Tuesday 13 May

Right, well, the blog every day in May didn't happen this year. I very much enjoyed it last year, but since then, we regularly have 'no screen' days at home. This is as much for me as it is for the kids. 12yo, who is a very active child and rarely sits still, has discovered Minecraft in the last year and would happily spend days behind the computer. 15yo is never far from her mobile, like most other teenagers. I find myself sometimes wasting away an evening just browsing, but for no real reason. A waste of time indeed, so now we have two days a week and one weekend day without computers. It leaves even less time for blogging, but so be it. I'd rather make and then blog less frequently but blog about those makes!

Which leads me nicely on to this

This is my Coal cardigan by Veronik Avery. I may have shown a progress picture before - I'm too lazy to go back and check!
As soon as I saw the pattern, in one of Brooklyn Tweed's pattern collections, I was smitten. I usually like most of Brooklyn Tweed's patterns, he's my favourite designer by far. It's not just the designs, it's the photography and oh, alright, he's pretty easy on the eye too!

Having in the past tried to knit garments with a cheaper yarn substitute and never really turning out how I had hoped, I decided a few months ago that if I was going to make something larger, I'd spend a bit of money on it too. So at my last Knitting and Stitching show I went to Shilasdair, whose yarn I've used before and who don't seem to be able to get any colour wrong, and got some dyelot ends for half price. The colour was called Moss and is mostly green, but has hints of blue and even yellow. It's a colour that you'd never get bored with. All their colours are dyed with natural dyes, and I seem to like every single one of them, even ones I'd not normally go for.

A favourite designer coupled with a favourite yarn seller = favourite cardigan. The only thing I didn't like about this, but that really is a very small point, is that it had to be sewn up afterwards. Apart from that it rapidly turned into my favourite cardigan - in fact, I'm wearing it now. It fits well, it's comfortable, it's warm and I've been told it really suits me. A real winner!

For my birthday back in December Zoe, who runs the craft school that I teach crochet classes for, gave me a book wrapped in some of her fabrics (she also has a very successful online fabric shop, worth a look!). I wanted to make something with it and suddenly remembered that I had some floral corduroy in my stash - actually, it had been there for years because I'd earmarked it for a skirt for 15yo... and she hasn't worn corduroy skirts for years :-) Anyway, I turned it into a little bag and just happened to have the right colours cotton yarn in my other stash and made a little flower to go on top. It's only a small bag and apart from keeping my WW journal and other paraphernalia in it, I'm not sure what else I'd use it for, but it does make me smile.

(And as a cheeky aside, I'm teaching a crochet class soon where we'll be doing flowers...)

Monday 3 February

 Day 12 of 100 happy days - travelling cables on my knitting. I'm knitting Coal Cardigan by Veronik Avery, one of my favourite knitwear designers. Simple, stylish, chique, oh so clever.

Day 13 of 100 happy days - Bury St. Edmunds cathedral in the glorious sunshine on Saturday morning. When I first moved to Bury, way back in 1995, the cathedral tower wasn't finished. I can't even remember what it looked like, but they won a millennium grant to finish the tower off and in the process, renovated/cleaned the whole cathedral. I think it's beautiful now. You can see the tower from several miles away, sometimes the sunshine reflects and lights up the little golden flags on the corners. Bury St. Edmunds has so much going for it, but the cathedral is my favourite part by far.

Friday 20 December

Earlier this year I got invited to join a local knitting group. There are several active knitting groups in Bury St. Edmunds, but most of them are held on days/evenings I can't make it, or they are well established and sometimes a little hard to get into. A friend who I've known for years through Freecycle (I think we've had most of her children's school uniform, as they're a little older than my two but have gone to the same schools!) turned out to be a knitter and asked me this summer if I fancied joining their little group. And I'm so glad she did - they're such a great group of women and we all get on so well, and not just because we all like knitting. That's actually the best bit about the group, that we get on with each other for lots of reasons.

Anyway, we meet up once a month at someone's house, taking turns in hosting, and we all bring something to eat. With a mixture of nationalities (Danish, Dutch, Scottish and English) there are usually several international dishes. After invariably eating too much we then move on to knitting or crochet, although there are also lots of exclamations of ohhh and aaahh over soft yarn, pretty needles and interesting patterns. In other words, if you want to do some mileage knitting, our get-together is not the place to be!

Our last meeting for this year was last night. I'd not had a great day and didn't really feel much like socialising, but as the meeting was just down the road from me and we were exchanging Secret Santa presents, I drove down and popped in for an hour or so. Of course they (and the very gorgeous dog Lupin) managed to take my mind off things and I was glad I did go. Plus, I came home with this....

Boozy chocolate truffles, I think they even have some marzipan in them - they're gorgeous! (yes that one missing is the one that's been sampled ;-)
I'm already looking forward to our January meeting!

I'm so behind on blogging. Life's just too busy at the moment. I started teaching a course of sewing classes but after one evening, I just found it was one activity too many. I wasn't going to let the participants down so we ran the whole course and I'm very proud of what they achieved, but I'm also glad the classes have finished and I have a bit of breathing space again. As it is, I don't know how everything is going to get done before Christmas, what with working right up until Christmas Eve!

But despite being behind and not likely to catch up again, I didn't want to not post this photo.

 

B. went to Austria back in November and imagine my surprise when he rang one evening and said he'd bought me wool. He's always liked it when I knit with self-striping yarn and always wonders how they dye it so you end up with the pretty patterns. He found a ball of self-striping yarn in the local supermarket and bought it for me. It was Regia and a colour combination I'd probably not have chosen myself, but now that I've knitted them up, they're actually my favourite pair. The funny thing is that because it makes these pretty patterns, many people think you're really clever. To me, they're a little bit like cheating - pretending you've done FairIsle when all you've done is knit stocking stitch! But they're pretty and they're comfortable, and they're from yarn that B. bought for me - well, can't get better than that can you.

 

And finishing those socks prompted me to take a photo of my current collection of knitted socks. They're all mine, apart from the ones at the front, which I knitted for 14yo a while back. I'm quite pleased to have a pair for every day now :-)

We're slowly getting into the Christmas spirit. We decorated the house on Tuesday evening 

(photo by 14yo and decorations by me) and I'm madly writing Christmas cards on days when I realise I'm not going to see someone again before Christmas. The kids both finish school today, although 11yo managed to finish a day early by coming down with a rotten cold and having to stay home today. (He had several nightmares last night - I'd forgotten what it was like to have your sleep interrupted... yawn!) We have a house full on Christmas Day but I'm very much looking forward to having a bit of time off after that. Plus, possibly a quick trip to Holland :-)

 

Tuesday 15 October

Almost a whole month has gone by without posting anything. It's not that I didn't want to - blog writing just seems to get pushed to the bottom of the 'to do list'. And it's not even something that's on the not-so-fun to do list, because I really enjoy writing. It's just that there are so many other fun things to do, that blogging is one of those things that gets left behind. Maybe I need another month of subjects to get me going again...

Anyway! Enough of that, I'm here and I'm writing, that's all that matters.

As I said in my last blog post (or the one before that - it's been so long I've forgotten and frankly I can't be bothered to go back and look it up), I craft a whole lot more than I ever show here. So, a few photos of FO's or finished objects.

This is my Alice cardi. Last year as a thank you for helping out at Latitude, Amy Twigger Holroyd sent the team of volunteers this pattern. She'd had a knitted one hanging in the knitting tent and I had enjoyed wearing it on the chilly Sunday afternoon, and really wanted to have one of my own. So I ordered chunky wool and needles 9mm! and cast on. But try as I might, I couldn't get the gauge right. It was far too wide and by the time I got gauge, the fabric was so stiff it felt like a straight-jacket. So I emailed Amy and asked her if she could bring her own yarn to this year's Latitude. By this time I already knew the pattern knitted up quickly (the lace is very easy to memorise) and before I knew it, I had been set the challenge of knitting it by the end of the weekend at Latitude. Despite knitting A LOT and getting sore wrists, I didn't complete my challenge, but I did finish it a few weeks later. I absolutely loved knitting it. It is so cleverly designed - everything is related to each other - the number of stitches you cast on for the front, is related to the number of rows you knit on the sleeve and many other aspects such as those. I've no idea how she figured it all out, but it made me discover a love of garments with an unusual construction.
Amy has just finished her PhD thesis on knitting, sustainability and consumerism (you can read more here). Her designs do not follow fashion, but are just, well, unique items I suppose, that will stand the test of time. I have to admit to taking a while to get used to this cardigan. I didn't think it was very 'me'. I liked it on everybody else but me (I think 14yo looks fabulous in it, but in my terribly biased view as a mother she looks fabulous in anything). I don't follow fashion at all but my style is very unobtrusive and definitely doesn't stand out. I feel happy in what I wear, but I do really like Amy's philosophy (and since meeting her, have bought very few new items of clothing). But then I started getting compliments on my cardi, and it is so comfortable to wear, that it's slowly becoming my favourite top. In fact, 14yo recently said that I wear it all the time. Bit like 11yo who will wear the same pair of trousers and same t-shirt day in, day out, refusing even to put them in the laundry. I do wash my outfits, promise...
And Amy, if you're reading this, thank you for the pattern. I'm sure it's not the last of your patterns I'll be knitting. You're very talented!

This is Harriet's Jacket. I have been reading Elizabeth's blog for a while and admire her designs very much. I followed her blog while she was designing Harriet's Jacket and as my Alice was such a success, I decided to buy the pattern when Elizabeth set up a KAL for it. It took me much longer to knit than most of the other people taking part and I wasn't an active participant anyway, but again this ingenuous and unusual construction kept me gripped for about 2 months. Mine is longer than Elizabeth's and with hindsight (despite my gauge being spot on) I could have gone down a size, it's a little big on me. I need to make the buttonholes slightly smaller as the little red hearts I found, are a little too small for the buttonholes, but they pick up the red flecks in the yarn so well. The best bit about the construction was that it was all done in the round with no seaming at the end, all that was needed, were a few ends sewn in. It's extremely comfortable and warm and I'm sure I'll be wearing this a lot this coming winter (specially if we're going to have the coldest winter for a long time, as is being predicted. Even though I don't really believe in long-term weather forecasts, I'm still a little apprehensive if they're true!)

I'm not sure if I've posted photos of this crochet bag before. It was a project in an issue of Simply Crochet last summer and didn't take long to whip up. Very useful as it's so incredibly stretchy, that it's a bit like Mary Poppin's bag...

A much needed crochet hook roll from Cute and Easy Crochet by Nicki Trench, a book that I often recommend for beginners as the drawings are very clear and the projects are perfect for practising yet you end up with something useful.
I love the roll but it needs a flap over the top to stop the needles flying out - ask me how I know... ;-)

My resolution to only craft for myself this year has gone very well. I have only made two or three little items for others and then only for those who are close friends. This cloth was for a friend from WeightWatchers, after our weekly weigh-in we go for a celebratory or commiserating cup of coffee and talk about the books we've read and family and children and everything else in life.

At the moment I'm working on a pair of socks for Socktober, a KAL organised on Twitter. The only 'rules' were to knit up a pair of socks in October and show photos of it. I've knitted up the first pair and am halfway down the cuff on the second one but progress has been quite slow in the last few days.

Excuse the rubbish picture, it was taken on my mobile at work. Was installing 111 updates and it took such a long time and my desk was clean already, so I knitted... ;-)

This weekend I helped out at the stand for the UK Handknitting Association at the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace in London, teaching knitting and crochet. I had a great time, although I did regret slightly not signing up for the whole weekend. I only had an hour to look around which isn't enough really, and when I went around, it was so busy that it spoilt it for me somewhat. I don't like the greed that comes over people when there is so much on offer. There was only one stand which I really wanted to visit and that was Shilasdair Yarns. I did manage to get there and for 23 pounds I got this:

I just love their colours and that they use all natural dyes. I found out about them last year and got 4 hanks too, which have now been knitted up. This is destined to become one of Brooklyn Tweed's designs (Coal Cardigan). But first to finish that second sock - it's the semi-final of the Great British Bake-Off tonight so I should be making some progress...

Wednesday 18 September

With a return to more regular blogging I want to revive my WIP Wednesday too. I make a LOT more than I show on this blog. In fact, it started as a craft blog, but has slowly evolved into more of a general diary. I would quite like to be better at recording my makes - in fact, every year I have a New Year's resolution to keep my Ravelry project page up to date. In reality I find I want to do a photoshoot, the weather's never right or I forget my camera or it's got dark, I'm already three projects further along and I lose the urge to post about it. Maybe my WIP Wednesday will help - or maybe I should start a FO Friday...?

Anyway, enough rambling, onto my project. It's not really a WIP anymore, as in fact it's blocking in my conservatory and all that's left to do is sew the three buttons on. But I haven't got anything else on the needles right now, so this is what you're going to get!

It's been a little warmer here today than in the last few days (brrrr it was cold in the evenings, specially as I'm resisting turning the heating on for a few more weeks yet) and the jacket is probably almost ready to come off the towel.
The pattern is Harriet's Jacket by Elizabeth McCarten, a Canadian designer whose designs I'd seen before and always liked. For years I haven't knitted a full garment as too many times I'd spend months and months on something, only to find that I didn't like the finished sweater as it wouldn't fit quite right or didn't look as I'd imagined. I followed Liz's blog as she designed this cardigan and liked it so much that I couldn't get it out of my head. After knitting my Gladys cardi, which was quite successful (and needs another blog post!), I bit the bullet and bought yarn for Harriet's Jacket. I started back in August, in fact, I knitted lots of it on the ferry back from Holland, and cast off last Monday during 14yo's ballet lesson. It was a very quick knit and I enjoyed every moment of it. The construction is very ingenious - you start at the cuff and work your way up the sleeve on a circular needle. In the past, circular needles and I haven't been on the best of terms, but I looked into the magic loop method and once I'd mastered that, I was away. Actually, you can hardly say 'mastered', as it is so simple. When the sleeve is the right length, and the great thing about circular needles is that you can try it on as you go, you increase stitches for under the arm and from there you knit the front and back half. You knit another sleeve just like that, then attach the two halves in the center back. Next up is the collar, and then the peplum. I knit mine a little longer as I'm tall (almost 6ft).
As I said, I cast off on Monday night and all that was left to do was sew in ends - no sewing up at all! Brilliant...

Looking at my photo and photos on the pattern I realise I've blocked mine a little wrong, as the bottom needs to be at an angle. I may just re-block it, because the increases at the side sit a little oddly at the moment.

I've tried it on and it's slightly bigger than I'd hoped (despite getting perfect gauge) but it's very warm and comfortable and I'm looking forward to wearing it. It looks fabulous on 14yo, so I'm hoping she'll be willing to model it this weekend for some proper modelled photos!

Now what to knit next... I've got a little project lined up - a crochet pincushion on the top of a jar for 14yo's Fashion and Textiles lessons, but after that - definitely another full garment, but what...?