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

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).

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

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.

I’m too sexy for my pants

OK. Now very, very sadly, I’ve misplaced my camera under the morass that is the craft room today so I’m going to have to wait until it re-emerges to photograph these for you. However... I’ve spent today working on developing my Pants Pattern (this is pants in the UK sense, I never thought quite how parochial my English was until I started this blog!). And… I have pants! They are well sewn and they will last. Indeed, I think those pants will outlive me. They are comfortable (I am wearing them now!). They are made of nice warm cotton jersey. When you put them on they look really quite cool in a retro 40s/ boy-shorts kind of way. I am going to make lots and tie-dye them and take them to the craft fair I am doing in September. All I need to do is grade the pattern (I say that as if I knew how to do it.) Hooray! Pants Success! However, I have a terrible problem.

When the Pants are on a person, they look cool. When they are not on a person, however, they look like a truss. They look like the kind of pants that Hattie Jacques would have worn in Carry on Camping. I wanted Brigitte Bardot: I have got Olive from On The Buses. How am I going to bring out the full retro ironic coolness of my Pants In Action when spread out on the table they will look like Support Pants of the kind that come in those free catalogues in Sunday supplements, along with fleece-lined unislippers and bra extenders? My clothes dummy hasn’t got legs. I am very seriously considering wearing a pair of the Pants over tights, like wonder woman, to show them off (I see this in Vogue occasionally, honestly I do, I think it is a fashion staple, so perhaps people will think I am really directional and not mad?). Oh God. Perhaps I am just no good at attractive underwear? Perhaps I have a mental block? Damn all that reading of Andrea Dworkin books at a formative age!

Underwear design. Harder than it looks. Walking away now. (Albeit in a way that indicates the wearing of Good Strong Supportive Pants.)