Knitting on the Green

Christmas Countdown - 2 days to go.

2009-12-23T13:49:00.004Z

Christmas knitting 2009

Items on list: 17 (unchanged)
Items started: 17 (+2)
Items finished: 16 (+2)
Net progress since Sunday - +2

Items still unfinished which are needed for Christmas Day - 0.

I win.

(I should probably admit that one item was finished on the train, and another is still blocking, and the final one is only technically started. But really, who cares at this point!)

Happy Christmas, all...

Countdown, 5 days to go...

2009-12-20T11:16:00.003Z

Christmas knitting 2009

Items on list: 17 (unchanged)
Items started: 15 (+2)
Items finished: 14 (+3)
Net progress this week - +3

As ever, Franklin has hit the nail on the head...

Snow day

2009-12-18T16:09:00.004Z

If you don't want my rail rant, just look at the pretty picture, and reflect that this is enough snow to bring public transport to its knees in this neck of the woods.

So, obviously, it wasn't as easy as all that. No Definitiveness. When I got up at 6:15, the snow was about 6" deep and the rail companies were saying different things. National Express East Anglia alerted me to the 0659, my usual Friday train, being "indefinitely delayed" due to Something-or-Other at Watlington; First Capital Connect ... well, let's just say that none of what ensued was recorded on their website.

Went down to the station for the 0732 which was delayed for 23 minutes. Sat there (knitting with gloves on) bitterly reflecting that predicting in last night's blog post exactly how long the train would be delayed might give me some satisfaction if the waiting wasn't in sub-zero temperatures on a metal seat.

Got on train at 0755.

Train pulls into Cambridge station at 0804 and announces it needs to wait for extra carriages.

Extra carriages arrive at 0820 and are hitched to the back of train.

Train breaks down.

*Extra carriages are detached from back of train; we all move back 4 carriages and start again.

Train breaks down.*

Repeat pattern from * to * once more. (No, honestly.)

By this time it is nearly 0900 (when I'm due to start work 60 miles away) - we are told it will be an indefinite wait until one or all of the "units" are fixed. Meanwhile, people with WiFi are reporting that the three trains after ours are cancelled.

Hear King's Lynn train announced; leave train; change platform; go home.

Work happily until 2.30 when the power goes out for an hour. It's thawing fairly fast here and small branches are falling off even the impeccably-manicured trees round the Green, so presumably something fell on the power line. It was back about an hour later...

I'll make up the lost time sometime over the weekend, but for now I'm going to pick up my tea order from the post office and do some Christmas knitting...

Deep and crisp and drifty

2009-12-17T22:04:00.005Z

This is the view from outside an hour ago. Now, I know there are people from more wintery climes who regularly read this blog and will be laughing heartily at the pathetic picture this paints (although do click to embiggen the wonderful cross-hatching the wind is creating). But at least one of them has spent serious time in this country, and realises Quite How Much Havoc this will generate. This photo was taken at the point the BBC thinks we're getting "light snow" and 3 hours before we are due to hit "heavy snow". And it's seriously blustery out there...

I'm hoping that it will all get Definitive before I have to leave for work - on the announced-on-the-radio "there are no trains leaving East Anglia" scale of Definitive; rather than my having to plod down to the station to find that there might be a train in 23 minutes and then there isn't but the screens go blank and I stand there for ages and then have to come home anyway... In that case, I already have official sanction to come back home and start on the mountain of stuff I've forwarded to myself... I'd much rather wake up, find out it's impossible to get anywhere and do some decent work, preferably in my pyjamas.

On a completely separate tack, I went to the Poetry Library today for work-related reasons, and met some really nice people. After we'd finished the main part of the meeting we heard about their Lost Quotations service. If you can help, or comment, do!

On the way back from the Poetry library, a pigeon crapped on my hat. I was so utterly and totally affronted by this that it took me several minutes to realise that if I hadn't been wearing a hat, I'd have been dealing with pigeon-poop in my hair. And also made me realise I hadn't blogged the hat yet. Another day.

Countdown, not quite two weeks to go...

2009-12-13T22:12:00.000Z

Threat level: probably edging from substantial to severe...

Christmas knitting 2009
Items on list: 17 (unchanged)
Items started: 13 (+1)
Items finished: 11 (+2)
Net progress this week - +2

Eek. Having said that, I'm 80% of the way through the most complicated thing left on the list...

Is it just me...

2009-12-07T07:44:00.002Z

... or was John Humphreys and Justin Webb bemusedly covering Mr-Squiggles-gate and the "paedo" mouse song this morning one of the funniest things ever?

Apologies for the links to the Sun. It was that or the Daily Mail...

Countdown, 3 weeks to go...

2009-12-06T19:22:00.002Z

Threat level: still at substantial...

Christmas knitting 2009

Items on list: 17 (unchanged)
Items started: 12 (unchanged)
Items finished: 9 (+3)
Net progress this week - +3 - yay...

Back to my needles... The usual Attempt at a Christmas tree went up on the Green today. I'd like to hope it'll last any length of time, but I'd bet it'll only be a matter of days before a) the wind blows it down b) joyriders crash into it c) the Yoof decide climbing it would be a great idea d) all of the above...

It's beginning to look a lot like...

2009-12-04T16:22:00.004Z

After a really nice evening at IKL last night, and an earlyish night, I woke up this morning feeling completely appalling. Couldn't work out whether I was getting flu, or whether I wanted to throw up, or what. So apart from a trip downstairs for water and pills, and another to phone work and let them know I wasn't going to be in, the morning sort of didn't happen.

This afternoon I've been feeling a lot better; and sometime or other while I was lying around feeling sorry for myself, this happened outside...

It's amazing how a single line of coloured light-bulbs can make somewhere look magic. And at least this afternoon I have the energy to knit...

Last day of the month...

2009-11-30T22:50:00.004Z

and NaBloPoMo achieved...

And also, the biggest bit of knitting for this Christmas (I think, have still to decide what to do for one present!)

The Patent Dryness Test was reached. More photos to come...

Thanks for sticking with the posts this month; I'm going to try and keep up with more frequent posting, but posting every day in December may be a no-no!

Study in contrasts

2009-11-29T18:15:00.004Z

It was One of Those Days, weatherwise. Woke up to driving hail, and by 9am there had already been a period of blue skies, and then this (click to embiggen) which Never Bodes Well - that was the second bout of hail coming over. I do love the 'sun-before-the-storm' moments though - the light is so amazing.

It was vile outside, and a perfect day for just sitting around knitting and making copious quantities of tea, but I had promises to keep...

After a quick look round the shops (and a reassuring discovery that M&S's sizes for this winter are less punishing than last year) and very nice noodle lunch, Sue and I went to the Val McDermid/Mark Billingham talk at Winter Wordfest (.pdf link). I was delighted to find out the moderator was Nicholas Wroe of the Guardian review, but actually they hardly needed him.

While I haven't seen McDermid speak in person (I had to back out of a previous event), I've heard her on the radio a lot and was prepared to be entertained, which I was; Billingham was an unknown quantity, and because his books are on occasion very dark, I was unprepared for his being quite wonderfully funny (apparently he was a stand-up comedian before he turned to writing). It was a fantastic two-hander with a very light touch from Wroe; and the opening chapters of both books, Blood line (Billingham) and Fever of the bone (McDermid) were gripping enough to send me off to the library catalogue as soon as I got home to place reservations...

And in the interests of continuity; with just over 4 weeks to go the Christmas Threat Level is at Substantial...

Christmas knitting 2009

Items on list: 17 (+2 - one I'd forgotten , and one I'd already done but forgotten to count)
Items started: 12 (+3)
Items finished: 6 (+2, one of them the biggest bit of knitting for this Christmas, yay)
Net progress this week - 0 (hmmnn...)

Ninja Flossie

2009-11-28T23:36:00.002Z

Spent last night over at Wibbo's in Hove. Basement cat Flossie is such good value...

Maintained my reputation as a Weather Goddess - was awake for a couple of hours during the night listening to the rain battering against the front windows - but we had a good wander around and shop and I only got completely soaked on my way back up to the station...

Genre-girl

2009-11-27T22:48:00.000Z

Sitting in a café recently talking to a colleague who used to work in a local public library, I innocently said "oh, I'm a handcuffs-and-guns sort of girl, myself". A chap at the next table turned so quickly he probably got whiplash.

Maybe it'd have sounded more harmless if I'd included the haunted castles...

(Today I am a) small blue thing

2009-11-26T23:39:00.002Z

I hope I haven't posted this before. I am incredibly tired and have had a very stressy week so far! Am looking forward to 24 hours or so beside the seaside with Wibbo but there's a day's work to get through first...

A 2-year-birthday sweater for my nephew. I haven't phoned them (haven't been back early enough to call at a civilised hour), but gather from my Dad that the parcel did actually arrive. In which case it will have contained this. Pattern is Ziggy Zag from Stolen Stitches. I did have one problem, which meant counting three times round the neck divide, which turned out later to be a problem with the pattern rather than me. The PDF's been corrected now, though...

I hope it fits, and suits...

They know how to draw you in...

2009-11-25T21:33:00.002Z

... those British Library types. Headlining an e-mail "Prize draw, Jeremy Irons and live music" is a sure-fire winner with me ...

The Supremes, part 1

2009-11-24T22:27:00.002Z

Sorry, couldn't resist the post title as a West Wing nut.

As ever in this country, radical change comes slowly, quietly and robed in tradition. You had to be quite interested in that sort of thing to notice the UK Supreme Court opening on October 5, despite it being the first formal division between the judiciary and the legislature since the late 14th century. But if you've walked around Parliament Square in the last couple of years, you'll have seen the most beautiful building (which Pevsner described as art nouveau Gothic - two for the price of one, then) being unearthed from a coating of air pollution and neglect.

I had heard all sorts of good things about the building - the Peter Blake carpet; the curtains by Timorous Beasties... So I took my courage in both hands and e-mailed the court from work to find out whether it was possible to visit. Within a day or so, I had an e-mail from the Librarian, inviting us over, and mailed my colleagues to see who was interested; in the end there were three parties of us, and I put myself in the second one. We had a fantastic visit last Friday - the Court rooms are beautiful and it was fascinating finding out how on earth an important legal library is built quickly using chunks of existing libraries and a minimum number of staff.

While we were there, though, we discovered that most of the building (apart from the library) is accessible to the general public, day in, day out. The Court doesn't sit on Fridays so the court rooms are wanderable-about as a tourist then, but anyone can visit the building (subject to airline-type security checks as with anywhere on Whitehall), sit at the back of the court and see proceedings, look at the architecture, visit the exhibition about the court (and watch proceedings on plasma screens) and generally see business being done.

Makes me (quietly, and in an entirely British way, you understand) extremely proud of what's been done. Not as flamboyant, or as scandalous, as many other things which have been happening recently, but possibly, potentially, more important in the long run. While the current members of the Court are Law Lords, the intention is that future appointments won't be; and six centuries of tradition will gently be severed...

(Part 2 of this post will be sorted out if it ever stops raining, and I can take some photos of the outside of the building, which is glorious. Check the links above for pictures of the inside.)

2009-11-23T22:40:00.003Z

The day ended better than it started - having looked up the large number of cancelled trains this morning just before setting off for the station, I was somewhat aggrieved to find mine had joined them only 12 minutes later... Presumably the people who update the website don't get up as early as the people intending to travel on the trains... And of course it was raining...

However, I made an excursion to Muji at lunchtime (ostensibly for pens for Wibbo, who's exiled out of Mujiland) and the sun was shining, and after a reasonably productive day at work, I met a friend for dinner (the Papaya Tree on Kensington High Street; I'd recommend it for food and service; apparently, so would Michael Winner; but you can't have it all...) and the train home worked, albeit with only half the number of carriages.

Checking blogs when I got back, funniest LOLcats for a long while, if you've ever had one of those cats who's permanently on the wrong side of a closed door...

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Lazy(ish) Sunday

2009-11-22T15:56:00.007Z

The weather is pretty terrible outside, and public transport is pretty limited on a Sunday, so I've had a fairly lazy time knitting and pottering around tidying up, paying the bills ready to post after payday etc... This is the only Little Ray of Sunshine this afternoon, and it didn't last long - not long enough to go out and plant the bulbs I bought earlier in the autumn, anyway!

I did produce my course blurb, syllabus and requirements list for next year's Cottenham Summer School (the link is to this year's programme but gives you an idea of what's usually on offer). Feedback last year said people had enjoyed it and would like an extra day, which is very flattering but will be pretty tiring - 4 days' teaching with the same class is a lot less tiring than multiple classes doing the same thing though...

I also had a good clearout of the spice rack in the kitchen. I got rid of some jars I don't really use, and made a list of what I need to refill (there are South Asian, South East Asian and Korean shops just on the main road around the corner from the Cambridge Blue so I can sort this out before knitting on Tuesday...) It's a big rack (about 90cm/3' by 60cm/2'), with 1-lb jam-jars, and one of the most satisfying things about getting a kitchen built a decade or so ago - you can draw something on the back of an envelope and a cabinet-maker will get together proper plans and produce something like this...

Anyway; got rid of the most out-of-date things including three separate quantities of yeast (haven't even bought bread for 2 years let alone made it) and some generic curry powders I never really liked... And although I really like star anise, I also seem to really like buying star anise more... Most of the jars came from the rather wonderful Daily Bread, but it's not the easiest place to get to without a car; I'll have to try and get there on a Saturday sometime after Christmas.

My hat from the Woolly Wormhead Mystery KAL on Ravelry is done and blocking - but I'll wait for the full reveal to put up a picture; and I started another Christmas present today...

The countdown begins - 5 weeks to go

2009-11-21T19:17:00.004Z

It's that time of year again.

Christmas knitting 2009

Items on list: 15
Items started: 9
Items finished: 6

Hmmnnn... A couple of things on the list are smallish, but a couple are quite large... better get knitting!

Probably best that after many years of making my own Christmas cards I realised I was devoid both of inspiration and of time this year; found some nice charity ones online which arrived today... and realised the last overseas posting date for Christmas is actually only about a fortnight away!

Slightly funny moment in the library this morning - went to shelve some Young Adult books and there was this huge gap on the shelves in the middle, in a library which is chronically short of shelving. It took me a minute to realise that that was where the Twilight books would sit - if we ever actually had them in the library for more than 30 seconds or so at a time... Presumably they did come back at some point last week before flitting off into the darkness again...

Pretty, and not so pretty

2009-11-20T20:30:00.004Z

Old news, I know, but I just went to find out what this year's Christmas stamps are, and my heart was made glad. Pre-Raphaelite stained-glass windows!!!!

The page was slightly marred by the quote from the Royal Mail’s Head of Speical Stamps, presumably produced by the Royal Mail's Head of Special Spelling without the intervention of the Royal Mail's Head of Special (or, indeed, any) Proofreading.

And then the not-pretty. I went to pull a scarf out of the cupboard today to wear, and found this:

It's not moth; fear not. I think it must have got caught on a door-handle in the cupboard under the stairs... But it's not exactly at the end of the scarf either...

There's a good 18" to re-knit; and it's the infamous "can't count to eight" scarf, and of course it's the end with 5 tassels rather than 4...

I may need to wait until after Christmas to sort it out.

Bluebird

2009-11-19T23:23:00.000Z

Some knitting in today's post - this is my mam's Christmas present, Rosemary Hill's Bluebird. I can show you this because she doesn't read this blog, and my Dad is far too nice a man to reveal the secret...

This is the first end - I'm ploughing down the long stretch of very simple, easy-to-memorise lace in the middle, to the accompaniment of a lot of podcasts (finally starting to catch up after a stretch of audio-book-listening!) Either another 6 or another 14 repeats to go, depending on how much yarn is left... I think it might be the longer version, though. And then another end. There's a little bit of beading on the ends.

The yarn is a quite wonderful Knitwitches blend - 70% baby alpaca, 20% silk, 10% cashmere - which isn't on their website - and the colour is slightly greener than it is here - heading slightly towards the teal end of turquoise.

Baby Mahalia

2009-11-18T23:43:00.000Z

My Dad edited this photo while I was staying with them this September, but I suddenly realised I'd never posted it... This has always been known as the "Baby Mahalia" photo at home - it just needed the Photoshop addition of the microphone to make it art; and yes, that's me, 42 or so years ago. Obviously, the singing voice isn't a patch on the original...

The Habit of Art

2009-11-17T23:46:00.001Z

Went to the press night of Alan Bennett's new play, The Habit of Art, tonight. I always forget that under that cosy exterior, the man has a mind for theatre like a steel trap, designed on post-modern lines. The "main action" - between Auden and Britten, two men whose work I admire without really understanding anything about their lives - is a play within a play; and people are constantly breaking in and out of role. There's a lot of playing about with self-consciously self-referential writing; and the nearest comparison I can think of is Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildernstern Are Dead, in the hopping in and out of two universes; except that, literally 40 years on, it's not really like that either... Richard Griffiths and Alex Jennings are extraordinarily good as Auden and Britten, and Frances De La Tour does a wonderful job as the rather slinky director. It's booked out, other than returns, until the end of January; but there are another couple of months of the run after that...

ETA - reviews from the Guardian, the Independent and the Telegraph are somewhat raving and deservedly so; the Times is slightly less convinced...

Stocking chart and guide

2009-11-16T19:24:00.003Z

Hi - thanks to all who've commented on the stocking. I'm still quietly quite chuffed myself...

I've put up a couple of files for the chart and a bit of a guide to it. To make the stocking you also need a copy of Folk Socks because the braid, heel and toe pattern are lifted from there. Both are PDF files.

The chart file is here; and the guide is here. Let me know if there are problems - I had horrendous trouble uploading them and am still not confident they're viewable by anyone else.

And as a result of this experience I'm looking for someone else to handle my mail and possibly my domain names - anyone got good ISP recommendations please?

Look! Look!

2009-11-15T15:52:00.006Z

My nephew's stocking has been started, and finished.

This is one of those days when I'm so glad I have this blog, otherwise I'd be wandering around the village accosting strangers (or, worse, non-knitting acquaintances) with my knitting, waving it in their faces and saying "Look what I've done!! no, no, look!!!"

I have had so much fun with the binge-knitting this weekend...

It's been a very quiet weekend, which was fine; I was meant to have a dinner guest last night, who had to cancel earlier in the week, but the Knitting Obsession had possessed me by then, and there'd probably have been nothing started and I'd have been sitting in a big pile of yarn and books come 7pm and it would all have been a bit embarrassing...

So this was the view on Friday afternoon/evening when I got back from meeting Rosie... Books include Alice Starmore's Fair Isle Knitting, Nancy Bush's Folk Socks, and Jan Eaton's Cross Stitch Motif Bible. I started off using a pencil and a printed-out Excel spreadsheet, but in the end took it over to the PC and blocked things in there - much easier apart from the lettering...

Then I started with a Latvian Braid. I actually managed the two-colour long-tail cast on this requires; but after I'd finished the braid, I realised that wasn't what I wanted and ripped it back. Repeatedly. In the end, I worked out what I actually wanted to do, and went to bed to sleep on it, and by the time I left for Tesco the next morning, I had a provisional crochet cast-on and braid.

By about lunchtime, I had three braids, one pattern and the lettering...

And then I knitted some more, pausing to blog briefly and change CDs occasionally (Jeffery Deaver's The Empty Chair - I'm working through the Lincoln Rhyme audiobooks in order) until about 8pm when I ran out of chart. Stopped to cook a bit of dinner, add some more rows to the spreadsheet/chart and then settled down to knit some more... and it was just-another-row or just-another-CD until .... erm ... 2:20am. How did that happen? (Actually, that happens to me quite often with colourwork, particularly colourwork which is growing quickly...)

Needless to say, it was a slow start this morning, but while listening to The Archers Omnibus and the rather wonderful Desert Island Discs this morning (it was Julia Donaldson, who wrote The Gruffalo among other things; I haven't read it, or any of her others, but she was funny, and warm, and moving, and picked some lovely stuff), I danced along the foot and finished the toe; and to the accompaniment of the first CD of Dorothy L Sayers's Strong Poison, in the Ian Carmichael reading (of course), I picked up the cast-on, did an attached I-Cord edging and sewed in the ends.

And it is done!!

Things I like:

It's festive and garish and still looks traditional
It's the size intended (hanging up like that, it measures 65 cm (26") from the top of the hanging loop to the toe)
The heel is exactly right for a stocking that's designed to hang up (the heel and toe both come from the Mamluke pattern from "Folk Socks"); I was hoping this was the case, but it actually is...
My swatch came out at 18sts/10cm, which meant casting on 72 sts - which meant I had a huge choice of Fair Isle patterns at my disposal - and then when I reached the heel I discovered that the Mamluke pattern is worked over 72 sts as well so it was a no-brainer...
It's a proper sock - most of the ones I've seen weren't really in proportion
After the Latvian braids, I had no ripping back, at all - very unusual for something I've worked out myself
It was the most satisfying bit of knitting I've done for a long time. I worked on a bit of a scarf a couple of weeks ago which had the same enjoying-the-moment appeal; but this was wonderful - there was nothing at all I'd rather be doing on earth than using this lovely yarn (Cascade 220) and making this great big sock. It's been a busy week after a busy weekend, and having a three-day weekend was just what was required.
I left long floats rather than knitting them in (other than for the lettering) and that worked very well - it's unblocked in the photos but I think a quick hover with the steam iron will probably sort it out without the need for blocking.

And now, the obligatory reverse-of-the-work shot...

Not too shabby, if I say so as shouldn't...

I've written up some brief instructions and the chart - I need to sanity-check it (possibly by knitting another one for myself without the lettering but with a different chart on it) and will then try and work out how to upload the PDFs somewhere!

And now I need to start all those other little things you do over the weekend... To be fair, I took stretching breaks (generally when I put a new CD in) to do bits of washing, ironing, washing-up etc. so it's not actually unhygienic; and I do have food in; but I could do with giving everything a bit, no make that a lot, of a tidy-up. Time for some more Peter Wimsey, I think!

Knitting!

2009-11-14T20:41:00.004Z

I finally got round to updating my Ravelry projects page with all the stuff I've been doing which I can show (there are still two or three things I can't because the recipients are also Rav members...)

And realised I don't think I ever got round to showing you the finished Moorish Sweater.

This was a fun knit. I love two-colour knitting and this is chunky weight so it knitted up fast - despite not taking it on the train very often it took just over 3 weeks. The yarn is Sirdar's late lamented Peru, some of which was bought incredibly on sale at Kemps to eke out the 8 balls of blue I've had in the stash for a while. This pic was taken at the KTog at the beginning of October when it was still a little too warm to be wearing it, really... It's definitely going to be a staple this winter - it's light and warm at the same time. It's pilling slightly, but not too badly...

Getting quite excited about this Christmas stocking - it's looking really good. More on that tomorrow...