Can't blog... knitting...

There’s a reasonable amount of progress to report…

The Sivia Harding Shetland Garden shawl is coming on – I’m on about row 85 (out of a hundred and thirty something), and it now takes about 15 min to do a right side row, but progress is being made.

First zebra sock… – Opal Zebra for most of it, toes and heels in woolcraft sock yarn (“man sock” yarn, grabbed at The Skep). My first afterthought heel – possibly to become my favourite heel, although I’m STILL getting holes on the ankle bones, but I think I have a way round it (other than just putting a couple of stitches in – shh… don’t tell the knitting police… )

First sock for my mother – Sockotta in 2×2 garter rib, gradually decreasing down to 2×1 garter rib – she has somewhat swollen ankles, so I want to make them comfortable. She is also sensitive to wool, and definitely allergic to spandex. This makes socks a tricky issue, but we think she can probably cope with the 40% superwash wool in sockotta (it’s tickly wool that she really can’t cope with).

And I’ve not only been knitting – here are two “skeins” (kind of small, I know, but still… ) of handspun.

Oh and my copy of No Sheep for You finally arrived from Amazon this morning. I was expecting to be fairly interested in the information about the various non-wool yarns, but wasn’t expecting anything much from the patterns. So I’ve been blown away – the information looks excellent at first glance, and I love nearly all the patterns. (And I so DON’T need anything to add to my list of “must-knits”!)

Not totally pointless surfing...

I did find the Woolly Thoughts website. Pat and Steve did a talk at Skip North. They are a pair of maths teachers who produce mathematically-inspired items (lots of afghans, but other things too). While I found their talk fun, and lots of their ideas were lovely, I did find the link between knitting and their designs a little tenuous at times. But this page of their website is wonderful.

(And I’m not knocking their designs at all – I totally and utterly loved them – it’s just that it wasn’t always clear to me what knitting them added to anything.)

Wibble

If you come round to our house this evening you may find a small heap of something sitting muttering to itself at the bottom of the stairs, or maybe under the stairs. It’ll be me. Don’t disturb me. I’ve had one of those days.

To start with: I’m going to be observed tomorrow – in not one, but two lessons. So it’s probably a good idea to do a little more preparation than usual, right? Yes, I thought so too, so Ruth and I went into my work this morning to pick up a couple of textbooks. While we were there I thought it would be a good idea to get a carpark pass for the new car (I rarely use the car for work, but with Ruth with me I didn’t feel like cycling, and I didn’t want to have the car clamped in the carpark… ) Where to stick the new sticker? Next to the tax disk would probably be best… Where’s the tax disk? Arrrggghhh!!! There is no tax disk…

So this afternoon has been dominated by a stressful and tedious experience with the automated telephone system of the DVLA. I was particularly taken by the bit where they told me “If you have a renewal notice, press 1. If you have a log book, press 2.” Since I had neither a renewal notice, nor a log book (did I say it’s a new car – the log book is in the post… ), I did neither, but held on and waited… and was told, rather officiously “You need to press either 1 or 2.”

I’m not going to narrate the whole procedure, but that gives you a flavour of the kind of thing I met. I have to say that when I finally managed to find a real live person with a gorgeous Swansea accent, she was tremendously helpful. And when Ruth and I got the bus to the next village where the post office would be able to help me, they too were very helpful (and they sold little squares of Green and Black’s chocolate for 10p each – that made things a lot better )

So things were getting better. We have a legal car. No-one threatened us with nasty big fines, and I was even home in time to pick the boys up from school. And now I have a cup of tea.

Everything should be fine, right?

Well, so you’d think. Except I’ve been in a little bit of denial about dinner. I bought a tongue in Waitrose this morning thinking I’d have plenty of time to boil it for dinner tonight. But by the time I got to it it was getting a bit tight. I’d found a way round it – boil it now, but eat it tomorrow, and have tomorrow’s dinner tonight. Genius!

So everything really is sorted?

No.

There I am, merrily surfing the web for no reason whatsoever (except that there’s a limit to how much Lazytown I can cope with, and I’m way too stressed and grumpy to even attempt finding them a non-tv activity… )

And suddenly the computer goes off. I check the living room – yup, Lazytown has disappeared too. I have a quick look at the circuit breakers under the stairs – at a quick glance (without a torch) they look fine – hmmm – I go round next door. Nope, it’s just us. I get a torch. OK, found the tripped switch. I turn off the cooker, and flip the switch. The television comes back on. I turn on the cooker. The television goes off again. I turn off the cooker and flip the switch again.

And then, just because, rather than doing anything at all sensible about it, I write down the whole pathetic tale and let the world read about it. Blogging is a little wierd, right?

(Actually (as Lola would say) genius has hit again – the children will be delighted if we simply go to Waitrose for dinner. It works for me too – if I can’t eat anything there, I’ll just buy myself a microwave dinner to eat later. Sorted!)

Meanwhile, I’m not going to try anything else. It sounds too risky.

(You know, I seem to spend quite a bit of time posting about “stupid” days (here and here) and in retrospect it’s all hormone-linked. I do believe I have the occasional “vaguely intelligent” day, and sometimes even a “positively inspired” day, but the stupid days happen far too often. Is it just me? Or does everyone find that simple everyday tasks are just a bit too challenging sometimes?)

Pink Sparkles

Yarn: Random pink sparkly stuff from Coldspring Mill
Pattern: Child’s cardigan from the knitter’s handy book of Patterns
Modifications: 10” sleeves before cap shaping rather than 13” (and tweaking cap on the fly to make it more or less the same size as originally).
Buttons: SPARKLY buttons from button stash

Happy happy daughter

For Lucia

Lucia has been looking for pictures of what she (or people she knows) has been calling garterlac.

This seems to be more or less what she calls “Garterlac II” – with the extra addition of moss (seed – tomato, tomahto) stitch blocks.

It is a shawl knitted when Adam was born by a very old family friend (also called Anne – not entirely coincidentally) – in fact she is the intended recipient of the Shetland Garden shawl. (Which I MUST get on with – I’ve been rather distracted by pink sparkle… ).

Skipped North

Well, let’s face it – it was a shopping retreat. And did I shop? Ooooh yes!
So quickly – have a peek:

See – pretty pretty yarn – including PINK and SPARKLY yarn for a jacket for Ruth. (She spent a significant portion of Monday morning walking round clutching the cone and demanding “Mummy, you make my jacket NOW”. The child is a born enabler.)

But there’s more…

There’s pretty pretty tops. Oh yes. Pretty colours for playing with. Pretty browns for (I’m hoping one day) a hat. And just because – sample packs of bamboo tops and milk protein fibre tops.

And that kind of hints at something doesn’t it – because why would I be buying tops? I’d be buying them to spin with, that’s why. So of course I needed a spindle too. And a very beautiful little spindle it is too – see:

And that little thingumy next to it? That’s my bookmark that is – all made out of my very own handspun. I’m embracing the slub. The slub is good. The slub is what makes it unique. The slub is designer slub. (Oh, and I like the word slub too )

But not as much as I like the phrase “niddy noddy”. I may have to acquire a niddy noddy just for the name. And a nostepinne (and having watched the video on that link I now see how to use one – oh the joys of the internet )

Last night I had the chance to use Liz’s niddy noddy to skein up (or “hank off” if you prefer) this:
– my best buy of the weekend. Approx 850 g of Noro Silk Garden. Probably worth about £100 – and you know? I don’t think I’m going to say how much I paid for it. But it was definitely a bargain.

So – highlights of the weekend: meeting lots of lovely knitters, being able to have incredibly nerdy conversations about yarn and casting on techniques, learning to spin (probably the most exciting thing – a big thank you to Sheila-of-the-14-spinning-wheels for taking the time to show me), identifying Sarah simply because Nic handed her a cloth nappy, getting to spend some time with Katie whom it feels like I’ve known for years, but had actually only met twice before, seeing my children again on Monday morning (oh how I missed them – quite good for me really I guess) – Adam was beaming from ear to ear, and as soon as she heard me Ruth practically flew across the landing to cuddle me.

Lowlights: (only two) – not enough sleep and missing Adam, Ruth and John.

So a big THANK YOU to Alex and Nic for all their hard work organising the weekend.

For a far more comprehensive round up of the weekend, see Katie’s blog (and if you scroll down you can see a photo of me spinning – Look at me spinning, look at me spinning!!!!)

Home now...

... and very sleepy. To summarise:

bought lots of yarn, bought lots of fibre, learnt to spin, met lots of people (waves – Hello people!)

More soon…

Surreal experiences...

1) When dropping Adam off at school another mother approaches looking concerned – and removes a part-knitted scarf from her bag. She knows she’s gone wrong somewhere, can I please help?

2) I find myself using the phrase “I’m already on the areola” in an email to a friend.

3) (And this is worst of all… ) I’ve been dragged over to the dark side…

First look at my creation from yesterday:

I’m probably going to restuff it once John has time to look in the loft properly for me – at the moment it’s home to an old pair of Ruth’s tights and an old (clean) sock of John’s. It’s alright though, until you look at the back:

“That’s not knitting!!” I hear you cry. And you’d be right. The instructions say to crochet the back. (Well, if you do the right thing and read through all the instructions first, it doesn’t – it quite clearly tells you how to knit the back. But I didn’t read through all the instructions first… ) So I taught myself to crochet last night. (Cue ominous music.) And… it was fun. Except that I now realise that I did it all wrong, but hey, I think the knitting police may be prepared to accept that as an extenuating circumstance.

(For a humorous take on the relationship between knitters and crocheters, see here)

Oh, and while you’re watching silly videos – here is Jamelia eating Marmite – yeah, I know, I know, I could go and find something more useful to do… (Oh, and Pixie – sorry you didn’t like it – and of course I’m not offended!)

How cool is this...

...story from BBC Radio Merseyside?

For the most eloquent and balanced writing I’ve ever read on breastfeeding – see Yarn Harlot here. This is just another way for knitters to support mothers who are trying to succeed, often in particularly difficult circumstances.

There is a downloadable pattern here

I know what I’m going to spend some of my week off doing…

Signed off

So I took my dodgy back to see my GP this morning. (Ruth came with me, and explained all about “My Mummy got a sore sore back”.) Dr Dansie (who is my favourite ever GP, and even gave me a home visit after I’d had Ruth – which was the first thing that made me think that giving birth to her had perhaps been a tad tricky) listened to my long, tedious tale of woe, diagnosed a viral infection and back strain and signed me off work for the rest of the week. Being a bit dim, I really hadn’t expected it. I’m not sure exactly what I had expected from him – something along the lines of “Keep active, don’t do any heavy lifting” I guess – but I wasn’t expecting a week off. So there’ll be plenty of knitting time over the next few days.

As for Skip North – the jury is currently out. I’m desperately hoping that I’ll be well enough, but I’m not going to be stupid about it.

Actual real live knitting content!

I did say I’ve been knitting.

Apart from the miles and miles of grey ribbing, now finished, but still in need of blocking (not so easy with a dodgy back ) I have been doing :
(Click on the image to see that I really did do the sleeves.)
All I need to do now is finish off a couple of ends, sew on some buttons and block the picot edging into submission. (Any ideas why it’s rolling so badly? I did use a smaller needle – I’m wondering if I should have done a round or two more before knitting up the hem?)
Update: It did block OK – I attacked it with a determined expression and a steam iron – that sorted it out

Pattern: Basically Opal Baby Sweater (scroll down)
Adaptations: Picot edging for bottom and cuffs. Sleeves knit flat rather than in the round. And I couldn’t find my printout when I did the neck, so I just made it up and did a few rows of garter stitch.
Yarn: Beautiful, gorgeous, wonderfully soft hand-dyed yarn from Kristen I love this both when it pools (front and back) and when it doesn’t (sleeves) and it’s soooooo soft.

I have also been doing:

It’s a square to contribute to the afghan for Skip North (eep, less than a week – the children still don’t know I’m going away – this is John’s department… – my back MUST be better by then!) I love the pattern – very simple, but very effective. I’ve still got some brown 4-ply Rowan Yorkshire Tweed lying around waiting to be knitted into a tank top – this could be the stitch pattern that I use.

And thank you to everyone for your suggestions and input on my post below – I decided to go for the Shetland Garden Faroese Shawl – and here is the beginning of it:

It’s kind of stalled while I finish the baby sweater and the square, but I’ll be back to it soon.

See – I do still knit

Saturday sky

It’s been a while, but today I’d taken Adam and Ruth to the playground, and I had my phone (AKA camera that will talk to people) with me, and the sky was magnificent, so I remembered:

And my back? Well, it’s not right yet, but it’s much better. Current medical wisdom is that it’s best to keep active with a bad back. However at the moment if I walk around or spend much time sitting my back seizes up (not really painful, just very very tense), but if I lie flat for a while it relaxes again. So I’m basically resting, but still doing a bit. I’m still fairly sure that it was fatigue that set it off in the first place, so resting seems to make sense to me.

And knitting? Well, give me a chance…