Back from Paris

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.