Bluebells & Knitting
Back in September, through the mists of time, I began working on the Brooklyn Tweed lace circle shawl Leaves of Grass. I used the Einband Lopi laceweight - Icelandic wool that my friend Alice brought back for me from holiday. The yarn is very…shall we say…rustic. I find it smooth enough but people sensitive to scratchy wool might find it painful! It’s a single ply and does rip apart easily, but it spit splices together like magic! That means that in the entire circle shawl, there are no joins, as the yarn is just invisibly spliced together. I made some VERY weird calculations and ordered piles extra for this shawl and didn’t need it in the end, so this yarn will be turning up in other projects in the future! Anyway, the shawl...
First blossoms!
After 12 months of terrible weather, starting with last April’s torrential downpours that continued for months. There have been floods, lost crops, the coldest winter in decades, a spring that wouldn’t come, but! BUT! This week was warm and sunny. I took the opportunity to go and investigate the state of my balcony garden and was very happy at what I found! It seems that a few days of good weather made all the difference in the world… My apple tree that I stole from a skip, sawed the top and roots off, and stuck in a pot, is blooming for the first time. My fig is setting its first fruit of the year, the grape vine has had bud break and is bursting open with leaves, the bleeding heart I got dried up and dead a year or two ago from the...
Strange Looks in London
I finally found a way to get strange looks in London. It’s very simple…cart your newly acquired, third-hand New Zealand-made spinning wheel into your Bayswater flat. Nudity, singing, strange clothing – nothing will get you a strange look in London. Except this. I bought it through ravelry from a nice lady in Luton and drove up this morning to collect it. It’s an Ashford Traditional wheel, and the lady I bought it from brought it with her from Australia. She had purchased it from her spinning instructor who restores spinning wheels, so I’m not sure that he was the first owner. I think it’s about 20-30 years old and has evidence of being well-loved! There are pictures drawn on it, it was painted at some point, then the lady I...
Preparing for the winter
The weather in London has been very cold and dry lately – everyone is saying that this winter is going to be ferociously cold! That being said, my roses are still in bloom, the apple still has leaves on it, and the quince is still growing. My grape vine (back right in above picture) is of the variety Marselan, a fairly recent cross of cabernet sauvignon and grenache. It gets gorgeous red foliage in the autumn and throws its huge leaves everywhere. I thought I had cleaned up most of it, but today I managed to fill an entire garbage bag with red leaves, dug out from behind all the other pots. In a tiny urban garden, cleaning up for the winter becomes very very important. Especially for those of us up in the sky, we’re exposed to all sorts of bugs...
Grace Quilt: Part 1
Even though I’m not great at sewing and it’s not really been a main hobby, I keep accumulating fabric stash, including charm squares & fat quarters like crazy! It’s impossible to resist these beautiful little samples! I had one charm pack sitting in my stash and thought that it’s now or never and I just jumped in! I got a book (Quilter’s Bible) which was utterly and completely useless for a beginner. Most internet resources seemed really unclear and disorganised, but then I found two, which were very helpful! The about.com quilting reference. It’s called “We’ll show you how to make quilts” and it means it! It’s a great all-round reference for a beginner. This Moda Bakeshop tutorial on a basic charm...
Boreray
This summer I got my greedy hands on possibly the most rare yarn ever commercially spun – pure Boreray breed yarn by Blacker Yarns! Yarn is VERY, shall we say, rustic, and is almost painful to work with, but it’s absolutely gorgeous. I don’t even think it’s wearable – and I’m the woolliest of wool fans! I decided to make heavy gauge lace so I’ve started the Echo Flower shawl, a fantastic free pattern! 2 into 9 stitches and nupps are NOT fun with course rustic yarn, but I’m getting there, and I don’t mind saying that it’s fabulous! As an aside, I’ve been obsessed with the isles of St. Kilda ever since I travelled to Orkney and Shetland for the first time and came across the book Life and Death...
PONIES!
Finally on Friday I finished the epic feat of engineering that was my PONIES! mittens. After a lot of struggle and re-working, I was glad to see the end of them. Here’s how they came to be… Last year I took my friend Alice to the New Forest national park. When we got to the Picket Post area of the park, she saw her first New Forest ponies, wandering across the street and started shrieking “PONIES! PONIES!” Alice is an extremely knitworthy friend so I started cooking something up in my head… These are gusseted mittens on 2mm needles in light fingering weight / 3 ply yarn. The yarn is one of my favourites, J.C. Rennie Scottish lambswool. This is a family company, established 1978, and this particular yarn is fine and...
Haruni
I’ve been working on my Haruni shawl for months; other than a strange start, in which I couldn’t get through the wordy instructions and did my triangular cast on backwards, it was quite uneventful. Switching to chart B took me weeks because I could get it to line up – I wish there was a transition chart! Finally cast it off and it looked tiny. Not the usual pre/blocked tiny, but so small it would be unwearable. My theory now is that it’s because of the puckers created by the overall leaf pattern, which pull in the fabric more than usual. I blocked it so hard I thought I was going to rip it, but it has opened up nicely! I could’ve gone up a needle size but the gauge seems about right as is, even though I have a third of a skein...
Perils of Moving
When we first moved in to our flat a month ago, there were so many plants in the ‘botanical garden’ that they all got crammed in to the balcony, just be able to even shut the door. There were still dozens in the flat, in the hallway outside the flat, on the fire escape…everywhere. Then we went and picked up the last of the garden from the old house and it got even worse! Realising that my most precious plants were on the far end of the balcony that I couldn’t reach, and that the weather had finally warmed up, I knew I risked losing plants. Sure enough, when I got to the back of the balcony and tried things up, my boysenberry bush had produced its first full crop and I had lost almost every single berry. The plant itself had also really...
Every day is worldwide knitting in public day
Certainly the best thing about my new commute is the return to taking the train. After all, the train is the whole reason I started knitting… A few years ago I had a nightmare commute across the southeast of England, involving a long walk, two trains, and a bus. The trains were always late, with reasons ranging from “we’ve lost the driver” to “risk of leaves on the line” to “body parts on the line.” I was so stressed about always being late to work and always feeling out of control on my own transport that I had to do something to keep myself busy and feel productive at the end of the not infrequent 2 hour delays. Woodworking, sculpture, and ballroom dancing obviously weren’t going to work, so and then I...
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