How can you possibly feel like this about a bookcase?

Honestly. Like a fool (see posts passim re: Home Improvements, Do Not Do It,) I am engaging with Home Improvements again, which is currently involving looking for bookcases on Amazon because we appear to have a small amount of wall that is not Utterly Bookcased To Capacity. Look at the review at the top. I bet this person finished writing this review and then went straight away and pinned something to Pinterest ('don't throw yourself away ladies on someone who wants you to be a size zero and stops tickling you when you tell him to!!! - Bertrand Russell').

I mean, I can think of things I might have difficulty forgiving, but a bookcase looking slightly different isn't one of them. Frankly, I don't care what bookcases look like any more, I don't. They can be fuschia pink. They can be spray painted with rude words. They can be flocked. I don't care. All I care about is, is it the right size to fit next to the fireplace so that the maximum possible amount of space is used, can it be assembled by a reluctant person with an electronic screwdriver and a cup of strong coffee, and will it hold enough of Partner's ridiculously huge and heavy books that we do not look mad when people come round. This is all I care about. Actually what I might do is, I might ring a carpenter to come and give us an estimate for shelves. I mean, I'm ashamed to be doing that when I read blogs like that of Rachel who would not need to do so but yes. I am working on accepting my limitations...

Introducing colour

We went to stay in Brighton and the B+B we stayed in was not painted like a mad white cube.

Colour!!! Partner said, at least it had a white ceiling

So I began to feel I could introduce some colour into our lives. I have been considering painting a bit of furniture ever since I saw a painted chest of drawers on the front of Making magazine, which was quite nice, and which chased away terrible memories of stencilling, and of ragrolling in mediterranean colours which you will understand my shuddering at if you are of my vintage (37)*. Anyway, the other day I trotted off out to buy the Observer and someone had put a small table out to be taken away (they had. I didn’t just take someone’s table. It had a sign). It was a house near where the Worst Cat In Cambridge lives, I just tell you that for local colour: anyway, I came home with the Observer and a free table, which surprised Partner a bit. And today I have painted my table. This was the table before I painted it:

I think it's highly unlikely this table was worth money but if it was, please don't tell me

And this is the table now, painted in Habitat Mediterranean and Cumin (Habitat go into administration and now suddenly they’re everywhere, doing paint in Homebase and featuring in the Argos catalogue, who knew):

I'm not 100% sure I like the colour of the legs. I shall sleep on it

I bought two tester pots of emulsion and a pot of varnish, which came to £13.59 (I had brushes/ masking tape/ white emulsion for undercoat already). So, this is my £13.59 table which is reasonably thrifty, I think. I shall touch it up in daylight and then I shall varnish it. I am gradually making inroads into our bedroom, and this is going to be my bedside table. I am going to move the current bedside table and beanbag to the study for Reading Nook purposes and make a replacement beanbag for the bedroom, which is a work in progress. This is all displacement activity because what I really need to do is sort out Partner And The Ridiculous Book Mountain, but baby steps, people, baby steps.

Bonus picture of cows who just come and hang out in the city centre as if that is both normal and acceptable, stopping me getting to the PUB

* If you are reading this in a room with ragrolled stencilled walls, don’t listen to me. I’m sure it looks lovely, and please enjoy your tuscany-effect ceramics, sun-dried tomatoes, and affair with the milkman.

Decorating

I have been painting our living room. Our living room has gone unpainted for a while because Partner and I have this ongoing battle about painting things. Partner says we must paint the entire house WHITE like a MAD WHITE CUBE and if I show him dusky blue or grey he looks appalled and disgusted, and it all becomes difficult. I say, other people have colour in their houses why can’t we, let us experiment with subtle coffee colours. Then Partner says, no, WHITE! WHITE EVERYWHERE! And I say, clearly we are not suited, and actually you would probably be much better off with someone else, perhaps I will leave or alternatively you could leave, and Partner says, I cannot leave because I would have to make a lot of trips on the Number One bus with all my books in boxes, so we had better just find a way to compromise and live together. And I say, magnolia? And Partner says, no! WHITE!

Paintings by me

Paintings from etsy and I am reasonably sure there is nothing dodgy on that bookshelf

Anyway, my friend has now moved into a mansion, and after I saw it I decided Partner and I must make a pretense at living like adults, and not e.g. have a hole in the ceiling which is partly covered by a botch job involving handbag interfacing. So I gave in and painted the living room white, and actually I think it looks fine. It makes the room next to it look worse, but, I will move on to that one at some point, although I may do the bedroom next. I am embroidering this cushion to put in it,

I am working up to engaging with the French Knots

and I think I may cut off the back panel and back it with something different, then use the back panel to embroider something else. I have some skull transfers from Sublime Stitching, so I thought that might look nice. Skulls and roses.

I am a brave little soldier

I saw this furry little chap in Cambridge the other day. Is there anything sadder than a dog tied up outside a shop? He was being very brave and patient, and waiting. I bet he was left there for, ooh, a good five minutes. How do they get their faces to look so poignant? It is probably a skill I would do well to master.

(Dye job tomorrow. Me = nervous!).

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

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.

When I am rich...

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!).

Like Apartment Therapy. But quite a lot more rubbish

I thought I would show you our kitchen now that I have decorated it. It will be like Apartment Therapy, but, not very good and with paint splashes in surprising places. I thought it might be at least interesting for Aunty Kath, though, because she has a shop selling kitchens and will be able to look at my photographs and think, poor Susie would be much better off if only she could rip it all out and install a Poggenpohl. And yes I would concur with this sentiment. But, you know, we have no money for Poggenpohls because I squander the household income on Orla Kiely ceramic items which I have now got to take back to John Lewis because the seal is dodgy (I know! And I have got PMT and may end up unintentionally giving the poor people in the kitchen department a piece of my mind. Hmm perhaps I should leave it to next week when I am human again).

The veg box is behind the table in the corner on the wine rack. You would be surprised what you can fit into a tiny kitchen if you are determined

This is my dining table. I can get 5 people round this which is quite impressive when you consider no-one wants to sit near Partner, as he is liable to drink wine and say sarcastic things in Latin. When we moved into our house, you had to see the kitchen to believe it. It is actually quite large for Cambridge, but the people before us had, as they would say on Phil and Kirsty, used the space in a rather eccentric way. They had built worktops all round the room so you couldn’t get any appliances under them or any furniture. Partner took one look at it and said ‘this is just silly’ and pulled the worktop away from the wall and rearranged it all so we could get a table in. This gives you an idea of the quality of the build. The worktop is not actually attached to anything, it is propped up on legs. I do not think this is normal.

At least we get sunshine

This is the worktop and my Dualit toaster which was bought for me by Aunty Kath and has seen daily use ever since. We had to install that light because when we moved in we had strip lights which, shall we say, had seen better days. One of them had seen better days to the extent that it was actually just wires hanging from the ceiling.

Daffs and garlic. There's a name for a blog right there

Pans, spices and cookery books. I would love to find a spice arrangement which means they do not all drop on my head whenever I am rootling at the back for the Asafoetida, but if I put them on the worktop they breed like ground elder so they have to be contained.

I painted those cabinet doors too. Before, they were exactly the same colour as a truss. Who wants that?

A panoramic view of the sink. You may be thinking, is that safe having a gas pipe behind a cooker, and the answer would be, it possibly isn’t ideal, no, but, I work with what I have got. You can see out of the window next door’s fence which is the only fence in our row which stands at the correct angle, go you John next door, and the paint which whoever painted the window outside got on the glass. I have actually never seen such terrible painting as the person who did this house before me, I think it was a trained orangutan. In which case obviously it is very impressive. Anyway if you too are dealing with the results of training an orangutan to paint, I can tell you that you can remove paint from glass by scraping it with a razor blade held at a 45 degree angle (or a ceramic hob scraper).

Hyacinths! ++ Something!

Bulbs! Reduced from Marks and Spencer, waiting to be snapped up. Lavender outside the window, waiting to take over the world. There is mare’s tail in that bed and I have discovered today that that is actually as bad as having Japanese Knotweed. I win, I win the Difficult House competition.

Do you all have proper, non-mad, not-codged-up kitchens? I bet you do ;-).

Home Improvements. Do not do it, especially in the garden

I am not going to bore you generally with my fencing problems because I do appreciate that the bathroom was boring enough. I am going to bore you with them in this post, though, so, feel free not to read.

The problem:
Our garden has a surprising amount of fencing which is all falling down. What would I do if it fell on the big white cat from two doors down while he is doing his acrobatics on the top of it and squashed him, or, even worse, the small and incredibly well-behaved child who rides her tricycle down the passage? Then everyone would hate me. So, I am trying to get someone to replace the fencing at a price which does not necessitate my selling a kidney (ha!). I am also trying to get someone to move two bushes from our front garden, which will hopefully make the whole thing look less as if a witch lives here. (Although, come to think of it, a witch does live here).

Now, I have learned many things during this exciting time of home improvements, one of which is that, getting estimates is like drawing teeth. I ring people, I leave messages, they do not ring me back, I grind my teeth, I fall out with Partner. This is before they have even seen the horror that is our fencing. I don’t know if this is because we live in a slightly questionable area, but I do know that if I say the words ‘in the most economical way possible’ in the message this increases my failure rate. Once they have seen it, however, they trot off, brightly, promising to send me a quote, looking nervously from side to side, and then they do not.

I do not begrudge these people, but I have become cynical, and I now factor in a certain amount of natural wastage. So, whereas I started off by noting carefully down in a small book who I had rung and what their name was, now I adopt a scatter-gun approach, and I pick people at random from the Yellow Pages and leave them clipped and unhopeful messages while I am having my coffee in the morning and am half asleep. Well the joke is on me today, because everybody I rang this morning is coming tomorrow, along with the man from the Salvation Army to pick up an armchair and the City Ranger to repair my green dustbin. I do not know their names because I didn’t write them down and I won’t know if they are expecting to see a bush, a fence, an armchair, or what. I have tried to schedule them at least half an hour apart but what if they all come together? It will be like a French farce involving garden contractors, with me in my furry-hooded Parka intoning briskly ‘who are you, and have you come to assess my bush?’ at the man from the Salvation Army, and a City Ranger trying to repair a green bin while competing men with tape measures measure up for palisade fencing under his feet. I will have to adopt a more organised approach in the future, and indeed you may see me next year in House Beautiful looking smug, under a caption which says ‘I acted as my own project manager and saved £xxxx on our renovation project!’. The caption never says, and I alienated all my friends, upset the dog and gave myself an ulcer in the process, but, we know.

On a brighter note, here is my stool which I had upholstered:

Rhapsody in beige

The man was the Henry Ford of upholsterers: I could have any colour I wanted but on the other hand he did have a beige remnant. I think it’s come out quite nice, though, don’t you? Yes, that might be yarn on the top. It might be Ethical Twist. I shall tell you more about this another time, when I shall also rant about the fact that the pattern for the Corrugated Asymmetrical Sweater in Loop-d-Loop just doesn’t work. There is a reason, as I often ponder, why I am so fond of the top-down raglan. There is a reason.

WIP Wednesday: Dealing with the Fireplace of Shame

Can you believe it’s WIP Wednesday again, no nor can I, but thanks anyway Tami for hosting, and as ever go to Tami’s blog to see WIPs by lots of talented people. Well, I have measured out my life in WIP Wednesdays rather than coffee spoons, but, this is what I’m working on at the moment. First a clue.

Today we had The Kills. Good for quilting to. And how cool are those slippers, hey hey hey?

Yes. That combination of one foot properly shod in a fluffy slipper against the cold and one foot naked in order to feel the foot pedal, along with the fabric, mess, and loud music can only mean one thing. I am digging out my quilt tops and I am backing and binding those suckers. Hurrah! So, today I have managed to finish my small art quilt which I am going to hang over the dodgy fireplace. I have decided we are going to have honest photographs on this blog and I am not going to pretend I am an attractive person leading a stylish life because, I am not. So, I am going to show you just how dodgy the fireplace is, and you will see that it is not conceivably possible for me to screw up the binding on this quilt enough that it will look worse than what it is going to cover.

No part of this house is too depressing for Partner to sneak a stack of books in

I know I should get a builder in to deal with the fireplace, but, in my defence, I am dealing with the garden at the moment. I had a man round today to quote for a new fence, and all the time he was measuring, I could see he was thinking, ‘oh, God, look at this ivy. Just move. That would be easier’. I could see it in his eyes. Anyway, that is enough of my Home Improvements Angst and we will move on to Quilt Binding Angst. I am not good at binding quilts, and I am confused by mitred corners. I used this tutorial, which I thought was helpful and straightforward, but, (and this may make sense to quilters or it may not), I do not understand how to vary the depth of my corners. Does it vary according to how far you stop before the end of the seam, or, how big a seam allowance you use when you are sewing the binding to the edge? Does that make sense? Only, I seem to get what I am given, which is fine, but sometimes in life it is nice to be able to make a choice. This is what I ended up with,

The corner is slightly too short. Why? How? What to do? It is a mystery. What does it all mean?

which is passable, but, I don’t entirely feel in control of the process. I might try binding the next quilt with square corners, I don’t know. I dug out my quilt which was made by my grandmother (Nana Bessie) to look how she had bound hers, and, she hadn’t! She hadn’t at all! It is two quilt tops sewn together, with no batting.

No batting! No binding! Call the Quilt Police

This is anarchy! Sadly Nana Bessie is no longer with us, so I can’t ask her why she made the decision to finish her quilts like this, but if she was still here, she would probably say ‘Oh, Susie, that’s the way you’re supposed to do it’ in a brisk and dismissive kind of way, then she would purse her lips at me and give me the News Of The World and a polony sandwich. Then she might make a trenchant remark about the size of my hips and wander off to landscape the garden and bring peace to the Middle East before putting some beetroot on for lunch.

If you look at it from a distance the rows almost look lined up properly. This is not true though

Anyway, this is what I ended up with. It’s ok, isn’t it? It’ll serve its purpose. One thing it did do, which I think is going to save me a lot of heartache and despair later, is make me realise that quilting without a long-arm machine and a quilting foot actually isn’t all that easy. I’m eyeing up the Very Ugly Quilt Top next, and I’m wondering if I might just hand quilt it. That’s a way off, though, because I’ve got to scrabble about and piece the back together next. God! When I could just buy one from Debenhams! (I’m joking, honestly. Go the DIY revolution! Even when it bloody takes forever!).

Confessions of a slovenly householder, no. 1: How To Paint

Everyone has roles in relationships and life. For some, their role is to be the supportive one, the one who deals with social occasions, the one who drives after evenings out, the one who catches spiders, etc. My role is to be the one who always does the decorating. This is not a role I consciously chose; if I were to choose, my role would be to be the one who spends all the household income at ascension online, but, here we are and now I have built up a degree of skill in it and I think I am trapped. As my mind is on this having spent today emulsioning the bathroom, I thought I would do a how-to of the correct way to paint a room. Most of you are probably better at this than me, and if you are, don’t hesitate to tell me where I am going wrong as I have to do the kitchen next and will incorporate your advice gratefully.

1/ Painting is very boring but it is not difficult. If you are up to balancing with one leg on various unsafe structures, then there is absolutely no need to pay someone else to do it although I can absolutely see why you might want to, so don’t feel bad.

2/ Painting is like sewing, it is all in the preparation, which takes oh god yawn forever, and the actual painting is very quick. As a rule of thumb the more time you spend preparing the better your room will look, so although it is counter-intuitive for me to say this, don’t think, oh I can’t be arsed, and dive straight in. No! First range your tools! You will need:

I have run out of masking tape, oh no

3/ Paint: listen carefully. DO NOT BUY CHEAP PAINT. While I am all for saving money, cheap paint is a hideous false economy. Does anyone remember the first Adrian Mole book? Where he tries to paint his bedroom black and it won’t cover his Noddy wallpaper so he has to do coat after coat and then scribble over the bells on Noddy’s hat with a marker? Adrian had clearly not bought Dulux, as this is what you are dooming yourself to if you buy cheap paint. This is the only time you will ever hear me say this, but, buy a named brand, and if it says ‘one coat!’ or something, so much the better. You will still need 2, though.

4/ A small brush for edges – all of them lose bristles, so you can buy a cheap one – and something bigger to cover more space. Do not buy a roller. They spray everywhere, and the hairy cylinder flies off and hits the carpet/ toddler/ afghan hound, it all goes wrong. Buy a Paint Pad with a small handle. If you are painting your hallway you can use the handle to tie it to the (non-hairy) end of a brush for greater length. Also you need a paint tray (these are very cheap).

Paint pad, tray and brush. Keep that mess contained. Lock up the cat

5/ Masking tape and polyfilla. These do not have to be wonderful quality, just buy the cheap ones. Buy polyfilla in a tub rather than a tube as otherwise you are forever squeezing.

6/ Now prepare your room. Have a wipe/ hoover round all the walls (because you would be surprised how cobwebs can accumulate), and clean with a damp cloth the tops of door frames, skirting boards, or anywhere that is liable to be dusty, because if dust gets on your brush, your surface ends up gritty. If you have any cracks/ holes anywhere, stick some polyfilla on (I just use a spoon and then smudge it with kitchen roll). It only takes about an hour to dry, and then you can sand it down.

7/ Now, stick masking tape all around every edge that will come into contact with paint: every single one. Skirting boards, tiles, doors, cupboards, light switches, overhead light fittings, everything. However tidy you are generally, assume you are going to be throwing paint at this room like a drunken monkey. Because you are.

Can you see? Like a drunken monkey. Buy that masking tape and use it!

8/ After hard-won experience I can tell you that: emulsion comes out of most things, and you can get gloss off hard surfaces, but the combination of gloss + carpet is a difficult one. So, if you are painting a carpeted room, put down dust sheets, at least next to the wall you are painting.

9/ This is just a tip which was passed on to me by my mother and which I now pass on to you. If you paint everything in your house white, you can use leftover paint easily and also you never have to be too accurate. My mother hyperventilates however if she is in a room which is painted anything other than white or magnolia so this is a better tip for her than for people who like colour, however everything I have ever painted I have painted white* and I can vouch for it working.

*Because partner only likes white. Yes, we have had the argument, we have had it many times.

10/ Now you are ready to paint, ha! Open your tub, stir it round with a spoon. With your small brush, paint lines along all the masking taped edges for a couple of inches, also in the join between the wall and the ceiling, around every light fixture and all the skirting boards. Also, if there are any angles between walls or on walls, paint there as well. This is because your paint pad will only do flat surfaces and cannot cope with corners or detail, so you do all the edges first and then just fill in the big bits.

11/ Fill in the big bits with your paint pad. Have a damp cloth ready and wipe up any bits of paint that go awol (wipe them up properly otherwise you end up with a smear and that is worse).

12/ Wait about 3 hours and give it all a second coat.

13/ The first time you leave the house either after or during a painting session, look at yourself in the mirror. You will have a large splodge of paint somewhere surprising. It is best that you find this out yourself, rather than have to have the bus driver tell you.

Make sure to have plenty of cups of tea and biscuits, and – and this is important – stop before you are exhausted. Painting is surprisingly tiring and you can’t just lay down your brush and walk away, you have to wash it (emulsion: wash under running tap, brush brush on newspaper to dry, squeeze water out of paint pad then lay on paper. Gloss: fill jar with white spirit, put brush in, later brush newspaper until dry) and sort everything out. Oh God, and I have got to gloss tomorrow! Anyway, the bathroom is looking much better. It’s white, since you were wondering. With white tiles. And a very pale grey floor.

All this does is prove to me that you can never escape your upbringing.

WIP Wednesday - The Joy Of Sox

I’m decluttering. Oh noes! It’s awful. At the moment it’s going like this:

1. Open cupboard
2. Realise how much there is to do
3. Put small item in discarded Waitrose bag (because they are stronger and better quality)
4. Wipe exposed inch of surface in desultory manner
5. Make nice cup of tea
6. Read Living Etc and feel despair rising within like an overyeasted loaf.

Well I have paused at stage 5 this time to come and do a quick blog post and show you my work in progress. Thanks as ever to Tami for hosting WIP Wednesday, cheers Tami! And if you go and look at her WIP Wednesday post you will find lots of bloggers with nice things to show you.

I myself am knitting a sock.

Admire those gusset decreases

I know it doesn’t look very exciting. That is because this is a vanilla sock, which means it is plain and straight and has no cables, colourwork, lace patterns or anything. I am charmed that knitters have borrowed the term for boring socks from our friends in the bdsm community, because I love a bit of friendly linguistic swapping, and I feel we should give something back. Might I suggest that there are some technical knitting terms that would make really excellent safe words? I’m thinking particularly ‘steek!’ or, ‘nupp!’, but you may prefer others.

I always knit socks the same way. This is because I am not very adventurous, but also because I see them as utility items and I know this way produces a good, serviceable sock that I will be comfortable ambling about in. Also I really love knitting with bamboo double pins, I find it excessively relaxing. (Odd? Moi?). These are knit on 2.5mm needles although I am wondering if I should have used 2.25 (wouldn't you think I'd write it down instead of trusting my memory?). I am using Regia Kaffe Fassett yarn and I cast on with a knitting-on cast on:

I don't know how to do the old norwegian cast on, I am rubbish

It doesn’t look tidy but it is very, very stretchy. I use this rather than a long-tail cast on basically because if I use a long-tail I have to look it up, and also I don’t like estimating how much yarn I am going to need. I may one day go wild and try a tubular cast on, though, who knows. If I knit on my socks every evening, I normally get a pair done in about a fortnight. I think they are possibly my favourite thing to knit: quickish, useful, cheap, and everyone thinks you are a magician to be able to turn a heel.

Where do you stand on the whole sock issue?

Buying craftiness at John Lewis

No Work In Progress this week, I’m afraid (although to see people who have managed to do things, go and have a look at Tami’s blog), because our major work in progress is the new bathroom. It is all very exciting. At the moment we are managing with a toilet without a cistern; you would be surprised how much space it adds to the room; although, it isn’t wonderfully practical, because you do have to flush it with a bucket. Having your bathroom refitted seems to me a bit like having a baby (which I have not done): when you are thinking of doing it, everybody says, oh go on, it is no trouble, it is dead easy you will hardly notice etc etc and then when you start doing it and ring people up for sympathy, hoarse with the horror of it all, they say God yes isn’t it appalling we had to strip down and wash in the sink in full view of the neighbours for a solid fortnight. But it is no use my thinking, well I wish you had told me that before, because our bathroom had essentially imploded and we had no option. I did say to Partner the other night, why didn’t we buy a house whose bathroom had been refitted since 1960, and then not by a monkey, and he set off on a long tirade: ‘because this was the only house in Cambridge we could afford! It was the only one! We didn’t have any choice! You’ve forgotten how awful everything was!’ etc etc. And this is quite untrue anyway, as we could have afforded the one in the area with all the police raids which didn’t have a kitchen, if one of us had exaggerated our annual income to bump up the mortgage. Anyway I am spending more time than normal out of the house this week, wandering glassy-eyed through department stores looking for Zone 2 lights which are not Hideous, and thus can bring you the news that Craft is very fashionable this year. Craft-inspired cushions from John Lewis:

Note to non-UK readers: John Lewis is the retail equivalent of the Church of England

Now, I did nearly set off on a rant about the cynicism of Big Business appropriating crafty stuff and possibly being a little bit too ‘inspired’ by individual crafters, but look, I am having to flush the toilet with a bucket, I do not have the energy. So I will show you these other crafty-inspired bedding things from Debenhams (I take these photographs quickly and secretly, like a ninja)

I don't like things with words on. When cushions with Latin phrases on were fashionable I would lose Partner in M&S and find him translating them & correcting the grammar

and just say, look, crafty things are really fashionable, aren’t we lucky that we can either make our own or buy handmade ones from etsy, because ours will look better because they are authentic and do not have to cater to the mass market. Hooray! Go crafters and friends of crafters! I will have a bit of a rant about this though, which I saw outside Body Shop:

Make it yourself! Impress your loved ones! Put a bottle in a bag!

In what sense is putting a few bottles in a bag handmade? At least John Lewis is cynically appropriating craft by giving us an actually rather cute chicken cushion (note to self: there is no more money, especially after today’s Great Vinyl Flooring Debacle. What were you thinking, Self? Seriously?), the Body Shop’s attempt is just dim. Does that mean if I go in Asda and put a bottle of wine in a carrier bag, that makes it handmade? Especially if I choose the wine myself? Hooray! That was easy! I didn’t even need a vineyard! This handmade stuff, it’s much simpler than it looks. Handmade Quality Street and Mateus Rosé all round this Christmas, and I promise you I’ll slip them in the carriers with loving care.

Tie Dye and Autumn Leaves

I'm waiting for Gary the Plumber to come and condemn our bathroom fix the leak so I thought I'd show you some things I've been working on. Because I've managed to actually list some things in my etsy shop, hooray! But first I've got some bad news. I'm sorry about this. There's no easy way to tell you.

O leafy harbinger of Autumn

Yes. It's the first falling leaf. I saw something orange on the grass earlier, while I was standing in the kitchen muttering about how other people have functioning houses and why don't I. What is that, I thought. Is it? No, it can't be. But it was. Readers: autumn is here. Did we have a summer? Did I miss it? But no, the blackberries are reaching their peak

and the nights are drawing in. Never mind, says she brightly, autumn is actually my favourite season of the year. Being able to wear boots. Making chutney. Enjoying knitting rather than feeling you are wrestling a big hot thing on your knee. Bonfire night, Samhain, cosy nights, lighting candles, fighting about when it is cold enough to put on the central heating, yes I can't wait. We won't mention the C word although they are probably getting their displays ready in Asda as I write this (the woman on Create and Craft the other night said brightly, 'It's time to start making your Christmas cards because it's only 130 days till Christmas!'. Well no. I think we've got a bit of time yet).

Anyway here are some things I've been listing. To start with, this is how the tie-dye came out. Red and blue spirals:

And experimental yellow-green-purple -

I thought they looked great, actually, I'm rather pleased. And here is my completed tie skirt.

I actually love this, I think it looks fantastic. And possibly foolishly I am offering the Rainbow Patchwork Skirt

as a custom order. I think enough time has elapsed that I can face ruffling another 50 miles of patchwork without wanting to murder anyone. Indeed I think I would quite like to make another but obviously there is a limit to the number I can have for myself. And I think I have reached that limit. Because I think it is one. So I am hoping the Rainbow Patchwork Skirt will go out into the world and find another home.

Right. Gary the Plumber is here and I must hear my fate. You know how plumbers suck their teeth? Well unfortunately he will be entirely justified.

I have had a Fabric Windfall

Partner and I are engaging with home improvements. We have different approaches to this. While I don't like it, I feel that, as part of the general social contract, you should make a bit of an effort to try to make your house look as if people live in it who have not been brought up by wolves. Partner feels – quite vocally - that if your house has a roof and a flushing toilet you have everything you could possibly need and anything else is Affectation (when I met partner he used to sleep on the floor. Without a mattress). So we spent the other morning having a full and frank discussion in a fireplace showroom. This is what we have got at the moment.

All this and woodchip too, can you even breathe for jealousy

So you can see I am not entirely unreasonable in feeling that some level of improvement might be theoretically possible. Anyway having finished being passive aggressive in front of a gentle old man who was trying to give us a quote (‘I think you’d better give him your phone number, Susie. You’re the person who deals with this kind of thing’), as we drove off so partner could be dropped off at the University Library to argue with them about their electronic catalogue (isn’t my life exciting?), I mentioned that I was heading off to Tesco car park to meet a man I had met on the internet who was going to give me some fabric offcuts. Partner looked at me. ‘You aren’t serious’ he said, flatly. ‘Yes I am’ I said, cheerfully. “I have met him on the internet. He said he had some spare fabric from his curtain business, and he is really nice.’ I saw Partner’s expression. ‘It’ll be fine!’ I said, defensively, as I imagined my final words being read out on News At Ten by someone solemn. ‘What could go wrong?’ Partner considered. ‘He could murder you’ he said. ‘He could murder you and bundle you into his van, and no one would ever see you again.’ He didn’t add, and then I wouldn’t have to bother with a new fireplace, but I’m sure he was thinking it. Honestly, I thought, no-one trusts anyone these days. I thought that in the half of my mind that wasn’t taken up with imagining headlines – Criminally Naïve Person Goes Looking For Fabric Offcuts And Finds Death Instead. Anyway I met my contact and you can tell that Partner was not right and I was, because I am blogging, and not from a deserted garage somewhere in Dartmoor with my leg tied to a chair. But, this is the thing: the fabric offcuts were absolutely amazing. My idea of a fabric offcut is something 5” square and a bit creased. This is what he gave me:

You could furnish a house with that!

This is better furnishing fabric than anything in my house. And in great big bits! I am stroking it thoughtfully. It is a sensory education. But that isn’t all. Look -

I could make something that needs more than a fat quarter!

Fabric on rolls! I am overwhelmed! And there are foam offcuts and bits of wadding as well! And the marvellous thing is, this is leftover fabric that my wonderful contact didn’t need, so we are saving it from being thrown away! I am blown away by my good fortune – thank you, Pelmetman – and I am excitedly thinking of what I can make. I was intending to make my square patchwork bag, but some of the bits of fabric are so big and with such nice prints I’m not sure I want to patchwork them – anyway, I will see. There is some cotton interfacing which is certainly whispering ‘tie-dye me and make me into an a-line skirt’.

I have spent the day deconstructing ties so I can use the silk to make a skirt and now I feel quite cross-eyed but I am going to spend the evening knitting on my Citron because I will finish that Citron even if it kills me, and it very likely will.