If you go down to the woods today

Felix and I went on a lovely walk on Bank Holiday Monday.



Felix walking through the very lush and very damp clover meadow.

Felix said that we might see deer in Holton Wood so we took care to be very very quiet as we walked through and saw a grand total of one fawn. Then we walked out of the wood, with voices back at full volume and saw this:



A whole herd of deer - there must have been at least 30 nibbling on the crops at the edge of the field. I managed to snap a couple of pictures from a distance before they got the wind up and headed for the woods.

Mooching

I can't think of a nicer way to spend a lazy Bank Holiday Saturday than a wander around the gardens at Blenheim followed by a cup of tea and slice of cake on the terrace.









I reckon it'll be about a fortnight or so until the roses start opening - I'll keep you posted.

Smells like summer

For me the smell of Soltan is the smell of summer and (hurrah) this weekend has been hot enough so far to have necessitated slapping it on in liberal doses. It hasn't prevented me from going a bit red in places but nothing like the redness incurred whilst playing korfball* around this time last year.

I've been outdoors all day at the OGWSD Art Weeks exhibition spinning and watching other people dyeing and (I have a new hobby) needle felting.



It's great fun except when you stick the needle in your finger - ow! Unlike most fibre-crafts this is not one to do whilst watching the telly. I needle felted some daisies/daffodils onto some purply/red felt and later turned it into a camera case.



Now that I have the basics - a big sponge and a viciously sharp (and barbed) needle - I'm keen to try embellishing lots of other things so don't be surprised if you notice that all my belongings have been customised to within an inch of their lives.

The big event of the day was that Chris and Linda of Red Hill alpacas brought 3 of their herd - Sonita, Amy and Jacita - over to meet us. Everyone was very excited to see the beautiful animals.





No wonder that everyone wants to have their own alpaca - they're just so cuddly. Sadly there's not really room for one on our balcony.

* turns out if you spend all day with one arm in the air looking skywards your neck will turn very red - even with sunscreen.

To my new socks

soft yarn
after ten days
I have socks
Monkeys

Liz Thompson 2009

Hee! Haiku (Haikus?) are fun.



Pattern: Monkey by Cookie A.
Yarn: Sweet Feet sock yarn from Artist's Palette yarns
Needles: 2.5mm
Ravelled: here

This makes 8 pairs now - better get working on that button for the sidebar.

On your marks, get set ...

I'm working hard on my preparations for the Great Manchester Run which I'm taking part in this Sunday on behalf of Mind, the leading UK mental health charity. Mind runs helplines, drop-in centres, counselling, and many other services for the 1 in 4 people who are directly affected by mental health problems as well as their families. I'm aiming to raise £150 to help them in their work.

So for training I went for a 6 mile run on Saturday, I biked 8 miles into work this morning, I've got another 6 mile run tomorrow and ... I baked two huge chocolate cakes.



Don't worry, they're not for me. The idea is to get my colleagues in a good mood tomorrow before asking them for sponsorship - I hope it works!

I'm afraid I can't offer chocolate cake to all my online friends (we just don't have that kind of bandwidth) however I do have something to tempt your generosity.

the Grand Prize



Clockwise from top left: hand-made (by me) pincushion, 1 skein Colinette Jitterbug sock yarn in Dusk, hand-made cupcake badge from Sumptuosity of York, 2 skeins Misti Alpaca Laceweight in Merlot, hand-crocheted (not by me) flower brooch, and finally a copy of Alterknits by Leigh Radford.

All you have to do to win all these knitterly goodies is to sponsor me online at http://my.artezglobal.com/personalPage.aspx?SID=260979 (secure online donation site) and then send an email to thomasinaknits AT yahoo DOT co DOT uk to let me know you have done so. Once the sponsorship deadline has passed I will draw one winner from the emails.

Competition officialness

1. The competition will close on June 17th 2009. This is the day by which all sponsorship money has to be submitted. The drawing will be on June 18th 2009.

2. I will assign each entrant a number according to the order in which I received their email. The winner will then be chosen using a random number generator.

3. I will contact the winner by email after the drawing to find out their postal details. I am happy to post to anywhere in the world.

Finally, if you have blogs of your own I'd be really grateful if you could send people this way. All this lovely stash has got to go!

Train essentials

I tend to bitch a little bit when confronted with a train journey that takes an hour longer than usual due to "essential rail maintenance" but really there's a lot to be said for a journey that takes 6 hours door-to-door. All that concentrated knitting time does wonders for progress.

These are my train "essentials". OK they're luxuries really but I find they're what I need to spend the best part of the day on the West Coast mainline without getting too wound-up.



Please note how my train essentials are colour coordinated. They even matched my raspberry coloured cardigan (although not the white t-shirt, at least not until I dropped a blodge of cherry yoghurt onto it).

Cold drink: at the moment I really like M&S's not-from-concentrate apple and mango. It even counts as one of my 5-a-day too.

Greek style yoghurt with cherry compote: my absolute favourite thing. I am constitutionally unable (it would appear) to pass a Simply Food M&S without buying one of these. I don't think this counts as one of my 5-a-day.

Hot drink: tea from Costa. I admit that £1.60 is a ridiculous mark-up on a cup of tea but I do like that Costa charge the same amount for their large tea as they do for the small. It's only extra hot water after all.

iPod: in very worn Kid Classic case (must make new one). I tend to listen to audio books, podcasts and radio dramas rather than music as I find them more absorbing which seems to make the journey pass more quickly. Hurrah for BBC radio 7 (this week I will be mostly listening to Cold Comfort Farm). Yesterday I was listening to Sparkling Cyanide (a pressie from Felix) which was still going strong when I reached my front door.

Knitting: Hedera by Cookie A. This pattern is working up just as quickly as Monkey. Must be the Cookie A. magic.

Sitting in a comfy chair with a cup of tea, an audio book, a yummy yoghurt and my knitting, watching sunlit countryside flash by. It's almost the perfect Sunday afternoon.

Slight change of plan

I got this far with the Sacre du Printemps socks before deciding that the gauge (even after going up a needle size) was far too tight. I still want to knit this pattern (albeit with finer sock yarn) but for the moment - riiiiiip.

It only took a few minutes on Ravelry to find the perfect alternative pattern, Hedera. It's pretty, straightforward, another Cookie A. pattern and it was even originally knit in Rowan 4-ply soft.



I've been wanting to knit this pattern for ages, ever since receiving a pair for Sockapalooza 4 and even more so after seeing Megan's. Once I've completed these and the current pair of Monkeys my sock drawer should be fully replenished and I can maybe get on with a bit of Christmas sock knitting - less than 8 knitting months to go, guys!

At last she recollected that they had been travelling ...

I don't really have a very connected post about our weekend in Derbyshire but I thought I'd share a few of my favourite photos.

On Sunday we went for a walk on the moors. This is my second attempt at this photo, on the first one the camera was being blown about so much that the boyfriend ended up half out of shot. Note the yellow GPS device. Useful for knowing how far you've gone, how far you still have to climb and, most importantly, keeping the bloke amused when his legs start to get tired.



"the wild and untamed beauty of the peaks" I suspect that that's a quote from the 1995 BBC adaptation of P&P rather than from the novel itself (which I don't have to hand) but it's rather fitting nonetheless. View from Axe Edge moor.



Goldfish in the Buxton Pavilion where we went for a late lunch after our walk. I was a bit underwhelmed by Buxton itself (although our B&B was gorgeous) but the pavilion and the gardens are very nice. I really like the way that the fish which were the intended target of the photo are so much less distinct than the reflections on the water.



Hello Pemberley (aka Chatsworth). You can't (at least I can't) go to Derbyshire without visiting at least one of the Pemberleys (the other one is Lyme Park over near Stockport). You can't access the steps on the left which featured quite heavily in the film as they're roped off, probably because otherwise there'd be a constant stream of Elizabeth Bennet wannabees posing on them and no one would be able to get past.



Fancy pants chickens at Chatsworth. We met these hens just wandering around the gardens having engineered a bold escape from the hen run. You can't see it very well in this photo but they really do have feathery trousers.



Sleeping lion in the sculpture gallery at Chatsworth. I think this guy had a bit part in Pride & Prejudice. They still have the resin bust of Matthew McFadyen there as part of the Chatsworth in film exhibition but I felt that taking a photo of that would be a bit fangirly. I did do a genuine double take when I saw it though.

Twelve Monkeys?

Given that I'm now at seven and a half pairs I might as well go the whole hog. Now I just need to sort out a blog button and hope that knitting 12 Monkeys doesn't actually bring on the apocalypse.



Having made that pledge I am taking a little break from the all Monkey diet with this charming pattern.



It's quite exciting to be knitting a sock where you actually have to read the instructions for the toe. I'm knitting them in super squishy Rowan 4-ply soft. A bit too plain for Monkeys but perfect for the delicate cables in this pattern.

Must knit more Monkeys

According to Ravelry this is my seventh pair of Monkeys and I've just cast on (by which I mean I'm five repeats down the leg) pair number eight. It's like a sickness.



Pattern: Monkey by Cookie A.
Yarn: Undyed sockyarn from Blue faced byed by me using Super Cook
Needles: 2.5mm
Mods: none - why mess with perfection?
Ravelled: here

These were my travelling socks for our trip to Derbyshire (check out the photos on flickr) last weekend and they were just perfect. The pattern is compelling enough to make the miles in the car just fly by* but memorable enough that you don't have to juggle a chart as well as the map and so readable that you never lose your place. You can knit them whilst walking around, whilst waiting to be served in the restaurant, whilst watching a film in French with subtitles**. They're like the Swiss Army knife of socks, handy in all situations.

Which is why I grafted together the toe of the seventh pair and immediately started the long tail cast on for the eighth.



I think I love these even more! The colourway just screams summer. It's the colour of sorbet and azalea bushes and rose gardens. I feel warmer just looking at them.

* I tried to tell the boyfriend how utterly satisfying it is when you get to the last row of the lace repeat and make the last two purl stitches disappear but I don't think he quite got it.

** If you haven't seen Priceless yet I beg you to - I loved it!

Cute as a button

This morning's post brought a fabulous parcel from the lovely Felix. I have to confess that when she texted me from York on Friday to say that she'd been thinking of me in Duttons a little part of my mind did wonder if that meant that some buttony goodness would be coming my way but I really didn't expect so many gorgeous buttons at once!



Thank you so much Felix!

Luckily I was wearing my raspberry Minimalist cardigan today so I was able to note that the reddish/pink buttons were a perfect match and to earmark eight of them right away. I waas only kicking myself that I didn't have the needles and yarn to get started right away at Bluestockings. Still it doesn't take long to whip up a button band. One episode of The Apprentice and two of Family Guy, et voila!



Ravelled: here

I'll hopefully get some better photos tomorrow or at the weekend but I just couldn't wait to share my modified Minimalist cardigan.

Now I just need to plan what to do with all the other buttons.

Sweet treats #2

Also for the OGWSD sales table during Art Weeks. And I have a question. How much would you pay for one of these (or for any of the cupcakes in the previous post)? As I'm not selling them to make money for myself I don't need to charge for the full amount of time taken (the best part of four hours) but I don't want to sell myself too short. The cupcakes took a much shorter length of time to knit (after I realised that continuing to knit cakes in 4 ply on 2mm needles was going to drive me insane).

Any thoughts?

Sweet treats

When not knitting daffodil lace, finishing socks or spinning coils (next post) I've been obsessively knitting cupcakes.



These are destined for the OGSWD sales table so you can buy own of your very own if you pop along to the Stanton St. John village hall during Art Weeks.



Yum!

Spring lace

My lace project for the OGWSD Art Weeks challenge is knitting up surprisingly quickly.



It's just a basic top-down triangle shawl recipe with a little flowers lace motif at the shoulders, then a zig-zag with vertical lines of eyelets which will develop into a daffodil motif at the bottom edge. I'm still not completely convinced by the colours (I wish I'd stuck to yellow and green really) but I'm hoping that blocking will work its customary miracle of making everything look about ten times better then it did pre-blocking.

Socks galore

Two pairs of finished socks to report on.

Toasty waffle socks



Yarn: my handspun Shetland 3 ply (about 175g)
Needles: 3.25mm dpns
Size: UK6
Recipient: me! no way am I giving away my first pair of handspun socks, but don't despair I'm going to be making more of these babies asap.
Ravelled: here

Broad Arrow (tbc) socks



Yarn: Malabrigo merino sock
Needles: 2.5mm dpns
Size: a small UK6
Recipient: me again! what can I say, I need socks.
Ravelled: here

Reports on the other knitting and spinning projects that I've been working on during my period of blog silence to follow shortly.

Toasty waffle socks

With two secret projects on the go I felt the need to cast on something quick and bloggable this evening.



There's something ineffably satisfying about knitting with one's own handspun. So far sheer contentment and (I have to admit) a fair bit of smugness is being knit into every stitch. The experience is comparable to knitting with a really lovely variegated yarn only instead of going "ooh" at an especially pretty colour I'm going "ooh" at a particularly evenly spun bit of yarn.

I'm knitting the socks in waffle stitch (two rounds of K2, P2, two rounds of K every stitch) as the marled effect means that there's not much point in doing anything fancier.

Spinning up a storm

Ok, so I'm miles behind on the blogging but I've just been far too busy spinning and knitting and doing stuff.

I knit a load of baby stuff the weekend before last. Another pair of tiny baby socks and two baby hats. The first is from baby cashmerino, the second from yarn that I dyed myself. I really like the cross-stitch detail, must do more of that.







The rest of the time I've been busy spinning. Although I'd started to spin my Spindlefrog birthday fibre using the drop spindle I switched over to the wheel in order to try out some of the stuff I'd learnt at the Wingham Woolworks sampling workshop and ended up with this DKish weight two ply. Do you think I'll have enough for a hat?



I'd say that it's the best thing I've spun so far, but then I spun this (I'm in a bit of a spinning groove at the moment).





200g of Shetland three ply in cream, grey and moorit. At first glance it looks like there are only two plies, cream and moorit, but the grey is nestled in there making the yarn appear beautifully smooth and round.

Finally we have my 'reward fibre'.



I picked this up from the Artist's Palette stall at the Cotswold Craft Fair in Cirencester on Easter Saturday and wouldn't let myself start on it until I'd finished plying the Shetland (a resolution made somewhat easier by running out of bobbins).



This is so pretty. The colours apeared really saturated in places in the braid but as soon as I started to pre-draft everything just softened up magically. It's a bit trickier to spin than the Shetland as the staple length is shorter and the fibres are finer and less crimped but I'll just keep treadling away at it.

All spun out

You know it's time to stop spinning when your hands start to cramp up and you get a serious crick (the sort I used to associate with a 5 hour waitressing shift) between your shoulders but with this Spindlefrog fibre it's just so tempting to see what the next colour change is going to spin up like.

That's my explanation for why I got through a bobbin and a half this evening.



I haven't been very systematic about either trying to keep the colours distinct or blending them all up anyhow so it's just going to be a glorious muddle of colour once it's plied. I have big plans for making a striped something (probably a hat) with the grey humbug Jacob I spun and plied a couple of weeks back. It's going to be fabulous.

There'll be no spinning this weekend as I'm up north for the footy but I'll have lots of little knitting projects to take with me.

If you think these are cute you should see the smaller size that I'm working on now.



Pattern: Two-needle socks from Baby Knits for Beginners by Debbie Bliss
Size: 3 months
Recipient: Seth (a colleague's new baby boy)
Yarn: Baby cashmerino
Needles: 3.25mm dpns
Mods: Knit in the round, otherwise according to the pattern
Ravelled: here

I bought the yarn and the book between leaving work and getting to the pub for knitting yesterday evening, I felt like I needed a bit of "yarn therapy". Although the book is aimed at beginner knitters (the front section has notes on all the techniques you'll need to knit the patterns) the designs are so lovely that they should appeal to knitters of all abilities. I love the dress with eyelets. It's such a simple design that you could either just knit it as written or add any colourwork or lace that you want to make it more fancy. I can't wait to knit one for Laurie!

What, no owls?

We didn't have a fantastic weekend - first the boyfriend was ill, then I was (thankfully not with the same thing) - but I did manage to knit most of a new vest which I should get a bit of wear out of before the weather gets too warm for bulky wool.



Pattern: based on O w l s by Kate Davies
Size: 34"
Yarn: Rowan Country; 7 balls
Needles: 6.5mm and 6mm 80cm circulars

I originally bought the yarn to knit a jacket for Laurie, then realised that there were some sizing issues with the pattern that I'd picked*. The yarn's really a bit bulky for her anyway so I decided to knit something for myself. As the gauge was just about the same as the O w l s pattern I decided to start off knitting that and see how I got on. By the time I reached the armholes I'd worked through 4 of the 7 balls so I decided on making a vest. I chose not to the knit the owls, partly because I wasn't sure whether the placement (right across the chest) would be flattering and partly because they're rather difficult to work in the bulky yarn and I didn't want to be all owled out for when I knit the sweater proper.

The pattern was really easy to follow and the clever waist shaping at the back makes for a flattering fit. Now I have a cute (and warm) vest for spring and a really good idea about what decisions to make when knitting O w l s for real in order to have a perfect fitting sweater. In fact, just think of it as a giant swatch.

* the clue was that one (adult) knitter on Ravelry was able to fit into the 2 year old size!

Essential luxuries

A new Lilyflame candle for the bathroom.



A Maison Blanc cake for tea.



An exciting new sewing project.



I'm just off to transfer my dart markings!