BLOCK PARTY!

I spent some time last night doing some serious blocking on the Vintage Vogue sweater. It's those pesky diagonal cables that have been the reason why it has needed some excessive blocking. Once it was finished the sides weren't parallel and the whole thing had to be pulled into shape. I thought I was 'there' once and had sewn the raglan seams, only to find it starting to spring back to its original form.

Its been a battle but I think we're ready for seaming now, so I'm keeping it brief tonight and with any luck we may even have a finished object by the end of the week, it all depends how well picking up the edge stitches go. Have been lusting over more Noro on E-bay earlier today but haven't got a new garment in mind yet.

ALL THE THREES!

Since its the 3rd today I am going to do a list of threes! I saw this done as a list of Ten Things of Four a while ago, whilst wandering randomly through blogland. I have nothing against fours, but since 3 Is The Magic Number (thankyou De La Soul), I've used a bit of poetic license and made this a list of Eleven Things of Three... hence the name...due to the bingo call....'all the threes - thirty-three'.

3 Places I have Lived : I lived the first 18 years of my life in a small village called Shotley on the Estuary of the River Stour and River Orwell, from the age of 21 to 33 I lived in Wales, mainly in the capital Cardiff, and I now live in St Leonards-on-Sea, a very small town right next door to Hastings, famous for the big battle of 1066.

3 Places I Have Visited : Amsterdam., Reykjavik, and Switzerland have to be favourites.

3 Places I Would Like to Visit : Mexico, Egypt and the USA, I know the US is a big place, but I'm not fussy anywhere would do!

3 Jobs I Have Had : This is quite easy as I have quite a few jobs to choose from, although not because I am a bad employee, I just used to get bored easily or move around a bit! I worked in a Make-Up Factory during my holidays from college one year, it's always an eye-opener when you see how things like that are done, huge barrels of wax being melted down and then put into little lipstick moulds, barrels of powder pressed into the little metal eye shadow trays with different patterns for the top, and filling litle nail polish bottles.

I also worked in a sock factory which was good fun, my first job there was seperating socks,they called it draw threading I think! The socks came out of the machines joined at the heel and toe in a great long tube and you would pull a sock onto your arm and cut a thread in 2 places and pull and it would come apart.

I also worked as a 'trolly dolly'. I was living in Bristol at the time and I worked on trains selling refreshments to rail passengers.

3 Things I Don't Like : I don't like vegetables, I don't like bad manners, and I don't like cruelty.

3 Beverages I Like : Tea, coffee and cheap red wine, if it costs more than £5 a bottle it is likely I won't like the taste, this is not to do with money, its my antsy palette!

3 Blogs I Read : Ok well there are about 27 I read on a regular basis at the moment, and I don't think it would be fair to single any out.

3 Favourite Yarns : Just 3?!I love unusual yarns but deep down its wool, silk and cotton, not necessarily all in one yarn, and if I had to narrow it down to 3 it would be Noro, I love stripey socks so have fallen for the new opal sock yarn at Get Knitted, and the sort of unusual handspun I aspire to make one day here, here, and here. Ok too much Etsy Itis!!

3 Favourite Yarn Colourways....see above, enough yarn porn!

3 Favourite Knitting Accessories....aha well the Knitting Needle Rolls I imagine that I will make one day, my wool-winder and my niddy noddy. Ok I know the niddy-noddy is tied to the activity of spinning but its also a great tool for measuring commercial yarn aswell, of course. Thing is I don't have many knitting accessories, I don't have a row counter, because I forget to wind them on....simple pencil and paper suits me, and I use a piece of scrap yarn for a marker if I need one.

3 Things I Did Today : I sorted through all Neo's toys, re-filed them and disposed of incomplete and broken bits, and put all those he has grown out of in boxes for the roof, I went to the local D I Y store for cable grommets, and I did a load of washing.

GLOVE HATE RELATIONSHIP!

Maybe hate is a bit too strong a word! I don't hate the glove and it is not the gloves fault that it is too small,and must therefore be frogged. I wouldn't mind so much if I hadn't bothered to check my tension (gauge), but I did. I think my brain must have been off sipping cocktails in a seedy bar, possibly with Mrs K's brain, whilst I was carefully counting stitches, and rows, and double checking, my gauge.

Just leaving you with this cute out-take from my Shedir photo shoot. Neo has been asking me to knit him a hat

although another Shedir is out of the question, been there, done that! He's asked for green although when I got home with the green, he asked for blue, I don't think he's sure, maybe he's blue/green colourblind either that or just a typically contrary child. I'm thinking of winging it for this one, just making it up as I go.

A Hazy Shade of Winter

For the month of December I am challenging myself to blog every day. To define what I mean by that, is that I am going to post something everyday, I may not write reams and reams, it may just be a photo, or even a drawing, or a quote, or an observation.

I was doing a guided tour of the Knitting Path webring that I have joined, just visiting the blogs around the ring when I came across NaBloPoMo, where a whole group of bloggers were blogging everyday in November, there was even prizes and a button! Anyway I thought it was a good idea but I had missed the boat as far as November was concerned, and have decided to do it anyway. I'm not sure how many Knitters there are on the Knitting Path beacuse I haven't made it around full circle yet.

I've been rooting around for something to show or say all day, its the 1st of December, its been a very dull wet uninspiring kind of day but Christmas approaches and there's a kind of magic lurking around the corner. I was scouring the internet for something, I'm not sure what it was I wanted to say or express, but then I found exactly what I needed close to home. Isn't that always the way, we can be searching and searching, and find exactly what is needed right under our noses!

The pictures above were painted directly onto canvas with silk paints scattered with salt, and then I couched a smattering of fabric and thread over the top, and the title....Winter.

I've been rushing around all week and keeping all my balls in the air has been a bit like juggling slugs.

Didn't get any knitting done over the weekend and any spare time I did find was spent spinning. I found this wool fibre in my felting box, I think its about 4 years old, its 100% wool and the coloured bits are viscose nepps, I've been trying to spin thicker yarn (not as easy as it sounds) and the first plyed skein of this is my most successful to date. I'm thinking of making some mittens and if there's any left over a hat, once I've got the whole lot spun and plyed. I've also found about 400 grammes of a white variation, which I will spin up and do some dying with...I'm dying to find the time to do some dying at the moment!

I finally got the handle attached to the booga bag, and we had some decent weather yesterday to get it photographed.

Monday evening saw me finish Shedir off but again I had to sit tight through Tuesdays torrential rain waiting for photos. I wore it out to Knit Jam last night, infact I'm a tidgy bit proud of it so I'm telling anyone and everyone who shows the slightest interest in it that I made it, it was tricky but I think it was worth it. I decided to cut out one row of repeats because I know I only have a small head.

On my needles at the moment are the jaywalkers, but I'm still procrastinating over changing the heel to short rows, and last night I cast on a pair of gloves. Yes I know I still haven't completed my Vintage Vogue sweater in the gorgeous Noro Silk Garden! What on earth is wrong with me?!

BOX OF DELIGHTS!!

A huge box arrived in the post this week, absolutely stuffed with well chosen delights from my secret exchange pal. Starting from the left are handmade beeswax candles, hot chocolate, dunkin donuts coffee, some christmas eve tealights in the back row, with a bag of Sanders mixed chocolates (just seen, top right) okay I confess its an almost empty bag already but they're delicious, all my favourites.

Just below this is some supersoft merino wool,( I am lucky enough to have 4 and a bit hanks! Its fabulously soft, I have big plans for this) and alongside that who could miss the beautiful handpainted blue Koigu. Hiding beneath this is a selection of teas. Front row we have a vintage guitar string, really cool packaging, a small bag of well-chosen buttons, and a couple of vintage dishtowels.

A HUGE thankyou to Kimberly who put this package together for me, there aren't enough adjectives to describe how special and wonderful and well chosen this package is! And a big thankyou to Mrs K for taking the time to organise this gift exchange, its been so much fun!

I'm just a little bit tense this evening as my flickr badge wasn't working when I logged into my blog, infact the message it was displaying was no such photos, and I can't seem to get it working, I have therefore left it in the hands of flickr for the moment and removed it from my blog. Grrrrr!

As you can see I have a new WIP, this is Shedir. The colour is more green than the photo, its Rowan Calmer in a shade called peacock. You can find the pattern here. I've decided that I'm in a special knitalong with Marianne. I really love knitting hats in the round and just like socks they are nice portable projects to carry with you. Anyway feel free to join in our Unofficial Shedir Knitalong.....just link to my blog and if there's a huge response I might even find the time to make it official and design a badge.

There has been a bit of a delay finishing the Booga style bag, firstly I ran out of black yarn and was waiting for a ball to arrive just to finish the strap off, then yesterday I was hit with an i-cord catastraphe.

Its not called Idiot cord for nothing! Any idiot could just leave it lying around on the sofa in the living room for days as she works a little more every night, until disaster strikes, the little imp who inhabits my life came running into the dining room yesterday after completing many laps of the said living room, unfortunately he had liberated my i-cord from its happy home on the needle first and the almost completed i-cord was frogged back to a foot in length, instead of the almost completed 5 feet!

Not to worry though, the 2nd Tuesday every month is Games night and I took my knitting along with me. As we settled down to discuss what we were going to play I started to re-knit my i-cord.

We had a game of Jenga, moved onto a few rounds of Boggle and then a game of Scrabble. I could knit and play Scrabble at the same time so by the end of the evening my i-cord is back to its former glory... this is my pre-felting photo. Whilst I was at the bar purchasing a drink one of the other girls Ivy got talking to a bloke and he was asking what I was knitting, Ivy told him I did martial arts and that I was knitting a black belt!

I have been making steady progress on the Jaywalker as you can see, I think it looks like a blue fish in the photo, but the colour is closer to what I'm actually using.

I don't think my last post was very clear, so I am just going to talk about the Texere Variety Bag Competition again, as the bag thing has become a bit confused. This purple confection is a Texere Variety Bag, it contains about 15 different textured yarns, all in the same colourway, which all measure 3 metres. It is intended for any creative use that you can think of, embroidery, weaving, embellishing, tassel making. The competition itself was to produce a piece of work not exceeding A4 in size. Basically you could do anything with this variety bag that your imagination can think of, knit it, embroider a picture, weave something, in some ways the ideas are limitless, and basically my entry is a simple textile pot, sorry for the confusion!

After seeing them everywhere, but most recently here, I have finally cast on a pair of Jaywalkers. I have been procrastinating about the best sock yarn to use and finally decided on this blue grey and inky colourway. Although the flash photography doesn't really do anything for the colour representation at all, but I will update it as I progress with a better picture, just the best I could do with the nights drawing in like this.

Thought I would share with you my entry for the Texere Variety Bag competition, I'm calling it Pot Luck and who knows, maybe I will be lucky, maybe not, it was certainly fun to make and I really like the results. These first two photos are the truest colour match I could get, its more of a turquoise mix than the blue of the final two photos.

Basically what the competition asks you to do is do something creative with one of their Variety Bags. They suggested to let the colour of your chosen bag inspire you, what I have tried to do is keep to the KISS principle, which means Keep It Simple Stupid! I knew I wanted to make a 3D object, and initially I tried to crochet a simple pot, but it felt and looked a bit overworked and clumsy, so I experimented with just simply coiling the threads on the sewing machine with a basic zig-zag stitch and I think the overall effect works.

On the knitting front I finally stitched the raglan seams of my vintage Vogue sweater last night, only to find the side seams need a bit more blocking and tweaking before I can stitch them together and then its ready for its roll neck. Anyway its not like I'm working to a deadline, if I had wanted it completed I would have finished it by now. Why do we knit something beautiful and then spend alot of time procrastinating about blocking and making up, well this time its a combination of not wanting to ruin it by rushing the finish, and fear of it not fitting quite right once I've finished putting it together, which is silly as its been blocked and measured, and double checked, but I still somehow don't trust myself, its just plain daft, but there's nothing worse than labouring over a sweater only to find once its completed that its not how you imagined it. Like falling in love with a garment in a shop window or catalogue, only to be disappointed with it once you actually get it on. Anyway I'm going to chill out with my wheel tonight, and schedule the blocking for tomorrow maybe.

Its been a beautiful Autumn day. I love the way the sun sits in the sky and the way it feels like the earth has rotated 45 degrees towards the oncoming chill of Winter. I've been making the most of the daylight and have been taking some photos around the garden. The first few are of my favourite tree, the Eucalyptus, who was proudly tossing off her bark as I tried in vain to capture her shadowy glory!



I also love the simplicity of her rubbery leaves....by the way this is all in honour of the beauty of the tree up the road in Mariannes blog http://knotminding.blogspot.com/. I'd really like someone to share the secret of how I can link so that if you clicked on Mariannes name you would get to her blog as this kind of techie stuff is really foxing me.

This is Willow lurking in the undergrowth.

And now for a knit update, here's the bag that I've been working on since Knit Jam Wednesday night, its Noro Kureyon and Lambs Pride, the base has been in a bag in the bottom of my knitting cupboard for months, I came to the conclusion I didn't like the original black sheep bags kit I had bought, so I'm making it up as I go really and basing it on the free booga bag pattern here http://www.blacksheepbags.com/booga_bag.html

Here's Neo being unusally compliant modelling my Sublime mohair scarf for me.

Hope I've suceeded in capturing the Fuschias glory.

Usually the Pampas blooms only to be destroyed days later by gale force winds, but seems to be fairing well against the elements this year!

Finally finished this skein of yarn off at the weekend, it took a bit of spinning, but I wanted to spin what I would

call a useful, or even usable amount, this actually weighs in at 100g, and is 338m. I can't help but add up the

hours its taken me, but I don't want to put people off spinning. There's an almost perverse satisfaction in making something so labour intensive.

Grrrr and blogger is making me cross because no matter how much I move this text away from the above photo in my preview ...well its just not making any difference....just going to have to grit my teeth and move on! You will also notice its doing something weird with my text spacing, even adjusting the line spacing between these paragraphs and the later ones. Still I'm not the only one with problems, dear Mrs Knitingale (http://floknit.blogspot.com/) hasn't managed to get any photos up today.

Sunday morning I even found time to bake some orange and polenta biscuits, they serve them at The Rooms which is the cafe where we hold Knit Jam, and Calire was kind enough to write the recipe down for me ages ago, but its taken me a while to actually get hold of the polenta.

Knitwise things have been ticking over on the scarf that I havent taken any pictures of yet, well until earlier this evening when I suddenly noticed that I had suddenly started knitting the wrong side on the right side and vice versa, for about 20 rows.....thought I was going to be casting it off tonight instead of unravelling.

I have also managed to block all the other 'vintage vogue jumper' pieces so I'm hoping to have another completed project soon.

As you can see I've completed my muse hat! Its very soft and airy being mohair, the pattern was only supposed to take 1 ball but I had to buy a second to finish it, instead of buying one ball, I bought 2, and I've already cast on a scarf. I'm not sure how warm it will be but my main incentive for knitting hats is to hide those bad hair days!

Saturday the 21st October, National Knitting Week, 2006, there was a gathering of knitters in the Priory Meadow Shopping Centre. It was an amazing adventure really, and I still can't believe that shy little me set it up, but it worked, we came together and we knitted.

This is our youngest knitter of the day, 7 year old Jack Sellers of Margate being shown how to knit by Shelagh Duffill of Battle Wool Shop.

We Knitted......

and we knitted....

in fact even Melita knitted....and throughout the day we were joined by a steady stream of knitters, it was difficult to put down once you started knitting, people came for 5 minutes and stayed for hours!

We had German knitters, even a girl from Columbia, who was at Cambridge University, just visiting Hastings for the day sat down and joined in. During the course of the day we had 50 knitters, all the photos will be up on the website as soon as we've finished constructing it.

Just a magical amazing day, we raised over £170 pounds for the

• sara lee trust

But it doesn't stop there, now I'm busy chasing up photographs from all the knitters who took part Saturday and constructing the website (www.bigsock/org) and making plans for the socks travels .

We Interrupt this blog......
The following are my answers for my surprise pal in Florence Knitingales special exchange

1. What is your favourite colour? My favourite colours are blues greens and greys!

2. Is there a colour you dislike? I like most colours,although I'm not really a pink person.

3. Do you have any pets? What kind? I have a cat called Willow (after Buffy's friend in the Vampire Slayer) and a chinchilla called Pichu.

4. Is there any knitting-related item you’re longing to have? I like antique/flea market patterns, Vintage Vogue Magazines, nothing in particular really.

5. Are you a sock knitter? Yes I am!

6. Do you have any online wish lists? I do have a small book list on amazon.co.uk, but would not expect you to get me anything on it.

7. Do you collect anything that isn’t terribly expensive? I hoard allsorts of weird and wonderful inexpensive things, usually the sorts of things people throw out. I have a paper bag collection which I started when I was about 18, sometimes in cardshops and stationary shops you're given these beautiful decorated little paper bags, and I suppose as an artist, I think its a shame to throw them out. I even have an envelope collection because I started to notice all the different designs that I received on the interior of standard envelopes in the mail, and I've been collecting them. Scraps of unusual fabric. Unusual buttons, or beads.

8. What would make you smile or giggle with delight to find it in your gift box? I think the surprise of receiving this package will be delight enough for me, whatever is inside.

9. Is there anything that would make you cringe if you found it in your gift box? Well obviously not red underwear for me darling....but seriously, no.

10. Do you have a favourite edible treat? I do have a terrible sweet tooth, I love chocolate, and sweets although nothing with nuts in....I'm not allergic just don't like nuts.

11. Do you drink coffee, tea, cocoa, or….? I do indulge in all 3 although not simultaneously!

12. Are there any dietary restrictions your pal should know about? Not really apart from the nuts.

13. Do you celebrate a winter holiday of any kind and, if so, would you like to receive anything holiday themed? We do celebrate Christmas and decorate the tree, etc, although I would like to enjoy my gifts all year round rather than something I will only see at Christmas. Unless its something to eat...of course!

So here we are all cast on and ready to go...sorry the picture is so awful but the kitchen floor was the only neutral space big enough to lay it on, still tomorrow we hit Priory Meadow Shopping Centre for the Knitaround.
It is about 7 metres round and it takes about an hour to complete a round at what I would call a moderate knitting speed.
I've had what I think is a bright idea, many months ago when I came up with this idea of a giant circular knit, I contacted the Guinness Book of Records to see if there was a record for the largest circular knit and basically they said they didn't have any interest in it because it was being done by many people. Anyway it suddenly dawned on me Wednesday, it was staring me right in the face, people keep asking me what is it going to be and I had tossed around a few ideas but hadn't come up with anything firm, I had thought about it becoming a giant sock, or stocking, its obvious really because its a tube, so I went to Guinness and searched for a record for the largest sock, they have a new scheme here in the UK where you can text them a question, so I did.
The world's largest sock measured 4.95 x 4.3 x 1.9 metres and was made by members of the sheep farmer association of Austria. It became a record on 28th March 2005.
This tube measures about 3.5 metres across, I think that's in relation to the 1.9 metres as the 4.95 and 4.3 are surely the foot and the leg, but I'm not sure and I have failed to find any other information, or even a picture of this sock. But still I think this could be big!! What better than a supersized record breaking sock, knitted around the world, raising money as it goes.
All I need is to capture the imagination of knitters so I'm off to see Lolly in Socktoberfest world and we'll see how it goes!

This is my restrained loot from Alexandra Palace!
From left to right....I was seduced by Habu of New York and could have gone wilder than I did, just enough there to experiment with and make a crocheted bag! The purple and green fibre lurking behind were too much of a bargain to leave, and what looks like a bright orange radioctive glow of burning wool is really a nice autumnal tops from the Finnsheep people Piiku. Behind that is a huge cone of single ply hemp, from www.houseofhemp.co.uk, I thought I would just experiment with this, just infront of that are more fibres, merino this time from the handweaversstudio.co.uk, and beside that is some dyed Wensleydale Longwool, beside that are six balls of debbie bliss chunky merino...doh, I meant to get aran weight so this may be appearing on e-bay soon....and last but not least a pretty ball of cotton sock wool, could do with a better picture of this as the colour is really nice but I was in a bit of a hurry!





CRAZIEST CAST ON EVER!!


So here it is.....so far 1,000 stitches over 6 circular needles....this actually reaches 4.5 metres!
My original plan was to cast on 2,000, and put 200 stitches on 10 needles but after getting this done this afternoon I've decided to cut back to a mere 1,500 stitches and put 150 on each needle, and the actual circle will measure about 7 metres(yikes!) hopefully will get the other half done tomorrow, then may leave it in 2 halves and join it Saturday morning when we have set up in the shopping centre, I'll make my mind up by the end of the week, I have so much to get done before then.

Its been one of those non stop weeks....that seem to pass in a flash.....stop the floor from moving I want to get off! I don't seem to have got much knitting done, but this is me at Gatwick Thursday morning for our surprise 4th Anniversary trip, surprise because until we arrived at Gatwick at 0630 Thursday morning I didn't know where we were going, and as it was a short trip with only hand luggage I had no knitting and dh confiscated my crochet hook aswell.

So here we are....but can you guess where....here I'll give you another clue.....

Neverland?! No just teasing how about this one....

Yes indeedy....that's the Swiss flag....we flew out to Geneva....caught the train from Geneva to a little place called Aigle and then caught the cog train up the mountain to Leysin. I've never been to Switzerland before and it was a spectacular trip which just flew by....in more ways than one.....

Thats me in a tandem flight after I jumped off la Berneuse, 2048 metres above sea level! Part of my present from dh who took the fabulous pictures.

So back with my feet on the ground and back in the UK, I'm off to The Knitting and Stitching Show tomorrow at Alexandra Palace.....and then its downhill all the way to my prestigious knitting event Knitaround Hastings....I'll try and keep you posted, but I am busy casting on the 2000 stitches I need onto 8 circular needles and joining them all together into the giant circle.

I had a productive day at the Hastings Week hobbies and crafts fair, with my trustee Ashford Traditional! Its not often that I have the opportunity to sit and spin for the day. It was very enjoyable, the Mayoress of Hastings stopped by so I took her photo, I'm not sure she understood the concept of blogging though.

The Girl Guides were intrigued by my spinning wheel and I talked them through the process, I wish I had learnt on a drop spindle and had the confidence to demonstrated that for them, I have brought one home to practice on for next time. This is what I did today....I've been mixing a small amount of coloured tops in with the fleece as I spin as a bit of an experiment with colour, its a blend of red with 2 shades of green, I'm thinking of calling it strawberries and cream.

I came back from the Craft Show and decided to knit a couple of rows of the muse hat, thinking I knew where I was in the pattern I blundered on, but I was tired and confused and I wasn't where, I thought I was, it wasn't looking quite as I wanted it to either so I've pulled it all out, in the infamous words of Edwyn Collins and Orange Juice....Rip it up and start again! I'm off to cast something on as an eerie panic sets in if there's no knitting to pick up at breakfast!