The Wool Palace

Married with children

We're back from a few days in the Peak District, relaxed and refreshed.  I'm not sure the same can be said for our hosts.  I like to think we were providing a useful service; showing a couple who are expecting their first baby in six weeks time just what to expect in seven to eight years time.  Just to make sure we got our point across, we went with another friend who has three children, including eight year old twins.  The children fulfilled their side of the arrangement admirably.

Very little knitting was done.  The baby blanket is finished and ws passed to said friends.  Before I left London I thought it would be a good idea to photograph a cream blanket on a white sideboard, just to really show it off.

It turned out rather nicely.  Here's a closeup of the edging, done in (Jill, look away now) recycled sari silk.

I know there were mixed feelings about using this on a baby item but I'm thinking of this less as a blanket to sleep under and more one to be used in a buggy or car seat.  I washed the skein of sari silk several times before using it, so hopefully the colour won't bleed anymore.  If the worst comes to the worst, it can be unpicked and another trim put on instead.

I love the colours of the sari silk and the effect it gave, but I found it broke a lot, both when I was winding it up and when I was knitting with it.  As I was only doing a couple of rows it wasn't much of a problem, but it would have been very annoying if I had been doing a larger item.  Has anyone else had this problem?

Off to do some laundry.  The Wool Palace machine is moving on to Somerset for a few days.  Thankfully our hosts know what to expect, being the childrens' grandparents and all.  Have a good weekend.

Diverted

So Donni tagged me for this meme.  Here we go.

10 years ago:

I was living in a little VW camper van with Toby.  We travelled around England, watching shooting stars in Cornwall, skinny dipping in lakes in Oxfordshire and parking up (with the owner's permission) in family graveyard next to a racehorse gallop in Wiltshire.  We met lots of interesting people, got excellent tans and had a blast.

We ended up living on the side of a mountain in Wales on a protest site set up by the local villagers to try and stop the mountain being dug up for an open cast mine.  It was the era of the road protests sites, where people camped in trees and dug tunnels (remember Swampy?) to try and stop bypasses and other developments.  We visited some of the other protest sites; Newbury and Fairmile, in Devon.  We lived in our van, but I learnt to climb the trees and use the walkways to get around above ground.  We ended up going back to London at the end of December 1995.  Sadly the protesters were evicted from the site in Wales and it was dug up for open cast mining.  All the water meadows and oak tress are gone.  It was a SSSI, providing a habitat for rare butterflies, but that didn't stop the development.

5 years ago:

I was dealing with two young children.  I can't remember a lot of specifics about that time.  I think it was the year we went to stay in a teepee in Cornwall for our summer holiday - the children had great time, although Josie was very concerned about the bear that she saw outside the teepee one morning.  Noone else saw it, but it didn't come back.

1 year ago:

We bought our flat and started to make plans for our wedding.  Time to grow up.

Yesterday:

I had my last day at work for 2 weeks.  Hooray for summer holidays!

Today:

I'm wondering how on earth we've ended up in a situation where armed police are shooting dead suspected suicide bombers on a tube train down the road from my house.  Scary times.

Tomorrow:

We head off to visit friends in the Peak District.  I'm looking forward to a break and getting away from London for a bit.

5 snacks I enjoy:

Salted popcorn, Edamame, Pistachio nuts, Prawn crackers, Pretzels.

5 bands/singers that I know the lyrics of MOST of their songs:

Goodness - I don't really know.  I definitely know all the lyrics to all the Duran Duran songs, being a mad Duranie in my early teens.  Besides that, The Smiths and The Cure probably.  Nirvana and Oasis too I guess.

Things I would do with $100,000,000:

Buy a nice house, go on a long holiday with the family.  Ensure a secure financial future for my children and family members.

5 locations I'd like to run away to:

The Wool Palace's escape from London is being planned as we speak.  It's not going to happen overnight, but it will be in the near future.

5 bad habits I have:

Sulking; Drinking too much wine; Not exercising enough; Procrastinating; Drinking too much coffee

5 things I like doing:

Hill Walking; Reading; Running (except see above); Knitting; Cooking

5 TV shows I like:

ER is about the only thing I would turn down invitations for.

5 movies I like:

Goodfellas; The Sound of Music; Spirited Away; Apocalypse Now; Lord of the Rings

Whew!  That was a long one.  I'm not tagging anyone else, if you want to do it, go for it.

Aurora Borealis

Still here, still knitting the BWMNbN.  Things have looked up a little since I started following Dawn's advice and spending half an hour on it each day, then letting myself do something else.

Last night I let myself wind up 2400 yards of laceweight merino.  Child of the metric age that I am, I'm not really sure what a yard is, but Toby seemed suitably impressed.  Apparently my hank of Cherry Tree Hill laceweight merino is equivalent to the height of  Mt Snowdon twice over.  Do you think it could catch on as a measure of length?  In the pattern instructions, 'Yarn, Cherry Tree Hill Suri Alpaca, Mt Kilimanjaro x 3'.  I think I could get used to it.  I suppose there would be standard mountains that would be quoted all the time.  Maybe it would split into US and UK equivalents.  Ben Nevis equals Mt St Helens or something like that.

That's two Mt Snowdons, that is.

The colour is 'Northern Lights'.  Knitted up, it is a lovely mix of purple and pink, with flashes of green.  Never having seen the Northern Lights, I can't comment on its authenticity, but I like it.

I've decided to knit Elizabeth Zimmerman's Stonington Shawl.  I wanted a simple pattern that wouldn't be swamped by the variegated yarn.  There's not much to see yet.  Hopefully I'll finish the middle square tomorrow and then take a photo. 

I'm hearing the evil laugh of the BWMNbN already; I'm sure something will come up to thwart my plans.

Not enough hours

I had planned a productive knitting weekend this weekend and I thought I had done a lot, but sadly I seem to have very little to show for my time.  I am not going to blame myself for this, rather the project I chose to work on.  What project could it be that would take and take and take in time and give nothing back in knitting? 

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that would be the Blanket of Doom, which is being renamed The Blanket Who Must Not be Named (can you tell what's bedtime reading at the Wool Palace this week?).

I'm not even going to put up a picture of it, as it doesn't deserve any attention until it gives me some sort of break.  I had one edging finished before the weekend started and thought I would fly through the rest, but then I'm forgetting, this is The Blanket Who Must Not be Named, not any ordinary knitting.  As of 9pm tonight, I have one edging and half of another done.  9pm last night, I had two edgings done, but then realised they looked different.  For some reason I had picked up the stitches differently on each side; once again, not my fault, blame The Blanket Who Must Not be Named.  However, I was the one who had to rip back and start one edging again, I didn't see the blanket offering any help. 9pm tomorrow night, what will I have?  Who can say?  Only The Blanket Who Must Not be Named I think.  It has to be done by Friday, but I doubt that will have much bearing on things.

Good thing I had lovely packages to take my mind off the whole BWMNbN thing.  My 2nd package from my lovely Secret Pal.

A pattern for two different bags and fabric flowers, plus fabric and all the notions necessary to make it and some very cool vintage sequins.  And then these great magnets, which she made herself (or even himself, I shouldn't presume).  1p coin is there to provide scale.

Thank you Secret Pal, I love it all!

So while I am slogging on with The Blanket Who Must Not be Named, I am having fun dreaming of my next project.  What will it be?  Well, I haven't decided for definite, but these have been my bedtime reading for the last couple of days.

And that skein of Cherry Tree Hill laceweight seems to have made its way out of the stash chest and is currently cuddled up to the ball winder.

To finish, here's Sam having his very own Harry Potter moment with a barn owl at the Lambeth Country Show this weekend.  The link is from last year's show - prices to hold an owl had gone up by 50p - a lot more than inflation!

Thanks for all your kind comments about the Viennese Shrug - I really appreciated all the positive feedback.  Even if I don't reply to your comment, please know that I read them all and appreciate the time people take to post them. It's nice to know you're out there!

The suffering of the masses

So I had a bit of spare time today and what better to do on a day when the temperature hits 30 degrees than play with wool?  Forget ice cream, swimming pools, G&T,  wool is the number one heat buster - soon everyone will want some.

I thought I had better bag up my Get Knitted stash and put it all away.  I have been having nightmares about circling moths.  How cruel it is to make someone with a phobia of all butterflies and moths become a knitter - now I combine a phobia of horrible winged insects with a fear of wool destruction.  I can trace my fear of butterflies (butterflies are much, much worse than moths) back to my time in Japan.  In Japan I witnessed the horror of large butterflies, as big as sparrows, landing on people.  My toes are curling even as I write this.  I have to stop.

Anyway, as I happily bagged up stash to the accompaniment of The Archers and The Afternoon Play, I realised there was a problem.

Conditions in the sock tray are becoming seriously overcrowded (note the large amounts of moth deterrent plastic bags).  We are moving into double layer territory.  Pretty soon I will be getting calls from charities dedicated to improving conditions for sock wool, demanding to know how I intend to alleviate the situation.  I will have to put an action plan in place.  Is there a fund somewhere that I can apply to for a grant? 

While mulling over my action plan and how I will present my aims and objectives to the funders I decided to make a small dent in the mountain.

Rib & Cable Socks from the latest Interweave Knits, for my Sockapal2za pal, done in Koigu P711.  I love this shade.  Initially it looks tweedy, which is why I chose it for this vintage inspired pattern, but then it hits you with all the colours it has in there, pinks, greens, yellows, just beautiful.  I'm using my super short 2.25mm Brittany sock needles, from Web of Wool.  I was unsure about these to start off with but I'm enjoying using them now.  When I went back to Josie's Regia socks today, which are on 2.5mm standard bamboos, they felt surprisingly unwieldy.

In other news, do you remember the lovely handpainted yarn I got from my Secret Pal a few weeks back?  Well shortly afterwards, I got an email from the lady who produces this wonderful yarn.  She was amazed some had ended up in England and very kindly offered to send me one of her patterns written for this very yarn.  Guess what came in the post yesterday?  The pattern for the Butterfly Shawl.  Thank you so much Virginia.  If you're in the market for some hand painted yarn, pop over to her site and say hello!

Must dash, I have an aims and objectives triangle to draw up.

Viennese Shrug

I would have posted about it earlier, but it's hardly left my body since I finished it last week.  It went to Get Knitted and to the South London Knitters tonight and if it's very, very good I will let it go to Liberty on Thursday as well.

From the front, it sits snugly on the shoulders and doesn't fall down - my pet peeve with shrugs.

From the back, if you can get past the overgrown haircut, you can see the lovely lace pattern.

The lowdown:

Viennese Shrug from Interweave Knits Summer 2005.

Knitted in Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool - I used 5 skeins.

Knitted with 4.5mm rosewood circulars, then decreasing down to 4mm dpns and finishing with 3mm dpns.

I knitted the pattern as written, except for the cuffs.  These should have been knitted on 3.5mm dpns but I didn't have any and forgot to buy any at Liberty, so instead of decreasing down to 48 stitches for the ribbing, I decreased to 60 and used 3mm dpns, which worked just fine.

Would I change anything?  If I did it again I might make the sleeves a bit longer.  They are meant to be three quarter length, but as I plan on wearing this through the autumn, a slightly longer length might have been more practical.

The main advice I would give to anyone doing this is to sew some sort of marker in to show you which way is up.  When you're not wearing it the shrug looks much the same either way up, but there is shaping at the neck, which becomes apparent once you have it on.  After 20 or 30 times of putting it on upside down I sewed a little bit of black thread on the inside edge of the neck, just to save time.  Even now, I could be wearing it upside down, but I like it that way so I'm not worried.

So there you go; shruggily goodness for a summer evening.

Get Knitted - Part 2

As befits a sequel, this is not for the squeamish.  If you are sensitive to the sight of large quanitities of yarn, look away now.

As leader of the expedition, I felt I had to lead by example in the purchasing stakes - although there were others who were not far behind.  All yarns are available on the Get Knitted site.

I went with a plan to stick to sock yarn and laceweight and largely succeeded.

Lots of lovely Opal, including Petticoat on a cone ½ price!

It's become apparent that if I am left alone with Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock yarn I am unable to exercise restraint, especially when faced with solid colours previously unseen.

Cherry Tree Hill is exerting a similar pull, especially the Laceweight Merino - just look at it!

I also succumbed to some Margaret Stove Artisan Lace, along with some scarf patterns.  I mean, I had to do my bit to support NZ producers didn't I?

Lucy Neatby's Celestial Merino sang a siren song to many of us and I was no exception.  This colourway is called Sugar Maple and is destined for a Travelling Vines scarf.

Kaalund Expressions and Koigu nestled up together like butter wouldn't melt.  I did buy some more Koigu but it's been wound up and is currently being knitted up into the Rib & Cable Socks from the latest Interweave Knits, destined for my Sockapal2za pal.

The best thing about the day was getting to see all these yarns in person and having plenty of time to fondle, sniff and generally get to know them.  UK knitters will know how rare a pleasure this is.  Full credit should go to Sue and her staff for bringing all these lovely yarns into the UK, it really has broadened the knitting experience for a lot of us.

That's your yarn fix for tonight.  Coming tomorrow - a finished item...

Get Knitted

What can I say?  A wonderful day.

Carol and I were at Paddington bright and early, thanks to Toby's offer of a lift.  Meeting up with everyone else was complicated slightly by the fact there were two ticket offices, so half of us were waiting in front of one and half in front of the other.  Jacinta did her own thing and waited for us on the train, very wise I thought.

The trip up was a blur of chat and knitting, although the police armed with semi-automatic firearms at some of the stations on the way was a sobering sight.

Jill and Jacinta making productive use of the journey time.

Sue had arranged transport from the station for us when we got to Bristol, there was even a sign made up!

Once we got to Get Knitted, then the serious business of shopping could begin.

Getting down to business.

One corner of the showroom proved particularly alluring for many of us, not surprising considering it contained Koigu, Lorna's Laces, Cherry Tree Hill - sock and lace yarn and lots of other goodies.  Here's Fi trying to withstand the lure of the yarn.

Eventually we were all done (except Dawn!) and settled down to a lovely lunch laid on by Sue, followed by tea and cakes (baked, Kiwi style of course, by Carol W) and plenty of time to chat and knit.

Sue, Jacinta, Carol and Jill.

Of course, given that there were 4 bloggers there, plenty of photos had to be taken.

Dawn and I in a photo shoot out.

I got to meet the lovely Tracy in person at last, as well as her Poetry.

Look at that work!

At the end of the day we were driven back to the station, considerably more laden down than we had been when we arrived and made our way back to London, tired but happy. 

Thanks to Sue, Carol and Tessa for the warm welcome.  Thanks to everyone who came along.  Kerrie, we missed you.  The only thing left to say is, when can we go back?

Carrying On

Thank you for all your thoughts and kind words.  It's very touching to know there are people out there, who I've never met, thinking about me and my family and all other Londoners.

Today in some ways is worse than yesterday, as more details of the horror that people went through come to light.  Reading the paper today has had me in tears.

However, the best way to fight against these people is to carry on living our lives as close to normal as we can.  So I'll be spending this weekend as I planned, going to Get Knitted with my knitting friends tomorrow and spending Sunday with my family.  My heart goes out to those who are not able to do so.

I hope all the London knitbloggers and readers out there are safe, as well as their families and friends.

We are all OK here.  I don't work in central London anymore, so have escaped the worst of the chaos.  Thankfully my sister, who works near Russell Square, had taken the day off work.  Toby drove to work, so he will probably be very late home, but at least he is safe and well.

Back to the knitting tomorrow.