Too Many Hobbies, Not Enough Time

Gadget girl

2012-01-28T18:35:00.002Z

My new iphone arrived yesterday so I spent most of the evening setting it up to mirror what I have on my ipad, including the knitting apps that I have been using. Hard to believe the two gadgets cost about the same, when one is so small and is going to be riding around in my knapsack every day. Hard to believe I have spent so much on gadgets. I can remember being incredibly excited to receive my first electronic pocket calculator when I was around 13 years old. They were fairly new then and only did basic functions, but for someone who had always struggled with arithmetic it was like a clunky boxy miracle from heaven. Now I can download a calculator app to install onto my pocketsized super computer communications device. Who knows what our children will be using once they are our age.

I managed to finish the Sirdar Baby Cardigan on Wednesday night. For good measure, I knit up a pair of booties from the March issue of Simply Knitting magazine because the pattern called for the same Sirdar Crofter yarn. I knit the first size of bootie but they came out fairly large. The cardigan came out fairly well apart from the band and buttonholes are a bit sloppy, but the mother-to-be was very pleased with them both and actually appreciates getting something handmade which is nice. I had to block out the scallops with a bit of steam, as a wet block wasn't sufficient to stop them from curling.

Thursday I had to go to a seminar for work in the morning, so I was knitting on my Harry Potter vanilla sock there and back. I was tempted to get the sock out during the seminar, but there were only about 20 of us in the relatively small room and my degree of boredom was not sufficient to warrant the social suicide. I've also done a bit of knitting on Day 3 of the Advent Calendar 2010 lace scarf - I'm just about to the end of the first chart repeat (there are 3 repeats in all).

Most of the TV time this week was devoted to the baby cardigan, but I also managed to sew down the binding on the second side of my Vintage Log Cabin quilt.

The penultimate instalment of the I-knit London Sock Club turned up, a lovely teal colourway (darker than it looks in the photo) of Cherry Tree Hill Supersock Select which is a yarn I like anyway. For some reason it is hard to find in the UK, and wasn't available in any of the New England yarn shops I visited. I've knitted mittens, socks and gloves out of this yarn and it stands up very well with virtually no pilling.

I've enjoyed getting surprise yarn gifts in the post but I think overall my first essay into the world of yarn clubs has not been a huge success. You are gambling that you might like the yarn and the patterns. I've liked about half the yarn, and none of the patterns have shrieked 'knit me'. I think what might work better for me would be to just treat myself to a special skein of yarn every two months (online, or going to a shop) and perhaps look on Ravelry for a pattern to go with that yarn. Of course, then I am losing the surprise element. This could be a gap in the market - a company that you can give all your parcels to and they mail them back to you at specified intervals in random order. Perhaps I could put all of the skeins in a big grab bag and reach in blind to pull one out every two months. Perhaps I am over thinking this :)

Quick week

2012-01-22T14:33:00.001Z

This week seems to have flown by, partly because I had to use chunks of time on unexpected projects. We are quite busy at work re-tendering our membership magazine, which I have gotten fairly involved with so had to put in some overtime. And at home our fridge started making a very alarming noise, a steady throbbing rattle which would shudder and die when you opened the door.

After a bit of googling, I came across some forum posts on what sounded like the same problem, including instructions on how to take the fridge apart from the inside to get at the iced-up fan causing the problem. Don't you love the internet? So that's how I spent a couple of hours one night: emptying out the fridge, taking it apart, DH giving it all a good clean while we were at it, and putting it back together. The reward? No more noise!! Here is some of the ice I found inside, and there was more ice caked around the fan which was what was causing the noise. I feel rather proud of myself for fixing this - hope it doesn't ice up again though - there may be something more permanently wrong as it shouldn't have gone like that in the first place.

Another time sucker was discovering that NetFlix had launched in the UK and had a free one-month trial. I was relatively excited as I've often heard American podcasters mentioning the Netflix service for watching online film and tv programmes. On the face of it, it sounds great, unlimited watching for £5.99 a month. However, the free trial was sorely disappointing, their extremely limited selection of programmes is abysmal. I was hoping for lots of American programmes but they had virtually none, just a few dozen dated films and a couple of UK tv series that I didn't want to watch. So we gave up on that and tried the Lovefilm one month trial instead. It has a wider selection but still not great - we found one film that we wanted to watch out of all the ones available. So we will probably cancel that as well and go back to renting DVDs by post which is what we've done for a few years now. Don't know why the UK should be so behind the US on this type of service, but probably because you can watch a lot of recent programming for free using the Catch up services from the networks.

However, I did start a new project this week which has been my tv knitting and my commuter knitting: a Baby Cardigan by Sirdar which was published in the recent issue of Knitting Magazine. I thought it looked really cute and luckily there is a pregnant colleague at work that I can make it for, so I ordered the yarn from Get Knitted in Bristol. I ordered the colourway specified in the pattern but it looks a bit duller in shade, perhaps they PhotoShopped the photo to brighten it. I'm knitting the 0-6 months size but am a bit worried as it looks small to me. But with my teenage son towering over me by three inches now, perhaps I've forgotten how small a baby can be. The colleague is leaving soon on maternity leave so I've asked if I can post it to her.

The cardigan is knit with Sirdar Snuggly Crofter Baby Fair Isle effect DK, which is 55% nylon / 45% acrylic. This yarn feels velvety soft knit up, but I am finding it a bit difficult to knit with. It seems to have permanent static cling, and instead of draping away from the needles, the free yarn end wants to cling to my hands, my clothing, the pattern, the knitting bag... I seem to be constantly having to stop to free the yarn so that it isn't putting too much tension on my stitches. It's happening in several different environments (office, train, home) which makes me think it is the yarn and not just the weather for example.

I also finished sewing the last row and a half of the Kaffe Fassett Snowball Quilt. Now all the rows are sewn, it will go quicker as I just need to press all the rows and sew them together. It was very fiddly to make sure each snowball had the correct colours on its four corners, plus thanks to Kaffe telling us to cut the wrong size cornerstones on the workshop, I had run out of some fabrics and had to pull different stash fabric to substitute, and then I ran out of some of that so had to unpick some of the previous substitutes and substitute different substitutes. One of those projects where the fun part was the designing but the sewing part leaves a bit to be desired in the fun department.

The last big time sucker this week was that I bought an Iphone. It won't be delivered until the end of the month but it took a while to compare all the deals, contract possibilities, decide whether I wanted the new one or an older one etc. Here in the UK, the newer ones aren't that much more expensive that the old ones, unless you get a really really old one with limited memory. So I've gone from being an 'I-don't-want-one' to being an 'I-convert'. Once I became so dependent on the Ipad 2, the I-phone was the next logical step particularly as my old Nokia smartphone is acting up and was never really that great in the first place. I am looking forward to having my knitting patterns and knitting apps on my phone as well as on my Ipad, and to be able to look at Twitter and the internet at something quicker than the speed of a creeping glacier which was the best my Nokia could do.

Oops, forgot to blog

2012-01-16T20:06:00.000Z

I managed to log on both Saturday and Sunday intending to do my weekly blog post, and both times got completely sidetracked. You know how it is: "I'll just check my email" and before you know it, you've lost three hours.

I was out for most of the day on Saturday at my sewing club. We are still doing the UFO Challenge for a few more months, so I was plugging away on my Kaffe Fassett Snowball Quilt in blue & white fabric prints with a variety of yellow cornerstones. Sewing each snowball is fairly tedious as all the cornerstones are different colours of yellow, so I have to make sure that the four coloured corners of one block are going to meet up correctly with the row above and the row below. It's gotten a bit easier since I remembered I have one of those stick-on plastic Angler guides, removing the need to draw a diagonal line or iron a diagonal crease. So I was proud of myself for soldiering on, and managed to get through quite a lot - only a row and a half left to sew now. And no, I didn't remember to take any photos.

Sunday we had someone come to look at our trailer tent and it looks like they are going to buy it, so that's good news. And today I got some more good news - I made my first Folksy sale!! Someone has bought a patchwork knapsack that I made a while ago. There have been a couple of enquiries about the quilts but no sale so far. I don't know how many people look at Folksy, I should perhaps try to get listed on some other craft selling sites. Although it took ages to put together my listings for Folksy, but I suppose it would then be quicker on other sites now that I've done the groundwork.

Commuter knitting this week has largely consisted of carrying my knitting to and from work without actually doing anything on it, but I have got as far as turning the heel (again). This is a blurry picture but gives you an idea of the colours.This colourway is 'Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince' so I have amused myself by trying to guess what the colours symbolise - perhaps the red is the blood of Hagrid's griffin pet? Either that or they had already come up with this colourway and just jumped on the bandwagon by giving it a Harry-related name.

I also finished the binding on my Hawaiaan Potpourri Quilt and got it listed online for sale. The colours and patterns on this really make me smile, but it is a bit special so needs the right kind of person to love it. I like the parrots peeping out of the jungle border too.

I managed with some stumbling to get Day 2 of the Advent Calendar Scarf completed. There is a yarnover right before the nupps and I had about a 98% 'success' rate of purling the YO into the nupp on the return row before I caved and started making the nupps with a crochet hook.

This week I finally got around to wearing my Drop Stitch Shawl to the office, where, absolutely typically, nobody said anything - except a lady who sits near me (she admired it). I ordered the shawl pin from etsy, it's sterling silver. The shawl is soft and warming without being too hot. I didn't want to risk wearing it under my coat in case it pilled, so I put it on when I got to the office.

Another job I completed this weekend was to finally finish taking and uploading photographs of our house contents. Being burgled last year really brought home to me the importance of having photographic evidence of what you own, both to see what is missing and to prove to the insurance company that you owned it. I gradually worked my way around the entire house, attic, garden and shed, and have uploaded several hundred photos by emailing them to myself in Googlemail. Hopefully they will never be needed, but it gives me some peace of mind. I didn't turn out every single drawer or storage bin, but I did make sure to get photos of the high value items and general photos of everything else. A fairly tedious job. I still haven't made the similar photographic record of all my dollshouses and their contents that the insurance adjuster recommended - I might save that for the next time I have loads of time at home due to illness or unemployment (or a lottery win!!).

Happy new year (I have to say that, don't I?)

2012-01-07T17:21:00.001Z

Yes, here we are in 2012 and this is my first post of the year. I've seen lots of new year's greetings and 2012 resolutions in the web-o-sphere as everybody else releases their first twitter/blog post / podcast / Ravelry post etc. I haven't made any resolutions, I am a list-maker and have plenty of list entries to get through so I don't need to make resolutions on top of those. I suppose the closest I have come to a resolution is the realisation that almost none of my clothes fit around the waistline anymore and it really is time to do something before I develop diabetes or high chorestoral or something else horrid. Easier said than done as office colleagues have been bringing in loads of Christmas goodies to get rid of them so they don't eat them. I am not a dieter so it is a question of eating less junk and trying to exercise more (ha ha ha). I think the only way I will ever be fit again is if I bought a television that only worked when powered off the self-generated electricity from the treadmill that I am using. Or if the internet only worked that way - wow, I would be an Olympics contender in that case.

I managed to fix the mess I had made of my Cabled Yoke sleeveless cardigan, finished the yoke, and blocked it right away because I thought it would be easier now than when it was part of a garment. However, this Drops pattern(119-28) has caused me some problems. The pattern specifies measuring around the circumference of the long edge and placing markers to pick up stitches while leaving gaps for the armholes. But even though I spread my yoke out, I couldn't get the outside circumference to match theirs (the inner circumference does). Also, matching distances were not ending up at matching points in the cable pattern. Sadly, I realised I would have to break down and actually Knit a Tension Swatch... (gasp!)

So I knit a tension swatch in the round, having decided that I would be steeking the front opening. Despite having gone down a needlesize, my gauge was still looser than the pattern specification. Also, having tried the yoke on, it seemed that following their measurements would make for really tight armholes. I consulted Ravelry and discovered someone else who had had the same problem, had knit their body separately and seamed it on afterwards. This sounded like a great idea so I cast on and knit about four rows before it dawned on me that I was essentially knitting a cylinder of stocking stitch (because I am not doing the waist shaping due to not actually having a waist). Like, duh, isn't this why I have knitting machines??

So I went out to the knitting shed and ran off a few tension samples. My standard gauge Brother 881 as usual did not like the DK weight and struggled with it even on Tension 10. The Brother 260 chunky knit it happily enough at Tension 0. I blocked both tension swatches and measured. My gauge on the chunky is now tighter than the pattern but has an acceptable hand. However, when I ran the maths, I would need to cast on 130 stitches and the chunky bed only has 110 needles. So now I am thinking I am going to knit it sideways and add the bands on afterwards. Meanwhile I got out the ball winder and wound the rest of my yarn into cakes ready for machine knitting. I will get there.

On the quilting front, I have been handstitching down the binding on my Hawaiaan Kaffe Fassett Potpourri Quilt this week while watching TV. I also finished quilting the Piece o Cake Applique Vines Quilt and gave it a wash. It has come up beautifully, all nice and puckery like an antique quilt. But before I could wash it, I had to take out the basting tacks.

-----------------------------------------
Mini-review: the Microstitch basting gun
I first heard about this gun in one of Bethany Reynold's newsletters a few years ago. It's one of those guns that bastes fabric layers together by inserting plastic tacks like those used on clothing price tags. The Microstitch has a very fine needle and uses very small tacks, so the holes left in the fabric are almost imperceptible. I bought one in 2008 and used it for two things:

a) I had a quilt, my Piece o Cake applique vines quilt, which was too large to quilt on my old quilting frame because it needed to be quilted longways. But I could put it on the frame shortways and baste it easily and quickly with the Microstitch.

b) I took the gun to a workshop where I was doing two classes of designing (not sewing) quilts on flannel design walls that we brought with us. At the end of the class, I could easily secure all my pieces to the flannel for transport home (and subsequent hibernation in my UFO closet).

This week I finally removed the tacks from the Vines quilt. Now this quilt has had a hard life which has been very testing for the tacks: it has kicked around various storage places in my bedroom, had a variety of stitch in the ditch done on it, been mounted on my Next Generation frame for machine quilting, and then back under the sit-down machine for finishing quilting. Even after all of that, I was pleased to find that the holes the tacks were making in the fabric were still virtually invisible. Almost all of the tacks had held, although a minority had worked one end inside the fabric layers. The tacks were also great for stitching as unlike safety pins, you can stitch right over them and they don't get in the way at all. The tacks held the layers really well and I didn't get any puckers on the back despite all the different manipulations this quilt has undergone.

On the con side, I had run out of black tacks when I basted this light coloured quilt, and the white tacks I used instead were virtually invisible. Even sitting by a well-lit window, I had to resort to running my hand over the quilt to find the tacks by touch, and I'm still not convinced I have got them all out. Overall verdict: great gadget, but make sure you use a contrasting colour of tack to your fabric colour.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

I did a bit of dollshousing on my Willowcrest dollshouse last weekend, and have also started a new knitting project, the Advent Calendar 2010 scarf. This is a long lace scarf, with 24 different lace patterns. The original gung ho knitters did it in 24 days leading up to Christmas, and there was a new pattern for 2011. I've decided to try the 2010 pattern and by coincidence stumbled across a knit-along on Ravelry which I have also joined. I'm using the Valley Yarns Huntingdon (light fingering weight) which I bought at Webs in Massachusetts to use for a lacy pullover. But I recently saw a FO picture of someone's version of the pattern, posed on a very plump tailor's dummy, and suddenly realised how unflattering this pullover would be on my figure. So lace scarf it is, and here is the Day One pattern.

Commuter knitting this week has been the plain sock in Harry Potter yarn. I got as far as turning the heel, and realised that I had once again knit a sock with no negative ease. I use the Regia leaflet pattern and normally cast on 60 stitches. So I ripped out and have cast on 52 stitches instead and am just about ready to turn the heel again, so we will see if that fits better.

Our remaining cat, Lucy, is curiously changing her behaviour now that she is on her own. She is spending more time downstairs than she used to, and here is a picture of her on a quilt. She's always been a very nervous cat, and we don't normally see much of her, but she has definitely been friendlier the last few weeks.

Pagans walk among us

On 2 January, which was a Bank Holiday here in the UK, the sun finally shone after a few grey rainy days. We decided to go for a walk in another village called Wraysbury, setting off across fields to arrive at the remnants of the 12th C St Mary's Priory. Nearby is The Ankerwycke Yew tree, reputed to be 2,000 years old. The trunk is enormous and gnarled, but almost entirely hollow so it seems amazing that it is so large and still alive. It seemed almost otherworldly to stand under its branches, and as we walked around the trunk, we came upon an actual shrine where passersby have been leaving offerings of flowers, holly, berries etc. Closer inspection of the trunk found several paper notes twisted up and wedged into the crevices. We looked at one of the more accessible ones, which was a prayer to 'the gods and goddesses' to grant various boons and ameliorate various personality faults in the new year. Fascinating stuff, and in a site which has likely been sacred for just as long as Christianity has been with us. I am tempted to go back and tuck in a plea for more even knitting stitches...

Timelessness vs hypertime

2011-12-30T18:18:00.000Z

My office is closed between Christmas and New Year's, so we have been drifting along this week in a kind of timeless indolence, punctuated with meals of leftover turkey and bolstered by far too many sweets and chocolates, and staying up late and sleeping in the next morning. We have arrived at that happy state where we can't actually remember what day it is, until I realised that it is once again Friday. That means that it is one calendar week since I last blogged, even though in my mind it feels like it was only a few days ago that I blogged. That makes it feel like hypertime, like the days have just flown by and in all too short a while I will be back at work. Boooo. Although I suppose I should be / am grateful to have a job to go back to.

I hope you all had a good Christmas without too many annoying relatives and with a sufficient amount of 'me time' to relax in. We had a very relaxing Christmas Day with just the three of us, very quiet and even productive as DH and I went out for a walk in the afternoon to scout out possible locations for photographing quilts around the neighbourhood. We carried along one of the TV quilts and tried it out in various positions over fences, gates, playground railings etc., while DH tried to pretend that we were behaving perfectly normally. I was behaving perfectly normally for me so I wasn't that bothered what people thought :)

The reason I was looking for photo locations is that I have finally accepted that I do not have room to store all the quilts and other things that I am making, so I am going to try to sell some of them online. I don't know whether to hook up my store to my blog or not. I have tended to be fairly honest on my blog about construction issues, problems, shortcuts, design decisions etc. which is probably not the best way to sell things to potential buyers. Also a buyer who is unaware of the quilting process may be put off by the fact that I started something about eight years ago and it has taken me all that time to actually finish it. Pricing is another issue for debate, here in the UK it is just not realistic to expect to sell a quilt for even the cost of materials, unless you are either a) incredibly famous, or b) somehow got all your materials ridiculously cheaply. Because most of our quilting materials are imported, the quilting hobby is a lot more expensive here than in the States. Which is why I tend to load up when I visit the States. So everything is underpriced compared to what it cost me to make it, but I suppose I've had the enjoyment and at least it will get things out of the house and buy me some more stash.

So that has taken up several hours this week, doing some preliminary photography, measuring quilts, writing descriptions etc. I don't know if I will actually sell anything, the UK-based site I am using has a lot of other quilters on it and most of them don't seem to be selling much. Etsy isn't really an option as a quilt would be so expensive to post to an overseas buyer that there would be no reason for an American to buy a quilt from a UK maker (unless they absolutely loved it so much that they were desperate to have it).

What else have I been up to this week? It's hard to remember. I did spend most of a day working on my Willowcrest dollshouse, because I need to finish that before I can start my McKinley dollshouse kit - which arrived in the post on 23 December, my Christmas present from me to me.

I finished my Tilly Thomas knitted bag kit that I bought in Cape Cod on our holiday. It has a pure silk drawstring top, and you knit right into the grommets to knit the bag sides, choose your own designs for the sides, then gather the bottom to close off the bag. I'm pleased with how it's come out but one design flaw is that the knitted outside wants to be a round cylinder, whereas the inner silk liner is just a flat square. Therefore when you put knitting in the bag, it looks a bit squashed flat. I think it would look better if the interior was a cylinder as well. It looks vaguely like a Regency reticule. I'm not sure what I will use it for, the silk looks delicate so not good for squashing into my rucksack on my commute. Perhaps I will keep it for showing off at knitting group.

I also finished re-knitting my Thorpe Hat. By ripping back to the increases and using smaller needles to knit the sides, it fits a lot better now. As well as short-rowing the front to make it longer, I also reduced the depth of the back part, and made the flaps a different shape. This time I did the crochet edge in self-yarn rather than a contrast colour. It's fairly warm to wear, still not the most flattering hat in the world but it's good for keeping my ears warm. The KnitPicks Sierra yarn, which is discontinued, is soft but robust at the same time. I've still got several skeins left, so it might be good for something like a cowl.

Christmas means lots of television specials and films to watch. I was going great guns on my Cabled Yoke Cardigan the other night as I watched 'Little Women', reaching what I hoped was my last chart repeat. Then I realised that in some alcohol-induced carelessness, I had mis-crossed a couple of cables three inches earlier. "No problem", thought I (remember the alcohol) and I ripped back all the affected stitches so that I could just knit those ones back up while leaving all the 'good' stitches alone. Uh huh. Now I have a nice three-inch section of tangled mess in the middle of my yoke. Luckily I had the sense to Put Down The Needles until another more sober moment when I can work out how to fix it.

I've done a lot of sewing this week as I listened to various podcasts on my Ipad. I've machined binding onto all the finished quilts from the frame quilting session this summer, so now I have a whole pile of handsewing to do, to stitch all that binding down. Two quilts needed further off-frame work. I managed to complete the quilting on the Garden Block of the Month quilt day before yesterday, and gave it a wash. I'm really pleased at how it all looks homogenous now, and all the various blocks have come together. Today I have been working on a real oldie, my Piece o' Cake Applique Vines quilt, which has been kicking around for about five years now in various stages of quilting. I did a lot of the vertical quilting on the frame this summer, but now I am doing the blocks on the edges which weren't possible to do in my short-arm throat space. It's going well and I'm about halfway through. Hard to believe this quilt might actually be finished soon.

My Fan Stitch Half-Circle shawl knitting project enabled me to sail gracefully and productively through the Boxing Day visit to the in-laws, apart from at dinner when I didn't think I could get away with knitting under the table. I also took it as commuter knitting when DH and I went up to London to see a play on Wednesday. We went to a production of The Canterbury Tales at a small playhouse in Southwark, which had the conceit that you were sitting in a medieval tavern watching some troubadours recount the tales. They were even selling ale and mulled wine in tankards. There was a lot of raucous singing, some bawdyness and a fair bit of running around and shouting. I enjoyed the atmosphere even though I couldn't understand some of the dialogue (it was in modern English but too much shouting) but DH felt it was all a bit too much. Something different for the holidays.

And that's about it - not a lot for a whole week. There was a bit of a dabble in the Boxing Day sales, which seemed disappointing this year although I did pick up some little cross-stitch christmas kits quite cheaply.

And that reminds me, I can show you the cross-stitch ornament I made before Christmas, because the recipient has got it now (Hi Anita!). Like me, she is into dollshouses so I thought she would appreciate this little house ornament.

Just before Christmas, I made this cross-stitch gift tag from a kit in a magazine.

I also made a pillowcase for DH's gift, from London Tube map fabric that I saw on the Creative Quilting website. He really liked it and started using it right away, although he did point out that the map is not geographically correct because the fabric repeat makes it look like the western lines run directly into the eastern lines.

So that's my week - hope yours has been good, and best wishes for a very happy new year.

Bit of sad news, and a Christmas gift for readers

2011-12-23T14:23:00.000Z

One of our two cats hasn't been very well for a long time, and we had to say goodbye to him this morning (Friday 23 December). We stayed with him and I petted him as he went to sleep. All very sad even though it was for the best, as he was suffering. I came home and saw the cushion portrait I made of our two cats last year, I don't know whether to hide it away or hug it. He was the black cat, and was only around 14 years old but very unlucky with his health, poor thing. I don't think our other cat, Lucy, realises that Colin is gone yet.

Today I am on leave, which was planned and I was looking forward to doing lots of sewing, but haven't done very much today except to sew binding on the log cabin quilt that I quilted on the frame a few months ago.

Earlier in the week, I have been working on:

a cross-stitch gift tag, using a kit from Cross Stitcher magazine, which I need to finish by the time we go to see the in-laws on Boxing Day.
my pink Thorpe hat. I cut off the brim and ripped it back to the end of the increases on the top, and am re-knitting the sides on smaller needles to tighten it up.
an old machine knitted chunky jumper. It came out well but I've rarely worn it because the high turtleneck itched my throat. I unpicked the ribbing to about half-way, and cast off so now it has a fairly open crew neck and is much more wearable.
I've started a vanilla sock using Harry Potter variegated sock yarn.
I've started another sock from the Sock Innovation book by Cookie A, this one is called Glynis, and I am using Cherry Tree Hill semi-solid sock yarn that I recycled from the second pair of socks I ever knit, Widdershins, which had come out far too tight.
Last Sunday was our local knitting group, and it was only me and one other person (Hi Daisy!) so I managed to finish my first Debbie Bliss wrist warmer. I haven't darned the ends in yet, and I'm not proud of the fair isle tension, but it's done. As well as changing this to being knitted in the round, I added ribbing at the top instead of a rolled edge, as both Daisy and I thought that a rolled edge would just be annoying.

Sort of a tutorial - Quilted Notepad Covers

The other thing I did last weekend was to make three quilted notepad covers, two of which are Christmas gifts for in-laws. This isn't exactly a tutorial, as measurements will be down to what size pad you are slipcovering, but here are some general guidelines as my Christmas present to you. Would love to hear if anyone else tries this. I was inspired by an article on Quilted Journal covers by Jessie Croker which appeared in Quilter's Home Magazine in the May/June 2008 issue, but pretty much did my own thing otherwise.

I picked up three ruled notepads from the bargain store for .69p each. I looked for pads with a coil binding along the top edge, and particularly for ones that had a good stiff cover (this give stability once the gift is assembled).

The cover is basically a quilted rectangle edged in binding. A ribbon or tie is stitched on the outside to hold it closed, and a pocket is stitched on the inside right hand side, to hold the flap of the notepad.

Estimate measurements by placing your pad on a ruler. My pad was just under four inches wide, was about a half inch thick, and about 5 3/4 high. So I wanted my finished cover to be 9" x 6.5", to allow seam allowances for binding all the way around, and so that the coil binding was well inside the cover.

Add an inch to the cover measurements to give you some working room and cut out two pieces of fabric: one for the front cover and one for the inside cover. You can also piece the front cover, as I have done with the black & grey notepad cover. Sandwich the fabric around some polyester batting and quilt as desired. I meandered on the sewing theme cover, and used my walking foot to stitch straight lines on the other two, with a bit of a zig-zag pattern on the grey/black cover. When your quilting is finished, press the cover lightly then trim to your finished measurement.

Now add the ribbon tie. I sewed mine midway down the cover, starting from the centre of the front of the cover, and ending about a half-inch from the edge of the back cover. This will give you a tie that ties at the centre of the front. If you would rather have the tie at the edge, then sew to within a half inch of the front cover also.

Now add the pocket. I cut my pocket 4.5" wide and about 12" long, folded it in half lengthwise right sides together, and stitched down one long side. Trim the corner and turn right side out, press.

Tuck the pocket flap up behind the ruled pages of your notepad with the seam to the left, and place the notepad in the desired spot on your cover (with the inside cover facing towards you. Once you've got it where you want it, pin the pocket in place and remove the notepad. The pocket will be sticking out at the right and bottom of your cover, flip it over and trim off the excess pocket. Stitch down the two long sides of the pocket very near the edge,, stitching through your ribbon tie on the seamed pocket edge, but leaving the ribbon tie free when you stitch down the right hand side of the pocket. Make reinforcing stitches at the top edge of the pocket where it will have to be strong. The bottom of the pocket stays open for now as you will catch it when you sew on your binding.

Test your notepad flap into your pocket to make sure it fits, it should be a tight fit so the pad stays put, and the coil binding should be within the cover area, not sticking out.

The final step is to cut binding strips 1.25" wide, and sew them around the edge of the cover to hide the raw edge, making mitred corners in the usual way for continuous binding. I started the binding with a folded edge, so that when I came back around with the end of the strip, I could just stitch it down and the folded edge covers the raw edge once you turn the binding to the other side. Fold the binding over to hide the raw edge, and catch it down with hand stitching.

Give the cover a final press and tuck your notepad in and tie a nice bow on the front!

Merry Christmas and Best Wishes for the New Year

I'm too old for this

2011-12-17T09:01:00.002Z

It's Saturday morning, and I have survived my week of Christmas dissipation, just. I have never been a big socialiser, but I can remember at university going to bed after having drunk a fair bit, then bounding out the next morning to tackle another day. Bounding has not been on the agenda this week, and this morning I feel more like something was bounding all over me in the night while I was sleeping.

So not much crafting this week, and not much of anything else either which means I only started serious Christmas decorating last night. Tuesday night we attended the excellent carol service that DS's school runs every year at their local church (DS being a teenager opted not to come this year). Wednesday night I was invited to a black tie event at the medieval Guildhall in London, very glamorous but why are dressing-up clothes so dam uncomfortable? Didn't get to bed until midnight then the next day was our office team Christmas lunch - until 4pm when I left and staggered back to the office to collect my things so that I could move on to the I-Knit London Christmas party. By the time I had walked over to I-Knit, I had more or less sobered up to enjoy a pleasant couple of hours of knitting, chatting, loads of food, and the Secret Santa.

In fact I did extremely well on Secret Santa this year. This is the practice of drawing someone else's name from the group, and anonymously giving them a present. Typically it results in neutral gifts like wine or chocolates, and even at a knitting party a few years ago I got a big box of smellies that weren't to my taste. But this year my office Secret Santa gave me Cath Kidston stationery after intelligently checking with a colleague as to what I liked, and my I-Knit Secret Santa gave me a splendid and thoughtfully chosen gift all wrapped up in a cute storage box.

Look at this: gorgeous sock yarn which apparently was a limited edition for Knit Nation from The Knitting Goddess, a beautiful stitch gauge pendant, Knitters, hand lotion, and a package of Eucalan woollens wash. I love it! What a great gift.

And to add to the yarny goodness, my neighbour received two skeins of Drops Delight sock yarn in a colourway that I absolutely loved. She was pleased with her present but didn't think she would use it, so was quite happy for money to exchange hands and the yarn came home with me. Thanks Santa!

For my Secret Santa gift at I-Knit, I had finally finished the Felted Messenger Bag that I knit in the summer. I stitched in a stiff bottom liner covered in a knitting-themed fabric, added a magnetic closure, and as an extra treat put in some of the knitting gifts that come on various magazines and wrapped the whole thing up in more knitting-related fabric. I thought that a beginner or intermediate knitter might be quite pleased with the handmade bag as a project bag, and find the gadgets and fabric useful. Well, out of 35 knitters at the party, my gift was allocated to one of the most advanced knitters in the room, someone who does test knitting for designers. Talk about coals to Newcastle, but Greensideknits was very gracious about it and I hope she is able to make good use of it.

I wasn't as late getting home from I-Knit, home by about 9:15pm, so I was able to put some more stitches into this Christmas cross-stitch which is meant to be a card for my m-i-l. I finally finished it last night but I don't know if it will get there or not in time now. Perhaps I could send it special delivery...

I went a little off piste with the chart. Not being able to count accurately is a bit of a handicap for knitting but kind of a deal breaker for counted cross stitch. My theory always is that the recipient is not going to have the chart to compare to, so will take it at face value.

Then finally my liver and I attended the office building christmas party, which this year had a 1920s theme so I had to take a flapper-esque costume and lots of bead necklaces to work. Pretty good spread of food, useful networking, and three more glasses of wine and I could totter home early. Went straight to bed to try to catch up on sleep, only to be woken up twice by phone calls after just 20 minutes, groan.

So last night and today I am trying to put some order into the trail of debris left from too many late nights, clothes everywhere, desk covered in unopened cards and paperwork, yarn to catalogue on Ravelry, Christmas decs to put up, bills to pay etc. etc. I need a secretary. Or a Christmas elf.

Look what I found in with the Christmas decorations - remember this?

Slowly gearing up for Christmas

2011-12-10T18:15:00.001Z

It's finally turned colder in the London area so it is easier to feel a bit more like Christmas. By 'cold' I mean about 7 degrees Celsius in the daytime, which is just cold enough to enjoy cosying up in my woollens. Balmy days compared to when I used to live in Ottawa in Canada, when it went down to minus 40 and your skin would literally burn from the wind chill. So I feel very fortunate to be living in a milder climate even though lots of my colleagues are bemoaning how cold it is.

Well done to the people who contacted me to say they do read the words on my blog and don't just look at my pictures :) It made me smile, and reduced the temptation to slip in that I have been abducted by aliens who wanted me to knit a slipcover for their spaceship, but returned me to earth when they found out how much the yarn would cost. Or something like that.

There are some office and knitting christmas parties to look forward to this week, and we went and got our tree today. It's not as tall as the last few years, prices seem to have gone up, so I may have to edit out some of my copious collection of ornaments.

But we had a jolly evening at the pub with my local knitting group on Tuesday night. Far too much food so my supper consisted largely of pastries and cookies, and for Secret Santa I received this great cowl and some beautiful stitch markers. I wore the cowl today when we looking Christmas trees and it's really warm. Thanks MizMiffy!

Now that it's gotten colder, I thought it might be good to have an ear flap hat like the younger kids are wearing. So I downloaded Thorpe from Ravelry and knit it up in some Knitpicks Sierra (50 wool/50 alpaca). After I took this picture, I added a pompom. I've now worn it a few times and I think it is too big, I don't like how far it is coming down the back of my neck. I'm also a bit worried that it looks like a big baby bonnet, although DH was very diplomatic when I asked for his opinion. I think I might take off the brim and try knitting the lower part again. I knit it fairly tightly to keep the wind out and it was pretty warm when I wore it outside.

I finished sewing the first blocks for the McCall's Quilting Mystery Quilt and I've sewn the rows for the Turning Twenty Around the Block Flamingo Quilt but haven't sewn all the rows together yet. I'm not sure what I am going to use for the border as I don't have enough flamingo fabric left.

Last Sunday I had some free time and decided to try out this online tutorial for making dollshouse books, on A Lavender Dilly blog which I think I found a while ago when I was looking for printables for my Fairfield house. I resized the book covers to be about 1 inch high for the 1/12th scale, and 1/2 inch high for 1/24th scale, and printed out a few sets, then glued them onto appropriately sized wood sticks. I'm pleased with how they've come out, and will distribute them into various of my dollshouses.

It will be time to get out my miniature Christmas vignettes soon and put them on display. I've also got my Gingerbread Houses christmas quilt hanging in the stairwell, my Christmas Star quilt on my bed, and yesterday I sorted out my Christmas quilted wallhangings from the quilt cupboard, ready to put them on display.

Do you remember this ruffled scarf in Katia Ondas yarn? I said I would never make another because I really didn't enjoy how fiddly this 'yarn' is to knit with, having to unwind the lattice before every stitch. Yet somehow I have agreed to knit one for a work colleague who admired it (she's paid for the yarn and given me a couple of pounds towards knitting it) and may even have to knit one for our other colleague. Bleah. Stupid stupid stupid. DH is kindly helping by pre-stretching the lattice out before I knit it but it's still rubbish to knit with.

Here's hoping that you are looking forward to the festive season and if you are celebrating Christmas, I hope you have a very happy Christmas with lots of crafty presents. If you have been reading my blog for a while, you may recall that I am in the habit of buying my own Christmas presents (so that I get decent ones and not more Body Shop smellies). This year, Santa is bringing me a Greenleaf McKinley dollshouse in 1/12th scale, and a Diana dollshouse in 1/24th scale! They had a 25% off sale and I couldn't resist. The big question will be whether Customs decide to take an interest in what will be a relatively big and heavy parcel. The 25% saving may have to pay the duty in that case. Hopefully not. Merry Christmas!!

Crafts are not optional

2011-12-03T17:43:00.001Z

It's been a bit of a multi-crafting week. Last Sunday I went up to London for my semi-regular visit to the V&A Museum. I had forgotten that the ‘Power of Making’ exhibition was still on, so had the pleasure of going around that. It had received a fair bit of attention in the craft magazines but the photos used (of a cubist knitted dress for example) hadn’t really attracted me. But the exhibition turned out to be really interesting, a wide-ranging look at made objects ranging from the functional (machine embroidered surgical implants used for attaching artificial tissue that looked like strange alien flowers; hand-cast replacement eyeballs; 3-D ‘printed’ aerodynamic plastic bicycles; bespoke leather shoes) through the unusual (a full scale crocheted bear fashioned realistically from mohair yarn; a gigantically upscaled Aran rug/wallhanging; a wooden marquetry ‘textile’ fabric) to the bizarre but fascinating (spray-on fabric used to create a dress of fantastical fibres; 3-D printed vase of strange labyrinthine tangled shapes; a shoe-guitar; ) and lots in between. There were also audio-visual installations showing artists and craftspeople at work – I watched a fascinating clip of a pin-hole camera box being installed in a park which apparently contained a pottery vase coated in photosensitive material, that was slowly rotating inside the camera box. When the artist ‘developed’ the pot in a darkroom, it was printed with strange ghostly silhouettes of trees and shrubs. All very inspiring.

While enjoying my cup of tea afterwards, I was looking at Twitter and realised the Bust Magazine Craftacular Christmas Fair happened to be on that same afternoon. Since I was in town already, I headed over to Bethnal Green and paid a very reasonable £2 admission charge to join the crowds thronging the stalls in York Hall. Lots of hand-made and one-off designs were on sale, there was a party atmosphere as the DJ on the stage provided entertainment, and craft workshops were underway at one side of the hall. I was very tempted by a pair of porcelain ‘button’ earrings that had a cross-stitch through them, but they only came in white which I didn’t think would suit me. I did pick up a little craft kit for a friend, and saw lots of neat ideas, screen printed custom fabric made into various bags and purses, and some hilarious anarchic cross-stitch mottos adorning various items. All a bit off the wall and a sense that you were taking part in something more than just a commercial event.

There and back I was knitting furiously on my Cowl at the Moon garter stitch cowl. The pattern is easy to memorise and it grows fairly quickly due to the bigger yarn weight (I used two strands of DK held together). By dedicating my commuter knitting to this, I was able to finish it by Tuesday and wore it some of the rest of the week. Not the most flattering object in the world, but it’s going to be ideal for keeping the cold winter winds from blowing down the back of my neck in my winter coat. The pattern says to knit until the top edge is 15” but I found that was too tight for me. I knit about an extra inch on the top edge and about an extra two inches on the bottom edge. It’s still more close fitting than the picture of the model, but I think this will be better draft-wise anyway. I used some Rowan RYC Cashsoft DK from my stash, I really don't like this yarn because it pills and I've now discovered it also sheds like crazy all over my coat, but it is soft to the touch and it's good to use it up.

I also got a fair bit of sewing done over the last weekend on my Turning Twenty Around the Block flamingo quilt. Once cut out, this quilt is very fast to sew and could probably be done easily in a day if you had the opportunity to sew all day without interruptions. I am enjoying my colours and might even look at my fabric and see what else I have that could be used for this pattern. I've done the 12 blocks and laid it out on my homemade design wall to see what it looks like.

In a burst of Startitis, I've decided to do the three-part mystery quilt in McCall's Quilting magazine. I've got a butterfly/bird fabric I bought in America, and have matched it up with three stash fabrics including an old 30s backing remnant. This is described as a quick and easy quilt. I've had mixed results with mystery quilts in the past, but hopefully this one is being error-checked before publishing due to the McCall's staff also making it along with the readers.

This is turning into a bit of a long post, sorry about that. Although most of you probably don't read my ramblings anyway and are only looking at the pictures. I should probably test that by inserting a really bizarre sentence in the middle of a paragraph and see if anyone comments on it :)

Anyway, today (Saturday) I had planned to go up to London to the London Kensington Christmas Dollshouse Fair. But I decided not to go, and to spend the day actually working on a dollshouse rather than shopping for things to go in them. Kensington is a great show, but tends to be mostly the same vendors, in the same locations, selling the same things as last year. Also not much 1:24th scale.

So instead I got out my Tower House to do some long-awaited repairs and finish up some long overdue elements. This house started out as a Dolls House Emporium competition kit, and I decorated it to look like a Loire Chateau gatehouse tower,which I fantasise is our holiday home in France (never going to happen unless I win the lottery!).

The ground floor is open with archways on either side, like a gatehouse. I had made a half-hearted attempt to indicate some outdoor living with a set of metal chairs and a table, but it was all a huge dust-catcher and very sad. I found some plexi-glass in the attic, which was a bit scratched but not too badly. I traced the archway shapes onto card and then cut them out in the plastic with the Unimat scroll saw. They are a reasonably tight fit (although there are still some gaps) and should cut down on the dust getting into the ground floor. To keep them in place, I made simple pivoting clips out of paperclip wire. The wire is fairly unobtrusive against the 'stone' work.

Ever since I finished this house several years ago, the opening front has been held on with a piece of string tied around the tower. As it was high time to rectify that, I made a simple closure using a screw, more paperclip wire, and a screw eye. Once painted to match the roof, they are unobtrusive. No more string!

With the ground floor now protected from dust, I installed some of the items bought or made for it. This two part cast plaster fountain was glued on the wall (doll was only used for scale, he doesn't live here) then touched up with paint to look like it has been in use for a while.

I glued some ivy pots on the wall that I made a few years ago, touched up the bench with acrylic stain, added the flowers my friend bought me at Kempton, discarded some dodgy poorly made croissants that I had acquired somewhere, dusted everything, touched up the cycles with some silver paint, and stuck it all in.

On the main living floor, I once again dusted everything, and stuck various things in or down.

In the attic bedroom, I dusted and made a bedside lamp from an old fitting and some origami paper trimmed with edging.

On the outside, I mended the long-broken railing and stuck the pot plant back in place that I made a few years ago.

And that dollshousing took practically all day, plus about five trips into the attic where I have to keep a lot of my dollshouse stash. No wonder I don't get much done on my minis.

We've entered a time slip...

2011-11-26T17:25:00.001Z

It feels very weird lately because I basically seem to have lost Autumn. Intellectually I know this is because I spent most of September and October getting ready for my big holiday in New England, then two weeks plus actually in New England. And while we were in New England we passed the big autumn milestones like harvest celebrations, Halloween and my birthday (and also missed out on Bonfire Night here in England). But emotionally it feels like I missed out on all of those things because I didn't celebrate them in my own home, with my own Halloween decorations and my own Autumn-themed quilts. Suddenly we are back in a country which is hurtling recklessly towards Christmas, and I just don't feel ready. The ridiculously warm temperatures are not helping this feeling of confusion (15 degrees Celsius in London last week), and I just feel like it should still be early October.

I can't help remembering how much I rolled my eyes when I was young, when my aged parents went on about how time flies by so fast and how could it be Christmas already...

Despite that, I had to put on the Christmas cheer for today, which was our last Saturday Sewing Club meeting of the year and therefore our Christmas celebration. I wrapped up four christmas presents (two to thank the committee members, one for Secret Santa and one personal gift), got the Christmas cards out of the attic and wrote some for members, dug out the Christmas tablecloth, the Santa sack for the presents, and my knitted Christmas-themed waistcoat (complete with tinsel earrings). Very bizarre. And yet it was quite fun and we enjoyed our potluck lunch on the tablecloth.

My eight members had very kindly clubbed together and got me this gorgeous set of sewing-themed mug, coaster and storage tin. Also included in the gift was a tiny glass punch bowl with ladle and tiny punch cups, which you may be able to make out on top of the tin, for my dollshouse.

My Secret Santa gift was 'Quilts for Chocolate Lovers' which I shall look forward to reading.

We have now moved onto the next stage of our UFO Challenge and today I started working on the Blue and White Mosaic quilt that I started on a Kaffe Fassett workshop in Hawaii back in 2009. It's basically a snowball quilt, only on the workshop Kaffe forgot what measurement the corner squares should be, and told us a smaller measurement. I therefore ran out of fabric for the cornerstones, as I had cut it all out to the wrong measurement, but I got some more in New England. Not the same fabrics but similar colours. It's a bit tedious as I have to work on each snowball individually to make sure it stays in the right place in the layout, and has the right colours on the corners, but I got through 1 3/4 rows today.

I also cut out a new quilt this week, using the Turning Twenty Around the Block book that I bought in New England. The fabric is a wacky but gorgeous print of flamingoes that I bought in a Christmas sale from e-Quilter a few years ago, and I've paired it up with some random fabrics out of my stash. I made the original Turning Twenty quilt some years ago, but didn't buy the second book. This is the third book and while I like the pattern, I am disappointed with the directions in the book. They are not at all clear, and omit rather obvious points like tips on fabric selection or even what fabrics you should use in each block. The cutting directions are also very convoluted so I ended up re-writing them for easy rotary cutting. I'm going to try to use all different fabrics in each block which I assume is correct from looking at the pictures.

Last weekend I went along to the Kempton Park Dollshouse Show. This is our local show, not a huge one but fun to go around. Judith of In Some Small Way was having a clearance sale as she is phasing out her attendance at shows. All those pieces of plastic 1/48 furniture were .05p each, so I picked up a bunch of beds, night stands, tables and chairs for future projects. I also got the three different impress moulds for brick and stone effects, and the bar bottle kit to make more bottles for my Old West Saloon in 1/48 scale. On another stall, I got the two cute china mugs which went into my modern Canadian house, and the Christmas lights with battery pack will hopefully fit into my Mrs Santa Claus' bedroom scene when it comes out for Christmas (not yet!!!!). The two baskets of flowers were my Christmas gift from the friend that I went with, and are going in my dollshouse conservatory.

TV knitting this week has been largely replaced by work on my secret cross-stitch project. I did start this new neckwarmer, the Cowl at the Moon free pattern on Ravelry. It's a plain garter stitch tube shaped by short rowing. I'm using two strands of DK like Cashmerino but not Debbie Bliss and am trying to knit quickly because my neck has been cold in my jacket from the wind. I've forgotten to wrap my short rows a couple of times because in the Yoked Cardigan I am knitting, you don't wrap the garter stitch short rows - old dog... new tricks etc.

Commuter knitting (and knitting club last weekend) has been the Debbie Bliss Wrist Warmer. I finally made it up to the thumb gusset where I had to do some more improvising (as I am knitting this in the round but the pattern is for flat knitting, so the charts aren't set up for round knitting and the original stitch count was too loose). I had to add a few extra stripes to get the thumb gusset big enough before going into the chart for the hand. I think I might add some extra rows at the top as well, so it comes up to my knuckles. This is in Debbie Bliss cashmerino and doesn't feel particularly warm so far, I think because the microfibre content in this yarn feels cool to the skin.

I found out yesterday that there is going to be an International Quilt Festival in Galway, Ireland from 7-10 June 2012. Perhaps because it is being organised by an American expat who also runs a travel company, they are thinking big and planning a very Paducah-like programme of workshops and tours around the quilt show. I will think about whether this might make a nice summer holiday for me while I leave DH to look after DS and the house.

P.S. (updated a few hours later) I've just slogged through balancing my credit card statement against my receipts and was delighted to find that the exchange rate on the card was a lot higher than what we got for travel cash. Therefore all my fabric and yarn purchases were quite a bit cheaper than I thought they would be - result!!!

Yardage shock

2011-11-19T16:05:00.001Z

I've spent several hours last weekend and today (Saturday) excavating, photographing, and stashing my yarn onto Ravelry. I couldn't do it in the week because it's dark when I leave and get home, and I'm using natural light for the photos.

I've set up a primitive photo studio made out of two pieces of foamcore with some freezer paper clipped to them. Despite tinkering with various settings on the camera based on advice from websites (white balance etc.), I was unable to get the camera to faithfully reproduce the colours of the yarn. Using the natural light setting is the closest, although still a bit lighter in colour.

I think DH was pretty stunned when I brought in my storage crates of handknitting yarn from the machine knitting shed.

And I certainly wouldn't have taken my card index of yarn to work, to type it into Ravelry in the office, because that would be wrong. :)

I'm still not finished, but so far I have stashed 129 yarns. Ravelry lets you download an Excel spreadsheet of your stash, and on that you can add up your yardage.

106,728 yards. So far. I haven't even put it all on yet.

I am a bit stunned as well. Considering I am not a particularly fast knitter, that is really a rather horrific (or splendid) total. It's also a bit of an eyeopener that the entire stash is about 1/3 pink, 1/3 blue, and 1/6 purple. Not only do I have enough yarn to keep me knitting for the rest of my life, but I will be very recognisable due to always being dressed in the same three colours.

I think it may be time to seriously consider going on a yarn diet. Or at least banning myself from buying sweaters-worths of yarn - sock yarn and lace skeins shouldn't count, they're low fat. Perhaps that should be my resolution for 2012, to only knit from my stash. I think I have a bit of a collecting problem, because I have mammoth stashes for all my hobbies. Obviously somewhere in my brain is a voice screaming "buy it now, you might never see it again! What if it all disappears and you don't have enough!", etc. etc.

TV knitting this week was the cotton baby hat kit that I bought in America. In the end, it was too small for me as the stranded knitting pulled it in too much. After this picture I washed it, and it is currently drying in the airing cupboard.

I also made a start on the other kit I bought in New England, for the Tilly Thomas bag. This is a pure silk drawstring bag, with a quilted top edged with grommets where you can pick up stitches onto a circular needle. This makes the first few rows a bit challenging to knit, as the quilted fabric is bunched up under your needles, but it gets easier once you are away from the grommets. The kit comes with mercerised cotton yarn in red and two blues, and the instructions are basically 'knit what you like until you've covered up the lining'. I am doing some fair isle patterns with a few purl rows thrown in. I am using the extremely useful 'Complete Book of Fair Isle Knitting' by Sheila Macgregor, which has charted designs grouped by the number of stitches in the repeat. I have 108 stitches, so I can use any of the 4-stitch repeats and also the 12 stitch repeats.

I've also done some tv knitting on the Drops cabled yoke sleeveless cardi. This is much easier to knit using Stitchminder on the Ipad, because I can run two counters simultaneously, one for the cables and one for the short rows. I'm getting near the end of the yoke, just a few more inches.

I finally blocked the Seriously Gorgeous Silk Drop Stitch Shawl, although I haven't taken a photo of it being worn yet. It's really lovely, like silky gossamer but surprisingly warm.

I had to sit through two hours of speeches and other people's children one evening this week, in order to applaud my son's year and my son in particular who picked up two academic awards at the prizegiving. DH dutifully clapped for a solid 60 minutes but apart from clapping my son's year, I was knitting on my Fan Stitch Half Circle Shawl and the Debbie Bliss fair isle wrist warmers. I didn't get a lot done on the wrist warmers in New England because I switched the yarns between hands halfway through the first one, and decided I didn't like the effect, so had to rip back to where I'd switched and knit again. I knit fair isle with one yarn in each hand, but I always have trouble with the tension being uneven, it's hard to judge how far to spread out the stitches and sometimes I end up with tight or loose stitches.

Today I've had a lovely peaceful day as DH and DS were out, so I spent the morning working on finishing some of the quilts that I did on my frame before the holiday. I did some stitch in the ditch and a bit of free motion to finish off the Christmas gingerbread house wallhanging, and put it through the wash to remove the marks, so it is currently drying on the door. I trimmed the edges of four more quilts and cut the binding out for them, ready for some marathon binding sessions. I've also been doing a secret cross-stitch project for a gift. I love the look of cross stitch but can only do it for about 30 minutes at a time because my eyes go funny and my wrist starts to hurt. There's a woman at work who churns out about one massive cross stitch picture a week, I don't know how she does it.

But where are the little chocolates?

2011-11-12T18:01:00.001Z

As you have probably guessed from a few days without posts, I am back home now and back at work. It feels strange to be back in the real world, it was a particular shock to have to plan and cook meals again. DH misses the hotel turndown service with the little chocolates left on the pillow.

So we had a night flight and arrived very early Sunday morning back in the UK. I can’t really sleep on planes so I was very tired on Sunday and still feeling a bit bleah by mid-week. I’ve gradually worked through my loads of laundry, the piles of mail, and have made some small inroads into the taped television shows.

After my last post, we had a day where we drove up to Plymouth to visit the Plimoth Plantation, a partially-living history recreation of the first colony including a recreation of the Mayflower ship. I enjoyed seeing some of the antique or recreated textiles on display in the wooden houses. Up in the main town, there was a knitting shop advertised on the local map, Knitted Treasures, but when we walked past it, it had been replaced by a different business.

DH offered to take me back to Tumbleweed Quilts but instead we used the excess weight allowance to go back to the fabulous Parnassus Books on Hwy 6A on Cape Cod, in Yarmouth Port, to buy a 1911 set of Encyclopedia Brittanica that DH had fallen in love with. The volumes were fairly small so by judicious distribution, we managed to end up with four bags that were all just under the weight limit of 50 pounds.

On our final day, we drove up past Boston to visit Lowell, one of the cradles of American industrialisation. Here the famous mill girls worked in the cotton mills in the 19th C and we were able to visit the museum with working (and incredibly noisy) looms where I bought a few tea towels woven on site. We also visited the boarding house exhibit which shows how the girls typically lived. But first we went to the New England Quilt Museum (pictured left) – all the sites are within an easy walk of each other within the National Historical State Park – which had a great gift shop but not that many traditional quilts on display. The main exhibition which took up most of the small display space was of new quilts made in Haiti. However, the members’ lending library was open, what a fabulous resource. I wish I lived in the US just so I could borrow from it. The library also had a sales rack where they sell donated books and magazines and I was very pleased to score a couple of early Rowan knitting magazines full of classic designs by many recognised names such as Kim Hargreaves and Kaffe Fassett. One is issue seven, I think, and the other doesn’t have a cover but must be a similar time period around 1989. There are some great designs although of course most are unflattering boxy drop shoulder designs, but could probably be adapted. Even just taking out some of the excess width (up to twice body width in some cases) would help a lot to update the designs. We just had time to nip over to the American Textile Museum and I wish we had gone there first as it was an excellent introduction to the different fibres, their uses in textiles in America, how the textiles were made including a large display of working looms with an excellent audiovisual presentation, loads of historical fashion galleries and even a small knitting display – which had an exquisitely knitted baby bonnet of very fine thread. I parked DH in the lobby and had a very quick whiz around the displays, would love to go back.

The trip home was uneventful apart from a smaller plane with Virgin Atlantic which was very cramped. I had to ask the flight attendant to ask the man in front of me to put his seat back up for the meal, because we were so close together that I literally could not spoon food out of my meal tray to my mouth because of his seat back being practically in my face. My wooden interchangeable needles once again made it through Security so I was able to knit on my Fan Stitch Half Circle shawl during the flight. This has been a really enjoyable travel knit, and I might even knit this design again. My only complaint is the shorthand in which the pattern is written makes it very difficult. You are asked to repeat large quantities of rows, which in themselves ask you to repeat smaller quantities of rows, so it got very confusing and in the end I just had to write all the row numbers out on the back of our itinerary, with the corresponding pattern row next to each one, so that I can keep track of where I am. It’s the kind of pattern that could benefit from advance preparation with an Excel spreadsheet before you start to knit.

TV knitting has been the kit for the baby hat that I bought on Cape Cod, which is knitted in a no-name cotton yarn of approximately Aran weight. The pattern is in three sizes for Child’s small/medium/large. I chose the medium and commenced knitting in the round, but after about 2.5” I started thinking it looked awfully big. I am a loose knitter but I know that so had gone down a needle size. I tried the hat on and it actually fits me snugly. So I asked DH if I would look stupid in the child’s design and he doesn’t think so, so now I am knitting it for me. It’s one of these colourwork patterns where they just tell you to ‘follow chart’ without specifying whether the original was knit in intarsia or fair isle. I’ve chosen fair isle but it does mean carrying some of the floats for quite long distances. I am weaving them in on alternate stitches but because it is thick and grippy cotton yarn, the floats are peeping through which is a bit annoying. Perhaps it will get better when it’s washed and blocked (the eternal knitters’ hope).

I’ve had time to put away my quilting fabric and haberdashery purchases, but all my new yarn is sitting in (spilling out of) a plastic crate in the living room, waiting for attention. I've decided the time has come to break down and photograph my stash for Ravelry. It’s just gotten too out of hand, it’s too hard to keep track of what I have and what project I bought it for. I was dreading the job, it will take ages to find it all, photograph it all and make sure the right photograph ends up with the right details on Ravelry. Also kind of dreading the realisation of just how much I have – more than a few lifetimes at the rate I am knitting. I don’t want to fall victim to Shopper’s Remorse… So far I've just done some of my sock yarn, and it's already taken about three hours. Bleah. I am photographing 12 at a time, and storing them temporarily in numbered partitions in a cardboard wine box to take over to the computer to catalogue.

I took more than 500 photos (the majority being either autumn foliage, heritage wooden homes, snow or coastal scenes) so won’t subject you to all of them, but here are a few.

foliage

Quilt at Shelburne Museum

Antique bandboxes at Shelburne Museum

Keepsake Quilting

The back-room Sale area at WEBS, Northampton

Very strange knitted dress in a gift shop in Chatham, Cape Cod, with a bodice made out of gloves and mittens, and a skirt made out of detachable and interchangeable knitted petals

Yarn shop burnout

2011-11-04T17:01:00.001Z

I think I have finally burnt out on yarn shops, much to DH's amusement. We were driving along the Cape on 6A when DH spotted Ladybug Knitting, which turned out to be quite a big shop. A few friendly ladies were knitting and the older lady begged my British husband to say anything so she could enjoy his accent. So she started quizzquizzing on what he had for breakfast etc while I chuckled my way down the aisles. I found two great kits, one for a Tilly Thomas bag with a fabric top and yarn to knit the sides. The other for the cutest multi coloured baby hat.

but after that I was really feeling like I was done, and worried that our bags are getting too full. So when DH spotted yet another yarn shop, only about 15 minutes down the 6A, I just covered my eyes and shouted "drive, drive!" so I wouldn't be tempted. They must do a lot of knitting on this island, to have three big shops only 20 minutes or so apart.

Besides, the Ladybug ladies had told me about a quilt shop in Barnstaple where the 6 A meets the 132, Tumbleweed Quilts. This turned out to be a huge and fabulous shop, perhaps as big as Keepsake quilts in terms of bolts, not sure. Big sections of kids prints, Kaffe Fasset, 30s, landscape, batiks, solids, sale fabrics, books, bag corner, patterns, notions, loads of other stuff, great shop and highly recommended. I bought a few yards of fabric, some Pellon 72F interfacing, some 36in zippers, some webbing for bag handles, some bag hardware, a storage box for thread, AACew rulers on 50%off, and some other stuff I can't remember.

When we got back to the hotel, I weighed all the bags and the good news is that Inam still in my weight limit!! I could buy more!! (DH now groaning loudly)

Few more yarn stops

2011-11-03T16:28:00.001Z

After a walk around the historic harbour of Newport, we stopped into Knitting Needles at 555 Thames Street. Small knitting shop, a lot of novelty yarn. The owner said that customers mainly want to knit hats, scarves and socks in this area, to keep warm. Therefore she had very few lace yarns.

We stopped at Tivertom, RI where the local knitting shop had just gone out of business, but the friendly hand weaver (who had a fabulous studio, I'm very jealous) sent us to Sisters of the Wool which had just opened in Westport at 770 can't remember the street name. This was a bigger shop but they seemed a bit disorganised because of just opening. I picked up two skeins of Plymouth Happy Feet in both red and dark Wedgwood blue, and when I asked if they had any white, the woman started showing me DK baby yarn in acrylic mixes which was a bit weird. I really wanted Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn but haven't seen any this trip, not even in Vermont. The Happy Feet seems similar. I wanted it for Selbuvotter mittens and other fair isle.

Now we are in Cape Cod, our last stop on the holiday. We fly home on Saturday (sob) and let's hope all the yarn and fabric makes it through customs ok...

Stumbled across the Yarn Basket in Eastham, on Hwy 6 west side. Varied selection, some nice alpaca yarns, lots of sock yarn, some cashmere, Auracania, Plymouth, and several brands new to me. I bought four skeins of Dye for Me (2 sock, 2 alpaca lace) to go with the yarn dyeing book I bought in Montpelier, will have to get the dyes in the UK.

I am just possibly starting to feel yarned out...

Sock yarn score

2011-11-02T01:09:00.001Z

After touring two of the Newport mansions, which make English stately homes look like victims of an austerity drive, we stopped into Miniature Occasions and Dolls at 57 Bellevue Avenue. Interesting to look around but more dolls and collectables than minis. Very few houses, some Bespaq, very few Artisan made minis. A selection of DIY materials and lights. Friendly owners. Didn't buy anything.

In the afternoon we drove up to Providence to buy tickets for the Jack o Lantern Spectacular at the zoo (which really was spectacular, 5000 carved pumpkins around a lake) and I innocently suggested we stop into Fresh Purls knitting shop at 769a Hope Street. I soon regretted it as we got caught in the Escher-like tangles of the city's motorways. DH had about three nervous breakdowns before we finally made it. Small shop but interesting selection of yarns, I had a good fondle and came away with a sky blue handpainted semisolid sock yarn, cant remember the label and it's in the car.

Tomorrow we will try to find the Newport knitting shop and enjoy more of the city's fabulous houses.

Nose against the glass but no yarn for me

2011-11-01T01:36:00.001Z

Bit frustrating on the yarn shopping front the last few days, thanks to the snow. Colourful Stitches in Lenox looked like a fabulous store and should have opened Sunday afternoon, but never did. Other stores were open and the roads were fairly clear, but I guess the owner decided it wasn't worth it. We tried three times, and I took a pic of the yarn bombing out front. We did find Pumpkin Patch quilts open in nearby Lee, and I stocked up on thread and a bit more fabric. this was a fairly basic shop, not too large.

Today we drove south, and stopped at Creative Fibres in Windsor, which also looked very good. Also closed due to widespread power outage in the area after the snowstorm. On to Mystic, with a quick stop at a Michaels craft store on the way (got some sponge brushes,only 39 cents over here, and some Zap a Gap glue). In Mystic, the yarn shop is closed on Mondays and also looked good ( whimper...). i did however pick up a beautiful stained glass panel by a local craftswoman at an artisan store, I think it was called Company of Craftsmen, on the main shopping street, had some lovely things.

Now we are in Newport and there is a dollshouse store just down the road from our hotel!

Knitting nirvana in Northampton

2011-10-30T02:00:00.001Z

Today was a long drive south, and luckily we stopped and shelled out for snow boots because boy did it snow. We knew it was coming, so we stuck to the interstate for safety, which meant that we went right past Northampton, home of WEBs, America's yarn store. I thought I wouldn't be going until Monday but as the snow was still relatively light, we made a quick one hour stop.

Oh. My. God. I thought my head was going to explode. It's the size of a British supermarket AND there is a whole back warehouse full of sale yarns. Picture a huge room full of every yarn you've ever heard of, every obscure yarn called for in foreign patterns, every luxury yarn you've ever seen in Vogue Knitting. Nirvana. Thank god I had brought a shopping list or I think I would have just started running around throwing skeins in the air and speaking in tongues.

I got yarn for about five projects on my shopping list and a gift skein of Madeleine Tosh sock yarn for m-I-l. the we had to go as the snow was getting thicker. Sadly we ended up taking about 90 minutes of white knuckle driving to go 20 miles on the increasingly hairy interstate before finally reaching Lenox. Apparently there has been 18 inches so far and another foot expected. Luckily we are here for two nights and there is another knitting store here, Colourful Stitches, which is supposed to be fabulous...

Quilts, yarn, and iPad apps

2011-10-28T23:16:00.001+01:00

We've had a great few days, with glorious sunshine today but it is very cold and apparently a risk of snow on the way. I hope not, as we aren't used to driving in it and I doubt the rental cAr has the right tyres on it. I had bought a warm coat at the LL Bean outlet and I've really been wearing it.

Yesterday we went to the Shelburne Museum and had a fabulous day. It was pretty empty as it is the end of their season, so we almost had the place to ourselves. We headed straight to the quilt exhibit to see some of their fabulous collection of quilts, some lovely examples and I took lots of pictures. This is a big outdoor museum bringing together heritage buildings from around Vermont so loads to see. There were more quilts and samplers etc. in many of the furnished homes, and also a collection of dolls and even some dolls houses. There is also an enormous side wheel paddle steamer on dry land, fascinating inside, and all sorts of amazing collections including hundreds of 1/12 scale circus figurines. I even did very wel at the gift shop where they had the cutest embroidered felt Xmas ornaments, very reasonable, and I bought several.

Today we went to the State capitol Montpelier where I struck gold. First of all, it is full of period wooden houses that look just like Greenleaf dolls houses so I took loads of photos. Secondly, I managed to stumble across a wonderful knitting shop The Knitting Studio, even though they had just moved to 112 Main street. What a great shop! Really big, loads of great yarns including from the region, very helpful staff, husband chairs. I found loads of new to me yarns, it was very hard to choose. In the end, I came away with five skeins of Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool, 45 wool, 35 silk, 20 nylon, in a lovely tweedy purple, enough for a vest. Nine skeins of her Hempathy, 34 hemp, 41 cotton, 25 Modal, which feels like linen on the ball but softens and has drape when washed (they had a sample garment) in a faded denim (I wanted turquoise but they didn't have enough) for a top. Four skeins of Mirasol Tupa which we can get in the UK but this was on sale, 50 wool 50 silk, in pink. Three 100 g skeins of Queensland collection Rustic Tweed which feels gorgeous , 63 wool, 27 alpaca and 10 Donegal, in a tweedy turquoise, and one luxury skein for a shawlette of Juniper Moon Farm Findley, 50 wool 50 silk, in a sort of burgundy purple, so soft and light.

Then we drove up to Johnson where we saw a covered bridge. On the way, we stopped at Baileys Floral in Morrisville, which stocks a limited selection of yarn. They had loads of Peaches and Cream, so I bought one ball to knit a facecloth, and I also fell for a gorgeous skein of Malabrigo Sock for a shawlette, in peacock greens and blues. In Johnson I was looking for a third knit shop but it had closed down.

To find all of these, I am using the internet site Knitmap, which tells you what yarn shops are in your area, incredibly useful when you are travelling. I also have an app by Map Muse to find quilt stores, but it doesn't seem nearly as well populated or accurate. I am using free wifi so today used the Free Wifi app to find a hotspot in Montpelier. And of course I have been looking up opening times, menus, email, skyping with DS in the UK... The iPad had become my essential travel companion.

Jackson to Stowe

2011-10-27T02:59:00.001+01:00

Today we drove through the White Mountains into Vermont. Mostly it was natural beauty spots but I did find a small quilt shop that was shutting down. I bought one fat quarter and three of the leather thimbles that I use when stitching down binding, all at 25% off.

We stopped in Barre for lunch and I was very excited to find a leaflet advertising the Real Good Toys dollhouse factory outlet! DH accused me of planning this visit, but it really was happen chance. So we drove up the road to find it.

Everything was marked down but I was surprised at how expensive they were to begin with. I think we are spoiled in the UK with fairly reasonably priced miniatures. I did see one very cute half scale victorian but it was $750 even marked down. I bought two tubes of Quick Grip glue which is hard to get in the UK and some strips of LED lights ditto. I hadn't realised they were based in Vermont but when I think about it, I realise how much both their houses and Greenleaf houses look like New England architecture. For example we saw this house in Stowe, very like a dollhouse. And there was one in Barre near the shop that had windows with surrounds just like a Greenleaf house.

We were just turning around in Stowe on the way to the hotel, when I spotted this sign for quilts and yarn and shrieked at DH to pull over . He is well trained so I was soon being welcomed by three ladies knitting, who invited me to pull up a chair. So I did, and knit a row on my shawl while we chatted. Very nice welcome to Stowe. Tomorrow we are going to the Shelburne Museum where I hope to see loads of quilts.

Shopping my brains out in New Hampshire

2011-10-26T01:47:00.001+01:00

Shopping my brains out in New Hampshire

So we've been in New Hampshire for a few days, which just seems to be Mecca for quilters and knitters. I even saw an official road sign directing drivers off a highway to a knitting shop (unfortunately my chauffeur/DH didn't see it).

My first yarn experience was when DH spotted Nancy's Alterations and Yarn, across a side street from the Conway Scenic Railroad. The owner was very friendly and stayed open late while I browsed. It's a small shop but had a nice selection and variety by British standards, yarns like Plymouth, Lamb's Pride, Malabrigo, and lots of others. I fell for two exquisite skeins of lace yarn by a company I wasn't familiar with, Ella Rae, made in Italy. Extra fine merino, incredibly soft, hand dyed effect, think it was $26 a skein, will make a lovely shawl.

Today we drove an hour south to Keepsake Quilting, a place I have wanted to visit for almost 20 years. It didn't disappoint, fairly large although not as big as Hancocks of Paducah which is my main American quilt shop experience. Fabric is arranged somewhat randomly so it was hard to find things on my list. Some is by genre, ie civil war, but then there will be civil war fabrics dotted randomly around the shop in themed displays, or in colour families as well. Not much flannel, almost no fat quarters, limited books or patterns. Lots of fabric though and I was able to drop a few hundred dollars crossing things off my shopping list. I benefited from a 15%off coupon which I earned by bringing a little Halloween quilt to show and tell with. I also picked up hard to get notions like steam a seam lite, fusible batting, etc, a new Turning Twenties book 'around the block', an iron storage pouch that you can put a hot iron into, a Marti michel kaleidoscope ruler, two calendars, some gift cards, and I can't remember what else. I was very good at fabric shopping and only bought for existing projects, nothing new.

After a spot of lunch, I dove into the yarn shop next door, Patternworks, which had some gorgeous yarn. Very wel stocked, loads of names I recognised from American knitting magazines and even some yarn from Maine. I had a brief but intense love affair with some Art Fibres beaded and sequined lace weight, absolutely gorgeous but $50 a small skein. i bought two skeins of Lambs Pride bulky to try the felted boxes in the Mason Dixon book, some kollage square dpns to try, a Stitch Fixer set, some coiless safety pin markers.

Then we drove another hour south to Henniker to visit Quilted Threads, a lovely shop with very friendly staff. This was more of a traditional quilt shop. I picked up a bit more fabric, some lengths of continuous zipper, two jacket patterns as gifts, and a pattern for storage cubes. I wanted some machine quilting DVDs but they only had a couple. I got a great blue fabric to try Hawaiian appliqué and the assistant recommended an online course by Nancy chong with the quilt university on Hawaiian appliqué that she had just done.

On the way back, we were just in time to stop into Close Knit Sisters at 1976 White Mountain Highway in Conway. A dedicated knitting shop, they had quite a wide range of Cascade yarns, some Plymouth, Regia, Berroco, Galway, and lots of other stuff. I didn't find it as inspiring as Patternworks and didn't buy anything, although I was tempted by again some Ella Rae Lace Merino.

Other than that, we've seen some gorgeous autumn colour, rode the cog railway up to the summit of Mt Washington in the snow, sampled clam chowder and tonight I had a boiled lobster, yummy.

I've downloaded an iPhone blogger app which lets me upload iPad pics so here are the quilts I saw at LL Bean.

On the road - Boston to Freeport

2011-10-24T03:12:00.001+01:00

Hi there, I'm in Freeport, Maine, and we just had a lovely dinner at our Inn after shopping the 24-hour LL Bean flagship store at 8pm on a Sunday. I took a picture of a couple of cute scrappy quilts with my iPad in there, but Blogger won't let me upload it from the iPad for some reason. They weren't very well made, big toe catcher quilting, but were cute. That was my first ever LL Bean store and I loved several things, including some really cute hooked rugs.In Boston we stumbled across two yarn shops on Newbury Avenue, the long shopping street. One was mainly a needlepoint store but had a small selection of yarn. She's been there 23 years apparently. The other across the road and a bit further down, had just moved into a basement shop and was much bigger but very disorganised. Yarn was arranged by colour so a jumble of different fibres in together, nothing priced, and when I asked how much some wool cotton tweed was, she had no idea. So I didn't buy that!In Rockport on the way up here, on Bearskin Neck shopping colony, we found a bead store and I got some cute glass earrings that look like little pumpkins for Halloween.Commuter knitting has been the Fan Stitch shawl, which is going very well. Mindless enough for travel knitting but interesting enough so it isn't boring. I've also been trying out the Stitchminder app which I really like, simple counter but really useful.

Last blog before the holiday!!! (plus update)

2011-10-15T18:31:00.002+01:00

Yes, we fly on Thursday to New England. So the priority this week is to shovel out the house and hide the craft stuff away in preparation for the in-laws coming to house-sit with DS while we are away. I also have to take down the 12-foot quilt frame to free up the living room, so tonight is the last night I will be stitching on that. (sob...) I really wish I could have it up permanently in a garage or a basement, it is just so much easier to quilt things on it. It would be great to just finish piecing a top, pin it on the frame and quilt it right away. Instead of hanging it on the back of a door for months until the yearly assembling of the quilt frame.

This week I have been trying to do as much as I can on my Piece o Cake Vines quilt, which is a single size quilt that I topped several years ago. Two years ago I used my previous smaller frame to hold it while I basted it with a micro-basting gun, and I did some stitch in the ditch quilting on my manual machine. This week I have stitched a floral panto in the sashing strips (which was a learning exercise in how to line up a panto with a not-perfectly-straight-nor-parallel quilt element). I also tried out my new open-toed hover foot from Cotton Patch and stitched a somewhat wobbly line around all the applique, and then did a loopy stipple in the background. My carriage is jerking slightly when I try to stitch a smooth diagonal. I suspect the wheels are not entirely aligned with the top carriage track but I don't have time to sort it out. I decided the wobbles were a design feature.

Commuter knitting this week was the Cookie A Sunshine Socks and I finished them! I knit these a bit shorter than the pattern and they came out fairly well. I knit them as written in terms of size, and they fit fine but could be tighter. I find it hard to knit negative ease into socks even though intellectually I know it makes for a better fit. These are in Cherry Tree Hill 100% wool sock yarn.

Having finished the socks, I was a bit stuck for commuter knitting for Friday so dug out my Selbuvotter Wedgewood gloves which had been hibernating due to the pattern being full of mistakes and no full errata available. Many Ravellers have given up on these and just turned them into fingerless mitts, but I have soldiered on and finished the third finger on Friday, and picked up for the fourth finger today. I think I will be able to finish the glove. The challenge will be knitting a second one to match with all the same modifications. Also they are a bit tight.

TV knitting has been the Drops Cable Yoke Cardigan, I am now almost halfway on the yoke. I have also been using TV time to sew down binding and finished the Stars over England quilt complete with label, so it is all ready for its new owner next week.

Daisy asked for a picture of the pink mittens slash arm warmers. Here is a picture of one (I'm holding the camera with the other hand. ) I've got it pulled right on tightly so there is no floppy bit at the top, but in normal wear there will be some flop.

I wasn't very well for a couple of days this week, and stayed home. On one of the afternoons I dug out a free kit that came with a dollshouse magazine a few months ago. There were several options for using it, I decided to make a set of towels to go in the guest bedroom in the first dollshouse I ever built. It was fun to do something creative but not very taxing.

(Update because I forgot to blog what I had done at my monthly sewing group).

I topped the Quilt in a Day Fans & Flutterbys cot quilt at my monthly sewing group today. It's a bit wrinkled in the picture. I would have loved to throw it on the frame and quilt it, but sadly it will go back to 'back-of-the-door-limbo' to await the next incarnation of the quilting frame. It's very sweet and will be a lovely quilt for some little girl.

In the afternoon of the club day, I put together a really cute little kit that I bought from Sally Holman at last year's Alexandra Palace (who surprisingly doesn't seem to have a website but she is a UK quilter, author and teacher). Last year her booth specialised in landscape quilts made with folded fabric layers, which I really liked, and I bought a kit to make a beach scene greeting card. It was a great kit, only £3.95 and had everything in it including interfacing, wadding and embroidery cottons. It was fun to put it together. I need to find a frame to fit the mount as I want to keep this one.

I also meant to say that I am taking my I-pad on holiday so I may be able to blog a bit while I'm away. The only thing is that I don't have the gadget that lets you upload a camera card to the Ipad so pictures will be a bit of an issue. The Ipad does have its own camera but it's not much good, and it's a bit heavy to lug around just to use as a camera. I will see what happens. I don't plan to turn this blog into a travelogue, but I may be able to blog some crafty things and purchases along the way. Stay tuned!

Update to last post

2011-10-12T10:46:00.001+01:00

A brief update to say that once my mittens were completely bone dry (and I put them in the airing cupboard in the hope that the dry heat would shrink them a bit), the yarn has plumped out again and regained much more body.

I was very surprised when I took them out, because even when they were still just slightly damp, they were floppy and thin-feeling. They aren't nearly as plush and thick as they used to be pre-washing, but have settled down to a smoother fabric that is soft without being too limp. Bizarre. This yarn seems to be really Jekyll and Hyde.

They are still much longer than they used to be, but I think they are wearable. If I push my hand right into them, they are only about an inch longer than my finger tips. The wrist however comes partway to my elbow now, but it feels a bit like wearing a combo wrist warmer / mitten.

They are definitely pink, which is still making me feel cross when I look at them, but perhaps I will get used to it. I will give them a chance this winter and see how we get on together. I can always give them to the charity shop if it doesn't work out.

A knitting disappointment

2011-10-09T16:35:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I finally finished my Johnny Rotten mittens, the ones that look like Union Jacks in hand-dyed red, white and blue pure wool from Skein Queen. I had struggled a bit with the stranding of three yarns in this pattern, and it took me a lot of work to finish them. But they were done, they fit well, they felt cosy, and I was quite pleased.

I decided to give them a wash and let them block flat before I took a picture for the blog. Well, I sure wish I had taken the picture first because after that decision, it all turned into a bit of a disaster. I washed them in a bowl of warm water with a little bit of liquid soap for delicates in them. My first inkling of doom was when the mittens went abruptly floppy and loose as they became wet in the water. Then the water turned a vivid pink. And stayed a vivid pink through multiple rinses. And the mittens just grew and grew and became floppy and huge.

It was as if the yarn had just lost all of its cling and bounce, and become floppy and stretched out. After about 10 or 12 rinses, the water was still very pink, so I tried adding a small amount of malt vinegar to the water. This immediately cut down on the pink, reducing it to a pale pink, but the damage was already done. The white yarn was a definite pink, and another 5 or 6 rinses only reduced it to a sort of dirty taupe colour. Meanwhile the mittens are now about two inches longer in the hand and in the cuff than they used to be, and they feel strangely floppy. Any hopes that they would shrink up again when they dried seem destined to remain unrealised, as so far they are staying the same length even though they are almost dry.

I still had my Paypal receipt so I have written to Skein Queen with photographs, asking for a refund. I am really gutted about this after all the work I put into them. If they were just a bit pink, but still the right size, then it wouldn't be so bad.

Update: Skein Queen promptly issued me with a full refund and said: "The colour should never run out of hand-dyed yarn and I'm mortified that it has done in this instance, especially after all your work. Please accept my sincere apologies and reassurances that this is not a common occurrence with Skein Queen yarn. I was also extremely surprised to hear about Desire losing its structure and having a odd smell. It never usually smells when I soak it prior to dyeing and has maintained its shape in anything I've knitted with it. I'm wondering if what happened might have been that, around that time, my supplier sent me a faulty batch of the superwash merino that acted a bit differently to the usual Desire and didn't have the superwash element added and maybe that's got into the kits before I realised there was a problem? I'm not sure, but could be a possible explanation. I'm just sorry it's happened to you. "

On a happier note, I am really getting excited about my trip to New England now. I spent several hours yesterday trawling through all my knitting books and loose knitting patterns, matching up possible projects to available yarns on the Webs (big knitting store in Massachusetts) store website and comparing prices to the UK. I now have a shopping list of several projects to buy for, but am keeping an open mind about the vast backroom in their warehouse full of end of line sale items. In fact, I had planned to go to the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace today, but realised that it was a bit pointless when I was going to the motherlode in a few weeks. We've purchased the ability to bring a second suitcase each on the return journey, and I'm sure mine will be full! And DH's as well... If he buys anything, he will have to wear it onto the plane :)

The weather has turned warm again, so I washed the Vintage Lone Star quilt very carefully in the bath and let it dry out on the rotary arm where it gets some support. The 80/20 Hobbs Heirloom wadding has shrunk up a bit, throwing the quilting pattern into relief.

My work colleague finally decided she definitely did want to buy my Stars Over England Kaffe Fassett design quilt, and she is giving me quite a decent price for it which is great and gives me more spending money for America. Not as much as it's cost me to make it, but a substantial portion thereof. So TV viewing this week, when it wasn't finishing the ill-fated mittens, has been sewing down the binding on the edges. I prefer to do single binding as I feel I get a neater result, and I sew it down by hand.

Today in the car I made a start on the Fan Stitch Half-Circle Shawl (Rav link) by Martha Waterman from 'Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls' , which is going to be my travel project in America. Why is it that no matter how many needles you have, you can never find the right pair? I wanted a 3.5mm lace circular, and I know I have some somewhere, but could I find them?? I had to make do with a blunt tipped metal pair, which worked adequately. I am a bit confused because currently I am knitting in garter whereas it looked like stockinette in the picture, but looking ahead, it seems that it turns into stockinette later. Do you read patterns through from start to finish before you begin a new project? No, neither do I. In fact, I kind of like the sense of a journey of discovery, when you realise 'oh, that's how we do that bit...'.

We were in the car on the way to a preview of an amazing film 'The Help'. We had to go to Henley which was a bit of a drive, but the tickets were free. It had received good reviews but I didn't really know what to expect. It's about race relations in the early Sixties in the southern United States, but from the perspective of ordinary white families and their black maids (the help) and it is so excellent and moving. I don't cry very much but my eyes were watering by the midpoint and by the end I was in full-scale nose blowing crying mode. Really well acted, really well told, highly recommended if you get a chance to see it.

In which I create a mutant bear

2011-10-02T18:44:00.001+01:00

We have been having the most gorgeous Indian summer the last week, with temperatures up to 28 degrees and cloudless blue skies. Having put away all my summer clothes under the bed, I've had to pull some of them back out so that I don't roast to death on my commute in and out of London. I've had several nice lunch hours sitting out in the park (in the shade) and enjoying the lovely weather while I eat, then doing a bit of knitting.

Today, the 2nd of October, we took advantage of the Radio Times free voucher for entry into a National Trust property, and drove over to Osterley Park. This is a lovely brick mansion decorated by Robert Adam in the late 18thC with gorgeous ceilings and walls. Neither of us had been since the early 90s and it seemed a lot better than we remembered. There is more of the house open now, and they've turned the stable block into the obligatory cafe and gift shop, so I had a cream tea in between visiting the house and the garden. After walking around some of the garden, we had a bit of a nap on a shady bit of lawn in the park. Incredible to believe that it is October. I think it is going to be very hard to pack sensibly for New England where it could be quite a lot colder, or even snow, when at the moment I am sitting here in shorts and a sleeveless top. The weather is supposed to turn cooler though on Tuesday.

Things have calmed down at work to a certain extent, as I met my deadline for producing the latest newsletter and it's off at the printers at the moment. So I've been able to leave on time and consequently get a bit more done at home.

I finished quilting my Vintage Lone Star doublesided quilt, which I was quilting with a tulip pantograph. I'm rather pleased with the effect of all the swirling lines behind the geometry of the lone star. Another seam came apart but luckily I saw it in time and was able to pin it down before I quilted over it. This lone star was a rescued top which was very wonky and didn't lie flat originally, plus it was pieced into some horrible pink sheeting. I unpicked it and pieced it into a new blue background, trying to get it to lay a bit flatter, and added the border. It obviously still wasn't quite flat as I ended up with some fullness about midway along the side borders which I had to ease in / quilt in, so there are some pleats and gathers there. Also the final edge was rather lopsided so the quilt obviously wasn't quite square despite my efforts. But it lies flat now, and I'm pleased that the reverse side came out fairly well centred. The reverse is a set of vintage lone star blocks that were originally attached to a backing that was literally falling apart. I just sort of pulled the stars away from the shredding fabric, and re-appliqued them onto blue squares before setting them in a zigzag pattern. Originally this was going to be another quilt, but then I realised it would make the perfect backing for the big lone star.

In two weeks I have to take the quilt frame down in preparation for my in-laws coming to visit, because I don't think it's fair to expect them to live around a 12-foot quilt frame in the living room. I have two tops left to quilt, one is a very complicated and very large blue & white top so I definitely don't have time to do that. The other is a Piece o' Cake applique vines quilt which is already partially quilted with stitch in the ditch lines. I'm tempted to put that one on the frame and just do as much as I can over the next two weeks. Because once the frame is put away, it could be several months or even a year before it comes out again and I will have forgotten how to use it and will have to build up my expertise all over again.

On the knitting front, I also had a finish: my Drop Stitch Shawl in Knitwitches 'Seriously Gorgeous Swiss Silk with Kid Mohair'. I haven't blocked it yet, so it will be wider once it's blocked. It feels so gorgeously ethereal and yet surprisingly warm. I'm a bit worried about it felting or matting if I wet block it, so I may just pin it out and then spray it with water and hope that will be enough.

I also started something new this week, because on impulse I dropped into the I-Knit knitting group on Thursday night. Since I had finished the shawl earlier in the day, I looked through various pattern books and magazines and eventually chose some fair isle wristwarmers, project number one in the latest Debbie Bliss magazine, which I am knitting in Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino. Rather oddly, the pattern wants you to knit these flat and have a really ugly seam that doesn't even match up the pattern. I have adjusted the stitch count to knit them in the round, which seems much more sensible and eliminates purling. I quite enjoy fair isle but I may restrain myself and save this project to take to New England for when I feel like a change from the lace shawl.

I knit a bit more on my Berroco lace tunic and am up to the point where I need to decrease for the armholes. I like the colourshaded effect on this, achieved by knitting with two strands of mercerised cotton and changing one strand at a time. Once again I have failed to complete this summer top in time for summer, having started it last summer. Must try harder.

And just in case you are thinking that my craft projects usually turn out ok, have a gander at this mutant bear slash dog which I tried to make from a free kit with a dollshouse magazine. This is the first time I have tried to craft a mini animal out of pipecleaner, and it did not go well. It actually used to look much worse than this but I persevered. At no time did it look anything like the picture, and it looked a lot more like some weird very inbred dog for quite a while. His snout is still too long for a teddy bear, and his chest looks like he is wearing Spanx, and let's not even discuss his strange staring eyes which seem to be located inside his ears...

Work hard, play hard

2011-09-24T21:39:00.001+01:00

Crafting has not been on the radar much this week, as I had to work late four days out of five and I've either been too tired or too crowded to do much commuter knitting. But today I took my hard-earned money up to Miniatura, one of the UK's biggest dollshouse and miniatures fairs at the NEC in Birmingham, and had a very enjoyable shopping spree and got several things for my Fairfield and Willowcrest dollshouses, as well as a few extras pictured below.

the Dee-Daw Designs box of cigars was a free gift they were giving away to subscribers of Dolls House and Miniature Scene magazine, it's an opening box with cigars wrapped in tissue inside. Great free gift! I will put that in my Vic-war-gency period house, probably in the gentleman's study.
The leather bound aged books are for my Gamekeepers Cottage, and the pumpkin is hopefully going to look like a large pumpkin on the porch of my 1:48th scale Hallowe'en house.
The lovely pillows have handpainted designs augmented with a bit of embroidery and were amazingly cheap, only about £1.25 each. I will probably put the lavender pillow in my French Tower House, and the others might go there too or in my Canadian modern house.
The two teapots, one shaped like a thatched cottage and the other like the Little Old Woman who lived in a Shoe, are my annual treat from Sally Meekin Miniatures and will join my growing collection of house-shaped teapots.

In the car on the way up and back, I was working on my Drop Stitch Shawl, I'm still decreasing for the second tip.

Haven't really done any TV knitting this week as I have been sewing down the binding on my Sunflower Quilt. I also got the binding machined onto the Stars over England quilt but haven't started the hand-sewing yet.

I've tried to do a few passes on the panto each night on my Vintage Lone Star quilt on the frame, and have now reached the halfway point. It's going quite well apart from one of the 70-year-old seams coming apart on the Lone Star and trapping my hopping foot. I did some emergency triage by just machining down the loose flap so I could keep quilting the panto pattern. I will have to unpick that and fix it properly once it is off the frame. Obviously I am going to have to treat this quilt gently but the close quilting should help to hold it all together.

I also spent a few hours trying to decide what knitting project to take with me on our holiday to New England next month. Yes folks, I haven't finished all the holiday arrangements yet as I've been too busy, my house is a mess, my desk is covered in paperwork, but I did find the time to identify a knitting project! Just shows where my real priorities lie. I am thinking of going with the Fan Stitch Half-Circle Shawl (Rav link) by Martha Waterman from 'Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls' and using a pure merino laceweight in lovely acqua. It looks interesting enough to keep me going but simple enough to do in the car or at a restaurant.

Kudos to the lurkers who came out briefly to introduce themselves: Loulee, Tee2, and LindaW. MarthaaMay pointed out that some people read blogs at work and don't get the chance to comment, and I've certainly been guilty of that myself in previous jobs. My current job is too busy for doing much surfing unfortunately, plus I am open-plan.

My love affair with my Ipad is deep and evolving, to the point where I have even started to dream about it and my DH is getting a bit worried. It just does what it does so incredibly well. That's probably another reason why I haven't done as much crafting, as I have been frittering away my free time learning how to use the Ipad. I went to a couple of excellent free classes at the Apple shop on Tuesday night, and today I was practicing with the Maps app by tracking our progress in the car on the way to Miniatura. I also managed to read the Deep Fall Knitty online magazine on the way back - hurray for 3G!

Lurked much lately?

2011-09-18T17:06:00.002+01:00

I have been blogging fairly regularly since 2007, when Swooze first got me into it. Most of the time I really enjoy it, it's a bit like writing a diary - if I were writing a diary for friends to read. I like the discipline of recording what I've been up to each week craft-wise, plus the blog serves as a palliative record for those darker days when I start feeling like I never get anything done.

Blogger now shows you simple statistics on how many page views you are getting (I never used to remember to go into Google Analytics to see how many visitors were coming, so this is an improvement). I was a bit afraid to look in case I am talking to myself here, but it turns out that page views peak at a little over 100 on a weekly basis after I have posted.

That's great news, and you are all very welcome here and I hope you like what you see. I'm just a bit surprised as my number of followers is relatively low, and I don't get too many comments. Perhaps I am just being visited by 85 search engines once a week? Perhaps 65 people looking for 'kit' are really bad typists and are accidentally sneaking an 'n' into the word? Although I suppose that couldn't happen every week. Must be the search engines.... :)

This week I had a finish: my Summer Flies Shawl in Patons Linen Touch. I finally finished the bind off at knitting club last Sunday, and then got it blocked this week. The Linen Touch is fairly sturdy so didn't stretch out much in blocking, compared to the picture on the pattern where you can see that their knitting has been hard blocked and has really opened up. Mine drapes well and has a much more ruffled edge which I like, but it has come out a bit more like a shawlette than a shawl. I like the way the crisp yarn shows off the texture of the stitches in this pattern.

I've also been having a lot of fun making hats for the Innocent Big Knit charity campaign. I put my basket of DK acrylic balls onto the sofa and just sort of 'doodled' every night. None of these are particularly original ideas, but I did make up my own patterns for them all apart from the fuschia. I particularly like the animal head which was meant to be a teddy bear but has come out a dead ringer for Rowlf, the pianist from the Muppet Show. Quite enjoyable to just knit something for fun, and I have packaged up all the hats now to send off to Innocent.

On the quilting front, I decided I was doing fairly well on the flowery panto so I loaded up my Vintage Lone Star doublesided quilt. This is the first time I've tried to line up a pieced backing, so hopefully it will work out. I measured the vertical and horizontal centres in order to start the top in the right place on the back. The quilting is going fairly well: I think doing that Baptist Fan pattern on the last two quilts has really improved my panto skills.

Saturday was the monthly meeting for my sewing guild. My feline random number generator (who now has diabetes so we have had to learn how to inject him with insulin twice a day) picked the piece of food on top of the number six, so we are working on project number six in our UFO challenge for the next two months.

Project number six for me is a quilt from the Eleanor Burns Quilt in a Day Fans and Flutterbys book. I bought the book about 10 years ago when it was published, and at the time I thought the designs were wonderful. I had great plans to make myself a big bed quilt, and I bought some suitable fabric from eQuilter online. The years passed, and my tastes have changed, and I no longer want a big bed quilt that is so girly. So I am going to make a small cot size quilt, possibly in both patterns. Yesterday I cut out and put together the Fan strips (they're a bit wrinkled from being packed for the drive home). The base of the fan is fussy cut from the fabric that I will use for the border, and the curved edges are finished with ric-rac.

I have to confess something now. I have jumped on the Ipad bandwagon. I know, I know, everyone and their auntie has got one and they all like to brag about them and seem to be surgically attached to them. I resisted for a long time, even when my netbook got stolen in the burglary. But I started looking at what I wanted to do online, and a tablet just seemed to make sense. I definitely didn't want an Ipad because of the whole Stepford Wife vibe, and the lack of Flash, so I was looking at the HP Touchpad (crashed and burned on launch in July and HP have now gone out of the tablet business) and the Samsung Galaxy Tab (reviews universally damn it with faint praise for not being an Ipad). But eventually my resolve crumbled, and I found myself looking at the Ipad forums on Ravelry and at all the neat things people were talking about doing with theirs. So I did it. I sold out. I went to the Apple Store on Regent Street and eventually worked out how to buy one (this is a shop designed to make you feel old and out of touch: there are no prices on anything, there is no sales literature, there are no cash tills, there is no obvious way to actually buy anything), and I bought a cool case on Amazon (the Stilgut white case, works fabulously. There, see, I'm boasting already...)

I still don't really know what I am doing with it but I am gradually figuring things out, and I've signed up for some free classes back at the Apple store next week. I can listen to podcasts, I've been watching vidcasts, I watched some catchup TV on the Iplayer, I synced my music to the Ipad (although I have to say the speaker is very tinny, even though it can be turned up fairly loud which is good for listening to podcasts when you are sewing on the machine), and I even tried my hand at some games - much to my son's amusement. On the whole, it works far better for all that type of online entertainment that my desktop PC.

If you are a crafter and have an Ipad, are there any good apps you would recommend?

Back to School

2011-09-10T19:07:00.001+01:00

DS started back to school last week, so we have shifted back into our autumn routine. The weather encourages the Autumn mindset, as it is grey and overcast and blustery - although alternating between cold enough for woolly hats and 20 degree humidity. Bizarre. I've also banished all my summer clothes to the underbed storage, and dug out my winter woollies, the official sign of a seasonal change.

Add caption

Another sign of seasonal change is that it's time to be knitting hats for The Big Knit for Innocent Drinks, which raises money for Age UK. They put the hats on their smoothie drinks in supermarkets, then donate money from each bottle sold (c. £160,000) to the charity. I usually knit 3 or 4, and I've just made a start today with this Fuschia hat.

Just in time for it NOT to be summer, I finished Project Number Four from our quilting club UFO Challenge, which was a bright summery quilted knapsack. This was adapted from a Susan Briscoe pattern in one of her books, and modelled after a similar bag that I saw a knitter carrying around at Knit Camp last summer. It's got an external pocket on either side and two at the front, all with elasticated tops.It turned out fairly well, and I did wear it to work for my daily commute several days this week. It's relatively comfortable, although the straps aren't as padded as my usual knapsack so the day that I brought home some library books, the new straps felt a bit like they were cutting into me. The main reason I stopped using it though is because it just isn't sufficiently ergonomic for the life of a commuter. I need to be able to quickly get out my wallet to pay for things, my season ticket at the train station, or my phone when it rings. I don't have time to un-button fiddly button loops or drawstrings, plus the useful outside pockets left said wallet and phone too much on show for my liking, considering all the warnings about pickpockets in major stations. Still, on the whole, it was successful and would be fine as a knitting bag or for a daytrip that wasn't too a major city (I work in London). I'm beginning to wonder if the best way to get a useful knapsack is just to buy a knapsack and slipcover it in patchwork. This bag has eyelets around the top edge and a drawstring, and the inside has zippered pockets, pen pockets and a key ring.

I finished quilting my Kaffe Fassett Stars over England quilt. It went relatively well, although it felt a bit weird being back in front of the machine to do free motion stippling, as I got so used to doing the pantos from the back of the frame. I just did a large scale stipple on it, as the quilting hardly shows (I used a red thread). In fast, the quilting showed so little that I had trouble seeing where I had already stitched when I was doing the border, even though I have a side mounted lamp throwing the quilting into relief.

I loaded a practice sandwich on the frame and practiced a panto called 'Lily' which I am going to use on the next quilt, a vintage Lone Star which I reset into a new background with a new border. Usually a Lone Star has each diamond quilted individually and maybe a motif like a feather wreath quilted in the blank background squares. But you can't do that on a short-arm quilting frame like mine, so I've decided to do the curvy panto instead as a compromise. It's going to have a pieced backing which is another quilt top of reset mini-Lone Stars. Hopefully all the seam allowances aren't going to be a problem. I've ordered a new hopping foot from Cotton Patch in Birmingham which will take a few days to come, but may get over bumps in the fabric better than the original plastic-inset hopping foot on the Pfaff Grand Hobby Quilter.

I took my Machine Knit Doll into the local Shooting Star charity shop (supporting hospices for sick children) and they were very pleased to have it even though they said they aren't supposed to accept new hand knits, but they thought she was too cute to turn down.

I have to show you this neat little makeup bag I bought after seeing it featured in one of the knitting magazines. It had sold out from the featured dealer, but I found it on another website which had free postage through Amazon.co.uk so that worked out better. It's one of the Needles & Pins line from Disaster Designs, and it looks just like an old sewing pattern envelope. It's even got buttons on the zipper pull. It's too cute to use as a makeup bag, so I will probably use it for knit notions.

Commuter knitting this week has been the Summer Flies Shawl and I'm almost finished! I am currently doing the Picot Bind off along the edge. Since that involves casting on two new stitches before casting off five stitches, I shudder to think how many hundreds of stitches I am now dealing with (it was 395 before the bind off). I've just knit what's in front of me, and going to an incredibly tedious parent's evening at DS's school helped get several inches done. I'm now in the final stretch, so hopefully will be able to block it soon.

I wore the Liesl cardigan to work again, and this time I fastened it with a large brooch instead of the giant safetypin/shawl pin. I think I am just going to do that, and not bother with buttons at all. Once again, noone at work said anything, but I got some compliments on it at I-Knit on Thursday. I actually told my manager my thoughts on buttons, and she agreed it didn't need them, but she did not then go on to say anything about how lovely it is. Perhaps I look like a variegated coloured sausage in it, who knows... I like it anyway.

How many quilts does one person need?

2011-09-04T11:13:00.000+01:00

For some reason work has been manic this week, causing me to have to work through my lunch and stay late two days in a row. It's a bit stressful again at the moment, lots of office politics flying around, and my interim manager's contract is coming to an end soon with no certainty as to what happens then.

I did get out to I-Knit in London on Thursday night for a pleasant evening of knitting, the first time in a while that I have dropped in. I also picked up the issue of Interweave Knits with the Dahlia Cardigan pattern that everyone on Ravelry has been adding to their queue. I like the doiley-like motif on the back, but I don't like the front of it. Apparently there are more options for customising it on the Interweave site, will have to go have a look.

I was working on my Summer Flies shawl, and that's also been my commuter knitting this week. I am now on the final section, which is incredibly tedious as the stitch count has doubled to 395 stitches and it's worked in stockinette. 395 purl stitches every alternate row, groan. But I am soldiering on. Meanwhile the weather has jumped forward to October so my dreams of wearing this over a sleeveless t-shirt on a lovely summer day will have to wait until next summer.

TV knitting has been the Berroco Eyelet Jumper and I am just a few rows away from decreasing for the armhole. It's been so long since I started this that I had to look for several minutes to find the rest of the pattern to find out what to do at the armhole - I've only been carrying around the chart in my knitting bag.

Knitting Magazine had some cool free stitch-in labels as the gift on their recent issue, including "Stay calm and carry yarn" and "I heart knitting" so I may sew those onto some of my knitting bags.

I'm about halfway or a little more through stippling on the Kaffe Fassett Stars over England quilt. The other thing I did this week was to move my dollshouse construction worktable so that I could get at my quilt cupboard for a longer overdue airing of the quilts. With DH's help, I got them all out and spread flat on the bed to spend a day relaxing, before we refolded them at the end of the day. I always mean to count them when we do that, but always forget. I have more quilts than I have room to store, and I don't use them as much as I did in our previous house which was much colder than our current home.

I used to be a semi-prolific quilter and I just wonder how many quilts does a person really need? I've got several vintage or antique quilts which I really love to look at, some family heirlooms which are not as loveable but they are heirlooms and have sentimental value, a bunch that I have made over the years, and some made by friends. I decided I have to get rid of some of them, and chose three bed-sized quilts that I will try to sell. But in the UK there isn't any good way to sell quilts - the majority of people would only pay the price they would pay for a blanket. I don't think Etsy is an option as the overseas postage costs would be a killer (c. £90 to post a quilt, been there, done that) and there isn't a good UK equivalent that I know of - Folksy has a number of quilts that either don't seem to be selling, or are on sale at ridiculously low prices.

I want to sell my Year in the Garden quilt - this is a picture of when it was just a top, but it's been professionally quilted since.

Also this sampler quilt - also professionally quilted.

And a third quilt made from a pattern in McCall's Vintage Quilts magazine several years ago, which features bright yellow circles against pieced blocks, set in red sashing, very bright. Can't find a photo of it though.

If any UK readers have any good suggestions on where to sell quilts, I woul love to hear them. I know there is Ebay, but I don't like their recent changes (high commission charges, forcing use of Paypal).

No more camping, sob

2011-08-29T19:50:00.000+01:00

We took Friday off to make a long weekend out of the Bank Holiday weekend, and went camping up in the Cotswolds near Chipping Norton. Gorgeous part of the world, I could definitely see myself living there if I win the lottery. The so-called summer continues to be erratic, and we had pouring rain on Friday, but the rest of the weekend wasn't bad although ever-changing. I took four knitting projects and made progress on all of them:

Summer Flies shawl: I'm now on the final stretch, just starting the final ruffled edge.
Drop Stitch shawl: I decided my crescent was wide enough, and I've started decreasing now.
Cabled Yoke sweater: having solved the cable conundrum prior to leaving home, I managed about another three inches on this so storming along now.
Cookie A Sunshine sock: turned the heel on the second sock, and am just decreasing the gussets.

Sadly, that was probably our last ever family camping holiday. DH has never been keen, and has been growing steadily less keen. DS, who is a teenager, has previously announced that he hates camping, and was visibly miserable all weekend. So I've accepted defeat, and am sadly going to sell the trailer tent. I really love getting away in it, but there's not much point if the rest of the family isn't cooperating. I'm not much of a driver and don't have a car, so going away in it myself wouldn't be practical.

This week I managed to finish the machine knitted doll, giving her a garter stitch red bow as a final touch.

I also got as far as loading the Kaffe Fassett 'Stars over England' quilt, but haven't started quilting it yet. I'm going to meander on it as I need a break from pantos and the busy design means that the quilting won't show very much.

How not to look after yourself

2011-08-20T15:57:00.001+01:00

I haven't exactly been treating my body as a temple this week. I've had a succession of late nights leaving me tired each day; then went out for drinks Wednesday night with an old friend and missed supper in favour of alcohol and french pastries; then got invited out for an impromptu drink after work Thursday with my boss and three other managers (I'm not a manager) which turned into a heavy drinking session (and no supper) resulting in me falling into bed just before midnight with the room spinning a fair bit. Normally I really don't drink much, honest.

ALERT - do not read the next para if you are squeamish.

So Friday night feeling groggy and ancient, I was trying to finish my log cabin quilt, feeling guilty about how little I had done this week. To make a long story short, I managed to sew right through the tip of my ring finger with the sewing machine. This is a Pfaff Grand Hobby Quilter which is a semi-industrial home machine, and I knew it was powerful but it's rather impressive to see an entry AND exit wound on opposite sides of your finger. It all happened pretty quickly and didn't even hurt much, but the needle shattered and I could only find two out of the three pieces of it. On the basis that there might still be a quarter-inch of metal needle in my finger, off we went to the A&E for an x-ray. The most painful part of the night was prizing off my wedding ring with the aid of some lubricant, so that they wouldn't cut it off. X-rays showed no needle tip (wonder where that went then, but likely DS or DH will find it soon with their feet) so they just sent me home again and said it should heal up in a week. Luckily the needle went through at the side of the nail, rather than piercing the nail, and the bone is intact. The hospital was predicting lots of swelling but so far it seems fine. I guess if you have to pierce your fingertip with something, then a tapered ultra-sharp metal needle is going to do the least damage.

Ok, no more blood and gore stories. So I finished the Log Cabin quilt this morning and it went straight in the washing machine to shrink up the cotton wadding a bit. I did a better job on the Baptist Fan this time so practice does make you better at things, but there are still some dodgy fan blades here and there. I was brave and used a plain calico backing (plain backings don't hide mistakes as well) because I thought it fit better with the American Civil War reproduction fabrics of the design.

Last Sunday I had 'booked' a day off from the family and planned to have a lovely restful sewing day, like the kind I read about on other people's blogs. I was working on project number five of the UFO challenge, the Scrappy Knapsack. Unfortunately, despite expressing verbal support, the rest of the family didn't seem to grasp the concept of me having a day off. M-i-L phoned to see if DS was taking them up on their invitation (which I didn't know about) to go spend a week with them, so I had to wake up DS, negotiate a length of stay with him, and phone back and negotiate with her on logistics. DS couldn't get the dishwasher to turn on, and had to be reminded several times to feed the cats. DH was with the programme until about mid-afternoon when he started to feel abandoned which made him grumpy, and all in all it began to seem that life could not go on for anyone unless I stopped what I was doing and gave them some attention. Obviously next time I want a day off, I should pack DH and DS off to visit with M-i-L. For breakfast and stay for supper. And possibly stay overnight as well. Anyway, I got the body of the knapsack done with the outside pockets, and have started to work on the lining. This is a picture before I sewed the last seams to join the back to the body.

About the only other thing I've done this week is some commuter knitting (Summer Flies Shawl, now back on track) and a bit of evening knitting earlier in the week before I started turning into a barfly. I sorted out the Berroco Eyelet Jumper and ran a lifeline through it. This is the first time I've ever used a lifeline and unfortunately didn't think about what I was doing and ran the lifeline through all the stitch markers as well (remember I said I was tired). As they aren't the kind that open and close, this made subsequent rows somewhat difficult so I had to take the lifeline out and run it through again, skipping over the markers this time. Machine knitted doll is still bald and the cables on the Cable Yoke jumper are still unfixed. I haven't tried knitting with my newly-pierced finger yet, hopefully it isn't going to be a problem. Shame I'm not a Goth, or now that my finger is pierced I could have put a silver stud through it to show how hard I am :)

Knitting karma has left the building

2011-08-13T17:33:00.000+01:00

It hasn't been a great week for knitting. After mucking up the stitch count on my Summer Flies shawl last weekend, and spending about an hour counting and re-counting stitches (and coming up with a different answer every time) I eventually identified the errant yarnover. The next row had some M1s scattered along it, which I managed to get in the wrong place. I sorted that out, and knitted the next row with relief (169 stitches) only to realise that it should have been a purl row. Sigh...

The Berroco Eyelet Jumper was going really well, I thought, until I couldn't get a row to go right. Somehow I have apparently managed to jump to a random point in the chart and knit about an inch of absolute rubbish. So now I am trying to unravel about an inch and a half of lace knitting, with no lifeline, without losing my markers.

And the Drops Sleeveless Cable Yoked cardigan has also rebelled, my cables seem to have snaked off piste and I'm not sure what's going on there but it doesn't match the chart. I don't think I need to pull back too much, maybe about a half inch.

But I have been getting on fairly well with my Machine Knit Doll, who is now fully limbed and dressed. I'm working on her hair, crocheting snakes of hair in a similar style to a doll in the latest issue of Simply Knitting magazine. At the moment she is entirely bald on the back of her head, so lots more snakes to crochet until she looks decent.

I gave my Vintage Spiderweb feedsack quilt a gentle soak in the bathtub. I didn't think it was that dirty, but the water turned an interesting shade of brown so I guess it had picked up some grime since the 1940s. The overcast-but-warm-and-breezy weather was ideal for drying it flat on a sheet on the lawn. The cotton wadding has now shrunk up a bit, lifting the quilting up into relief. It looks a bit too bumpy now, I think I will gently steam it a bit to relax the wrinkles and flatten it a bit, but it already has a vintage look like it is an antique and not just quilted a few weeks ago. I've done several passes on the Log Cabin quilt currently in the frame, I might be halfway now on it.

And I finished Block 16 of the Grandmother's Last Quilt 25 block applique quilt, which was Project Number Five in the UFO challenge we are doing in my quilting group. Only 9 blocks left, which at my present rate of progress is probably another two years...

Summer: don't blink or you'll miss it

2011-08-06T21:41:00.002+01:00

Our erratic British weather abruptly decided to be summer earlier this week, and we had highs of 30 degrees or more, before it once again collapsed into torrential rain. Today we had both: nice sun earlier in the day, then sudden rain this evening. It makes it very hard to decide what to wear to work in the morning, and my knapsack weighs a tonne as I am burdened down with sunhat, umbrella, shawl for warmth, water bottle for hot train carriages etc. to be prepared for all eventualities.

Commuter knitting this week has been a new start: the Summer Flies shawl , a free Ravelry download. I couldn't resist starting something with my Patons Linen Touch cotton/linen DK yarn, and I love love love knitting with this yarn. It feels so cool to the touch in this intermittent hot weather, the stitches look crisp even with my loose knitting gauge, and it drapes really well while still feeling substantial. I've made it to Row 60 and the rows are starting to feel a bit long now (159 stitches so far).

TV knitting this week has been the continued assembly of my Machine Knitted Doll. I haven't sewn the skirt on yet but I've draped it on for the photo so you can see the effect. I'm not very convinced by the hair or the facial features in the pattern, but coincidentally Simply Knitting magazine arrived this week with a supplement which has a really cute knitted doll in it. So I might copy her face and hair for this doll. It's fun to make a toy, I have no use for them and usually end up giving them to the local Shooting Star hospice charity shop, but I do like making them.

After the carpet cleaning last weekend, we brought the frame back indoors and I reassembled the poles and re-levelled the table. I got a new quilt loaded on, this is a Log Cabin made in American Civil War reproduction fabrics from a kit I bought at the Stitching Post in Sisters, Oregon a few years back. I'm going to quilt the same Baptist Fan quilting pattern on it. However, after setting up the panto and getting all set, I stitched about two feet (everything working fine) along the quilt, then suddenly without any reason the top thread started looping on the underneath. I didn't realise this for about another two feet, so now I am having to painstakingly un-pick the bad part which is really annoying. Don't know what happened, I'm beginning to wonder if I have a faulty bobbin case.

The sock yarn swap has now taken place, and I swapped my two I-Knit Sock Club yarns for these two great skeins: a lovely Fyberspates fingering variegated and a Zauberball. So I'm looking forward to making something with those, and they are much more my colours. Hopefully the next Sock Club yarn will be a colour I like more. I think the Fyberspates might make a really nice cowl or simple shawl.

We went to the Victoria & Albert Museum today for our monthly visit. We happened to go past where the Textile Galleries used to be (you know the ones with all the pull-out study boards featuring different kinds of needlework). I was surprised to find they were closed off and there was a big sign reading: "Behind these hoardings we are in the process of transferring the textiles collection to the V&A's new Clothworkers' Centre for Textiles and Fashion Study and Conservation, a new international centre dedicated to the study, conservation and enjoyment of textiles and fashion in Kensington Olympia, opening 2013."

I hadn't heard about that before, and it sounds pretty cool although not as easy to get to. Also, I thought I had read that they were knocking down the Kensington Olympia complex to build a new luxury housing development. I wonder if they will have room to display more of their collection, the bulk of which has always been out of sight in storage.

While we were up in London we happened to walk through Leicester Square and came across 'M&M World', located in the old Swiss Centre. Apparently it just opened in July, so the staff haven't yet become jaded and suicidal. They were all really friendly and bopping around to the over-loud soundtrack, including one dressed as a giant M&M, and everything looked shiny and new. It was all a bit mad, four floors of technicolour M&M themed clothing, toys and decorative items, with lots of London-themed M&M goods like M&M characters riding doubledecker buses or dressed as Beefeaters. There are life-size statues of M&M characters costumed as armoured knights, or doing the Beatles Walk along a mini-Abbey Road. We wandered around dazed by the soundtrack and amazed that anyone thinks the world needs four floors of M&Morabilia. Then we discovered the colour-separated M&M pic-n-mix, tall vats of every colour of the rainbow, or colour mixes. They looked like giant fabric bolts. We were tempted by a mix of all blue colours which weren't cheap but were incredibly tasty, much fresher than the kind normally sold in packets at corner shops. Worth dropping in if you have kids.

Brave? or stupid?

2011-07-29T22:09:00.004+01:00

I laughed when I read Sue's comment on last week's post about my new quilt pattern on the quilting frame: "You are so brave to do a baptist fan. That has got to be one of the hardest patterns to do freehand like you are doing. Every little waver shows."

Well, yes it does Sue, and I have lots of wobbles and deformed blades to prove it. Brave? or just stupid? I have been see-sawing all week on this question. On the one hand it's been great practice and I've learned a lot, plus the quilt is now done (yippee!) and no longer just a useless top hanging on the back of a door. It is now useable and off my guilt list. On the other hand, I have committed the sacrilege of machine quilting a vintage top made from genuine feedsacks, with the double sacrilege of not doing a perfect job, so maybe I should just be holding out my wrists for the Quilt Police handcuffs right now.

But then I took it off the frame, and saw how great it looks. Yes, if you look closely there are lots of dubious blades, some alignment problems, some wobbles, even some accidental overlaps. But then the quilt top itself is not that well made, it is hand pieced out of relatively coarse vintage feedsacks, with bulky seams, and had never been loved enough to be actually finished until I bought it and added borders to it. Somehow, even with all the wonkiness, the curves of the baptist fans really set off the quilt design.

So what did I learn?

I found it easier to make smooth curves going faster, not slower.
Rather than staring at the line I am on, I found also looking at the previous line and imagining that I was steering parallel to it helped to drive a smooth line.
Drawing the pattern on paper really helped to develop muscle memory.
The key to this pattern seemed to be to get the final, longest curve as smooth as possible. As long as that line was pretty smooth, wobbles on shorter, earlier curves of the fan didn't seem as obvious.
Keeping track of how many passes I get per bobbin sounds like a great idea, except that my machine does not seem to consistently wind the same amount onto each bobbin. Still, it broadly helped.
Tweezers help to bring the short bobbin thread to the surface of the quilt if I used the thread cutter on the machine and had to restart in the middle of a pass.
A quilt with very bulky seam allowances in the middle (the centres of the spiderweb blocks) and relatively smooth seam allowances in the border, is not going to wind onto the rollers smoothly and the edges will tend to become slacker than the middle. Therefore it is prudent to check the alignment of the panto in two or three places along the quilt after a roll-on, prior to stitching.
No matter how good I am getting at steering, bulky seam allowances will grab the hopping foot and inexorably yank it off track to go in completely the wrong direction. This will also happen if the power cord gets wrapped around the corner of the carriage, if DS bumps into the edge of the quilt frame on his way past, if a loose thread from the edge of the quilt snags the hopping foot, or if one of the 70-year-old seam allowances suddenly gives up the ghost and a yawning chasm opens up just in front of the presser foot.
If the pantograph was aligned to the quilt top at the beginning, and mysteriously begins to be not aligned partway through the quilting, it may not be the rolling on at all. It may be that the #!x(+! cursed masking tape holding the panto to the table has in fact given up any idea of being sticky and the panto has actually slid forward an inch at one end.

I used Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 wadding so I am going to wash it gently and let it shrink up a bit, which should do something to disguise the less than perfect stitching. I am going to do the baptist fan again on a big Civil War log cabin kit that I made from a kit, and hopefully do a better job as it is pressed quite flat so the seam allowances shouldn't get in the way as much. I'm also going to use a lot more masking tape!

Quilting is pretty much all I've done this week, as I had a deadline to get the quilt off the frame so that we could empty the living room as we are getting our carpet cleaned tomorrow. So my frame is now out in the garden (too long to go anywhere else) and the sofa and everything else has been crammed and stacked in the conservatory. I took the poles and the machine off the frame obviously, but I didn't want to have to unscrew the table.

Otherwise, commuter knitting has been the same as last week, and TV knitting has been the same also. The only other new development is that I started machine knitting a toy doll, a little girl in a dress, using a pattern that I bought for .25p at the machine knitting show. It's fun to just knit something low key, and use up some of my acrylic 4-ply. I was feeling quite pleased with the completed body until I realised one leg was mysteriously several rows longer than the other. So I will have to reknit that leg but it won't take long.

I've been wearing my Clapotis shawl a lot during this miserable summer, for an extra layer of warmth. I made it last year from Paton's Linen Touch, which I think is now discontinued, which is a blend of linen and cotton. The Clapotis is so nice to wear, a really nice texture and cool to the touch even though it adds a little warmth on cool days. It's also worn really well, with no pilling and only a little fuzzing. I suddenly realised that I should grab more of this yarn before it disappears, so I found some cherry and navy balls online at a good price and snagged them for my stash. I wouldn't mind having another Clapotis in the navy, except that it was so incredibly tedious to knit that I don't think I could face doing another one.

Good news on the Sock Club front, I've found someone who loves the first two yarns and is willing to swap me some great sock yarns from her stash, so everybody's a winner. I'm still looking forward to the months to come, it's fun getting surprise packages of yarn in the post.

Better week

2011-07-23T19:59:00.001+01:00

Do you remember I lost my earring last weekend. Well I was relieved to find it on the floor near where I was working on my dollshouse (this is after scrutinising the lawn around the apple tree for 10 minutes, in case it fell out while I was picking up windfalls...) Never did find the missing double-ended bodkin.

[break] You won't believe this. While I was downloading my pictures from the camera just before I started blogging, the doorbell rang. It was a kid visiting next door, and his dad, who had thrown a ball over our garden wall. I politely went and retrieved it for them (which means finding shoes, finding the key to unlock the back door etc.). Not ten minutes later, as I am typing the above paragraph, the doorbell rings again. Same kid. I gritted my teeth and said fairly calmly that I was working, and I would rather he would be more careful. His grandmother (who is our actual neighbour) suddenly pops us at his elbow, and I explain that I am doing some work and she says they've got a big family group visiting. Then I say politely to the kid that I will get it this time, but that will be the last time tonight. Then our neighbour, who has always been perfectly pleasant, suddenly glares at me and says "I'll remember that next time I get a parcel" and stomps off. To add insult to the incident, I couldn't even find the da**ed ball which turned out to be stuck in the most inaccessible part of our border and I got a bit scratched retrieving it. So I don't know what that's all about - apparently I may order too many things online for her liking? Although I wouldn't say she's been inundated with parcels, maybe one every two months. Neighbours... She was a bit funny when we had our security lights installed (which is on that side of the house) after the burglary, even though she has a light on her side of the gap which is on every night all night. Our gardens are fairly small by the way, not exactly ball game ideal.

Anyhooo... This week has been a nice mix of quilting, knitting and dollshousing, and things have been going well at work. Today I had my quilting club, and tomorrow is my local knitting group, so it's a nice crafty weekend.

Commuter knitting this week has continued to be the Cookie A Sunshine Sock and I'm almost ready to start the heel flap. TV knitting has been the Berrocco eyelet jumper and the Drops cabled yoke. Both of these are going fairly well now that I am used to the charts, and I can actually knit on them while watching TV. The big breakthrough with the cables was the belated realisation that the cables are snaking over and under each other, which makes it a lot quicker to know which way to cross the cable so I don't have to keep looking at the symbol key. My tension isn't perfect (I tend towards loose knitting) but I am hoping that blocking will smooth out the cables a bit more.

On the quilting front, my new tracks arrived and I fitted them, then I loaded a practice sandwich to practice a Baptist Fan pantograph. This is much harder as you have to quilt smooth parallel curves. The carriage is steering much more smoothly without the cracks and breaks in the old tracks, but I am still finding it difficult. I practiced several rows, and you can see they are fairly wonky. I also drew the design over and over while on a not very interesting course at work, to build muscle memory.

Now I have loaded a real quilt, which is a vintage spiderweb top that I bought in America and added borders to. The baptist fan pattern will look more traditional on this vintage top. I am trying really hard to achieve smooth parallel curves. Some of the fans aren't bad, others are not great, but overall the effect isn't too bad so far. I'm a bit afraid of ruining the top, but on the other hand it's not accomplishing anything hanging on the back of the door for five years as an unfinished quilt. I'm using Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 wadding for this one so that it will shrink up a bit when I wash it.

At Quilting Club, the first phase of our UFO challenge has drawn to an end. It seems to be working and is motivating most people. I have completed about 80% of block 16 of my 25-block applique quilt and will keep plugging away on this block even though we have now moved on to Project Number Four on the list.

My Project Number Four was supposed to be my Kaffe Fassett Stars Over England quilt, but I actually got this to top stage this week in preparation for quilting it on the frame.

So instead I am going to tackle a Patchwork Knapsack, copying one that I fell in love with on another camper at Knit Camp last summer. She very kindly let me take photos (that's her in the photo, sitting down holding the bag), and told me it was adapted from a pattern by Susan Briscoe. So I bought the book but didn't do anything for a year. Today I worked out the measurements that I am going to change on the pattern to make the bag wider at the sides, and how I will adapt the front pocket and the patchwork to be more like the one I saw at Knit Camp. I even have an American Jane layer cake (by Moda) of fabrics similar to the one's that she used.

Then I pieced together a panel of Square Dance blocks for the front and side pockets, and some strip panels to be the back/front and sides.

Making the Square Dance blocks was fun, I can imagine making a full size quilt that way. I feel slightly guilty though because I suspect the instructions I found on the web may be breaking copyright on an author's book somewhere, and I don't like supporting that kind of behaviour.

That's about it for this week. Still feeling a bit unsettled about the run-in out of the blue with the neighbour. I wonder if she has been brooding on our 'crimes' for a long time without actually saying anything before. For that matter, I wonder what our crimes are? Bringing down the neighbourhood by getting burgled perhaps? Some people have too much time on their hands...

Having a grumpy day

2011-07-16T19:52:00.003+01:00

It's been one of those random days when nothing seems to go right and the universe seems to be out to get me. I think I will retire with an alcoholic drink and watch a Disney film, on the principle that I will be safe on the sofa and nothing else can go wrong.

It's been an ok week. My commuter knitting has been the Drop Stitch Shawl and I also took it to I-Knit on Thursday night. I've stopped increasing regularly now, and will likely only increase occasionally to see if I can turn it into a crescent shape instead of a triangle. While I was at I-Knit, Maurice told me that it was Machine Knitting (MK) Live in Selsden on Saturday.

I haven't been to a MK fair for years, so this morning I looked up how to get there and thought: "why not?". I was interested to see how MK had moved on over the years, especially since I've heard that it is starting to pick up in popularity again on the back of the handknitting boom.

It took about an hour and a half to get there, via Clapham Junction (where I missed my connection due to the apparently non-availability of Oyster card touch in points anywhere in the station other than the main entrances), East Croydon, and then a tram ride. It was raining and gusting wind by the time I got there, so even with my brollie I was rather damp by the time I found the college and the entrance to the show.

Oh my god. It was like Night of the Living Dead. I'm used to an older crowd at quilting shows and the like, but this was like a nursing home. I saw one girl in her 20s (perhaps a college textiles student), two other women possibly in their 40s and then everyone else looked about 90. I'm talking wheelchairs, wheeled zimmer frames, shaking palsies, humpbacks, canes and a positive sea of grey hair. If there has been a mini-renaissance in the MK world, it doesn't seem to have made it as far as the MK Live show.

But what was really disappointing was that, as far as the stands at that show, machine knitting seems to have completely stalled in the 90s. Not only was it the same exhibitors that I used to see at the shows 10 years ago, almost everything for sale was either actually made before 1995, or designed to look like it was. I only saw two garments that I would consider wearing myself, and one of those was handknit. Almost everything was drop-shouldered, 80s styling, very unfashionable, very baggy. Some of the stalls were more like antique dealers, selling bits of equipment manufactured in the 1980s or earlier, and box after box of tattered patterns and ancient books from the 90s or 80s. About the only concession I saw to modern Ravelry-type trends was a pattern for fingerless mitts on Ann Brown's (Posh Frocks) stall. I came away thoroughly depressed. The only things I bought were a few .25p old patterns, and a chunky-gauge double-ended bodkin.

Going home was the same in reverse: rain, just miss train at Clapham Junction and had to wait 30 minutes. And when I finally got home, I found I had an empty bag where my bodkin should be and I can't find it anywhere. Plus, later on I realised I was only wearing one earring and seem to have lost one of my favourite knitting-themed earrings. Bleah. Some days you just wish you had stayed in bed.

On a more positive note, my new tracks for my quilting frame showed up this week, undamaged, and I have installed them. The new Grace laser pointer was in the delivery as well, but I am less impressed with it. It's really cheap and plasticy, and I can't work out how to install the laser tips to narrow the beam down. The battery case won't stay shut on its own but luckily the mounting bolt holds the case tightly shut. I'm going to try to learn to do a Baptist Fan pantograph which is going to require very accurate steering, so I've loaded a practice sandwich for some practice quilting.

That's about it this week. I've knitted a bit on the second Sunshine Sock, and done some more rows on the Berrocco Eyelet Tunic, and even done some rows on the Estonian Lace Shawl. I still haven't decided about unpicking it. I checked the book and I have the correct number of stitches but for some reason (probably my gauge as I am a loose knitter) it is coming out wider than the typical measurement. I should probably block what I've done while it's on the cable and see how wide it comes out and how that's going to work for wearing the shawl.

My second delivery of the I-Knit Sock Club showed up, I won't post a picture yet but it is a luscious Natural Dye Studio fingering yarn. Sadly it is again in a colour I won't wear, unless I make socks out of it. It came with two cute beaded stitch markers, and a note asking me to email them for the patterns. The patterns this month are for socks and a scarf, both designed by Gerard of I-knit. I am beginning to worry that all the colours will be ones I won't wear, if they are all being chosen by Gerard and he seems to like acid, yellow-toned colours. I like those in quilts but not near my face in clothes - I'm more of a cherry red, navy blue, and pastels kind of girl. Still, the yarn is lovely and maybe next time I will like the colour more.

Too Many Hobbies on holiday

2011-07-09T19:59:00.000+01:00

We went camping this week, staying in a lovely country park just outside Southampton. The good news is that we didn't get burgled this time. The bad news is that the weather was intermittently appalling. Wednesday night the gales were so strong that the entire trailer tent was shaking about as the rain lashed like a drum on the roof - quite interesting trying to get to sleep in that! Thursday we gave up and drove home (an hour and a half) to spend some time in the dry and have a shower. Luckily we are well used to rain as it almost always does rain on us when we go camping, and we were able to pack up the awning all dried out on Friday evening when the weather improved, and then pack up the main unit in the sun today before coming home. We had a nice time, and I got to do lots of shopping, plus we went over to Cowes on the Isle of Wight for lunch one day (as you do...).

I took several knitting projects on holiday, and we also visited a couple of shops. The Dolls House in Whitchurch, Hampshire, is well-stocked with all the usual Dolls House Emporium imports, some Reutters, I think I saw a bit of Bespaq or Bespaq knock-off, etc. I didn't notice any handcrafted miniatures, but they certainly have everything of the cheap import variety, including some DIY materials, glues, big wall of lights, and a small selection of 1/24th furniture. I've been wanting to go to Liss Wools, also in Hampshire, for some time as their big ad is in some of my knitting magazines. They seem to have an online shop with a different name, Knitstation.com. It was a welcoming spacious store, with two big red sofas inviting people to knit (I didn't have time unfortunately as we arrived not long before closing), loads of attractive knitted up sample garments, an attractive window display which included a miniature knitting shop done all in knitting. They had Rowan Yarns, and I think Sirdar, Manos, sock yarns, Sublime, and they stock the Namaste knitting bags and accessories. I literally only had about 10 minutes to whiz around, and to grab a 5mm circular needle for one of my projects, but I would certainly stop back in again next time we are going that way.

As well as the knitting projects, I took my 16th applique block and am getting on well with that. It's probably about half done now, although I could only see well enough to work on it when we actually had some sun coming into the awning.

I finished my first Cookie A Sunshine Sock and cast on for the second one, knitting on it in various restaurants and on park benches through the week.

I knit several rows on my Bergere de France Eyelet jumper. This lace tunic has clever shading from one colour to another by knitting with two strands, and switching one strand for the new colour. In the picture you can see that I am currently shading from green to blue. I was having trouble with my cables having a loose stitch, but I've just discovered that if I knit the preceding stitches in the cable very tightly, then the cable row is a lot tidier.

I bought the 5mm circulars for my City Tweed Drop Stitch Shawl in Knitwitches 'Seriously Gorgeous Swiss Silk with Kid Mohair' as I was finding it very awkward to knit with full length straights - the needle ends kept hitting the chair arms etc. This is knitting up very quickly and shows off the yarn well. It is supposed to be a big triangular shawl but I think I may stop increasing for a while and turn it into a crescent-shaped shawl, as it is almost as long as I want it already.

I started a new project which is rather complicated, so it was nice to have some peace and quiet on the holiday to get it started. It is a DROPS sleeveless cardigan, pattern R-557, which is a free download. And I am using the gorgeous Iris colourway of New Lanark DK that I bought during our (dis)organised excursion from Knit Camp in the summer. As well as it being a complicated (for me anyway) cable pattern, you have to short row so that the top edge ends up narrower than the bottom edge. This is because you are shaping the sideways yoke as you knit. The picture shows one chart repeat completed, and the next one underway. The chart is confusing as well, it uses completely different symbols than I am used to. The chart is also entitled 'M-1'. So needless to say I found the written directions rather confusing for a while, as I couldn't see where the patterning started after you had increased one stitch :) I've coloured the chart in with crayons which has helped a bit. I expect I'll get used to it. The wool is knitting up fine, a bit splitty. It's a traditionally hairy wool which feels a bit scratchy, but the comments on Ravelry suggest that it will soften up after washing.

And I even did a few rows on my Estonian Lace Shawl. I am beginning to have a very bad feeling about this as it is starting to look far too wide, even unblocked. I need to look at the book again to see what are their typical measurements for a rectangular shawl, but I am fearing that I have included too many repeats of the Lily of the Valley pattern. By the time you add a border, this is going to be enormous. I hope I don't have to pull back... all those noops.... whimper....

So it was a very crafty week, as I also took along some knitting and quilting magazines to get caught up on. When we were home for a few hours on Thursday, I even did some sewing on my Stars over England quilt which I will add to the queue for the quilting frame. Before we left for camping, I decided to turn one of my quilt tops into a quilt back by adding bigger borders. This was a top I made out of re-used vintage star blocks which were falling apart. I took them off their old background, and appliqued them to new background squares and set them in a zig-zag. Now it is going to be a back for my big vintage Lone Star quilt top.

I hope you had a good week too, with better weather!

The one where I finish a long term project

2011-07-02T22:03:00.001+01:00

Yes, I actually finished my Learn to Knit Afghan from the Barbara Walker book, on which I re-learned how to knit back in Autumn 2006. While she offers 63 squares, I stopped at a more modest 25 and used 24 for the afghan. I can remember trying to figure out what the 'worsted' wool was that the book called for (I bought Debbie Bliss Merino Aran as the nearest equivalent I could afford in the UK at the time). And I can remember painfully re-learning to knit, teaching myself continental style from the wonderful free videos in the KnittingHelp.com website. And now it's done, complete with garter stitch border which really pulls together all the disparate squares. In fact, it looks like a quilt now. It's lovely and warm as well. And I can knit! I'm still no expert, but it has long since become a pleasurable and relaxing activity (except when it's all going wrong...).

And even when it does all go wrong, I have the confidence and patience to pull it out and start again, as I've done several times now with my Cookie A Sunshine Socks. I'm just about to start the toe, and it's fitting really well.

I've quilted my Seven Wonders of the World Stack n Whack quilt this week, a project that I started for my son back in 1999. The backing is made up of Y2K fabrics sewn together, that's how old it is. I used a simple pantograph design stitched top to bottom. I'm getting much better at following the lines but am still being thwarted by my dodgy tracks, but apparently my new tracks have arrived in the UK and they will be sending them to me soon. I've got three more tops to go after this quilt, and a fourth one that just needs borders. I'm beginning to develop a Quilt Mountain in my bedroom/sewing room, piled up waiting for binding. Perhaps everyone is going to get a quilt for christmas this year...

I pulled out another old project this week, my Bergere de France Eyelet jumper in mercerised cotton. It took me a little while to work out where I was in the lace pattern but I'm back into the swing of it now. I didn't feel like knitting on it during the winter because it is such a summery project. And I made myself keep working on my applique block for the Group UFO challenge, making templates, tracing them on fabric, tracing the placement lines etc. I've started sewing down the stems now for a whirling design with four roses on curving stems coming out of a centre rose.

Well, I'm going to go and wrap up in my new Afghan-that-looks-like-a-quilt, and knit in front of the tv. Happy Canada Day and Independence Day to you (1 and 4 July respectively), hope you had a good day.

Callooh! Callay! (s)He chortled in his joy.

2011-06-25T17:32:00.000+01:00

Yes, I am chortling in my joy as my raise at work finally came through. Even better, it is backdated to 1 March so I should get a nice pot of money in July to pay for my quilting frame. In celebration, I took my newly minted letter from HR to the John Lewis sale, where I bought a sweater's worth of Rowan All Seasons Cotton in Shell Pink at about half price. There wasn't as much quantity of yarn on sale, but there was a good selection of types of yarn and I had a good fondle. I also wandered the womenswear floor and came home with a celebratory cardigan, t-shirt and two summer tops from my newly discovered new favourite brand 'White Stuff' which does vintage-look fabric designs. There were a number of half-price pattern books as well, and I picked up "Rowan Classic Heartland" featuring designs by Martin Storey in Silky Tweed. I don't usually like his designs but there are some nice classics in this book.

Speaking of books, I also picked up a discounted copy of "Country Weekend Knits - 25 classic patterns for timeless knitwear" by Madeline Weston at a bookshop in London last week. There are some really nice things in it. Each chapter, 'Ganseys', 'Fair Isle', 'Aran', and 'Shetland Lace' starts with a short history of the traditions associated with that type of knitting, then goes on to several patterns updating the stitch patterns to traditional yet modern styles. I was a bit disappointed that there are no diagrams and several patterns don't even have charts, so it's a bit of a detective game to work out what shape the knit pieces are and I would need to chart out the written instructions so I didn't get lost. The photography is gorgeous, lots of montages of classic island living, stitch patterns etc.

This week I wore my Liesl Cardigan to work. It still doesn't have a button, but I felt very elegant in it and it was surprisingly comfortable, very elastic and flexible. I closed it with a decorative shawl pin. As usual, my colleagues said nothing, so either they were thinking 'oh my god, how can she be wearing that', or else it looks so normal that it didn't occur to them to say anything. I would have thought the giant safety pin would attract at least one comment...

I'm halfway along the foot of my Cookie A Sunshine Sock and it's fitting well, and I've sewn on about 2/3rds of the border to my Learn to Knit Afghan - which is starting to look very quilt-like now.

I finished quilting my Sunflower Moda Portugal quilt, my first one using a pantograph. It went pretty well. As it turns out, the stitching is pretty invisible, but I was actually getting much better towards the end of the quilt. I was still having a bit of trouble with one side of the quilt backing feeding slightly faster than the other. I think it was because my dead bar wasn't exactly parallel to the take up bar. So I took that off after I finished the quilt, and did some plastic surgery to make it line up better. Sue suggested that I could replace my tracks with metal strip, which would be a good Plan B if Cotton Patch can't obtain the replacement tracks from Grace in America. Bet that would be a bit noisier though. I'm going to load another single quilt and do a different panto on it.

I needed a new brainless knit for telly viewing and knit group. I had some lovely Knitwitches 'Seriously Gorgeous Swiss Silk with Kid Mohair' that I got on sale at one of the I-knit Weekends. I've now cast on for the Knit Picks 'City Tweed Drop Stitch Shawl'. It's quite eay to knit and is showing the yarn off well. I'm not adding the knit-on fringe, and I think I will try to make it crescent-shaped rather than triangular.

And I knit another ugly cat blanket from acrylic yarn. It's not blocked yet which is why it's all folding in at the edges. My plan is to knit them in sets of three, then use the three knitted blankets to 'pay' our way into the Battersea Cats Wing to admire the lovely kitties waiting for new homes (usually you have to donate actual cash to go in as a spectator).

Finally, it's that time of year when you have to look at my spectacular rose bush. I took these pictures just after a morning rain shower. These roses are about the size of my hand, just amazing (and even more amazing that they haven't died, in my garden...)

Panto time

2011-06-18T20:58:00.000+01:00

I'm learning to do pantographs on my quilting frame (tracing over paper patterns with a laser pointer while the machine stitches out the pattern on the quilt top). I loaded a practice sandwich and tried out three different patterns before finding one that I liked the look of. Now I've switched to my Moda Portugal Sunflower quilt and am slowly quilting along. Slowly because I have to roll on the frame after stitching each row. I'm getting better at following the line but there are still plenty of wobbles and accidental loops. I'm also trying to get a more consistent stitch length as I don't have a stitch regulator.

I saw stitch regulators at the Cotton Patch open day - £450! It doesn't really seem worth spending that much money on a short-arm set-up. I enjoyed the day out. The shop is much smaller than I was expecting. Up until now, I've only experienced them from their professional newsletter, e-newsletter and ordering via their website. They stock a lot of American brands of quilting supplies and I just thought they would be bigger somehow. But they are only a shopfront and a half and it's pretty crammed. They were fairly busy the day of the open day and I was constantly having to shuffle about in front of the till to let people in and out of the shop as I waited to order.

But I enjoyed the demos which took place in their dedicated studio further down the block. They had several short arms set up on various Grace frames, plus a Sweet Sixteen sit-down Handiquilter, and a big 120" frame with Handiquilter. You could try them all out, plus try out the Grace Pattern Perfect (which I liked), Groovy Boards (didn't like these as much), the stitch regulators, speed controls etc. There were about 25 people in each session, and loads of helpful staff demonstrating, answering questions etc. I picked up several good tips about using my frame, and enjoyed talking to other frame afficionados there. We all got a big Handiquilter totebag, with a reel of Cotty thread inside, a Cotton Patch / Marti Michell Corner Trimmer ruler with instructions, and various pamphlets and newsletters. I also had a go on a top of the line Pfaff Quilting 4.0 edition sewing machine - and didn't like it which made me feel a bit smug about my own machines. Irrational I know. I ordered new tracks for my frame, a new laser pointer, and a new hopping foot for my machine, but they are all on back order.

On the knitting front, I finished my Vertical Garter Edging for my afghan, and you can see it blocking here. I also knit a quick blanket on my chunky knitting machine to donate to the Battersea Cat Home, which is the ugly little blanket in the middle. I have loads of coned acrylic yarn from when I used to do more machine knitting, and this seems like a good way to use up some of the more hideous colours that I obviously bought in a moment of insanity. I'm knitting double stranded 4-ply on T3, I turned up a hem on either end and crocheted down both side edges. The plan is to keep knitting these until I use up the ugly yarn, if I get time anyway.

You can see the Sunflower quilt on the frame in the background.

I also finished the Leisl Cardigan and here it is blocking. I have had to guess a bit at what size to block it out to, I'll how this fits when it's dry. If it doesn't work, I can always block it again. I also need to work out how I am going to button it.

I had my Saturday quilt club today and finished Block 15 of Grandmother's Last Quilt 25 block applique quilt. This was my UFO challenge project for our group UFO challenge, and I found that being in the challenge really motivated me to work on it, and I picked it up several times since last meeting.

Then I switched on my machine and in the afternoon I put together the blocks for the middle of my Kaffe Fassett Stars Over England quilt. It just needs some borders now and then I will be able to squiggle over it on my new frame.

The other nice thing that happened at quilt group is that I took along the quilts I've quilted on the frame for show and tell. The members like them and one lady actually bought my Daisy Trellis quilt for her granddaughter who happens to be called Daisy! The purchase price isn't bad - it doesn't cover all my costs but it covers the lion's share, and even better she is going to do the binding so I don't have to. Result!

Happy WWKIPD!

2011-06-12T10:13:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was Worldwide Knit in Public Day, or at least the kick-off, as it will go on for a week or so to allow everyone to take part. I went along and joined the Hampton knitting group who were knitting in public at the Hampton Carnival. They are a very friendly group but I'm not sure any of the public realised what we were doing as we didn't have any signage.

I was wrestling with the third sleeve (first sleeve Part Deux) of my Liesl Cardigan, once again having a dickens of a time getting the pattern to match up smoothly. Although Feather & Fan stitch is easy to do, it is relatively difficult to get it to line up if you aren't sure where you are. I'm several rows into the sleeve but still not sure it is working properly. The variegated Knit-col yarn was admired by several people.

On a more positive note, I'm really pleased with the re-knit of my Cookie A Sunshine Sock. It is working out much better in the Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn. It fits better, and looks more delicate and less like knitted truck tire tread. I have turned the heel and am just starting to decrease the gussets. I only did two repeats of the leg chart so it will be a shorter summer sock (the pattern calls for three repeats). Turns out the top-of-foot chart is wrong as well, but an obvious error (double column of purl stitch) that was easy to spot.

I'm still knitting away on my Vertical Garter Stitch Edging for my afghan and am now on the final side.

On the quilting front, I finished the frame quilting on my Gingerbread House Christmas wallhanging. It still needs more quilting off the frame, mainly stitch in the ditch around the borders and panel squares.

My tracks seem to be getting worse and the steering is definitely getting a bit wonky now. I'm looking into getting replacement rails through a UK supplier.

I have a treat to look forward to - DH has kindly agreed to drive me up to visit Cotton Patch, a quilt shop in Birmingham which specialises in machine frame quilting. They are having an open day to demonstrate the various frames and gadgets you can use like rulers and pattern boards. Goody Bags are promised! It is probably going to give me a bad case of mid-arm envy, but hopefully it will also prove useful.

Meanwhile I am trudging on with preparing my remaining tops for the frame, finishing them and constructing backings where necessary. I got the sunflower borders onto my Moda Portugal Nine-Patch quilt. I've hung it up in the landing where it provides an uplifting sunny spot - given that our weather has turned cold, grey and rainy again here. I'm planning to quilt this using pantographs - so now I've got to learn how to do pantographs! I plan to load a practice sandwich onto the frame today and start trying to learn.

Getting a bit out of breath as I clamber up the learning curve

2011-06-05T10:07:00.000+01:00

Still getting to grips by trial and error with my new quilting frame. Why can't we just pop a pill and wake up the next morning as instant experts? Learning curves can be hard, and sometimes depressing. Having meandered on two quilts, I moved onto something more difficult: my Garden BOM quilt which has applique squares that needed custom quilting.

So I had to get my head around doing custom quilting when I can only do a 5-6" stripe at a time. Cue lots of starting and stopping and rolling the top back and forth. Almost instantly, I discovered I couldn't see where I was stitching because of the scratched up plastic insert in the hopping foot. So there is a stripe or two that I will need to unpick. Eventually I took the foot off to look at it, and discovered I could pop out the plastic insert. That has vastly improved visibility, but made the tension more difficult to get right.

This quilt took a lot longer because of all the custom work, and I only took it off the machine on Saturday morning. It's not finished yet because I need to do some of the fine detail work on my normal machine, plus unpick and re-sew the parts I mucked up at the beginning. I also got discouraged near the end as I discovered it was rolling crooked due to my broken ratchet at one end of the backing roller, so I needed to fudge back in some of the fullness at the other end. The quilt has ended up slightly trapezoidal although it isn't too obvious. Once it was off the machine, I re-glued the ratchet so hopefully it will stay put now.

I've discovered my back rail has cracked for about 3 inches in one place. I've read about this on the Yahoo group, in America you can order replacements but heaven knows if I can get them here in the UK without paying a fortune. I've now loaded on a smaller Christmas wallhanging but it also needs custom work. I am experimenting with chalking through some stencils then trying to follow the lines.

On the knitting front, I finished the second sleeve on my Liesl cardigan and have taken off the first sleeve and picked up to re-knit. This wasn't too difficult as I hadn't woven in my end when I joined on to knit the sleeve, so I could just unravel the joining yarn and pick up as I unraveled. I've also continued to knit on my Vertical Garter Stitch Edging, I'm on the third side now. I've found I can knit it almost without looking, while I am helping DS revise for his GCSEs.

We're in the middle of a heatwave here in the south of the UK. Yesterday in late afternoon, I took a break from all the weekend chores and hobbies, and took my new issue of Knitting magazine outdoors to the recliner in the shade and enjoyed a tall cold Pimms as I read my magazine. Very nice.

To paraphrase Piglet: "Look at me! I'm quilting!!!"

2011-05-28T18:44:00.000+01:00

Yes, the 12-foot-Beast is operational and we have lift off! (or should that be 'quilt off'?) Last Sunday after I got back from knitting at the pub, I loaded on my first quilt and started my learning curve. I decided to go first with the twin size Daisy Trellis that I made earlier in the year. My party piece from using my first frame is a large meander stitch which is perfect for this type of busy quilt where the quilting lines aren't going to show very much.

So I loaded it up and started stitching, and did an hour or so of stitching each night after work, and finished it Thursday night! I've gotten used to the heavier feel of the carriage and steering is going fairly well. The Pfaff Hobby Grand Quilter seems like a real work horse although it is slightly pernickety about how it is threaded - the smallest thing left out and it goes wrong, it also wasn't too sure about tension for a while. For the first quilt I used a variety of cotton threads in the top before my order of threads arrived from Cotton Patch in Birmingham. I found the bobbins hold a lot less than my Janome 6500 and I was having to change bobbins about every 1.5 passes which was a bit annoying. So I switched to Bottom Line in the bottom and King Tut in the top, and like magic it all started behaving. Here's a pic of the finished quilt.

So Thursday night I loaded up my second quilt, going with the Hawaiaan Potpourri Quilt as it is another busy quilt that would suit meandering. I went even bigger with the meander on this one. I used Bottom Line in the bobbin again, but went with a variegated YLI thread on top. I couldn't believe how much fluff the YLI thread generated in the bobbin area, mega fluff compared to the King Tut, I had to clean it out several times. I also had more trouble with the tension, but that may have been because I used a batik fabric on the backing. I switched up to a 100 Schmetz (?) Sharp needle which brought the tension up to an acceptable level, but I also had to tighten up the top tension considerably compared to the King Tut.

And I finished that one on Saturday afternoon. The new poles are working really well, but one of the homemade rachets has given out, luckily the opposite end is still holding.

I emptied all the waiting tops off of my back-of-the-door rack (which was collapsing under the weight) and I have an embarrassing number, about another 6 or 7 after these two, and some of them are absolutely huge. I have no idea what I was thinking, making king-size quilts. Luckily I had recently won £50 of Hobbycraft vouchers in a competition, so we went over there today and I bought four more packs of Poly-Down wadding which I quite like. I wanted to get more Hobb's Heirloom Wadding as well, because I am down to two packs, but they were out so I may have to mail order again. I've also got a fair bit of work ahead of me to get all the tops ready for quilting, with a backing prepared or pieced as required.

I am also in denial about all the binding I will have to sew on.

Meanwhile, on the knitting front...

I was working on the second sleeve of the Liesl cardigan at the pub last weekend, and having a lot of trouble getting the lace pattern to match up with the body pattern. I looked at my first finished sleeve to see how I had done it there, only to discover that I hadn't and it is completely wrong. So instead of being almost finished, I now have to finish the second sleeve then rip out the first sleeve and knit it again. I'm about halfway through the second sleeve.

Meanwhile, things are not going smoothly on my Cookie A Sunshine Sock. Armed with the corrected charts, I got as far as knitting the heel flap then tried it on to see how deep the flap needed to be. Although I have been loving this smooshy Colinette Jitterbug yarn, it is quite fluffy, and I was disappointed to discover the combination of fat yarn and a very textured cable lace pattern was about the most unflattering thing I could possibly put on my ankle. It made my ankles look like tree trunks. So I thought, ok, I could make fingerless gloves instead. But it even made my wrists look bad, plus the tube was too loose. So I accepted my fate, and ripped it all out. Again. I have now cast on with white Cherry Tree Hill, which to my eye looks a bit thinner than the Jitterbug, so hopefully I will get a nice delicate lace rather than a woollen version of a truck tire tread.

I am still knitting away on the Vertical Garter Stitch edging for my Learn to Knit Afghan. I discovered at knitting group that 'afghan' is apparently not a familiar word in the UK. They had seen the word on American knitting patterns so they knew what it meant. I don't think there is a word in Britain with the same connotations of a knitted/crocheted blanket. Interesting. I've switched from increasing using 'Knit front and back in the same stitch' as recommended in the book, to making one stitch from the bar between the stitches of the previous row, as I found I was getting a little row of holes up one side of the scallop with the previous method. I'm not re-knitting the first several feet though.

I've pressed on with my applique block for the UFO challenge. It's been so long since I did needleturn applique that I've lost my edge a bit. I've done the central rose but I need to go back and rip out and re-do one of the bud cases which came out crooked. Still, I feel virtuous as I've already done more on it this week than I have for several months.

I think it should be safe to blog my I-Knit Sock Club package, because I think everyone should have received theirs by now. So here it is. The patterns are for lacy socks or lacy fingerless mitts, the yarn is tomato red and gorgeously smooshy, and the gifts are a custom project bag and a little sachet of Eucalan. A lovely treat to me to receive in the post.

Almost quilting

2011-05-21T21:17:00.000+01:00

I've put in a lot of work this week on converting/upgrading my Next Generation machine quilting frame. Lots of drilling, sawing, sanding, gluing etc. And even some sewing to make the leaders (fabric bits attached to the poles). And I think I am just about there. I think it is going to work although I haven't quite got to the testing part yet.

Sheathing one of the original poles in a metal tube, screwed to it for stability, made such a huge difference. If you shake one of the original poles, it has about two inches of play. The reinforced pole barely moves and if you shake it, the whole frame shakes.

But the real work was completely replacing two of the poles. I carved end plugs out of the wooden dowels I ordered, and glued them into the ends of the metal tubes, so that I could suspend them from threaded rod. I improvised new end caps from wooden toy wheels with cork glued to them, so that I could avoid using the horrible ratchets on the two key poles: the take-up roller and the backing roller. I've left the ratchets on the quilt top roller and batting roller as I will just leave them in neutral.

Anyway, I'm conscious that the above three paragraphs are just gibberish if you are a knitting or dollshousing reader, so basically I am almost quilting! Just need to power up the machine again, oil it, and adjust the levels of the poles to try out the little test sandwich I've started to load up. And it's only taken a month. I pointed out to my husband that I was obviously not going to get the 12-foot frame out of the living room within a month like I originally promised. He frowned and said that I had better get it out of there by Christmas so that we have room for the tree - what a sweetie! It really is in the way as well.

So what else have I been doing? I have been knitting several feet of the Vertical garter edging for my Learn to Knit Afghan and am about half-way through now. It's starting to get a bit bulky for carrying around in my knapsack. It was a good mindless project to take to the London Kensington Dollshouse Festival last week though. I had a good time and bought several 1/24th scale accessories for the Greenleaf Fairfield house that I am building, plus a 1/12th scale castle-shaped teapot for my teapot collection. They were also showing some films about miniatures, so I watched some of those while knitting on my garter edging.

I've also finished the part-knit sleeve on my Liesl Cardigan and started to pick up for the second sleeve.

I've had good intentions to keep working on Project Number Five from my quilting group's UFO Challenge, which is an applique block. But I just find that the light isn't good enough in the living room - god I sound old. I need to bring down my daylight working lamp that is on my dollshouse work table.

I had a lovely squishy arrive in the post a few days ago - my first package from the I-Knit London Sock Club. I guess I had better not reveal too much in case people haven't got theirs yet. The yarn is hand-dyed by Gerard in a vivid colour which is not quite my colour but I think I could wear it, and it feels lovely. There are two patterns, one for socks and one for something else, which unfortunately had become rather battered in the post as they were just placed in the padded envelope with no protection. Gerard has posted on Ravelry that we can email him for a .pdf version so I've done that, and I will print replacements. There was also a cute extra which is also very practical. A nice surprise and I enjoyed looking through it all. I've never been in a yarn club before. I was in a fabric club a couple of times, but you quickly get too much fabric and none of it seems to go with each other. I like the Sock Club because I will get two patterns with ideas to use the yarn.

We now return to your normal programme

2011-05-14T21:49:00.001+01:00

It feels a bit like things are getting back to normal. It has become normal to have a boarded up window - still no sign of the replacement glass although I left a message today chasing them up. The insurance assessor came on Thursday and turned out to be really nice. He was very sympathetic and it sounds like we might actually be covered. Apparently what happens now is yet another company gets involved who decide how much the electronics will cost to replace, and then offer us replacements, while some other company values the jewellery. Meanwhile he gave me permission to replace my son's Ipod as he is studying for exams and was really missing it. We got that today so my son is happy.

I had my Saturday Quilting Club today. We have started our new group project, which is actually a UFO challenge rather than a group sewing project. It's based on the one that Swooze was taking part in, where you list six projects and the coordinator (me) chooses a number and that's the one you have to work on. We are going to do two months on each project, and I gave out prizes today for the oldest project on the list etc. Some very ancient projects have come out the woodwork, including a 1982 hexagon quilt, and a 1980 first quilt. In lieu of a random number generator, I got my cat (the one pictured below) to choose the first number by placing six pieces of dry food down on a piece of paper with six numbers written on it. Of course he ate the closest one first, so I went with his second choice which was Number Five.

My number five project is my Grandmother's Last Quilt 25-block applique project. I started this years ago with the plan to needleturn applique two blocks a month for a year, and do one more block and have a top. Ha ha ha ha ha. Today I excavated block number 15 and worked on that all morning. It felt kind of good to finally be giving it some attention. In the afternoon, I sewed together all the blocks for my Moda Portugal quilt that was on my design wall last week. Now I just need to add a border.

Also this week I have sewn together the blocks for my Learn to Knit Afghan and have started to knit a border for it. The border I've chosen is 'Vertical garter stitch scallops' from Knitting on the Edge by Nicky Epstein, only I've added an extra plain row to round the scallops a bit. I experimented with knitting this directly onto the edge by joining at the end of each return row, but it was really cumbersome and heavy with the weight of the afghan, so I pulled that out and am just knitting it seperately. This makes it a portable project. Nicky doesn't say how to turn the corner, so I just mitred a corner in between two scallops by using short rows.

I made a push over the last few weeks on my Liesl cardigan in Knitcol yarn, because now is really the right weather to be wearing it. I took it on our camping trip last weekend and got a lot done until I managed to break one of my KnitPro needles. I did a bit on straights which was really awkward until my new tips arrived from Get Knitted in Bristol, then I finished the body this week. Annoyingly, despite joining in several new balls of yarn as I knit, the variegation has split so that the two sides of the cardigan are completely different colours. Grrrrr. It looks cropped but that's just because it's not blocked yet.

After having a rethink about the Next Generation Frame, I ordered some wooden dowels in place of the too-hard plastic ones I was going to use. Today I did some work on the home-made pole ends and maybe tomorrow, if it isn't raining, I might gather up my courage and try cutting one of the metal pipes. It has become normal to have a 12 foot long coffee table in our living room and we are stacking the garden furniture cushions on it. I am feeling intimidated by the whole job and wondering if it is going to work at all, but I'm not a quitter so will keep going and hope for the best. Hopefully I will be quilting the Moda Portugal quilt on it some day soon.

Tomorrow I am off up to London to visit the London Kensington Dolls House Festival, one of the top UK shows, which generally has loads of eye candy. I still haven't got my pay raise (although I am assured it is coming) so won't be going crazy, but I would like to get more 1/24th accessories for the Fairfield / Lydia Pickett dollshouse I am still building. It's usually quite an enjoyable fair, although a little static as it seems like almost the same people every year, in exactly the same spots. This year they are promising a programme of free films/lectures so hopefully I will get to see some of those.

Trying week

2011-05-07T19:40:00.001+01:00

It's been a fairly stressful week, trying to deal with the aftermath of the burglary and meanwhile I am really busy at work. I can't remember if I blogged that my old boss' boss, the one that stepped in and fired the consultant, had a heart attack a few weeks ago and is going to be gone for three or four months after open heart surgery (yes, I've said it before, I really do work in a Soap Opera). So not only am I doing my own job, and most of my previous boss' job, but I no longer have the support of the senior manager and we are having to improvise processes and do the best we can.

Meanwhile I've been talking to the insurance company, who are sending an assessor next week; getting the window measured up for replacement; I've had two electricians in to quote on better security lights; I've had a security firm in to quote on security lights as well but they said we would be better off with a burglar alarm; and I've had the local police in to advise on how we can improve the security of our home (they also said we should get an alarm).

So not a whole lot of crafts this week. I did go out to my machine knitting shed last Monday, the day after the burglary, and when I unlocked the door, it fell off in my hand. Turns out the burglar had patiently unscrewed all the hinges to have a look inside. Let's hope he was fairly pissed to discover yet more yarn. He didn't actually go in as the bolt side and the bottom hinge were still intact and nothing had been disturbed.

I was coping fairly well until Thursday when I suddenly realised that my engagement ring (which I rarely wore and kept in its box) was missing as well. That really upset me and Thursday wasn't a great day.

Over the Easter weekend I cut out a new quilt, using up a pack of Moda 'Portugal' fabric that I had, and throwing in some of my own stash. This is a pattern called 'Sophia's Song' which was in the May/June 2011 McCall's Quilting magazine, designed by Gerri Robinson. Thursday night, to cheer myself up, I got out my homemade design wall and laid out the blocks and took this photo. They are pinned up in rows now, waiting to be sewn. A plain border goes on around the edge - I might try my sunflower fabric and see how it looks. I love these colours, which make me think of sun-washed summer days.

The rest of the evenings I have been cocooning on the sofa in front of the TV, working on sewing together my Learn to Knit Afghan. I sewed my six rows together, and now I am sewing the rows to each other. I did experiment with crocheting the rows together, using double crochet and then slip stitch, but I didn't like the ridge it made nor how stiff it made the 'sashing', so I decided to just overcast stitch the crocheted edges together.

Mabel left a comment on the blog asking what was happening with my Next Generation quilting frame. I couldn't respond directly as she is set to 'no reply' on Blogger, so I will say here that progress has been slow because the supplier I ordered most of the hardware from, to have a go at making an improved end instead of the sticky ratchets, thought it would just sit on the whole order because one of the handles wasn't available until 12 May. I protested, and the first part of the order finally turned up yesterday. However, the plastic dowels I bought to be the insert into the metal pipe have turned out to be too hard to drill or reduce in size, so I am a bit discouraged. I could go back to Plan A and just sheath the saggy poles in metal tubes, but I was hoping to avoid having to use the ratchets on the take up roller and backing roller at least. Time for a rethink on how to hang the poles from the frame. Meanwhile we have a 12-foot long coffee table in our living room which hopefully impeded the burglar as much as it gets in our way.

Burgled :(

2011-05-01T22:16:00.000+01:00

We've just come back from two nights camping, and our plans of having two more days relaxing at home on this long Royal Wedding weekend have been disrupted as we found that our house had been broken into while we were gone. The neighbour thinks she heard a bang in the early hours of last night, and it looks like they entered by smashing in a window in our rear conservatory and reaching in to let themselves in.

They turned out a lot of boxes and bags upstairs but didn't do much downstairs so perhaps ran out of time. Very luckily they didn't take time to smash up or vandalise, for example none of my dollshouses or sewing machines or anything seem to have been touched. They have taken two laptops, some jewellery and a watch, but mostly have hit my son: they took his game console, three handheld games consoles, most of his games and over £100 of his pocket money. So he is pretty upset as you can imagine. But it could have been an awful lot worse, and as far as we can tell, they didn't bother to steal our identity like passports, cheque books etc.

So we've spent most of the evening talking to police, getting the smashed window boarded up (at our own expense as our insurance company seems to be rubbish when it is out of hours) and picking stuff up to put it away, while we try to work out what is missing. Dare I say it, but I think our extremely cluttered home may have stymied the burglar, most of the cupboards and things that he opened were full of craft material which must have become a bit frustrating after the 6th or 7th cupboard... Let's hope so anyway.

I think I'm dreading having to deal with the insurance company even more than I am upset about our home being invaded. I hope they aren't going to want receipts for everything. And I know we are going to end up out of pocket with the excess, having to pay for the window to be boarded etc. And we've just realised that they stole the spare key for the car, so DH is going to have to go and hide it on another street.

Staycation

2011-04-23T15:05:00.002+01:00

The UK is having two four-day weekends in a row, one for Easter and one for a certain VIP wedding. Lots of adventurous people have used the opportunity to book an 11-day holiday to jet off to foreign parts while only using up three days of their holiday allowance. As we are going to New England later in the year, we don't have enough holiday left to book the time off.

So I decided to have a 'stay-cation' instead at home. We went shopping for ready meals so I wouldn't have to cook or plan meals and I have made a determined effort yesterday and today to a) not do anything chore-like, b) not to think about work and c) to just relax and chill out. The weather is absolutely glorious, up to 25 degrees C or in that region, blue skies, yet with a light refreshing breeze.

Yesterday I woke up and did a few hours of dollshousing, breakfasted and had a nap, then we took a tea tray out to the shady corner of the garden and lazed around for a few hours. I was crocheting borders around my Learn to Knit Afghan Squares - I'm using a navy pure wool aran mystery yarn that I picked up a cheap load of, from Riverside Yarns (Riverford? can't remember what they are called) at a machine knitting show long ago. They used to have cardboard boxes of unballed, unlabelled yarn at very cheap prices. I'm having to guess how many stitches to do around each one - I've settled on 30 stitches to a side and a triple stitch in each corner, but of course some of the squares are bigger than that, so I am wavering a bit on pulling it out and going for 35.

After a tasty lunch in the garden, I had a nap in the shade before moving into the shed to work on my machine knit felted bag.

My first felted bag, using the Fiona Morris felted bag pattern that I mentioned last week, came out absolutely brilliantly. I didn't take a 'before' photo but basically I had this floppy loopy mess of oiled Shetland wool in a thin ply, that didn't look like it would ever be anything usable. The pattern uses the knit side as the right side, and tucks in both directions on the wrong side to build up a thickness of layers. But it is knit on T10 so very open and loose. I threw it into the washing machine when I went to bed, on a 60 degree wash and was absolutely thrilled in the morning to find this charming bag. It's like a magic trick.

So yesterday I knit another one, adapting the pattern to make the bag wider and bigger inside, added a flap and switched the twin handles for one long one. This time I took a 'before' photo. You can see how floppy it is, and the handle is so long that I had to knot it to keep the bag in shot.

And here is the finished result - another magic trick, producing a lovely felted messenger bag. I might put a stiff base in to help it keep its shape. I was guessing on how deep to knit the flap and on rounding the corners but it's come out fairly well. Could have been a bit longer but it will work.

I still have about a third of a cone of yarn left so I could probably manage one more bag.

I came in for some sewing then, and added the parrot borders to my Hawaiaan Kaffe Fassett Potpourri Quilt. It's pretty wild, isn't it?

After a late supper of ready meals, I caught up on some telly and then watched some machine quilting shows on YouTube and QNNTV before retiring to bed with a machine knitting magazine. The perfect day?

Today we headed off to Richmond-upon-Thames in the morning, for a little shopping, a stroll along the Thames, an icecream, and then we took over a table in a garden cafe in the park for a few hours. I was knitting on my Cookie A Sunshine Sock - again. Remember I ripped this out because the cast on wasn't stretchy enough? Well, I got on quite well and was near the end of my second pattern repeat when I realised I had crossed a whole row of cables the wrong way in the first repeat. So I ripped out again and reknit. But then I realised that my sock didn't look like the one in the pattern picture. I studied the pattern again and again and couldn't see what I was doing wrong. So onto the lovely Ravelry to find that there are unpublished errata for this pattern and the cable crosses on the leg and foot pattern are reversed. So I ripped out again and today finished the first repeat. It finally looks like the picture but I have to say I am getting a bit sick of it.

And I think now I am going to go and do a little quilting... The Stay-cation will be interrupted tomorrow as the in-laws are coming for Easter, so I will need to shovel out the ground floor so it looks less like we are living amid mountains of clutter, but I should be back on holiday on Monday!

Hope you are enjoying some sunshine and good weather, and lots of crafting, where you are.

Where is an engineer when you need one?

2011-04-17T19:35:00.001+01:00

A lot of my free time this week (and, admittedly, some of the time when I was meant to be working) has been spent on solving the problems with my new-to-me Next Generation quilting frame. I found several forum posts from Americans who strengthened their poles by sheathing them in EMT Conduit, a thin wall galvanised steel tube that isn't available in the right diameter in this country. So I have gambled and ordered some mild steel tubing online, because I couldn't find a shop locally that sold it.

I ordered two 6m lengths because it was cheaper than ordering four 3m lengths (the frame has four poles), and I also ordered a thinner tubing to make a dead bar across the frame (makes it easier to quilt). It belatedly occurred to me that because my tubes were 6m, I could cut them full length and replace two of the saggy poles altogether, if I could only work out a way of connecting them at each end to the frame. Then I wouldn't have to deal with the annoying ratchets at all on those two poles.

This is where the engineering came in. You can buy tube inserts, and I concocted an elaborate plan using Google to purchase threaded tube inserts from one supplier, and screw in threaded rod from another supplier with star handles from yet another supplier. That came to a grinding halt when I discovered you could only buy the tube inserts in packs of 100. To make a long story short, I have come up with an alternate plan which involves no less than five online suppliers, and made my head hurt with extensive calculations, looking up ISO metric threading charts, British Standard tube widths etc. Math is not my strong point. So this weekend I cleaned and degreased my metal tubes, and sprayed them with Metal Protekt, and am waiting for all my supplies to turn up to see if this is all going to turn into a workable quilt frame, and not just a colossal waste of time and money.

Meanwhile, I wore my new Holden Shawlette to work, where noone commented on it at all - but I felt very glamorous and cosy and spent a lot of time admiring myself in the bathroom mirror.

I also re-knit my Cookie A Sunshine Sock back to where I ripped out, and slightly past it. Cast on is now fine and stretchy.

Now that my knitting machines are squeaky clean and all oiled to go, I have been knitting a Fiona Morris Felted Bag pattern on the standard machine, in tuck stitch using oiled Shetland wool. It has a decorative top in e-wrapped boucle yarn. I've done the body of the bag and one strap, just need to do the other strap and then I can sew it up for the washing machine and get to the fun part of felting it.

I finished the bottom of my Hawaiian Kaffe Fassett Potpourri Quilt and I was pulling fabric from my stash to decide on a border. I had A) a batik that had all the right colours but looked too much like a frame, I had B) a Texas wildflower print which was well matched in terms of broken colour, but not quite the right green and of course pretty far away from the tropical theme, and C) a wild jungle print with parrots, frogs and lizards which matched the tropical theme and several of the colours, but the wildness was fighting with the quilt a bit.

I left them up on the wall for a few days, and decided to be bold and go with the parrot print. So on Saturday when I had Quilting Club, I carefully cut out borders to centre the parrot both vertically and horizontally. I also cut borders for my Stars Over England quilt and started sewing the blocks together. Hopefully I will be quilting both these quilts on my new frame! some day...

And in the evenings in front of the telly, I've been plugging away at my remaining Johnny Rotten mitten. I'm on the decreases for the top now, so not long to go. Soon I will have a snuggly warm pair of mittens, just in time for summer :)

Summer days

2011-04-10T13:24:00.002+01:00

We've been enjoying summer temperatures of 22 degrees C and gorgeous sunshine, which is incredibly unusual for April in the UK. I actually wore a skirt and bare legs to the office on Thursday, although I still had to wear a light woolly hat in the morning on the way to the station before the sun had warmed up the air. Our apple tree is putting on its annual show of gorgeous blossom and looks lovely.

It's been a bit of a frustrating week in terms of my new quilt frame. The machine appears to be working fine, which is good news. The poles on the frame, however, are so floppy and saggy that I haven't actually been able to get quilting. I was also having trouble with the rachets (the plastic bits on the ends that hold the poles up) but I've sprayed those with silicone to loosen them up. Both these problems are apparently known issues with the Next Generation frame, as I have found out on the Homequiltingsystems Yahoo group. The mystifying thing is that many people swear by their Next Generation frame and how great it is. I have tightened the join as much as I can, and it doesn't seem to have that much play in it, so I really don't understand why they are so bendy. In the USA, they can strengthen their poles by sheathing them in metal conduit, but despite visiting several DIY places and a few metal places, and extensive googling, I haven't found a source in the UK yet.

Meanwhile, I finished my Holden Shawlette in Malabrigo fingering weight. It's come out a lot deeper than it looked in the picture. Also, my picots were more like nubs, much less prominent than in the picture, so I don't know what I did wrong there. I didn't try to block them out as they really are just little bumps, so I concentrated on the scallops instead. I really like this colour and the yarn is so soft and cosy.

Bad news on my Cookie A Sunshine socks in Colinette Jitterbug. I really love this yarn, and I had got far enough to try them on when I discovered that my cast-on wasn't stretchy enough. I had done a loose cast-on but not a super-stretchy one, but it turns out this lacy cable pattern is very stretchy and my cast-on is too tight. So I took this picture for posterity, pulled it all out, and started over with my favourite stretchy cast-on (cast-on over two dpns held together, and rib the first row using both the ball yarn and the end held together).

I've been doing a bit of Spring cleaning, inspired by a visit to 'The Cult of Beauty' exhibition at the V&A museum. It made me feel deeply dissatisfied with my cluttered existence, so I had a bit of a turnout. One of the things I tackled was a fair-isle sweater that I knit on the machine about 10 years ago using Jamieson jumper weight. The sleeves have always been about 2.5 inches too long, which contributed to it being rarely worn. I finally decided to do something about it. I threaded two circular needles through the rows on either side of the excess, opened up the seam slightly and cut through the knitting to unravel all the unwanted rows. Then I grafted the two edges together and closed the seam again. Voila - sleeves that are the right length. Why didn't I do this 10 years ago????

The rest of my time this week was spent in the knitting shed, cleaning the remaining 600 or so needles on the knitting machines, replacing them, and following the rest of the instructions on the maintenance video for checking brushes, tension masts etc. So the machines are all clean and ready for use - apart from I discovered that my Brother 260 Chunky actually has a sponge bar in the ribber (which is now long dead). I must have known that at one point, but I had been thinking that it was just a plain plastic bar like in my 881 and 950i ribbers. I don't even know if you can still buy those, so I may need to recondition it myself like I did last year for the main bar.

I've signed for the I-Knit Sock Club so I am looking forward to getting some nice treats in the post starting in May. I've never been in a yarn club before but I've always been attracted by the idea - just been put off by the price, especially for the overseas clubs. This one provides two patterns as well as the yarn, one sock and one non-sock, so it sounds like it will have a lot of potential and won't just feel like a sock treadmill. Also the yarn sounds nice, with some big names like Cherry Tree Hill.

Hope you are enjoying some good weather where you are!

Happy Mother's Day - to me

2011-04-03T17:51:00.000+01:00

Look what I bought myself for Mother's Day! (yes, here in the UK it was Mothering Sunday today).

This is a Grace Next Generation quilting frame with 120" poles (wide enough to do a King size quilt, and even to turn quilts sideways) and a Pfaff HobbyGrandQuilter 1200 machine. All secondhand on Ebay for a bargain price (the whole set up for about what the machine alone would cost new).

I was wistfully watching videos of HandiQuilter mid-arm machines on Youtube last weekend, wishing I had more money and more room, when it occurred to me to look on Ebay to see if there were any secondhand machines. As they aren't very common here in the UK, not surprisingly there were none. But my search on 'quilting frame' suddenly popped up the just-listed entry for the above. Bargain price for 'Buy it Now'. I did a quick bit of research on the Yahoo HomeQuiltingSystems group and found it was a well known frame and machine combo, and decided to go for it. And we picked it up today. It was all dissassembled and took us most of the afternoon to put back together, so I ran out of time and energy to actually have a play on it apart from testing that the machine works.

It's still only got a 9" throat, which is the same as my current machine, but my current frame can only accept quilts up to 60", so it is going to be a huge improvement to be able to do an entire wide quilt. Hopefully I can finally tackle my collection of huge tops from my pre-frame days. As you can see, I've had to set it up in our living room which is the only room big enough, so once again my family are going to have to live around my hobby for a while. I've committed to about a month to my DH, so will have to get cracking. Luckily we've got two double bank holidays (four-day weekends) this month, one for Easter and one for the Royal Wedding.

What else have I been up to this week? I've started giving my knitting machines a sorely-needed clean. One of the videos I rescued and converted to DVD before the third VCR died on me was a knitting machine maintenance video. I transferred the file onto my smartphone so I could watch it out in the knitting machine shed and pause it while I completed each step. I brought out lots of fluff when I ran the cleaning brush through the sponge bar channel, and now I am taking out all the needles, cleaning them in surgical spirit, and replacing them. As I have three machines each with a ribber, that's over 1000 needles, so it is taking me quite a while. I'm just about finished the first machine (400 needles) but it is giving me sore fingers.

I wet-blocked 24 afghan squares from my Learn to Knit Afghan. That also took quite a long time and virtually every plastic-headed pin that I own, to pin them all out to 9 inches square. As you can see, they are rather a motley assortment. Now I need to crochet around each one and join them together. I have some navy blue aran in the shed that I might use.

I have been doggedly ploughing on with my Holden Shawlette and am now doing a picot castoff on the edge. Really annoyingly, I ran into a knot about 6 rows from the end. I did the overlap/knit with both ends method of joining on, but now I am wishing I had done a spit splice. Not ripping it out now, and it was in one of the garter rows so isn't obvious. I have been having my usual trouble when I have a project that doesn't require much concentration - my brain ceases to concentrate at all and I start making stupid mistakes. In this case, omitting a set of decreases for about 8 (very long) rows and having to drop down and fix them. I guess the knitter's version of 'less haste more speed', is more like 'more chart reading, less time wasting'.

The new manager has started at work, and she seems really nice. And our Director has verbally told me that I will be getting an 'acting up' allowance (more money). Don't know how much yet, but I feel a sense of achievement to have asked for it and actually get it. Considering I was all prepared to quit only a matter of weeks ago, it has been quite a turnaround for the better.

So I need to get some practice fabric rolled onto my new frame and start learning how to use it this week - wish me luck!

This and that

2011-03-26T21:32:00.000Z

For some reason I don't seem to have many photos this week. It's calmed down at work now that I've got past the printing deadlines, and I have been able to catch up on my to-do list. I also prepared a list of how much more responsibility I have now, compared to last year, and asked for more money. My new boss was somewhat startled but agreed quite willingly to look into it. The new interim manager starts next week so fingers crossed she is nice.

Sewing this week has been all about Kaffe Fassett. I sewed together all the pieces I had from my design workshop with Kaffe last year, for the Hawiaian Potpourri Quilt. I didn't completely design the quilt in the class, because it is ridiculously long (something like 62" wide and 95" inches long, which is like a single quilt for someone who is 7 1/2 feet tall). So at the moment it has an uneven bottom edge - I need to work out how to fill in the gaps to achieve a straight edge shorter than the original pattern, while still using the three sizes of square that make up the design. Looks good though. And today at my quilting club, I finished sewing all the blocks for my Kaffe Fassett Stars over England quilt and laid it out on the floor with all its setting blocks. It is one heck of a bright quilt, to the point where you almost feel you need to shade your eyes. Lots of colour combinations I would never put together myself, but these are the authentic fabrics as I purchased a kit of fabrics from Glorious Colour in the States. I should have taken a piccy but didn't think of it. Now all the rows are stacked and pinned up, ready to assemble. I'm not sure that this one is a keeper for while it has been exhilarating to work with colours and big prints that I wouldn't normally use, the overall effect is rather more psychedelic than I think I want to have around in my own home. May have to find a new owner for it when it's done.

On the knitting front, I knit the 25th square for my Learn to Knit Afghan, a twisted stitch trellis in two colours. Now I need to block them all out to size. I also did a few rows on my Holden Shawlette, I'm on the last repeat of the chart for the wavy edge.

I picked up a cute book at the discount book warehouse by Waterloo Station for only £4.99. "Beautiful knits for heads, hands and toes - stunning accessories for you to knit" by Alison Dupernex. I am not normally that interested in accessories but there are some cute and useful things in here, the usual scarves, hats, bags, legwarmers, some nice socks and some really interesting gloves. There is one pair of gloves knit sideways in garter stitch, with a different colour for each finger. And a pretty pair of fingerless gloves with a braided cable, knit in Rowan Denim so slightly faded - and I think I have some Rowan Denim leftover from my Mustang jumper that I knit a while back.

The weather in London has been absolutely glorious this week, I ate my lunch in the park in the sunshine on a few days (with some knitting afterwards of course). In typical English fashion, it turned grey for the weekend, and even rather chilly in the afternoon. Our clocks go forward this evening, so I am trying to decide whether it would be better to have a lie-in tomorrow then be cranky on Monday morning from lack of sleep, or get up early tomorrow to get it over with, and be cranky tomorrow which is at least a home day and not a work day. Decisions, decisions...

What happened to this week?

2011-03-20T18:28:00.000Z

This week has been ridiculously busy at work, as I had two publications going to print this week and my new boss seems happy to be piling stuff on me that my old boss used to do. Therefore I spent most of my evenings collapsed in an exhausted heap in front of the telly, and not doing much crafting.

I did do some pressing and sewing on my Kaffe Fassett Potpourri quilt. Working on this brings back so many lovely memories of my trip to Hawaii where I took this workshop with Kaffe and Brandon Mably. This is a very bright quilt. When I got home after the trip, I took it to my fairly traditional quilt club and unrolled it for them to see. There was a sort of stunned silence, before one member said faintly: "it's very busy, isn't it?" Someone else suggested adding solid sashing "to calm it down".

While it does look a little like someone vomited up a Hawaiian flower garden onto the wall, I rather like it :) It's very cheerful and in keeping with the Spring weather we are enjoying now.

I knit two more squares for my Learn to Knit Afghan, bringing my total to 24 squares. I just need one more now and I think I will call it a day. I put them all out on the floor to have a look at them, and realised that my tension must have become looser over the years, as the earlier squares are smaller than the later ones. Hopefully they will block out, it is a pure wool yarn. The blue and white stripe one is the biggest, I may have to pull that one out and try it with fewer stitches.

Yesterday (Saturday) we headed over to the newly re-opened Squires Garden Centre at Shepperton. We had boycotted it for a long time, as they had closed down several independent craft businesses that leased outbuildings when they decided to rebuild. There used to be a good needlework shop there, a wool shop, a farm shop etc. The new building has a 'craft area' which is like a Hobbycraft wannabe, full of stuff of no real interest to people who actually do those hobbies. For example, although the word 'knitting' appears on a lot of big signs, the only yarn they have is one wall unit of ultracheap Stylecraft acrylic. However, there are a number of cheap craft books, and I picked up this book of memory quilts for only £3.99. There are some really cute ideas in here for transforming your collections into quilts, be they music tickets, programmes, pins, ties, postcards, letters or whatever. I would like to have a go with some of my travel souvenirs from when I was younger. We enjoyed a cream tea in the huge new cafe, and wandered around the sparsely stocked plant area enjoying the Spring sunshine. As they are newly opened, they were giving away goody bags to people who brought a voucher to the till, and to my surprise we were able to get one. It had some great stuff in it, cookies, savoury biscuits, sweets, soap, lavender bag and a pen. Still wish they hadn't closed down the independent craft stores though.

And today we drove up to Birmingham for the enormous and always excellent Miniatura dollshouse fair. I had committed to only keeping DH waiting two hours, so I had to run around like a madwoman, trying to get round all the tables. I basically had to reject any table that didn't have goods that were on my shopping list - which probably saved me money. I picked up several 1/24th items for the Fairfield house that I am building. On the drive there and back, I was knitting on my Holden Shawlette, my Johnny Rotten mitten, and my Selbuvotter Annemor glove.

Be careful what you wish for...

2011-03-13T09:40:00.001Z

Well, the work situation has changed yet again. The consultant and I had reached a sort of detente, in which I got on with my job while he waffled hot air and blustered his way through the days earnestly pretending that he knew what he was doing. But suddenly it was all over. Thursday morning I came in, and he took me to one side to tell me that it was his last day. Apparently the head of our department (my old boss' boss) had told him at the end of the previous day. He seemed rather shocked by the suddenness of it all, and was scrambling all day to put his affairs in order and close down what he had been doing (not that much). I felt a bit sorry for him really. And to do him justice, he did bring in chocolate after lunch as a farewell present for us.

So I am suddenly boss-less, at least temporarily. The department head doesn't want to get involved with details, and is very eager to have me take on things that my boss used to do. Meanwhile, apparently there will be an interim manager coming in for six months to cover another vacancy in the department, and she will have a 'dotted line' to me - whatever that means. I'm hoping it means that I can get on with my work independently, yet still have someone for backup when I am on holiday or sick, and someone to refer the awkward people to. I have mixed feelings really, relief that both my old boss and the consultant are now out of the picture, but some anxiety over the uncertainty and sudden increase in responsibility. I hope the new interim manager is nice and we get along. Oh, and apparently my old boss was incredibly upset at having her shaky arrangement with the consultant overset, and was even shouting at our department head (so I hear) but he was telling her ' you don't work here any more and we have to manage without you'. I'm beginning to wonder if there is a master plan to engineer my old boss out of the picture completely. I know her shambolic performance had been criticised by a lot of people.

It's like working in a soap opera. My old job was never like this. What is that old Chinese curse? "May you live in interesting times..."?

Anyway, what have I been up to this week craft-wise?

I finished the crockery wall hanging and it is now brightening up my kitchen. I did trim the border a bit narrower before I added the binding. This was a fun project, and I am tempted by some of the other projects in the book. There are neat quilts that look like shelves with crockery all along them.

By the way, the bottom edge of this quilt is in fact straight - for some reason it looks bowed in the photograph.

I was looking in my cupboard to see what UFO I would tackle next, and I came across this crumpled rag. Long-time blog readers may possibly recognise it (but I doubt it) as the Potpourri Quilt that I designed on the workshop with Kaffe Fassett and Brandon Mably when I went on the Hawaii trip a few years ago. We worked on flannel design walls (the brown taupe) and before I packed away that day, I tacked every patch to the flannel with a Micro-stitch gun so I wouldn't lose the design layout while it was packed in my suitcase. So now I need to take off a few patches at a time, iron them and seam them together, then put them back on the design wall to keep everything in the right place during assembly.

Yesterday we went on a day trip to Calais in France. We are on the wrong side of London for the Dover ferry so it was a very long day - we left at 7am and didn't get back until 10pm. We did all the usual things in France: I bought duty-free perfume, we picked up cheap wine and booze, I had Mussels in white wine for lunch, we hit the hypermarket for some bargain clothing, and a patisserie for a mouth-watering strawberry tart. While we were shopping in Calais, I found the Phildar store was still there. I last bought yarn in either that store or another, about 20 years ago. It's strange by UK standards as it sells clothing, but at the back of the store is a well-stocked yarn corner. And they had a bunch of discontinued yarn bagged up at 50% off. So I picked up 10 balls of Phildar 'Croisiere', a ribbon yarn in 24% cotton/76% synthetic, which I thought would make a nice summer top. I haven't knit in ribbon yarn before, but this seems fairly tightly woven and has a nice sparkly strip running through it. Will have to knit up some swatches and see what it looks like knitted up. My French is pretty abysmal and the store lady didn't speak English, but luckily we both spoke Knitting so I was able to check that I had enough for a short-sleeved sweater and to ask if she had any knitted swatches (she didn't).

During the long car journey, I was knitting. I was even knitting on the way back in the dark, thanks to the round-the-neck light that I posted about a while back. It worked quite well in the car - DH said that the soft light didn't distract him from the road. I think it would be better to use it with thicker yarn - I was knitting on my Holden Shawlette in fingering weight, and found my eyes got a bit strained trying to focus on the lace stitches. I also knit a bit on my Estonian Lace Shawl and on my Liesl Cardigan during the day. Commuter knitting this week has been the Holden (I am about halfway through the lacy border now). I've also been working on my Selbuvotter Annemor 12 Wedgewood gloves. Those are the ones with the big problem with the charts for the fingers. I think I have worked out a solution, and have knit a little finger and am started on the ring finger. I will post on Ravelry once I find out if it's worked.

March comes in like a Lion

2011-03-05T14:55:00.002Z

It has been very cold going to work this past week, especially in the mornings when there has been an icy wind dropping the c. 9 degree Celsius London temperatures down to something that feels much colder. I've been wearing almost as many woollens as when we had the snow, including my gauntlets. And yet the days are much lighter now and the daffodils are out, so it feels like Spring.

Not much has happened at work this week, my new boss has been too busy to pay much attention to us, and I've been quite busy as well. The consultant is floundering, and his increasing signs of instability (talking to himself, huffing and puffing in exasperation at his PC, muttering unhappily coming out of meetings etc.) have been noticed and remarked on by several people. Perhaps he will crack under the strain and depart, but I don't know where that would leave us then.

Last Sunday I paid a visit to Studley Grange Craft Village, outside Swindon, as we had a day to kill while DS was doing a school thing in Swindon. I went because they advertise having a dollshouse shop, but that turned out to be almost entirely 1/12th scale Dolls House Emporium-type stuff. The complex is aimed squarely at the family market, with a children's play area and a Butterfly World/mini zoo, and various crafty stores doing children's workshops. But surprisingly they have quite a decent little knitting shop, called Crafty Yarn. It was relatively well stocked with Malabrigo, Artesano, Rico, Katia, and I think Debbie Bliss (not very good at remembering these things) and she said she was just about to move across the complex to a bigger unit. Telephone 01793 855535, info@crafty-yarn.co.uk I bought a skein of gorgeously soft lace yarn called Filigran Lace No 1 from Germany, 100/% merino superwash in a light robin's egg blue.

I quilted my crockery wallhanging. I straight stitched around all the elements and the border, and then did free-motion quilting along the diagonals of the border trellis, and meandering in the background. When I first started the quilting, it felt so strange, like I'd almost forgotten how to do it. I can't remember the last time I quilted something off the frame, and I haven't even done frame quilting for well over a year. The flip side of 'practice makes perfect' is 'use it or lose it'. Anyhow, although the trellis quilting is a bit shaky, it doesn't show against the print, and I felt more confident by the time I got to the meandering. I am thinking the border is a bit wide (3") so I may trim it down to 2 1/2".

What I need is to find a BFF who hates piecing, but loves doing a fabulous quilting job. Although then I suppose we would fall out over who got to keep the quilt.

I've been feeling fairly tired in the evenings and not up to tackling anything complicated, so I dug out my oldest knitting UFO. This is the 'Learn to Knit' Afghan by Barbara Walker, and is the project on which I re-learned to knit back in 2006. There are some 65 squares in different patterns in the book, and this week I completed the blue cabled square which is my 21st square. I bought 4 lots of Debbie Bliss Merino Aran for this project, a yarn which is now discontinued, and I'm running out. I may just aim to complete 24 or 25 squares and call it a day, rather than try to match the yarn. I can remember how difficult some of the squares seemed when I was learning, and I feel a sense of achievement that at my current skill level it was fairly easy to knock off the cabled square (having said that, I twisted the central column of stitches the wrong way and had to drop back several rows and crochet the stitch up again...). I will need to block all these squares to a uniform size before I can join them with crochet.

I finally got around to starting my Cookie A 'Sunshine' socks, in Colinette Jitterbug. These are my first Cookie A socks and I was a little bit nervous, but so far they seem straightforward enough. I am getting good stitch definition with this yarn and the lacy cable seems quite elastic so perhaps they will even stay up, unlike every other pair of handknit socks I have ever produced.

I saw in a knitting magazine that there is going to be a new fibre festival, and for once not in the depths of Wales or somewhere else far away, but in Thurleigh, Bedfordshire. Fibre-East will take place 23-24 July 2011. There's not a whole lot on the website yet, but presumably more will be added.

I'm wearing my Jaeger Natural Fleece Yoked Cardigan today and it is so cosy and warm, just the thing for March. It's not as scratchy as the Rowan Scottish Tweed cardigan I made a year ago, which is also warm but I don't like it on my bare skin as it irritates, so I have to wear it over a long sleeved collared shirt. I'm wearing the Jaeger over a short sleeve t-shirt, and no scratchiness or irritation, lovely.

Our passive-aggressive 12 year old cat seems to be developing a death wish. He regards my place on the sofa as 'his' and many evenings has decided that he wants to go to bed and that I should therefore vacate the spot. When I don't cooperate, he seemingly inadvertently starts getting in the way, by sitting on my knitting pattern, sitting on my yarn, or his favourite which is climbing into my lap and turning around in a circle as if settling down, but in reality tangling up his limbs and head into my knitting yarn as much as possible. I tolerate this to a certain degree, but a few nights ago he went too far. It was fairly late, almost 11pm, and he had been sitting next to me on the sofa glaring steadily, as he tried to persuade me to move by just using the powers of his mind. Suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, he turned his head and bit down on the tip of one of my bamboo knitting needles sticking out of my knitting basket, splitting it in half. Before I could even react, he turned his head back and resumed glaring at me. Now this wasn't playfulness, or attention-getting. It came across as pure unadulterated spite: "you ain't moving so look what I'm going to do." I still haven't forgiven him, and now I feel like I need to keep my knitting up out of the way when I'm not actually using it. I'm going to try sanding down the split tip, because it is one of my set of Clover bamboo needles. Stupid cat. And his insurance bills have gone up sky high since he had an expensive thyroid problem last year. He should get a job.

Still employed

2011-02-26T20:38:00.003Z

Thank you everyone for your sympathy about my job situation. It has gotten better, in a rather unexpected way. I was all ready to hand my notice in, and took advantage of a manager-less last Friday to clean out my desk, clean out my PC files and bring home my personal stuff. I also started updating my CV etc.

Then on Tuesday I saw my boss' boss was in the office, with his door open, and I thought 'I'll give it one last shot and ask again for a working day at home'. I went in and asked if he had a few minutes, and began my speech by acknowledging that he had previously refused the request. The speech went out the window when he denied having done so, and I realised my boss had lied to me about that. I'm afraid I rather lost it at that point, and poured out my woes about the uncertain situation, the lack of handover, the stress of not having a competent person in charge etc. He was genuinely shocked because he said he had assumed my boss had given us a lengthy and thorough handover so that we were all happy and knew what we were doing. Hah! He also said he had begun to suspect something wasn't right as the consultant didn't seem to know about several issues that he should have done.

The upshot is that my boss' boss has now assumed direct management of me and my colleagues. He has asked both me and the consultant to write down our current work responsibilities, so that he has an overview and can see where any gaps are. He acknowledges my request to work from home and will evaluate the request once he sees what I am doing, which isn't a 'no' so there is some chance. So I feel better now that someone with proper authority is in charge, and am prepared to give it some time and see what develops.

I went along to the I-Knit knitting group in London this week, where unfortunately the curse of the I-Knit alcohol license struck again. I have learned my lesson not to drink their cider, but apparently the white wine is no better as I managed to overshoot on my increases on my Holden Shawlette. I un-knit those rows but discovered I had an odd number of stitches which I traced to a missed yarnover several rows previously. Sigh... I'm all ready to start the lace border now. Loving this Malabrigo yarn.

On my Liesl cardigan, you may recall that I was experimenting with the fit of the yoke and sleeve. The original yoke depth is ok, I think, but I didn't like how extremely tight the sleeve was. The cardigans in the pattern pictures all have very bodyhugging sleeves as well. I ripped back my sleeve knitting and ripped back the body to the end of the yoke, and this time I cast on two repeats under the arm instead of just one. Then I knit a bit of body and a bit of sleeve, and tried it on again. This time the sleeve seems to fit well, so I think I will go with that.

I also realised that I missed the framed box in the pattern entitled 'Optional' where it turns out the buttonhole instructions are given for the yoke. I therefore have no buttonholes and will have to work something out later. I am not that upset as the buttonholes in the pictures on the pattern are all gaping wide open so hopefully I can come up with a better alternative.

I put the final border on my Kitchen Crockery wallhanging and sandwiched it up using a themed backing fabric featuring pots of marmalade and jam. So far I have quilted around the border and the crockery with the walking foot, and I plan to stipple in the background.

As I type this, I am also trying out a new bit of kit to convert VHS videos to DVDs. Both our VCRs started misbehaving years ago and wouldn't play tapes properly any more, and you can't seem to get them fixed either as they are obsolete, nor can you buy one without spending loads of money. But a lovely neighbour (Hi Rosy!) had two she wasn't using, and gave one to me, and it works! So I have seized the opportunity to convert some of my antique VHS tapes, especially the craft ones. So far I have converted Susan G's 'Hand-Manipulated Stitches on the Knitting Machine' and at the moment am converting 'Knitting Machine Maintenance' by Peter Free. I'm using a product called 'Video2PC' by Ion, which comes with software on a CD, a little video capture box, and a cable. I also had to buy a Scart-to-Composite plug. You use it by plugging the video capture box into a USB port on the PC, plugging that into the VCR using the cable and the Scart plug, and turning on the VCR. When you play a video on the VCR, you see it playing on the computer screen and you just press the 'Record' button on screen to capture the video in real time and convert it to a digital file which you can burn to a DVD. The 60-minute Hand-Manipulated Stitches video converted to a 1.79Gb file. I haven't tried burning a DVD yet as I don't have any, but I've got some on order.

Almost forgot! I finished my scarf in Katia Ondas. I have to say that I didn't enjoy knitting this. You have to unfold the ribbon in advance so that you can knit along the edge, and as I knit with the yarn in my left hand, it was an awkward interrupted process of knitting a few stitches, sorting out the ribbon, knitting a few more stitches etc. I took my cue from the comments on Ravelry and only cast on 7 stitches so that I could get a longer scarf. Not convinced about this. I wore it to work this week but it felt a bit like wearing colour-coordinated seaweed around my neck.

The times, they are a changing...

2011-02-19T19:09:00.003Z

I have pretty much decided to give in my notice at my job, which could mean that I will (hopefully temporarily) have LOTS more time for crafts.

This was my new job that I found almost a year ago, after being made redundant from my old job of 18 years. I like the organisation and the culture, and I like most of what I'm doing, but my boss is a very difficult person to work for - her work habits are shambolic, she's a diva, and extremely jealous of anything she perceives as a threat (e.g. me) so very reluctant to hand anything over and I don't think she has a mentoring bone in her body. I was tolerating this initially because I hoped they would agree I could work one day a week at home, but that was turned down. I continued to tolerate it because I really didn't want to be jobless, but last week the final straw arrived when she called me to one side and announced she was being seconded onto a project team for six months or more, and that the APC (annoying pompous consultant) was now going to be my manager. This guy has only been with us a few months, doesn't know squat about the organisation and lacks basic skills such as editing or proofreading, so there is suddenly no support net for me in my role. Also I can't stand him. But my boss' 5 minute handover did not acknowledge this increased pressure on me in any way - I think she views me as equivalent to the photocopier and that I will just keep plugging away with no need for feedback or motivation.

I'm going to wait a few weeks just to make sure I know my own mind, and also to bring my time there up to an exact year. Part of my brain is screaming in intermittent terror but the rest of it is eagerly anticipating just walking away. Shame though, as I could knit there on my breaks.

On top of all of this, I have ANOTHER cold. There ought to be some law that when you have had one stinking cold, you should be automatically immune for at least five months.

Not feeling well means lots of sitting on the sofa knitting, so I managed to finish my Jaeger Natural Fleece Yoked Cardigan. I designed this myself working from the numbers in Ann Budd's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns. It is knit in one piece to the armpits, then the sleeves, then all picked up for knitting the yoke. The edges are single crochet. It's lovely and warm, and surprisingly light as the yarn is quite lofty.

I am enjoying knitting the Liesl Cardigan in Knitcol variegated yarn, the lace pattern is only four rows so very easy to memorise. This is knit from the top down, and the instructions say to knit the yoke to the depth of the armpit. I couldn't tell if it was deep enough or not because the unblocked lace was pulling up so much, so I put it on a longer cable and gave it a quick block.

I knit a few more repeats then took off stitches for the sleeve. I am still concerned that the fit is going to be too tight on the armpits, so I have only knit about two inches on the body, and have put caps on the ends of the cables (don't you love interchangeable circulars!) to hold the body stitches. Meanwhile I have picked up for one sleeve, to knit a few inches of that so I can try the cardigan on. If it's too tight, I will rip back and put some more repeats on the yoke, but I want to find that out now before I knit the entire body.

I put together the Kitchen Crockery Foundation-Pieced wallhanging and am now adding the borders. I like how bright and cheerful this is, a nice thing to be sewing now that Spring is in the air.

And in honour of Spring, and the crocuses and daffodils coming up in the lawn, I dug out my Quilt in a Day Spring basket wallhanging that I made some years ago, and hung it up on the wall.

Today was my monthly quilting group meeting for the little group that I run. I suggested to them that our next group project could be to make seasonal wallhangings, because I like to have a changing assortment on my walls to reflect the seasons. Blank looks all around and no enthusiasm, so I guess we aren't going to be doing that.

This is what I did today, pieced together 10 blocks for my Kaffe Fassett Stars Over England quilt, which is half of the total of 20. I don't often make block quilts anymore because I really get bored doing the same thing over and over, at least with this quilt the fabrics are pretty wild, but I was still quite bored after doing 10 and got my Holden Shawlette out for the last 40 minutes or so and just sat knitting. I am using a fast flying geese method for these, which is explained in several places on the internet such as here. I had to guess at the size of squares to cut but tried my guess out in scrap fabric before cutting out the quilt, and these stars are going together quite smoothly (except for the one where I accidentally cut the background square too small, but let's not talk about that one...)

Me and my big mouth

2011-02-13T10:12:00.000Z

I have to tidy up the house today, as some nice people that I hardly know are coming over to see my dollshouses. This is what happens when you have too much to drink at your husband's office xmas party and the nice woman next to you says "Oh, I always wanted a dollshouse when I was little!"

Along a similar vein, following my boastful post last week (which was intended to be tongue in cheek), every time something has gone wrong this week with a craft, my DH has said innocently: "but I thought you were the boss of your crafts?" It was somewhat funny the first time, and several reiterations later is making me feel homicidal. I wonder if they let you blog in prison. Or knit. I suppose you aren't allowed to knit because the needles would be potential weapons. Which leads me back to what I want to do to DH...

Anyway.

I've continued to sew the Paper pieced kitchenware blocks this week, as they are so much fun to do. I'm using some red and blue Dutch fabric that I bought years ago at a quilt show in The Hague. This week I've finished the rest of the blocks: teapot, milk jug, tea cup and plate.

This is what the hanging will look like.

I finished the Baby Surprise Jacket in Mission Falls 1824 cotton. As many knitters before me have observed, this pattern really is an act of faith. Even though I knew what it would turn into, I still had trouble working out what part of the jacket I was actually knitting at any one time, and the final transformation into a jacket is like a magic trick. I joined the shoulder seams by crocheting on the right side, to make a feature of them, and added a little collar. I have made buttonholes on both sides, and will sew one set closed when I find out if I am giving it to a boy or girl. No destination in mind yet, just waiting for the next baby to come along. The size is definitely not new born, probably more like six months or so.

I also finished the Sanquhar Gloves at long last, darning in the ends and wet blocking them. When I washed them, I purposely worked at the palms a little to shrink them down a bit, and they do fit better now but are still a bit loose in the palms. I wore them to work this week and they are very warm. Guess what, it's really really hard to take a picture of your own hands. I had to improvise by suspending the camera from the clothes rack and using self timer.

The wet blocking flattened out the knitting beautifully and the gloves are quite smooth now. I'm a bit disappointed that I don't have good definition on all my checkerboard patterns, a result I think of my uneven tension and the hairness of the yarn making some stitches more prominent than others.

It was a really fun knit to do and I feel a sense of achievement at finishing these with such small needles (1.5mm) and lace weight yarn. The geometric pattern is easy to memorise and yet gives a constant feeling of progress as you move upwards, and touches such as the gussets between the fingers and the meeting of the three vertical bands at the tip of each finger are satisfyingly structural.

I've crocheted a bit more of the bands on the Jaeger Yoked Cardigan and have been knitting away on my Katia Ruffled Scarf this week. I've also cast on for the Holden Shawlette using a limited edition Malabrigo fingering yarn that I bought at Imagiknit in San Francisco and have been saving for something special.

Well, off to tidy the house up now.