Throws I love

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

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

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.

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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

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?

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

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

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

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).