, put the mould in the fridge for 5 minutes until the chocolate has set and then just give it a second coat, then it will be easier. (If you have one of those posh silicone brushes that might work better, but a teaspoon is ok if not).

Then, you just fill your chocolates with something sweet. So far I have tried caramel and peanut (not together). The recipes are in the book, so I can’t really give you the exact quantities, but basically the peanut filling is peanut butter, a splash of double cream, and some sugar (you make quite small quantities – you only need a bit), and then you melt it together, so you could just have a go and add sugar to taste. For the caramel you could use any toffee sauce recipe (mine just uses cream and sugar) – it is ok for it to be fairly liquid, so you don’t have to mess about with a sugar thermometer. (Note from me: when you are boiling sugar, never stick your thumb in it to test it. You may think, God, no-one would do that, but, I did once and it hurt very much).

Lady, after I've watched you empty your handbag to find your camera to take a picture of me and get Strepsils, receipts, and a great big cabbage everywhere, I can only say it's a travesty that it was your species that got the opposable thumbs

You could also try making a ganache, and flavouring it with various things, to use as a filing - I am sure you will have lots of ideas (you could be like Heston and make bizarre things. I bought garam masala chocolates from a posh shop on the Ile St Louis for Partner when I was in Paris, but he has not eaten them yet because he likes to save chocolates, like a mad person). When you have filled all your little holes apart from the hole within you which will only be filled by Self Knowledge, stick it all in the fridge for a bit to firm up.

Then you remelt the chocolate which is left over (20 second bursts again and keep checking), and cover all the little holes with a layer. Then, leave it all overnight to set properly, and take the little chocolates out of the moulds carefully. Remember to try to share the chocolates with other people and not eat them all on your own in 5 minutes, even though that is what you will want to do. I think they keep for about a week in the fridge, so if you do want to make these for Christmas you will have to do it at the last minute, but that’s fine, it’s not as if you’re going to be busy over Christmas, is it? (Just remember. The more you make yourself, the less probability there is that you’ll be standing in Waterstones at 3:45pm on Christmas Eve looking at that £14.99 hamster calendar, and at least when you’re standing in your kitchen slaving over a hot bowl of chocolate you can have a nice cup of tea. With brandy in it. And you can eat the chocolate with a spoon).

I never realised this, but,

2011-11-19T05:09:00.000-08:00

Gerard Manley Hopkins once tried to crochet 99 granny squares, and wrote a poem about it! Isn't that amazing? I don't think this poem could have been about anything else, so, no, I don't really think any other interpretation is possible. Spiritual and social alienation versus another round of double crochet in black acrylic? I think not.

NO worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief	5
Woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing—
Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked ‘No ling-
ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief’.

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap	10
May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.

68 down. 31 to go. {Flexes fingers which are cramped like Gollum's around the One Ring}.

Smelling of catnip

2011-11-14T08:49:00.000-08:00

I think I must smell of catnip. As I have indicated before, the cats in Cambridge seem to have no natural predators, because not only are there no cat-eating creatures in England, but a lot of the Cambridge roads are of the sort where one car goes past a day. So it's feline anarchy. They have no fear. As I go along they actually shout at me, ('miaaaaaaow!!') and then they throw themselves at me. I am serious. I have to be giving off waves or something.

Who's that trip-trapping down my nice middle class street? Don't you know you've got to stop and pay homage?

OK, yeah yeah, you've told me you've got to get to the Co-op and I'm in your path. Stand there and look at my claws while I do my rolling-over thing

Can you do this at yoga, inadequate human? Thought not

Failure to convey the complexity of fibre arts

2011-11-12T09:29:00.000-08:00

It is a truism of the knitting part of the internet* that non-knitters do not understand how long it takes to knit things, and therefore will occasionally expect you to whip up a super kingsize bed cover in a weekend for £4.50. This is fair enough as I would have no idea how long it would take to, for example, make a table, but you might want to be aware of it so you can wave them and their £4.50 away if necessary. I can now, however, exclusively reveal that non-knitters also do not know how long it takes you to knit things even when they sit next to you every evening looking at you curiously and going, ‘oo!’, every time your wool touches their thigh.

I wonder if handknitted socks have ever been taken as an exhibit to Relate counselling? (Actually, they probably have)

Scene: this morning. Partner and I are moving a million black crocheted granny squares so he can sit down (I’m on 41. 41! When I get to 50 I will be over half way and I will open the champagne/ Asda Prosecco).
Me: If I ever again decide to crochet 99 granny squares I want you to stop me. That’s your responsibility.
Partner: I thought of that good way round it. If you’d listened to me, you’d be nearly done by now. (Partner had previously suggested I should only crochet half of the squares and ‘make a feature of the holes’).
Me: No, but that wouldn’t work, would it, because the pattern only looks good if it’s entirely solid.
Partner: I’ve got another idea.
Me: Have you? Is it a helpful one?
Partner: What you could do in future if you want to make people things is, you could just knit them socks.
Me: Just knit them socks?
Partner: Yes. Because you knit those very bright socks. It’s as if you’ve got an inexhaustible supply of those very bright socks.
Me: ???
Partner: Socks for everybody!
Me: But, but, socks take a bit of time as well, though, you know.
Partner: No, they don’t. They only take you an evening. I’ve watched you do it. You like it! It’s knitting for fun!
Me: No, honestly, they take much longer than an evening.
Partner: No, they definitely only take an evening. Quick bright socks! (Picks up paper). There we are. Sorted.

So there we are, readers, if you want to knit for Christmas, a pair of socks will only take you an evening. You’ll be able to kit out all your family, all your friends and possibly the local rugby team as well if you start soon. It’s no more effort than walking into Marks and Spencer and buying them a gift voucher and a miniature of Tia Maria**. Should I be pleased that I make it look effortless? (Note in case I do actually end up giving anyone any socks: it isn’t effortless! Socks are not an afterthought!).

*That would be about 20%. The other 80% is 79.99999% cats in boxes and the rest varied.

**Does anyone know if you can buy miniatures of Tia Maria? Only I've got this Nigella cake recipe that uses it, but I don't want to buy a big bottle because it's expensive and I'd never drink it. (God. Sometimes I feel like that bit in Miranda where Stevie didn't want to go to a nightclub and said, 'I'm too old! I'm in my thirties! I want to grow my own vegetables and make ratatouille!'. Note to younger readers, you too will one day find yourself getting excited over a Nigella cake recipe and thinking briefly, gosh, I used to leave the house after dark occasionally wearing the kind of makeup you don't just poke on with your index finger and have the ability to attract men, whatever happened).

And my other thing I am making which I'm not sure about yet

2011-11-09T11:37:00.000-08:00

I thought I would show you my other thing that I’m in the process of making but I’m not sure about.

Knit 1 inch ribbing, then think, thank God that ribbing's done, and go and have a biscuit

So, I have posted this before but I will do it again otherwise this post won’t make sense (worse than usual). One of my favourite poems is Catullus 85: Odi et amo/ quare id faciam fortasse requiris/ Nescio. Sed fieri sentio/ Et excrucior, which translates in my not-very-good Latin as, I hate and I love. Why do I do this, perhaps you ask. I don’t know. But I feel it happen, and I am tortured. Well readers, haven’t we all had someone like that in our lives? Let’s all take a brief moment to be glad they aren’t now sitting on our sofa (unless they are, in which case, don’t put him on your credit card. I learn this from Judge Judy). Anyway, I had this idea (bear with me) that I should make mittens with Odi and Amo on them. Because, people have Love and Hate tattooed on their knuckles, don’t they?* So, it would be like that! Only much more pretentious! So I made a chart. This does not look like it took blood, sweat and grinding of teeth, but it did. In case you want to make one too, I just used Excel, and it is easier than you would think. I started off with graph paper and a pencil but that took forever.

Ream? Or, like, totally unream? So hard to know

I have only charted the Odi mitten so far, and I have cast on and been knitting it up in Palette, but I have not got very far.

I am very sorry. This is just a bad photo. Look! Fuschia! Try to imagine!

This left hand mitten will be a fuschia background with the text in white. The right hand Amo mitten will be a white background with the text in fuschia, and where I have put the ampersand, I will put a heart. If I get to the point where I have knitted them, adjusted the chart and am test knitting others versions, I will try to do the ampersand and the heart in a different colour, but, this will involve stranding three colours over quite a few rows, so you can see I would want to work up to it.

What do you think? Odi? Amo? Good idea? Bad idea? Thinking of other three letter words to put on mittens? Thinking no-one really has love and hate tattooed any more? Think again.

* I used to know someone with Love and Hate tattooed on his knuckles. So I know people do.

My thing I made

2011-11-07T10:49:00.000-08:00

Before I show you my thing I made, I just need to emphasise – because this has become quite a big thing in my life – that the secret granny square project involves making 51 granny squares in black. Have you ever made 51 granny squares in a really intense acrylic black so you can’t see where you are putting your hook? If you haven’t, I do urge you to, because it’s always useful to get a foretaste of the things they’ll make us do in Hell. I am eyeing up Partner and wondering if he could be trained to make a few. Would it be wrong of me to go back to the pub next Wednesday, find the excited men, feed them Stella and crochet instructions and have them cranking a few out? Perhaps in exchange for a glimpse of ankle or collarbone? Hmm? Would that really be so wrong? Yes, ok, don’t say it. I know it would.

Because their tension would be different to mine. Such a shame! Anyway, I lay the 20, yes that is only 20 and we are going for 99 in total, granny squares I have created, together in various combinations, and I can see that this will indeed be a very cool pattern (provided I don’t take Partner’s advice, which is, ‘just do half of them and make a feature of the gaps’). So I will crank them out with a good will and by the end I will be saying, black acrylic, that is no challenge. These days I only crochet with invisible yarn and occasionally worms, as otherwise I find it all just too easy and I particularly enjoy the challenge of tensioning the worms around my little finger.

Anyway here is my thing I made. Readers: do you have double pointed knitting needles stabbing you in the bottom whenever you sit down? Do you find them randomly laid carefully along bookcases? Are they in the toothbrush mug? Do you lose them and find yourself knitting a sock with a combination of 5mm, 2mm and 3.5mm and thinking oh, it will all even out? Well I did. So I made a case to round the little buggers up:

Reclining on a furry throw

Look how subtle that outside is. Are you impressed? Are you thinking, Susie is exploring new horizons in her patchwork as normally it is very colourful. Perhaps the inside is blue as well or a very subtle grey.

It is not!

Cheery!

I don't know, I keep buying Knit Pro even though that one broke when I sat on it

It actually looks more impressive when it is empty, but I felt if I took the needles out they would all instantly disappear again into quite unhelpful places around the house and so I left them. It was fun to make. The outside is a job lot of a cotton/ linen mix which I got from a man who sells fabric for excellent prices at Trumpington Village Hall: if I have any Cambridge readers, he will next be there on 30th November until about 3pm and I may pop along to see if he has any tweed for a winter skirt, I don’t know (that doesn’t affect you, I’m just remarking). The inside is leftover tie silk which I bought from Mountain Heirlooms on etsy ages ago – I bought a big box and felt very guilty, but good Lord that box of silk has lasted well.

After I had made this, I actually had an idea for tweaking this design so that it would be rather cool. So I am going to make a few more and experiment. If they go well I will put them in the shop, if they do not, well, I will just look at them sadly.

Now please excuse me. I have a daily granny square target to meet, and I am behind on weaving in my ends!

My touching faith in The Gingerbread Lady, plus advice on How To Catch A Man

2011-11-03T09:38:00.000-07:00

Readers, I have faith. (Swelling music).

I have faith that possibly the ugliest granny square known to mankind (which is actually a rather perky flourescent green. You can’t see it in this photo. My camera, which is normally very biddable, balked. I said, it balked)

Practice those grateful faces, family, that's right, teeth gritted

will become something rather cool. This pattern, which I am not going to link to yet as it is for Christmas for someone, is by The Gingerbread Lady and is one of those ideas which is simple (well, ish – me and granny squares, hmm) and comes together into something really cool, in a how-can-no-one-have-thought-of-this-before kind of way. So I have faith that my alien-snot-green and black squares are going to be transformed into something rather funky, yet retro and ironically urban. Moreover, I have faith that I will be able to produce enough of them without going out and poking people with my crochet hook in frustration.

Knitting Noro stripes stresses me out of all proportion. O my God! I've got two pinks coming up together!

And as well as faith, I also have advice. Ladies: would you like to meet the kind of men who, urbane and charming as they may be in their day-to-day interactions, go out of an evening to watch things on large screens in pubs, and grunt? Do you feel starved of male attention? Do you sometimes think, gosh, if only I had a group of men drinking lager sitting close by watching me with avid attention and making semi-explicit jibes in an aggressively playful kind of way? Because if you have ever thought that, then, this is what you must do. Go out and sit in a pub with other women and knit/ crochet something. Because, I have joined a small knit group, and last night we sat in a local pub near some men who were so fascinated they could not wholly give their attention to Sky Sports and pints of Stella. ‘Oy! Oy! Oy! Love!’ they said. ‘Knit us a cock sock!’. There is only one response to that: it is, we don’t like knitting tiny things, and one of our number gave that response straight away so really there wasn’t anywhere to go from there. But that could not be the end of it, because, they were just fascinated, and every time I lifted my head up from my sparkling mineral water (look, I have to go to yoga today. Have you ever done a down dog with a hangover?) I could hear mutterings about what we could knit for them or how we should give them what we had made or things like that. Readers, I know those men were just dying to be taught how to do a treble cluster and would have been thrilled but look, I had just done with the bomb squad, I did not have the energy. So, for anyone reading this who is doing a feminist PhD on gendering of public spaces and threats to masculinity I am happy to be interviewed, and for the rest of us, you know you read those mad stories on the internet about how people whip out their wool and cause a commotion, and you think, no, surely, that does not happen? Well, it does! (and people find grenades in their gardens as well!).

Shall we all go out and find someone fly fishing and heckle them to get our own back?

Garden Improvements. Do not do it

2011-11-01T11:09:00.000-07:00

OK. Do you remember my advice about home improvements, i.e. do not do it? Well, I am now going to expand that advice to garden improvements as well and in fact I am forced to make it more emphatic. Today a man came and laid a base for a shed and found two hand grenades. I have had a policeman, the bomb squad, and two reporters from the local paper doorstepping me. They (the bomb squad) had their sandbags ready and were going to do a controlled explosion, but luckily they were able to x-ray my grenades with their equipment and they were dummies which you use for training. Why would there be dummy hand grenades in my garden? Was it in former times a hangout for Dad’s Army? What in God’s name will I find next? So now I am nervous of engaging with Hard Landscaping, and feel that the black squirrel is the least of my worries (he was watching. He was fascinated).

On the bright side, I cast on a sock. The policeman remarked that it would be very useful for winter, which indeed it will be, and it is to his credit that he did not say, look at you, knitting through bomb squad manoeuvres.

The C Word

2011-10-31T11:12:00.000-07:00

OK. So, I do kind of half despise myself as some kind of terrible low-rent Martha Stewart-Kirstie Allsopp hybrid, but, today when I went out to buy a fondue burner (seriously, I am a martyr to that fondue), I just happened upon one or two things and I may have bought them

I am suspecting very strongly that Martha Stewart would have got the marks out of that formica

to make Christmas presents with. Because, readers, this year, we are having a homemade Christmas. If you are wincing right now, then, rest assured I am wincing with you, because I am entirely 50-50 on homemade presents. On the one hand, if I get into the swing early enough that I make bits over the months leading up, it isn’t that much trouble, it is fun, and means I avoid the terrible Christmas Eve Shopping Trip of Doom, which always finds me standing despairingly in Waterstones at 3:59pm wondering whether to pay £14.99 for a calendar with hamsters on it. On the other hand, if I don’t get into the swing, the same time will find me in our spare room crying tears of neat brandy over a sewing machine and a bit of ric rac.

The pride of Lakeland Plastics. I love Lakeland Plastics and I want the kind of life where you know what to do with an egg poacher and put cedar in your wardrobe. I think Pam has cedar in her wardrobe

Have you noticed, in any book on thrift/ handmade living/ general eco-y-ness you ever read, they will tell you you will save money making homemade presents? Readers, here is the truth: it is generally not cheaper to handmake anything unless your normal point of reference is Harrods. Yes you can possibly save money if you craft things regularly and have equipment and lots of leftovers (and then use them rather than thinking, it is for xx! Xx is special! I shall buy cashmere!, even when xx is the window cleaner and you have only exchanged 3 words in the last 6 months) or start saving jam jars in March, but, if you get to November and suddenly have a yen to make people something where you have to buy equipment and there is a learning curve then trust me, it will cost you just as much money as if you had just gone straight to John Lewis and bought one in a packet (and then to the pub after).

It has always been my experience that to make something nice, you must throw one or more of the following at it: skill, money, or time. So, if you are going to knit someone a giant garter stitch scarf and you do it in cashmere, it will be beautiful and well-received but it will be extortionate, although, some people (and my own loved ones actually don’t think this, or if they do they disguise it well, well done family) think if you handmake anything you are cheap. Or you are doing it as a strange perversion of the competitive instinct which you should have satisfied by climbing the corporate ladder, not putting feminism back 30 years by floating about knowing one end of a knitting needle from another (no I don’t think this is the standard feminist view. But yes I have encountered it!). And to make things worse, we will soon be getting a slew of mad articles that will tell us to make things for Christmas presents that honestly no-one wants and which will require enormous initial expenditure on things like glue guns. So you see my moral dilemma.

Why, could that really be Stylecraft Special DK in a rather challenging colour combination? Might someone be in for a treat?

But, this is why I do it (when I have the energy). I genuinely like giving people things. I think often with the gifts we give it’s not actually about giving something someone needs (although, I am going to call out my own hypocrisy here, because for my birthday my parents gave me part of a shed. So, sometimes people do really need part of a shed), it’s a token to say, hello, Merry Christmas, I have been thinking of you. And with handmade presents you really have been thinking of them, and not for the 10 minutes it takes you to buy the hamster calendar in Waterstones and swear. And you know I love handmade things and think they are better, so if I am feeling generous I would rather give someone something that would be a treat for me. But does that mean it is a treat for them? You see, it is difficult. Anyway, homemade Christmas it is this year, for better or worse, and I have made a list and everything, which I will hide from Partner as if he found it he would be quite sarcastic. And if you will excuse me, I am off now to google food colouring paste because you would not believe the price of it. (At least I don’t need a glue gun).

Well, I don't know how this happened

2011-10-24T06:08:00.000-07:00

But apparently now I can knit lace. (Pattern: Jaali, here on Ravelry and also here on Etsy. This has no errors as far as I could tell, and also it is both written and charted so if you want to knit one too it should be a fairly smooth ride).

I've had those towels for 20 years. Thrift, it is my middle name. Or it would be if I hadn't realised with HORROR over the weekend just how much wool is in this house

Again with the dodgy blocking shot in bad light on the old towels and the green carpet. If I'm going to actually manage to finish knitting things I will have to work out how to photograph them properly. Lace! Mad! Where will it end? Will I lose all sense of proportion and start knitting one of those enormous round shawl things with a million stitches? I could use it as a Partner Cozy and put it over him when he is moaning, to see if it shuts him up like it does when you put a sheet over a parrot in a cage.

Not only but also

2011-10-21T10:54:00.000-07:00

Because for some reason Blogger won't let me comment on my own blog post (censorship!), just wanted to update that I bought the kit I was moaning about. Because I am grumpy and ill this week and didn't want to be mean to the shop, and because Partner is also ill (Partner is always grumpy though) and I have been ferrying him about, I did it from his office. I finally managed to unearth a browser the site would work on - they really do have some very pretty kits when you can see them! - and I ordered it.

Obviously the minute I had ordered it online they emailed me and said I was more than welcome to ring them or order by email...

And also, as everything about this kit is doomed, the postman tried to deliver it when I was out, and he was not the normal postman, because our normal postman always hides parcels in the hedge. So I have got to pick it up from the sorting office. Which I will do on Monday.

But... we nearly have emotional closure on this kit! It is nearly in my hands! And I am feeling much better about it now, so thank you for all your kind comments and I will be able to show you the Kit Of Bad Karma when it arrives (at which point it will be absolutely obvious where I bought it and you will have to pretend you did not read my moaning). Rather ironically, the pattern I am going to knit with it is a pattern which, through no fault at all of the designer, whose designs are great (and it is a good pattern), got itself involved with an event with quite a bit of bad karma too. How strange is this? Anyway. I shall pick up the kit, I will knit it, it will be lovely, we will get some better karma flowing through the medium of stranded knitting!

(PS quick question. We have a very lively black squirrel O_O. Does anyone else have a black squirrel? I thought they only came in red and grey).

A cheerful blanket

2011-10-21T10:27:00.000-07:00

I am struggling through The Cold That Will Not Go (and on my birthday no less! Rubbish!) but just wanted to show you my completed rainbow blanket. I am dragging this thing round the house with me like that chap who used to be in Peanuts (look, I'm ill, don't make me google), it is so warm and bright and cheerful.

Still not ironed the duvet, still not painted the woodchip, crocheted a blankie though

OK. Pattern: Neat Ripple Pattern from Attic24, Yarn: Sirdar Bonus DK, cheap as chips (who actually says that? Nobody) but honestly it is great for projects like this, where you are going to want to wash it often, and you are also going to want to use A Lot. I used 13 balls of different colours, I don't think my rainbow colour progression is perfect, but it is difficult picking out colours online, and it's not bad. I had enough left over to do a border, using these helpful instructions from Wires and Yarns

We decided it was colourful enough without another round on the border

and I've also got enough to be making the granny squares in the post below, 27 so far and counting. I should be able to make about 10 more, but I don't know what I'll do with them then. I would quite like another throw, but I don't want to buy 13 more colours and have loads left over because then I'm going to end up in a terrible endlessly recurring acrylic crochet loop and be doomed. Then before I know it the entire house will be covered with granny squares because I have to keep buying more yarn to use bits up. I might just buy a couple more balls of a plain colour and make a feature of the bright ones. Listen to me rambling. I'm off now to practice my guitar and mutter. Have a lovely weekend everyone xoxo

An interview with Tiny Owl Knits

2011-10-19T11:20:00.000-07:00

Today I have an interview for you with Stephanie from Tiny Owl Knits.

I happened upon Tiny Owl Knits patterns when I was unable to get the Parseltongue hat out of my head until I had downloaded it and knitted it, which I have done, and I will show it to you when I have woven in the ends. Then I looked at her other patterns and was blown away; they are so unusual and beautiful, and have a real ethereal, other-worldly feel which is incredibly alluring. Also they are some of the few patterns I have seen that have made me want to knit intarsia motifs, I think the animal mitts are lovely.

Stephanie is also a very successful musician, and I am having visions of my brother Dan reading this interview and thinking, Susie, somehow you manage, through what nefarious means I do not know, to lure someone into being interviewed for your blog who has been on Jools Holland, and then you ask her about knitting. You are no sister of mine and now I shall never teach you the F chord and I am even considering withdrawing husky-stroking privileges (Dan has a husky, although I have to say I think it would take some fairly intensive training to make him shun people). Well, yes, but to this I must answer: Stephanie is also the designer of the Hexipuff. Yes! If you have been on the knitting bit of the internet recently, you may know (and if not, ready yourself!) that the current pattern craze is for making little hexagon shapes out of leftover sock yarn which you then make into a quilt. They are all over Ravelry looking very beautiful and inventive. I am resisting this as strongly as I can, however much fun it might look, because I do not need another epic project, although I will not be resisting other Tiny Owl Knits patterns. I have particularly got my eye on the sheep mitts. Actually, I think I might have some wool that would work…

Take it away, Stephanie! (All the patterns in the pics are available on Ravelry or on Etsy).

1/ Stephanie, you’ve taken over the known world with your hexipuffs. It’s one of the coolest patterns I’ve seen, but doing an entire quilt out of them must be quite an undertaking! Why do you think the pattern’s been so popular? Is it nice to think of there being little collections of hexipuffs all over the world?
Thanks! I really had no idea anyone would do it! the whole thing has taken me so much by surprise. I didn't imagine that the pictures could show the concept of the puffy hexagons so I did a little video talking about them. That was really fun and I plan to do lots more videos (even though I run the risk of frightening people with my weird.) Anyway, I think making the hexipuffs is actually fun. I became totally addicted to making them myself, so now I feel a little less crazy because it seems they have that effect on others too! I love to peek around ravelry and see all of the creative things people are embroidering on them. I'm not going to say that I haven't actually wiped a tear away at some point! haha

Beekeeper's Quilt. Hexipuffs-in-progress, proving my theory that where a beautiful, complex, time-consuming knitting project is, there also will a cat be

2/ Your patterns have this wonderful, ethereal vibe. Are you attracted to fairytale, otherworldly things in general?
I love fairy tales! I think I have always had a tendency to want to hide away in secret places and dream about faeries and magic. I think its actually becoming a bigger and bigger part of our culture to think about magic as well. Everyone seems to be joining together to find something really special in the otherworlds. Life is so hectic and moves so fast. Real magic happens when a person is able to center themselves and put their mind on something that brings them joy or peace. That's why knitting is so magical. My goal when I'm knitting is to stay calm and centered. No it's not always easy! But what a great medium for rolling around in the power of joy. Magic Magic Magic Joy Joy Joy Ü•

Fairy castles for storing hooks and needles. Look! With little windows in too!

3/ Lots of knitwear designers combine knitting with a day job, but I’m not sure there are that many whose day job is being an extremely successful singer, and I’m reasonably sure Elizabeth Zimmerman never played Glastonbury ;-). Does one feed off the other, or is knitting completely separate?
Some days it's easier than others. This very minute I'm trying to finish up a record and I REALLY want to release my version of my "Mr. Fox Stole my heart" pattern. So this morning I'm fighting the urge to finish the pattern when I'm really supposed to be in the studio in an hour. But most days I have time for both. Its like doing dishes and the laundry. You just do them both. OH ELIZABETH ZIMMERMAN AT GLASTONBURY!! She would be by far and away the most interesting thing there. :)

4/ Have you ever worn something you’ve knitted on stage?
I used to make pretty much all of my clothes for stage. I do a lot of sewing so I made all of my skirts and customized all of my t-shirts. I'm sure I've worn something I've knitted for sure. Oh I wore the woodland hoodlet at a show at the Royal Festival Hall in London last year. At that time it still had a wonky hood, but I wore it anyway. Then I came home and ripped the hood off and started over before I released the pattern.

Woodland hoodlet. I love anyone who wears their creations proudly. Get out there in your woollies

5/ Post-internet and especially post-Ravelry, it’s much easier for designers to meet the people knitting their patterns and get lots of immediate feedback. You have a very popular Ravelry group: is this link with your knitters something you enjoy?
It is absolutely a huge deal to me and I love being connected to everyone. I used to work in a knitting shop so I would be helping people with my patterns all day long. After I quit and moved to London to pursue music I missed the community aspect so much. That was right around the time that Ravelry started. I couldn't believe it! I jumped right in to a virtual version of the lifestyle that I had grown so accustomed to and it has totally changed my life. Thank you Ravelry!

6/ Which of your designs (current or upcoming) have you most enjoyed making?
I loved making the beekeeper's quilt and I love wearing my meow mitts :) They are my favorite thing I've ever designed because the little kitties on them just make me happy!

Meow mitts! I've even got some wool that colour. Hold me back

Thank you very much for doing this interview, Stephanie, you were a great interviewee and when you have taken over the world with your small puffy hexagons I’m confident you’ll be a benevolent dictator ;-). You can find Tiny Owl Knits on Ravelry or on Etsy. Please do go and have a look at her patterns, they are beautiful and I think you will like them although if you find yourself a month from now with baskets full of puffs and muttering 'just one more' to yourself at three in the morning, do not come and tell me off.

Thanks again Stephanie and best of luck with the new record xoxo

Just stuff I am making and stuff I have seen

2011-10-18T08:52:00.000-07:00

With the leftovers from my finally completed rainbow throw (I will take pics later in the week) I made stuff.

OK, look, even I think this is a bit bright

I've still got enough left for a few more so I'll see how many I end up with and then go from there (I know I should have crocheted the ends in as I went along, I do it all wrong). I don't know what I'm going to make (I promise it won't be a garment).

We, as plants, offer a living counterpoint to the sterile pursuit of Knowledge

Plants benefiting from the sunlight

In the History Faculty at the university they have some strange thing going on with plants. I think it's a plant-growing competition. At certain times of the year it all goes a bit wild and there are plants everywhere with names on, and a little hospital corner for plants which aren't doing so well.

Wherever you go here there's something medieval looming at you

I dragged Partner to Apple Day in Ely at the weekend. He said it was beyond parody and just like the opening scene from Midsomer Murders, and could we leave before they found someone dead in a cider barrel. I enjoyed it myself. There was a man who you could take your apples to for identification

Partner said 'they all look the bloody same'. They do not

And folk music. There was a knitting stall too, but it was very popular so I couldn't get near it. Anyway, there is an Eel Day at some point (I'm not making this up) so I shall drag Partner to that, too.

Also, after being grumpy yesterday, wanted to mention two excellent people/ companies I bought from recently: Get Knitted, who replaced some dodgy Knit Pro needle tips for me without any problem even though I bought them a month ago (I've also bought from them on and off for a while and they've always been great): and Scrapunzel Pixie, who I bought a jumper from after I interviewed Niccy, and I think I have worn it nearly every day. I love it!

Trying not to be irritated and failing

2011-10-17T12:20:00.000-07:00

OK. Could you all just slap me on the head and tell me I’m unreasonable to be irritated by this?

Due to an exciting incident involving a dead cockroach I find myself with a tiny, tiny bit of spare money. As my birthday is coming up, I decide to go wild and buy wool for a pattern I would very much like to knit. Hurrah! Somewhere sells a kit of the recommended wool, which seems very good value! Now, due to (being non-specific) something about this pattern, the wool in the kit is probably the wool it will work best with – you need a specific type, so I can’t shop about quite as much as I would usually do. The place I am trying to buy the kit from is also the only place where it is, I suspect, good enough value for me to bother. I try to buy it online – failure. Their website, which is pretty and features a very beautiful windswept sheep, is not compatible with my browser which is old, and cannot be updated unless I upgrade my OS, and look, here I am spending the money on wool instead (or, trying to). I very rarely have this problem shopping online but it can happen, and at this point I would normally go elsewhere but I really want this kit. I cannot see contact details on the website because of the browser problem. I am cunning and track them down on Ravelry, where I find an email address. I email them and ask for a phone number so I can order over the phone, as their website does not work with my browser. I am nice and friendly and I do not say, your web designer is an idiot who has prioritised a pretty website over people who are not on the most modern versions of everything actually being able to use it, although, this is what I think.

I receive a nice and polite email back which says, although they can take phone orders, they really don’t want to. They would really prefer me to order online, as that is much easier (not for me, obviously). If I ring them up they are happy to explain to me how to use their website and they are sure I will find it easy when I have had it explained. I email back politely and say, sadly I do not think I will, given the fundamental fact that their website does not work on my browser, and perhaps I will wait to place my order until the day I happen to find myself on a different computer with hell in the process of freezing over (I mean, I don't say that last bit). I receive no reply.

I am irritated. I am getting over a cold so I am Mrs Grumpypants anyway but I am irritated. What shall I do now? Shall I ring tomorrow and be chirpy? Shall I forget about the kit, especially since a lamp exploded earlier while I was dusting it and now I will have to buy a new one? Shall I hope I encounter another dead cockroach and get more money? Shall I get Partner to order it from his office (no! Bad idea! Who knows what I would get!).

I know this is a first world problem! (Really, I do ;-) ).

Socks for absorbing knitting energy

2011-10-14T10:47:00.000-07:00

I work on these socks (there is another one floating about half-done)

With bonus marks on left foot from having it tucked up under me

when I haven't got the brain power to do anything more complicated than ribbing, stocking stitch, bit of fiddling, stocking stitch, bit of decreasing, end. I think I'm always going to have a boring functional sock on the go somewhere to absorb extra knitting energy when I can't face one more chart row.

These are in Noro Kureyon Sock, and while this is truly terrible yarn, funnily enough I quite like it when it's become a sock. It looks rustic. And it's not as rough on your feet as you think it's going to be. I've no idea how that works because it's so rough while you're knitting it it feels like they've done it on purpose to annoy you. But, there may be more Noro socks in my future. And, if I ever feel the need to create a nice multicoloured hair shirt, I'll be able to use it for that as well.

What would you do?

2011-10-10T12:15:00.000-07:00

OK. I have a question for you.

What would you do if you weren’t afraid?

Mum bravely conquering her fear of underground railway systems on the Metro

I’m going to take a wild punt that I, as a blogger, crafter and hedgewitch am not alone in this, but, in real life, I am not wildly outgoing. I do not come across as not wildly outgoing, indeed I suspect I come across as quite the opposite, but I am not. I mean, I am not hiding quivering in corners because this is why God created chardonnay, but, if I had the choice between a/ walking into a party full of people I don’t know and networking without being sarcastic or b/ sewing up a really horrible long seam with mattress stitch it would be b/ every time (in fact I don’t think, looking back on my failed attempts at being Supportive Academic Partner, that I’m constitutionally able to network at a party without being sarcastic, so that perhaps isn’t much of a choice). Anyway I tell you this not so that you will think, poor Susie, because at least half of people in the world feel like this including Jeremy Paxman according to an interview in today’s Guardian, but to demonstrate that the things I am afraid of are mainly around outgoing-ness, big groups of people, being forced to be extrovert, that kind of thing. (Also anything that involves heights or dangling).

Anyway, the point of this ramble is, being afraid is OK unless it stops you doing things. So, what would you do, if you weren’t afraid? If a Good Fairy came along and waved a wand, and just for once you were protected in a Ready Brek glow from rejection, nerves, failure, being abducted by Somali pirates, spiders, whatever: what is the first thing you would do? Would you go skydiving? Would you travel to Africa? Would you go and declare undying love to Barry in Budgens? (Don’t! It’ll hold up the queue! He’s steady enough!). Would you take part in a burlesque show (have to say, I quite fancy that myself)? Would you join the Women’s Institute? Model for a life drawing class? What would you do?

I’ll tell you what I would do. I would learn my guitar properly, I would write a song, and I would perform it in public. So that’s what I’m going to do*. It might take a while as I am hampered by the lack of any natural talent but, readers, seriously, what is the worst that can happen? If they heckle, it’s not as if I’m sitting there with nothing. I’ll have a great big guitar. I can hit them with it.

What would you do?

* I don’t know where yet, in case you’re thinking I’ve got a hotline to Simon Cowell. This is Cambridge though, there are sure to be open mic nights somewhere, gosh that sounds terrifying when I type it, off to drown emotions in Food.

Back from Paris

2011-10-07T09:31:00.000-07:00

But not lively. But lively enough to do a quick Photo Spam.

Notre Dame at dusk to prove we did actually go to Paris. Last night when I showed this photo to Partner (who is an expert on literary intertextuality) he started telling me about how he had discovered that the name Quasimodo is an homage to a very, very obscure medieval poem, and then he started quoting it, even though I had just come back and was tired

All the Paris bridges are covered in locks. You write your and your lover's name on it then throw the key into the Seine and your love lasts forever, alternatively you can get a mortgage

Do not put your hands in the door on the metro because you risk getting squeezed very hard. I shall add my own caveat to this, which is, do not get RER line B in the rush hour as not only is there not room to breathe but someone groped my bottom

Shop window and Art in the Place des Vosges. But could you live with it above the telly? Yes I could actually

View from a bistro near the Pont Neuf as I necked my vin de pays d'Oc

Particularly liked the Paris graffiti. This was somewhere between Les Halles and the Rue St Denis which is better than it used to be (says she thoughtfully)

Bookseller on the Left Bank providing foxy pictures aux masses

OK. I have a helpful post about wool shops at some point, and also Action Shots of a shawl, but for now I will spare you ;-). Off for tea. Can you get a cup of tea in Paris? Well yes you can but not as easily as you can get one in my kitchen.

How to wear your shawl stylishly

2011-10-03T10:18:00.000-07:00

If you want to knit lace, sooner or later you are going to have to knit a shawl. I mean, you don’t have to in the sense that no-one is actually going to take out an injunction (because if they were, believe me, I would have met them!), but, it’s just one of those things. Sooner or later the sheer number of shawl patterns is going to wear you down emotionally and have you thinking, hmm, perhaps one tiny little laceweight shawl will be ok. I never have to do another. I can stop whenever I want.

Attractive spread-out-on-ironing-board shot

Then, there you are, halfway through your first triangular shawl, and you think, but, where am I going to wear this bloody thing. I never wear triangular shawls. I will look like Mrs Pepperpot. I will have ends dangling in my gin. I will be losing my shawl as I dash about performing open heart surgery/ anticipating what the cat is going to do and stopping it/ sitting on the Board of News International. I do not know how to wear a shawl, you think, and now I am irritated at myself that I have succumbed to peer pressure. I shall go onto knitting message boards and start discussions about Wool vs Acrylic and Crochet vs Knitting to get my own back.

Well, gentle reader, for when you succumb to the shawl bug which you shawly will (that is a pun), I have been thinking of situations you can wear your shawl in. Never let it be said that shawls are not easy to integrate into our carefully-thought-out wardrobes (I know. Mine neither). Let us wear them with pride!

Please always remember to match your toes to your current knitting project, it is a basic of personal grooming

Scenario 1. You are in a pub garden in summer. Dusk falls and so does the temperature. ‘Gosh isn’t it chilly’ you trill, putting your pork scratchings to one side and reaching inside your bag for your shawl. Remember to hold it up in a faux casual manner, so everyone can admire it properly, before wrapping it around your shoulders with Panache. ‘Why’ say all your companions, ‘what a stunning garment, did you buy that perchance at M&S’. No, you reply, in an amused and tolerant tone, for if an M&S buyer ever came near anything of this quality they would have to kill her to prevent her blabbing. I handknitted this myself in a mix of virgin alpaca and silk where the silkworms were not killed but were only mildly inconvenienced. I do it before I go to bed when I have just put down my Kirkegaard and finished watching a bit of Fellini.

Then, you must smile smugly as if to imply that you also have better sex, deeper and more meaningful relationships, and are able to make a Victoria Sponge without weighing the ingredients.

Scenario 2. You are at a party involving canapés. You are wearing vertiginous heels, therefore, do not move too quickly especially when you have started on the Cava. Your shawl is wrapped in a complicated yet ironically knowing manner around your torso, in the manner of this one. This will keep you warm enough that you can wear a shorter skirt, while also subtly and subliminally implying that you are a delicate creature who needs the protection of something lightly woolly which has been produced with great skill, ha, not like that hulking and uncomplicated person over there who is wearing a mass produced cardigan. Toss down that cava, and give the eye to that chap in the corner who is dissecting a blini thoughtfully, but remember, no shawl removal until the third date. Keep it wrapped tightly.

Scenario 3. You are in an art gallery, standing looking at one of the more challenging works, with a shawl wrapped kerchief-style around your neck. Thoughfully and yet alluringly, you bite your lip and flick a single lock of hair over your shoulder to draw attention to your shawl. I am making a knowing comment on Craft vs Art, you convey mutely, by wearing this skillfully self-produced Kerchief. Yet it is, amazingly, not as prestigious, in the eyes of the Intelligentsia, as this Installation I am looking at, which the artist has had produced by people paid minimum wage in Bromley. I stand, your ensemble says, as an example of the value of Craftsmanship in the age of the Meta.

Also, because you are wearing it as a kerchief, it will not dangle in your tea when you go and have a bun in the coffee shop afterwards.

You know what we need? Action shots. I’ll finish that Jaali quick and start wearing it out and about ;-). Paris tomorrow. Send me not-getting-lost-or-losing-mum vibes?

Patchwork yearnings

2011-10-01T11:10:00.000-07:00

Do you know what I've not done for a while? Patchwork. I feel the inclination welling deep within, I really do. I feel it bubbling and sizzling and welling up. I shall casually flick through my Kaffe Fassett books tonight and see if I feel inspired by any shapes. Mooncalf left me a link ages ago to this blanket by the Purl Bee (I mean, don't anyone feel nervous or anything, but I never forget a comment) and I'm wondering if I want to do some kind of grey + BRIGHT! modern geometric patchwork thing. I've got some grey Liberty print hanging about, actually. And I'm sure I could find a couple of bright contrast colours. Hmm, off to think. In the meantime, what comes to your mind immediately when you think patchwork? Quilts? Cushions? Lovely hippy clothes? Of course not.

If you can't hide it, make it a feature

Dustbins. Here in Cambridge we have a thriving subculture of dustbin art. It's because our houses are very, very small, and our Council's recycling ambitions are very, very large, so we all have three enormous dustbins which we have to fit in somewhere in our tiny gardens. Someone down our street has painted a very realistic cat on theirs an I often see stripes and flowers and things like that. I sometimes look at those stickers with flowers on you can buy online but then I look at the prices and decide they are not my top priority.

Sadly the contrast means you can't see next door's attractive drainpipe

And the sunset looked pretty earlier. This is the view from what we laughingly call the study. One day I want to make some setting sun mittens. In the meantime I'm trying to get better at my stranding and learn intarsia (have you seen these intarsia designs? I love them. Look for the sheepy mittens) and researching sunset colours. It may take a while.

Cows

2011-09-28T11:18:00.000-07:00

I don't know if this is bizarre or not, but, one of the ways in which Cambridge has not moved on at all since 1463 is that we have cows in the city centre. Lots of cows. Hanging out. Doing their bovine stuff.

We turn our bottoms towards women waving cameras. Vamoose

These cows are near one of the main roads into the centre. There are also cows in the colleges (this is bizarre, isn't it?) and also near the river which runs through the centre, on the fen. The cows on the fen stand on the bridges and face down tourists. They are cows without shame. When people have picnics in the summer, sometimes the cows sidle up and intimidate them and nibble their sandwiches.

I was buying some beef from the farmers' market once, and as I passed it to the woman who was running the stall to pay for it, she said, brightly, this beef comes from the Cambridge Cows! I winced because I do not really like to think where my meat comes from especially if it is a cow who might have faced me down on a bridge, and she looked at me firmly and said, now look. These cows have had a very lovely life.

This is the dilemma, isn't it? The more you don't know where your meat comes from the more likely it is to have come from somewhere absolutely appalling, but then it's difficult to eat a cow who you might have met out and about. I won't do my lecture on How Capitalism Separated Us From The Means Of Production And Destroyed Society (although, what a lecture that is!) but I think if I'm going to eat meat I should eat meat whose origin I know and trust, not pretend it started off in a neutral polythene tray and ignore how it was really produced (I know there's the option of not eating meat at all. Not at the moment. Perhaps later).

Cigarettes and alcohol. Without the cigarettes. With some hawthorn

2011-09-26T11:42:00.000-07:00

Do you know what happened to me over the weekend? I discovered I was allergic to alpaca. Anyway, we will briefly acknowledge my pain (group hug) and move on (what the hell am I going to do with the alpaca laceweight? Lucky I kept that Ventolin!). So, today I have been foraging.

Nice weather for foraging and competing with Squirrels

Yes! Inspired by the herbal hedgerow walk, I have been looking for hawthorn berries and rosehips, to make hawthorn tincture and rosehip syrup. I also had some blackberries hanging about, from the veg box and our garden, and thought I would make blackberry vodka with these, because, Nigella and me, we’re very similar, you know, apart from her house might be be the tiniest bit posher (joke).

I'm really almost positive this is hawthorn

Foraging makes me slightly nervous. I’m always worried I might pick something that is actually Deadly Nightshade masquerading as something harmless. Also, I always think someone is going to come and tell me off for fiddling about with trees and I will find myself in front of a magistrate trying to explain myself incoherently (‘OK look. I’m a hedgewitch, right, and I went on this walk, right, and they said if I picked hawthorn it would root me and protect my heart and I’ve been working on opening up my heart chakra recently and I thought…’). I think there’s something deep within me that thinks something is only really permissable food if it’s wrapped in plastic and sold in Waitrose. I think there are a lot of people who think this, because whenever I go into Cambridge there are lots of people in M&S buying fruit for twice the price of the market stalls less than 5m away, indeed, I do it myself when I am being undynamic. When I am being dynamic though, obviously, I go rooting round trees with a bag being intrepid.

Hawthorn tincture, candlestick, blackberry vodka, leftover garlic, plum and apple chutney and a bit of cardboard used to catch a big spider

Anyway, this is how I made the blackberry vodka. I used about 350g blackberries, and half the weight of sugar, and put them both in a big Kilner jar, then covered with a 70cl bottle of vodka. I made the hawthorn tincture just by covering hawthorn berries in brandy, but, I could not submerge all the berries because they float, so I am worried that might cause problems. We will see. I’ve not made the rosehip syrup yet and it sounds scary as it involves straining through muslin (or tights, depending on your level of domestic goddess-ness. I will not be able to palm my rosehip syrup off on people now as they will be thinking worrying thoughts about gussets. I bet Nigella doesn’t go straining syrup through her gusset, do you? Remember though: it’s only slutty if you wear them afterwards without rinsing them first).

I’ve got a book recommendation. In one of my previous posts, Vivianne recommended James Wong’s Grow Your Own Drugs, and I suddenly remembered I had actually got it – I bought it ages ago when it was hugely reduced and then I buried it under a pile of books. Well, I dug it out and it is great, so thanks Vivianne for reminding me, and it is a good book for those of you who may have leanings in this direction. Also, I seem to remember Mumma Troll actually went to one of his talks once and really enjoyed it, so, yes, James Wong. Look, it said in the Guardian today that it’s the end of capitalism, and you’ll need to know this sort of thing soon, you know. So when the post-oil society arrives, you all stick with me. I know how to make soap and knit socks, and Partner says if he put his mind to it he’s convinced he could kill a chicken (not one of yours, though Aunty Kath!).

I need you to be specially nonjudgmental

2011-09-20T09:16:00.000-07:00

So I can show you my City Stole blocking without feeling bad about all the crap I had to push to one side to make room on the floor (it’s alright, it’s just the overlocker, wool-in-progress, pins and a random elasticated belt from Top Shop. No-one has to ring Hoarders. You’re not going to see me ever on Discovery Home and Health clutching onto a 10-year-old yoghurt pot while all my family stands round wringing their hands). Otherwise I have to get the laptop out and fire up Gimp and crop and it puts me off.

I had to stand on a chair and balance against the ironing board to get this photo. I straightened the edges a bit afterwards

Anyway, vital stats because EVERYONE SHOULD MAKE A CITY STOLE:

Here is the pattern – you have to pay, but it is definitely worth it, it is a lovely pattern (12 pages of charts and they are very clear. I found about 2 tiny errata, unfortunately I forgot to note them down but they won’t cause you any trouble – there was one missed yarn over when it is obvious there should be one so you would realise, and one of the stitch count numbers was one out but the chart is correct),
I used KnitPicks Gloss Fingering from Great British Yarns because I wanted something cheap, navy blue and in fingering weight (sock yarn weight). Well, it was certainly cheap and navy and is OK yarn, but, that is never sock yarn weight. Sock yarn my arse, as Jim Royle would say. It felt more like DK to me (I did check the label). I went through agonies thinking the stole would not work because of it, but it seems to be blocking alright, and I can always knit another in proper thin sock yarn at a later date,
Mistakes – I made a couple of tiny errors in the chart but tant pis only God is perfect. Also, I think it is going to curl a bit as it is a stocking stitch base, but the blocking should flatten it a bit, and honestly, I don’t mind that much – I think it’s the nature of a stole like this (I can’t see how she could have got this effect apart from on a stocking stitch base, and it does have a garter border).

Bonus Cambridge cat photo, looking pointedly in different directions like an 80s album cover

So there we are – this stole was such an epic that I feel like my life’s work is now done, and I am a little rootless. I will try and get better in-action pics when it is blocked (also of the Annis – I was worried the Annis would spring right back when I took it off the pins but it held its shape completely – it looks great). In the meantime I am making chutney,

I never want to chop up another apple, I really don't

And I am casting on for some new colourwork mittens which I may give to my brother Dan for Christmas, and working up to winding the wool for Jaali. Wish me luck…

Blocked my Annis

2011-09-15T02:21:00.000-07:00

This is one of those posts that's more interesting for me than for you, lovely readers, sorry! I blocked my Annis - managed to not felt it, not drop it down the plughole (I'm going to hold off on the rant about how much I hate our new plughole), not drop a stitch as I bound off, etc etc and now it is done! And when it is dry I can wear it!

OK, are you going to say to me that you don't save your oldest towels for blocking?

I do appreciate this would look more attractive with better light. Try to imagine

Ha ha! First proper lace, first nupps {brushes fingers on lapel}. The lace world is now my oyster and I shall celebrate with Cake.

WIP Wednesday: Making Stuff For Paris

2011-09-14T10:54:00.000-07:00

Can it be Wednesday? Can I be sitting here with a spare five minutes and photographs? Could I be about to do a WIP Wednesday post?

Mum and I are going to Paris in three weeks (bear with me). We have our train tickets but we have not booked a hotel yet, it may be the George Cinq, it may be the Three Ducks, we will see how flush we are when we get to the point of booking. I have to tell you at this juncture that Partner doubts my and my mother’s joint capacity to economise on accommodation. If I have to hear again his tales about how he went to Paris when he was very poor (he was transcribing a manuscript) and had to stay in the red light district and only eat every other day, I may not be responsible for my actions.

Partner: And I had to stay just off the Rue St Denis! I was propositioned continually! And I could only eat every other day! You tell your mother that!
Me: Did you buy wine every night though?
Partner: Yes!

Anyway, in preparation for the trip, mum has been on an Epic Quest to find the perfect pair of shoes for Paris. They had to be comfortable, coruscatingly directional, and cause Parisiennes to stop dans la rue, throw up their hands and say, mais Madame, comme vous êtes plus chic que votre fille ou est-elle votre soeur. They had to also cost less than £40, preferably from Clinkards. Oh, the tension, you would not believe, every time the phone has rung we have jumped to answer it in case it was The Call. And, last night, the quest came to an end and my mother managed to purchase appropriate shoes UNDER BUDGET in Meadowhall, hooray, that will buy us both a Kir Royale. However, my quest continues. For, I am trying to finish the City Stole, block it, and take it with me.

Repeat after me, it will look better when it's blocked

I am starting to feel the City Stole will never be finished. I feel like the charts expand as I get close to the end. And now I have sat on my needle and broken it and must wait for a new one to arrive from Get Knitted, will it come in time, oh the tension. There is a lot of knitting in this thing and I think it may have been a little ambitious trying to do it on a deadline, but, apart from that, I absolutely love the pattern. I think it is one of my favourite things to have knitted ever, and I recommend it without hesitation to anyone wanting to start lace, because, it is very easy to read your knitting and correct things if they go wrong. I actually feel, serious face, that I have learned and improved as a knitter while knitting this, and it has made me very happy. Anyway it is on hold at the moment until my needle arrives so I will update you with progress and hopefully action shots of it on me in Paris.

Repeat after me, this one will definitely look better when it's blocked

While I wait, I have almost finished my Annis. Well, the laceweight was a bit of a learning curve, but once I had accepted I had got to use 5 million stitch markers, it was straightforward and it is now nearly finished. The nupps were fine, you just have to have a reasonably pointy needle and do your yarnovers quite loose. I am excited to block it and see what it looks like then.

It seems all wrong to me that you can get a luxury lace shawl for under £10 which is less than a not-luxury takeaway. I do not complain though

And the moment you’ve been waiting for, did Susie get beige in her Posh Yarn order, is she going to have to swap it/ dye it/ cry. No! I got a lovely dove grey semisolid with (subtle) purple bits and a very pretty blue, it does mean I’m going to have a bit of a blue theme going, but, I’m kind of into blue at the moment so I’m happy. I actually really like how this yarn feels and I’m looking forward to knitting it, but I am leaving it be for the moment until I have finished my City Stole.

Right, {cracks knuckles}. Off to cast off Annis. Off to fill my Victoria Sponge first, though (that isn’t a euphemism). You need lots of sugar when laceweight is involved. That’s what all the books say. Honestly. However, for lots of other works in progress, most of which are depressingly better than mine (I mean, I do try to be generous-spirited, but…), go and have a look at Tami’s blog. Thanks, Tami!

Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa

2011-09-12T11:30:00.000-07:00

Forgive me, Father/ Universe/ Insert Patriarchal Punishing Deity of Your Choice Here, for I have sinned.

You know I am on a budget. You know I am trying not to buy anything at all.

You know I am especially trying not to buy wool online given that we have the very lively postman who squashes my packages and shouts up our stairs ‘are you buying wool again? You’ve got enough wool!’ even though this opinion is based on the fact that I bought all that Stylecraft Special DK, and not only was it very, very cheap, but I have crocheted it all up into a blanket. And that sack of Ethical Twist from Kemps honestly cost practically nothing, and besides, you in your All Seeing-ness know that I split it with Mum.

You know, Father, that it is of no use my explaining that to the postman. Indeed, I think you and I might agree that it would make things worse.

Not only am I trying not to buy wool online, Father, but you who are omniscient know how I feel about certain aspects of knitting culture. I mean, I get that the first use of omniscience isn’t necessarily to be monitoring my thoughts on acrylic, but I believe there might have been something somewhere about every hair being numbered. You know I am a miserably utlilitarian Product Knitter. You know how I like things that are Rugged and Useful. You know my idea of hell is going on a ridiculous internet quest to get the type of wool which is so popular you can only get it by selling your soul to the chap we don’t talk about (sorry he got such a good write up in Paradise Lost, by the way. It seems Evil is just that tiny bit more glamorous. Who knew?).

And yet, Father, given all these variables which would in normal circumstances have led to my next yarn purchase being a small ball of cheap craft cotton for a single dishcloth some time in 2015, I find myself waiting for the arrival of two skeins of laceweight yarn purchased from the Posh Yarn Orphaned Skeins sale yesterday at 7pm.

I do not think, Father, that the fact that I only procured these skeins by having the internet-shopping skills of a seasoned pro, and a paypal trigger finger which would have devastated the Wild West, tips my moral balance. Nor do I think that, although I believe you might want to encourage people generally to have Hope, my apparent expectation of being able to produce, block, and wear successfully not one laceweight shawl, but two, is in any way admirable. Father, I think it is misguided. In fact, Father, I blame the hawthorn tincture and I feel this should be a lesson to others about Temperance.

I know you are annoyed with me, Father, for I sat on a knitting needle earlier and I snapped it in half and must now buy another. I know that was a Sign. Therefore I will do penance. I will not complain about things. I will clean the house and not just move things about. I will make offerings on ebay, bids starting at 99p, non smoking home and will combine postage.

And in return, Father, given that these are orphaned bargain skeins and therefore I could not choose the colour, please influence the nice lady at Posh Yarn, work on her inner being, and try to make sure she does not send me beige.

Yours in sad self-awareness,

Susie (look, I don't know how to end prayers. I'm a pagan. I'll go and light a candle and try and access the inner realms or something).

Season of mists, mellow fruitfulness, and me on a Herbalism Walk

2011-09-11T08:17:00.000-07:00

I am contemplating a Giant Autumn Chutney Production Session. My last Giant Autumn Chutney Production Session was the year before last and took a week. It only ended when the smell of vinegar finally broke Partner and he begged me to stop (big wussy). I ended up with a mountain of chutney and gave it to people for Christmas, I thought we would be eating chutney until 2015, but actually it was quite delicious, so the jars we kept got eaten very quickly. Also it is quite cheap to do if your mother has been saving jam jars for you (as has mine) and if you get all your plums/ apples either from the market or from people with trees. Hmm. I feel a preserving session coming on, off to dig out my recipes. (In case you feel one coming on too, FYI you don’t need a brain to make chutney, it isn’t like marmalade where you have to test for a setting point, so you can put it on and wander off). In the meantime, and on the subject of Using Autumn Plants, this morning I dragged myself out of bed and went on a hedgerow herbalism walk with Of People And Plants in Milton Country Park.

Making good use of the things that we find (elderberries), things that the everyday folks leave behind, la la wombling free

And do you know, I had a really good time. Latterly I have become better at dealing with the whole plant issue, i.e. I can recognise some of them (well, you know, I can tell a daffodil from a cactus) and I am starting to have some kind of a vague awareness of seasonality, but my knowledge is tiny and I am always happy to expand it. So this was a walk where we had a bit of a nose round Milton Country Park to see what was around and what its properties might be.

We found burdock (I didn’t even think burdock was a real plant!), comfrey, hawthorn, birch, elderberries, rosehips, and something else I have forgotten the name of which I was not to eat despite it looking rather attractive. Vanessa and Jude who were running the walk had brought tinctures and syrups and teas, made up from plants they had picked, for us to try. I stood sniffing my hawthorn tincture thoughtfully until she told us it would re-balance our emotions and protect our hearts, and readers, last week was a bit of a week, so I snarfed it straight down. I cannot tell you if it has helped, because there was a lot of brandy in it, and that certainly did. So much so that I had to refuse further tinctures as I cannot drink in the morning due to being a big girl’s blouse and a lightweight. I did, however, have some elderberry syrup,

It even looks good for you, doesn't it?

And it was really delicious. Unfortunately I think elderberries are on their way out now, but I took home with me a recipe for how to make it and next year I will be ready to pounce. What an amazing tree the elderflower is, isn’t it? Elderflower cordial, elderflower champagne, elderflower fritters, and now elderberry cordial. Apparently it is excellent for colds and as a general winter tonic, as is rosehip syrup.

Making tinctures seems to be very easy: you cover your plant with brandy, leave it for ages, and shake it occasionally, just like sloe gin. Another walk-goer and I were talking about sloe gin, and she told me about a place in Cambridge called Wandlebury which has lots of whatever tree it is that sloes grow on, so I am going to go and have a look. I am encouraged that I could remember the name Wandlebury because this was post-tincture.

This is a willow, which is apparently the best kind of tree to hug if you are feeling a bit depressed. Or - have a tincture!

Anyway, if you are around in Cambridge there is another walk sometime in the winter and they are really interesting so it’s worth going. I am going to have a look now into making tinctures and syrups and things because I like the idea of having a cupboard filled with scary-looking bottles and whipping them out whenever a pick-me-up is needed, while my loved ones cry, no! Please let me just have an aspirin!

On a different subject altogether, dangerously buoyed by my ability to a/ attend regular yoga classes and be able to execute down dog without falling on my nose b/ fit into my thin jeans again HA!, I thought I might have a go at an exercise class (bonus knitting reference around 3.35). In fact I thought I might give Zumba a try tomorrow. I’m really unco-ordinated and I don’t do lycra. This is either a brave new move or me setting myself up for the worst evening of my life so if you think it isn’t a good idea, please could you stop me in time!

(Since I linked a Victoria Wood scene, obligatory Let's Do It! link. Do you know what I thought while I was listening? I thought, I wish I had a vinyl flooring catalogue. Seriously, I did. I need a few more tinctures, I do).

Failure to display WIPs so showing you my nails instead

2011-09-07T11:10:00.000-07:00

I was going to do a WIP Wednesday post today but I didn't get it together to take photographs. So, here's a quick summary:

City Stole - 3/4 done, coming on great but do not like the yarn I am using
Annis - done 8 rows, working up energy to do nupps (when I have done nupps the rest is easy garter stitch short rows)
Boring Socks in Noro Kureyon Sock - nearly done 1 sock, the yarn is very strange, it has interesting colours but appears to have been spun by a monkey out of especially rough sheep
Sewing - am contemplating making an asymmetric jacket from the latest Burda magazine

And that is all, and if you would like to see proper photos from competent people please do go and explore the links on Tami's blog. Now I will show you my nails.

No one look at my cuticles. You don't get to look polished in two days, you know

They are a deep forest green although it looked more of a teal in the little pot so that is what I thought I was getting. Anyway, I have painted them, and hopefully have left enough time for them to dry before I have to take the bin round. This is the problem: real life interferes with Glamour. In an unprecedented move, I have also bought a lipstick. I do not dare show you the colour because I suspect you will tell me it is unwearable and I must not leave the house wearing it {cough} orange {cough}. Anyway I shall go now and slip on a negligee and some high-heeled fluffy mules and lie on the sofa eating grapes. Not that we have any grapes. Or a negligee. OK, I shall go and put my Primark tracky bottoms on and go and eat a baked potato.

Did somebody tell her, you can really be redeemed

2011-09-05T10:57:00.000-07:00

I think I’m bored now of being quite as low maintenance (aesthetically) as I have been recently (my mother will be perking up at this and will be thinking, hooray, perhaps Susie will at last get rid of those brown corduroy trousers). So I thought I would paint my nails. I dig about in the random-things-drawer, this is what I find:

I am not feeling inspired

Where have all my nail polishes gone? Why have I only got left yellow, blue which I am bored of, an imitation of Rouge Noir which has dried up, coral which does not suit me and a small bottle of grey which came free with a magazine? You know how this happened. When I left the Job Of Doom ages and ages ago I subconsciously donned sackcloth and ashes, and either threw away or Ebayed anything frivolous or that possibly might make me look attractive, let us not analyse that one too rigorously. Well here I am now, sitting about in a shirt that is 10 years old* and no choice of nail polish colours. That wasn’t very empowering, was it? Well, luckily, I find myself in possession of a £5 Boots No. 7 voucher and I know that Boots No. 7 nail polish is £7, so for the relatively small outlay of £2 I could have fresh new nails, and I am walking through town tomorrow so I can pick some up. What colour shall I buy?

*Boden. I think this shirt is indestructible. I may send it to them to use in their promotional literature.

Failure to communicate

2011-09-03T09:51:00.000-07:00

Partner has been watching my struggles with Annis sympathetically (it is going better now I have accepted I have got to use stitch markers. But I do not like using laceweight and I will not pretend).

...and now I see why top-down shawls are popular

He has suggested that if it is too difficult I 'could always go back to knitting, because you like that'. I wonder what he thinks it is I am doing? I think he has divided fibre arts into categories in his head in a way other people would not recognise. It is like the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis as applied to crafts. I shall not analyse too deeply though because at least he is supportive (in a sarcastic kind of way), and enjoys going in wool shops and giving his opinion on the merchandise. I don't know if that should be encouraged or not.

Everything you ever wanted to know about running but were afraid to ask

2011-09-02T09:41:00.000-07:00

When I was at school we sometimes used to do cross country running. This involved waiting until it was the most inappropriate and miserable weather, either freezing cold and raining and everywhere covered with mud or boiling hot, and then everyone getting dressed up in our navy knickers to stumble round the bottom of the sports field, fending off flashers. I used to manage to run a hundred metres with the gym teacher hollering at me (from the relative comfort of the sports block I might add) before I gave up and walked. I cannot think, looking back, of anything that would put you off running more effectively. I mean, I suppose the flashers made us speed up a bit, but, generally it didn’t work as a programme. I wonder why they wanted to put us off exercise? I don’t remember anyone trying to teach me maths by, for example, hitting me on the head with a hammer. Then a while ago in the Guardian I read an article by a man who had apparently gone from nothing to being able to run 5K in a fortnight. I suspect that man also tells people his penis is 12” long because this is complete nonsense and there is no wonder those of us who are not athletic are put off, what with navy knickers, flashers, mud, and unreasonable expectations. So as I am now following Couch to 5K and am thus an athlete and an expert, I have decided to tell you The Truth about running and exercise for those of us who are not 18 and were never sporty to start with. Yes, readers: this is everything you wanted to know about running but were afraid to ask (although if it isn’t, ask away).

1/ Couch to 5K works. However. If you are unfit like me, the weeks will take you longer than a week. Frankly they may take you months. You might even need to practice to get good enough to do week 1 (I did). Don’t feel bad about it and don’t do more than you can do. I mean, try to do it regularly and push yourself a bit, but you’re not supposed to be on the point of collapsing because then you would give up and be depressed. Remember: sustained effort, not one-off huge unrepeatable efforts (and that is a summary of everything I have ever done wrong in my life).

2/ If you ever go anywhere near a running magazine, website or other publication, they will impress on you the importance of correct shoes and equipment. Now, if you have existing joint problems then yes, fair enough, but, if you are just averagely unfit like me, let me break it to you: when you first start running, there is absolutely no chance of you running far enough to do your knees any harm at all. Frankly you could drag a pair of flip flops out of the back of your cupboard and do it in those (don’t because you might trip. I fell over today (not wearing flip flops) and it hurt, also I had to be rescued by two ginger dogs and I looked ridiculous). If I were you I would wear whatever trainers you have got lying about until you know if you like it or not because if you spend a fortune on flashy new ones that will guarantee that your first run will be your last.

Bruise developing on knee from falling over. Splat! Just like a starfish!

3/ Nor do you need leggings which wick sweat away, posh shiny vests or anything of that ilk unless it makes you feel more confident. I am sorry to say this, but, when you have first started running, you will look daft. You will look as if you are about to expire when you have been running for twenty seconds. You will stumble. You will have a constipated expression on your face. If you have posh sweat-wicking leggings and big shiny trainers you will look like a new runner who has spent money on clothes: you will not look as if you can run any better.

4/ When I first considered running I was very preoccupied by how daft I would look. I felt it was something I could not do in public. I felt the embarrassment would crucify me. After I had been running for 10 seconds I stopped caring and I have never cared since. And I am generally quite self-conscious. So do not let self-consciousness put you off because there will always be someone who looks worse than you (me) and really, no-one is looking at you. If they do look at you, give them the finger, no I am joking, or at least do not do that until you are confident you can run away fast enough. For me that will be some time in Autumn 2012.

5/ There is one item of equipment that is vital and that is a sports bra. I sometimes think you can tell who was likely to have benefited most from PE at school if you know what bra size they were when they were 13. I was 36C and let me tell you, there were additional issues for me when we had to do trampolining (I kid you not) that were not a problem for my AA friends. Get a good, supportive bra (it will look revolting) and I also then wear a tight lycra vest (from Treehouse28 on etsy) to strap myself down further so I can be comfortable, and not be recreating Baywatch Circa 1991 any more than I have to.

5/ Dogs love runners. I run through the local park and the hairier and larger the dog, the more it wants to be friends and run with me. It is a bit disheartening to be continually overtaken by the Dulux Dog, yes it is, but just remember that dogs have no sense of irony and they mean well. (Unless they bite you! They won’t).

6/ Buy a stop watch. Again, you do not need one that measures your blood pressure, heart rate and the condition of your soul, just a very cheap one from Argos. This will mean you can measure your progress and it is encouraging, also you cannot do Couch to 5K without one.

Pro Fitness. Ha

7/ Think back to the days of navy knickers. Did you try to get out of PE by saying you had your period? And did your PE teacher tell you that exercise was actually excellent for period pains so get moving, Fatso? Well, you were right and she was wrong. I suspect this is one of the things that is different for everyone, but, if I time my run wrong (either as my period starts or during ovulation) I can bring on cramps. You may be different but just be aware because who wants pain if they can avoid it. And while we are way down the TMI road I will tell you that although I do not have personal experience with this, I believe running can bring on leaking if you have stress incontinence, although I have also read it can make it better. You see, running is hardcore and all your insides get jiggled about. Why should I do this terrible thing you cry, well…

8/ What they really don’t tell you is that exercise makes you feel much better. Much better! It is like drinking wine without the hangover. It is the endorphins. They are strangely addictive and also it is better than drugs because you don’t have to be hanging about on street corners, you just have to embarrass yourself failing to overtake dogs and occasionally falling over.

I am thinking of swimming next, but the thought of the swimsuit is putting me off. Perhaps I could have one like Nigella? I would be the talk of Cambridge.

Thank you for comments ++ bored of my blanket

2011-08-29T10:59:00.000-07:00

I have been a bit AWOL. So, first I wanted to say, thank you everybody for your very helpful comments about my lace dilemma on my last post. I said to Partner, do you remember the shawl we looked at, I asked my blog readers about the pattern… And Partner said, ha! I bet they said it was very difficult! without taking his eyes off the television. Partner has been learning lots about knitting recently, I rub him with different wools (on his face, not as part of questionable practices) so he can tell the difference in fibres and so far he has pronounced Noro Kureyon Sock ‘very rough’ and says he can definitely tell it from Malabrigo (this would be a good game at Christmas, wouldn’t it? Look out for me on Dragons’ Den). Anyway, you will be excited to learn that I have decided I am going to do a Lace Apprenticeship before I attempt the difficult pattern, which might be a good thing anyway as it might make me confident enough to tackle the big size first off. So I have acquired a skein of laceweight and I am going to have a crack at Annis, which looks easy and is a shape I will wear, but has nupps so I think will be enough of a challenge. After that I shall consider myself a lace master and will go wildly crashing about knitting things that are patterned on two sides.

Non, Whiskery Grey Pussycat, genus, non te facundia, non te restituet pietas

Second, here is a traditional Cambridge pussycat photo, you might recognise this one as he has appeared on my blog before. It is Whiskery Grey Pussycat who has eyebrows just like the former Regius Professor of Latin. Partner has just walked past and told me I should not write that, and that in any case he actually looks more like the Regius Professor of Latin before the one I am referring to, whose eyebrows were apparently even more striking. What this tells you about classics faculty recruitment procedures I do not know. Anyway, Whiskery Grey Pussycat and I have advanced our acquaintance and now he lets me stroke his nose as I pass.

When will it be over?

Third, my crochet blanket which I had finished and woven the ends in on and then masochistically decided to add a border. Readers, I am very bored of this blanket and frankly I wish it would finish itself, but, I suspect it is going to be very useful very quickly as the thermostat on the central heating has broken and I have got a cold. So I press on doggedly.

A border with my trademark taste and subtlety

Fourth, it has come to my attention that a certain person of my acquaintance (it is Aunty Kath) has been looking for reduced price Mulberry bags on websites. Now, here is my handy guide for telling whether a website is likely to be genuine or not: if it refers to Mulberry bags being carried by such luminaries as ‘Kate Mose’ then I am suspecting it might not be an official Mulberry outlet. So Aunty Kath, please do not part with your credit card details for a cut-price Alexa, as I would be worried you might get something questionable with a Mulberry label sewn on, and also I am worried the label might not have Mulberry spelled correctly. Indeed it might have Primark crossed out and Mullllberrrry written underneath. The only places I know of to get cut-price it-bags are TheOutnet.com and also the various designer sample sales in London, also ebay, but recently I find I have lost my killer ebay instinct and sometimes I would rather just buy things in shops (this happens when you get old, also the whole flat shoe thing and you start to watch quiz shows on BBC4 with interest).

Hmm, that made me think. Is Only Connect on later?

Cheapo bargain and a questionable endeavour

2011-08-22T10:53:00.000-07:00

First, you have probably seen this but just in case you haven’t, you can download the Fall 2009 Interweave Knits Accessories e-magazine (snappy title) for 10 cents which is 7p in proper money, joke. I am not fond of e-magazines as I don’t like having to sit squinting at my laptop, but this is a truly excellent bargain as it has Koolhaas and the Sideways Grande Cloche in it which you might want to knit (I mean, if you knit Koolhaas with all that cabling you deserve having Jared Flood come round to your house, strip naked and do your hoovering, but I bet some of you have greater tolerance for cables than me). Also if you look at the patterns in it on Ravelry a lot of them are selling for $6 each. And an unbudgeted 7p is not too bad. Also if you are feeling slightly more flush, you can get an Interweave Knits (or other magazine) subscription for $18 here; you have to pay $7 international postage (if you are in the UK like me), but I have worked out for you that for 4 issues this means you are paying about £3.75 each, which is cheaper than you would be able to get if you bought them individually.

I give with one hand, I take with the other, because now I need advice. As I said previously, like a fool I now think I can knit lace and it will not make me want to go out and stab someone, so I thought I would have a go at a shawl. Now, although I admire all the beautiful shawls I see people knitting, in terms of my own personal style I do not think many of them are me (my fault not the shawls!) so I thought what I would do is, go through patterns and see if any of them jumps out and says, knit me. So I have looked at shawl patterns until I have gone cross eyed, and the shawl that jumps out and says knit me is Jaali by Kitman Figueroa. I have bought the pattern and looked at it and although it is quite involved it does not look impossible, but, it has patterning on all rows including wrong side ones which is apparently difficult. I am relatively adventurous and I have googled how to insert lifelines, also we have quite a collection of spirits for if things go badly and a secret store of Harveys Bristol Cream which my dad’s neighbour Roger keeps buying him and which he passes on to us when a certain critical sweet sherry point is reached. Would this be a stupid shawl to start with? Whenever I look at beginner lace advice everyone says knit Traveling Woman, but while Traveling Woman is a great pattern and very pretty, it is just not me and I would never wear it, so that seems a waste of wool. What do you think? Am I setting myself up for misery? (In knitting terms. In life terms I often do. I am like this poem but you will be encouraged to hear that it is quite correct, some polish is indeed gained with one’s ruin, and also the ability to knit mittens).

Huffington Post and whether feminists should knit. The definitive answer

2011-08-21T14:43:00.000-07:00

If you have been on the internet recently you will know that someone on the Huffington Post has dissed the Yarn Harlot and essentially the internet has now ended because there is Fury. Well, I say, it is a shame the author of this piece about how we should all be tough like Sookie, whoever Sookie is, never read Dyke’s Delight comic circa 1993, where these issues have already been comprehensively explored and dealt with. I used to buy Dyke’s Delight and other indie comics from Forbidden Planet in London in the late 90s and sit on the commuter train back to Cambridge reading them, with men in suits looking at me thoughtfully. Forbidden Planet no longer have comics like this but I have a secret store for referring to in cases of internet crisis so we are very lucky and I can drag this one out tonight.

Rip Up Those Roles by Leanne Franson is the interesting story of Buzz, a Tuff Dyke, who feels herself trapped in the role of tough female. I don’t know if this is how Sookie, whoever she might be, feels, but I think we have to accept that it may be because it is never nice to feel that you can’t branch out.

Buzz the Tuff Dyke as approved of by the Huffington Post

Despite Buzz’s buzz cut, biceps and talent for motorbike maintenance, what she also – note, Huffington Post blogger – also wants is to spend time knitting, with her cat, and in a committed long term relationship with fellow Tuff Dyke, Bof. Oh the tragedy of attracting hoards of femmey chicks when what she wants is to escape the stereotype.

And this was pre-Ravelry so she probably had to make her own pattern

But triumph! In Yolanda’s Yarn Universe while buying a skein of Baby Sno Soft to knit pussy a mousie, Bof walks in, their eyes meet over a bin of Fancy Fluff yarns – mermaid bumfluff wasn’t yet being harvested in 1993 but you know, the next best thing – and Love Blossoms – because Bof knits too!

I don't know if they were into gardening and Hello Kitty but they may well have been

And they live happily ever after, baking cupcakes and knitting. But also being able to mend their motorbikes when necessary. So I am afraid the Huffington Post is a little bit behind the times but it has revealed that you do not mess with knitters, and we knew that, because we deal daily with terrifying things like Steeks and that is scarier than anything Sookie does. And don't anyone be putting any daft strictures on feminism because if you do I will have to show you Auntie Studs. What do you think she would say? Exactly.

End of summer pictures

2011-08-19T10:16:00.000-07:00

It is coming up to the end of summer, although to be honest it has felt a bit to me like summer is on its way out ever since the solstice. This is why a tiny amount of knowledge of solar cycles is a dangerous thing and also why I always decide in December that winter is over and it is now spring, which really it isn't.

I imagine you're all very jealous of my Feature Plug Socket

Someone was kind enough to buy me orange flowers. Excitingly they match my orange candle and orange picture. My orange picture is from TK Maxx and my orange candle is from the New Atlantis Bookshop near the British Museum and is a spell candle which will bring me prosperity. It hasn't done yet but that is because we have not finished burning it down. You have to do these things properly and not rush them.

That jug is part of my Denby Arabesque collection. Actually it is the only part but one day I may find another bit

One thing our garden produces in great quantities is blackberries. This is actually a moral failing as I am not sure they are there deliberately, in fact to be completely honest I think they are weeds, however, we eat the blackberries, so they earn their keep and I leave them alone.

It'll be fine when it's blocked. 12 pages of charts, go me

I dangled my City Stole in the tree so you could see it more easily, it didn't work, so you will have to take my word for it that it is going well. I am near the end of Chart 2 and I am enjoying knitting it very much. It is dangerous however as it makes me think I can knit lace, then I will go out, buy laceweight, download a shawl pattern, knit one row, then succumb to misery and despair and be on this blog moaning.

The terrible consequences

This is what happens when you try to take artistic photographs. You get your balls of wool wound round trees and rolling about in the undergrowth and have to go retrieving them and picking the leaves off.

Look, I just like rainbows, is that so wrong?

You may remember a very long time ago I became annoyed by Jane Brocket suggesting in her knitting book that you should crochet a throw and spend almost £200 on the wool to do so. It is not as if she is the only person who has ever suggested this so I should not have been annoyed, also it is not as if she came to my house personally and laughed at all my acrylic and KnitPicks cheapo wool, however, I do get irritated by the All Fibre Arts Must Be Done With The Best Materials And Hang the Expense idea. Thus I decided to crochet my own throw out of cheap acrylic in a thrillingly transgressive manner and at a cost of only about £22. I am on the last colour and the end is now in sight, I feel I have crocheted summer into this nice bright throw, and I may even have sufficient energy to do a border around it. I got the pattern from Attic24 as the one in Jane's book has slightly more pointy ripples and you need flowing ripples for a rainbow (look, you just do). If you have the urge to spend a lot of money on a woolly throw, however, I do quite fancy this one and I can see why Noro would work well, so I point it out to you in case there is anyone reading this blog who has not spent all their yarn budget up to 2020 (there are variegated acrylics as well though so you probably could do it for much cheaper).

It is not quite the end of summer yet though, I think we have time for a few last hoorahs.

I may just possibly

2011-08-17T07:04:00.000-07:00

hypothetically and potentially have got new shoes.

OK, look, in an ideal world I wouldn't have chosen that carpet

What what? They're flat. They're practical! And everybody knows gold is literally the most hardwearing colour you can get. That's why all postmen wear gold shoes. And people digging the roads. And surgeons. Yes they do! Metallic gold jazz shoes! Practical shoes that last! You look closer.

They'll last me for years.

Susie exits stage left, doing jazz hands to match jazz shoes.

Antisocial behaviour

2011-08-15T10:38:00.000-07:00

Cambridge can be quite a dangerous place to live. As I have documented earlier, there are the very bad cats who jump out at you from all directions and weave round your legs in a fashion contravening all health and safety directives. There are the tourists with enormous cameras who think it is an excellent idea to be walking along and then stop suddenly and crouch down so they can take photographs of something bizarre like a road junction, and that no-one will be inconvenienced or trip up over them. There is Partner, who is not friendly, and who I suspect sometimes says choice words to tourists who do this, especially when I am not there to supervise him, instead of just tutting in an annoyed manner like I do, which is the proper British way. And then there are the swans.

A swan pretending to be innocent. They aren't innocent

In Cambridge the river is quite a big presence and a lot of the time it is full of boats, often punts full of people thinking they are Sebastian Flyte (OK, I know that was Oxford). And that is lovely, especially if they want to take their enormous cameras with them and not photograph road junctions and trip me up. Or there are students rowing. There are also a lot of swans. The boats annoy the swans very much, because it is their river and the boats are interlopers and they are quite furious. However, in recent years a swan hero has emerged. I do not know if he was elected by some form of swan consensus or if he just rose to prominence because of natural swan superiority but, since 2009, Mr Asbo the Swan has been terrorising rowers and boats. It has obviously been a contentious issue because on the one hand there are the people who Mr Asbo has had a go at who are very frightened and want him relocated, and on the other there are people forming under a banner of Rights For Swans, Swans Were There First etc etc. It is like the Montagues and the Capulets or like Al-Amin and Sainsbury’s although I do think possibly Al-Amin’s case may have been boosted recently by a Cambridge woman finding glass in her Sainsbury’s Basic Sausage, but I digress. (Actually I will digress further and tell you that my mother once found glass in a Sarah Lee Gateau and ate it by mistake and bled. So I came home with the news that I had passed my driving test to find my mother hacking up blood in the sink, upstaging me as usual. She complained. We got vouchers. Here is a recipe for a nice easy non-Sarah Lee chocolate cake, you do not have to add glass unless you want to).

Anyway there is a sad postscript to Mr Asbo, which is, he has a bad toe and has had to be removed from the river, although he seems now to be recovering well. But, what new Animal Avenger will emerge in Cambridge? I will be keeping a close eye on the very bad cat down the road and also the collared dove, who now actually hovers over me when I am outside if I have not put his nuts out quickly enough. We are very close to nature here, which as you know is red in tooth and claw. Things can turn very quickly.

Get well soon, Mr Asbo!