It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

The boyfriend and I tend to spend a lot of time over Christmas with our respective families so we need to get our own Christmas stuff out early in order to enjoy it before we head off to Kent and Bolton. We've already had two cups of coffee out of the Christmas mugs and I'll be putting up the decorative twigs (with their new Handm@de ornaments) on Friday.

Christmas knitting is underway too. I've finished one scarf for a colleague and I'm a quarter of the way through a pair of socks in Megan's gorgeous Wellington sock yarn in the Stringybark colourway. I love this yarn, there's a real complexity and subtlety to the colourway which totally does not show up in this photo!



Proper daylight photos when we get some proper daylight around here!

Handm@de Oxford

I had a completely gorgeous time looking around the Handm@de craft fair in Oxford this afternoon. This was such an amazing craft fair - all you could hear as you browsed round the stalls were people murmuring "that's so sweet" as they looked at the beautiful things on display. If you are near Cambridge next weekend I urge you to check out the fair at the Guild Hall on 5th December.

The little pink heart earrings* are my favourite thing from the afternoon. They and the black and white hairslides are both from Button Moon. The little robin tree decoration (which is filled with cloves and smells delicious btw) is from Fabric Nation and the felted soap is from Funny Banana.

If you can't make it to a Handm@de Fair there's a list of all the Handm@de designers online at the Handm@de site and I'm pretty sure they all have etsy or folksy shops.

* I have to confess that I have a totally soppy reason for loving these - they remind me of the pink candy heart which Gilbert Blythe gives to Anne in Anne of Green Gables.

Rest day

Blenheim, Water Terrace, hot chocolate, knitting, no one else around - perfect.

Believe me, I know, I mean I really know, how lucky I am to have a place like this right on my doorstep. I even did a twirly dance on the Vanbrugh Bridge at how gorgeous everything was. Then I had to stop because I got dizzy. There was even a marquee put up on the Water Terrace so I could sit right by the fountains without freezing my ass off. I am now feeling much more relaxed.

RSPCA Christmas Bazaar tomorrow

Just a quick plug for the RSPCA Christmas Bazaar at the Methodist Church Hall in Woodstock tomorrow between 2-5pm. I'll be manning a stall on behalf of Oxford WSD. We'll be selling gorgeous hand-dyed yarn and fibre by The Thylacine and Yarnimals, beautiful recycled tweed brooches in the shape of little houses, and there'll be a few of my little owls. I'm hoping there'll be lots of bird lovers who would just love a woolly little friend to perch on their coat.



[check out these jewel coloured (somewhat over-exposed) lovelies]

Megan dropped off this big bag of yarn last night. The colours are so pretty it's taking all my self-control not to just snatch the lot and flee the country.

You can't have too many bras*

Or rather, I have had to buy yet another bra to go with the new dress I bought at John Lewis at the weekend. It's one of the things you don't remember to think about in the shop when you're sizing up the price or how "high maintenance" a new dress is likely to be. They should put it on the care label after the laundering instructions: "Handwash at low temperatures. Do not tumble-dry. Oh, and you'll probably need a new bra with that neckline." Either that, or on the price label "£69 (€92) + £20 bra-tax". The thing is that I thought I already had all the bras - white, black, nude, strapless, multi-way, padded, not-so-padded, fancy, plain - obviously I was wrong.

Still, the new bra is an engineering miracle - there are allegedly over 100 ways to wear it. If only someone would tell me what they all are because I can't get much above twenty, not including "as improvised earmuffs" or "emergency airline pillow".

* I am clearly the anti-Harlot on this point.

Champagne moment

I don't want to start enumerating poultry and I'm keeping skin contact with the wooden desk at all times as I type this but I think that the work project we have been planning and sweating over for the past few months and which has been keeping me awake at nights for the past couple of weeks (culminating in yesterday's night of total insomnia) is just about completed. I'm sitting here with a glass of Sainsbury's finest champagne (it really is very good) just about to head downstairs for a steak dinner and Strictly Come Dancing. Life is good right at this minute.

Plus I have a kick dress (as Buffy would say) and shoes which I bought in John Lewis this morning. Photos tomorrow maybe.

Pain, I can't sleep*

I know that I can claim time in lieu (i.e. leave) for work done at the weekend but do you think I can claim a lie-in in lieu for project-related sleepless nights? On the plus side I have managed to knit a whole mitten in a pattern I've been trying to work up since Woolfest in the summer (when I had my last bout of insomnia - although that time it was mainly because I was high on caffeine and wool fumes). I got a lot of knitting done that night too. Not that my knitting doesn't suffer a bit under these conditions. For instance I just made a beautiful spit splice to an entirely random bit of yarn under the impression that it was the piece I had broken off at the thumb.

Talking of Woolfest reminds me that my work stresses are very small beer compared to the misery of the poor people in Cumbria who have been flooded out this weekend. It's heartbreaking to see Cockermouth, where Kate (and Tom), Lara, Felix, and I had such a lovely time in the summer, submerged under feet of water and Keswick and Kendal too - places that I know really well.

* just to say, there's no any actual pain involved - it's a lyric from a song which I have on my ipod.

Random Thursday

I scraped my knuckles on an extremely vicious bit of hedge whilst running on Tuesday. If anyone asks I'm going to claim I was in a fight and you should see the other guy.

I get intensely annoyed by cyclists who cycle either in the road or the bus lane when there's a perfectly good cycle path right there! If there's a 50mph speed limit and your name's not Mark Cavendish then you shouldn't be in the road holding up the traffic.

I've been out running three times this week already and I hope to make it four on Saturday. I may have to buy yet more running socks as the laundry is not keeping up with this schedule.

I'll be knitting more tiny owls this weekend as I'm manning a stall for the OGWSD at an RSPCA fundraising fair in Woodstock on Saturday the 28th. Hopefully there'll be lots of bird lovers there.

Is this the weirdest looking sock you've ever seen?

So weird in fact that Lien had to ask what it was at Bluestockings this evening! Trust me, it looks a lot more sock-like on the foot. I really wanted to design a sock where all the shaping was created by the stitch pattern and the only way I could do it was with a very small, pointy toe. There was quite a bit of sock knitting going on round the table. Ellen was working on her niece's fabulous Christmas stocking and Jenny had completed her first sock in the lovely red yarn.

I came home to find that the boyfriend had created a masterpiece in shepherd's pie form. He was so proud of his beautiful pie that he thought it deserved a mention on the blog.



The potatoes are light and fluffy, the sauce is full of flavour, and it's as pretty as a picture...but is it good enough for the quarter-final of Masterchef?

De-stressing, two knits and two purls at a time

Nothing quite like 2x2 rib to take your mind off things. Work is not the most stress-free environment in the world at the moment and the knitting is pretty darn necessary to take the edge off. This sock is a prototype for a design I have in mind. It's not perfect as it stands but it's going to be lovely and cushy and perfectly wearable.

You know what else is good for stress? Cuddling babies. I went round to see Aliki and P after work today. P is such a sweet little thing, very smiley and very relaxed about being held by random friends of his mum. Hurrah for babies, I say.

Tiny and cosy

I might have mentioned, once or twice, that I have the cutest niece in the whole world. She turns two on Saturday and already she is totally the little mother. Whenever we take her to the park she'll have a quick go on the swings and slide herself and then spend the rest of the visit putting dolly on the swings, pushing dolly in her pram, changing dolly's nappy.

I had the idea to make dolly a gro-bag (baby sleeping bag) of her own after one afternoon in the park when Laurie spent the whole time tucking dolly into her own pram and covering her with her own gro-bag.



It's just a rectangle with armholes and a neckhole and a zip up the front. I used the rest of the snail and peapod fabric for the outer and a beautiful blue fabric with flower print for the lining.



The bias binding is the fabric I used for my needle roll.



When I saw Laurie at the end of October she had really got the hang of adjectives. She would hold up a Cheerio between her little fingers and say "TINY" at the highest possible volume and pitch. She gets very excited by things that are tiny. The other thing that she would do is to tuck dolly and mousey and Jane dolly into her pram and say "cosy". Hopefully she'll find this both "TINY" and "cosy" and she'll have a wonderful second birthday.

Flipping awesome

Another project, this time started way on the train from Les Houches to Geneva at the end of August, to which I put the finishing touches—a button and a crochet buttonhole apiece—last week.

Felix very kindly took some photos in the glorious Sussex sunshine.



I love the way the sunlight catches those sproingy little Shetland fibres. As you can see I'm wearing the mittens here with the flip-tops buttoned back. Funnily enough I have been wearing them with the tops over my fingers ever since - it has just got so bitterly cold in the mornings and evenings - and they're splendidly practical. I just flip back the tops whenever I need to fumble for my keys or my bus pass and then it's back into the lovely warm mittens as soon as the need for manual dexterity is over.

Pattern: my own (not written up yet)
Needles: 3mm dpns (I think - must make more notes)
Yarn: about 1/2 ball of cream and 2/3 ball fawn fingering weight Shetland from Garthenor Organic Pure Wool. (You should pop by to their site just to see the galloping sheep!)

I'll do my best to knit another pair and make better notes this time.

Where did you get that hat?

What, this hat?



Pattern: 115-12a - hat with lace pattern by Drops Design
Needles: 3mm and 3.5mm circulars
Yarn: Buttersoft DK (1 skein)

I finished this up on Friday evening at the Studio. Once I finished the decreases the hat, which had been assuming quite alarming proportions, wound up being a quite reasonable size - fabulous for keeping my ears warm. Now I just need the matching gloves.

Down on the farm

I've just got back from a fabulous trip to East Sussex with Felix and Ruth. On Friday afternoon I met Felix and Ruth at Reading station where we all piled into the Felix-mobile and drove to Beech Hill Farm near Rushlake Green in Sussex where Julia Desch keeps a flock of coloured Wensleydale sheep.



[The Studio (exterior) at Beech Hill Farm]



[Felix and Ruth making supper]

It was pitch dark and raining when we got there but we soon got the wood burning stove going and we had a lovely cosy evening eating butternut squash and ginger soup and watching Autumnwatch. One of the assignments on this week's show was to help the British Trust for Ornithology monitor the numbers of Tawny Owls for their Bird Atlas. When the rain let up later on we went outside to listen for Tawny Owls and were very excited to hear three! I've already added our "hearings" to the Tawny Owl coverage map.

The next morning was gorgeous so we headed out to meet the sheep and get some provisions for dinner at the Redlands Farm shop.



[Happy chickens at Redlands Farm shop]

Julia's black Wensleydales are so beautiful.



I love their mad dreadlocks and sweet little faces. These guys are six month old rams.



And this is Old Grey Owl. He's a bit lame and so Julia is moving him to another field to stop him being picked on by the other sheep.



On Saturday afternoon we had a spinning lesson with Wendy. Ruth and I are already pretty good spinners but wanted to learn to spin thicker yarn. Felix was more or less a beginning spinner so this was a great chance for her to get some 1-1 coaching and lots of time to practise on the wheel. I think she's hooked now.



[Felix on the Ashford Kiwi]

Ruth and I both had a go on the Ashford Country Spinner which is for spinning really thick yarn. Ruth managed to ply some of her yarn using it but I just couldn't get used to the weighted wheel which kept going after I stopped treadling.



[Ruth on the Country Spinner]

What I could get used to is the double treadle Ashford Kiwi that I used. So much easier to control the speed than my single treadle Wee Peggy. Having used a wheel with Scotch tension I'm now inspired to sort out the Scotch tension on my own wheel. It can be used with both double drive and Scotch tension and so far I've only tried double drive. I just need a new spring and to replace the existing thick twine with some nylon thread I think.

By the end of our session I felt much happier spinning a thicker yarn and had spun and plied three skeins of grey Romney from another local flock. I'm really looking forward to spinning some more heavier-weight yarn on my own wheel.

Today, once we'd tidied up at the Studio, we headed over to Lewes to spend some of our English pounds. The weather had turned bitterly cold overnight so we were more than happy to keep diving into the lovely little shops that we passed on our way to the Needlemakers craft centre. It was a good thing for our wallets that the patchwork shop was closed but Ruth and Felix still managed to spend a fair amount on buttons, I Spy books, and an incredibly hammy radio dramatisation of The Sea of Adventure which kept us in stitches for the first half hour or so of the drive back. Personally I was most tempted by a near complete set of Arthur Ransome first editions - the former property of an F. C. Baden-Powell of Hinksey Hill, Oxford - but couldn't quite kid myself that I could afford even one. If I was a collector then I probably wouldn't blink at £30 for a first edition but it's a bit much for a book that I just want to read (and re-read). I did get quite a way into We didn't mean to go to Sea whilst Felix and Ruth were browsing and I may have to make a quick trip to the bookshop tomorrow in order to finish it!.

I don't have any photos of the Aladdin's Cave that is downstairs at the Needlemakers but I'm sure Ruth will be posting hers soon. After all that rummaging we were very ready for a lovely lunch followed by cake at the cafe upstairs before heading back to the car for the drive home.

I did get some, although not much, knitting done over the weekend - there were about equal quantities of knitting and ripping - so there'll be a couple of finished object posts coming up in the next day or so.

By the river

I went for a wonderful run this lunchtime. I feel so lucky that I can get up from my desk and 15 minutes later I'm running along the River Thames with geese and ducks swimming on the river and cows and horses grazing alongside. It's a great way to relax in the middle of the working day - when I'm out running in the sunshine along the river or canal it feels like a holiday, it's so different from the regular lunchtime routine. It's also a great answer to the problem of early evenings in the winter - normally at this time of year I hardly get to run off road in the week - it's so nice to get away from the roads and the traffic and run in the daylight.

Treason and plot

I've always loved Bonfire Night. For the past few years the boyfriend and I have been going to the fireworks night at Somerville College. There's always a really nice atmosphere with lots of kids (the families of the younger Fellows) running about. We don't have any of our own as yet but we "borrowed" a couple by inviting Kathrin and her two along - I think they had a good time. The fireworks really were fabulous - they must have blown the JCR budget for the whole term on them - but I do miss family bonfire nights, it's much more fun with a bonfire and a guy and deciding which firework should be lit next. We always had fabulous bonfire nights when I was little. Our family would join together with our next-door neighbours on each side. The mums would make hot dogs with fried onions and baked potatoes and Bryn's (our neighbour on the right hand side) famous black peas and the dads would sort out the bonfire and fireworks. There were a couple of really memorable nights - I remember one where it chucked it down and we all huddled under polythene sheeting while the bonfire smouldered in the damp. Another time we put the old table tennis table on the bonfire and we all had to retreat inside away from the intense heat it gave off. Happy days!

More like it

There, that's a much better photo of the lace hat. I managed to snap this at lunchtime just before the heavens opened and my hat got an impromptu blocking.



I really am enjoying knitting with the Buttersoft DK. I don't know whether it's the fibre or the way it's spun but it has a lovely velvety texture. There should even be enough leftover for matching gloves and I'll need them soon. The weather front that the boyfriend and I saw on Sunday evening has brought some really nippy weather and my fingerless mittens aren't quite cutting it anymore.

It's making for very good TV knitting. I worked through the ribbing and the first few increase rows whilst watching Into the Storm with the boyfriend on Monday evening. Quite apart from the excellent performance of Brendan Gleeson as Churchill we enjoyed playing "spot the British character actor" as the cast was packed with familiar faces. It was rather a potted history of WW2 - kind of like those iphone adds "sequence has been shortened and some steps removed" - but very entertaining overall.

A hat with no name

Or as good as, anyway. Even if this were the prettiest hat in the world there's virtually no chance of it sweeping the nation with a name like 115-12 a - Hat with lace pattern. It's just not memorable enough. I'm already knitting the pattern and I can't even remember it - it's why I'm putting all these links in the blog posts, just in case I lose my print-out and need to find the pattern again on Ravelry.

If a pattern has a name you can always find it again or find someone who knows it. Even if you get it slightly wrong and go around saying that you want to knit Damozel by Ysolda Teague or Forest Glade or Fern Grove from Knitty - someone's bound to know what you mean. If I get a digit wrong in "115-12 a - hat with lace pattern" I'm lost.



All that said, it is a very pretty lace hat pattern and it's knitting up very nicely in the lovely Buttersoft DK. Now that I've finally worked out how to wear hats without turning my hair into a complete bird's nest I forsee lots more hat knitting this winter.

Stuck on sleeve mountain

I am stuck halfway up sleeve mountain. I have been knitting on the first sleeve of the Arisaig cardigan for the length of a bible.



I'm a bit further on than this now but it feels like I'll never reach the top. Some people might say persevere, struggle on. Me, I'm taking a little break and knitting a hat instead. I'm knitting the lyrically named 115-12 a - Hat with lace pattern from Drops Design using some of the beautiful Artist's Palette Buttersoft DK that Juliet gave me earlier in the year. It's not that I don't love the grey (at the moment I'm wearing grey tights, grey shoes, grey skirt) but it's lovely to be knitting in technicolour again.

Victory is mine

For I have nabbed the last two 34B high-impact sports bras in the whole of M&S Oxford. I decided that I needed a new sports bra when I forgot to take my running t-shirt to work today (it was OK - I wore my jacket) and realised that even if it had been the height of summer and I had a stomach like Erin Boag there was no way on this planet that I could go running in just my skanky, grey (originally white) sports bra. New support was definitely required.

I really do like that M&S stocks proper sports bras (no more changing in a tiny cubicle in JD where you have to be let in by a fifteen year old) but they do suffer from the typical M&S phenomenon of being sold out of all sizes smaller than a 36C or D. After searching through 4 racks of bras in every size from 34FF to 40G I finally came up with two that I could wear. I know that women of all shapes and sizes play high impact sports but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that maybe a larger proportion of them are on the smallish size and that maybe they should order in more. It's almost as annoying as the one-size-fits-all policy adopted by the London marathon organisers when it comes to post-race souvenir t-shirts. Whilst I might fit *inside* an XXL t-shirt it most certainly doesn't *fit* me. Even if they can't manage the enlightened policy of some race organisers (thank you Dublin and Manchester) of handing out goody bags by size couldn't they order them just a couple of sizes smaller. Surely even the largest runners will have slimmed down to an L by the time they've run 26 miles.

OK, enough grousing. The main thing is that I have my lovely new bras - there's nothing like new kit to motivate you to get out there.

Posh tea break

I received a lovely parcel in the post yesterday from Kate containing not only my beet heid (which she had been photographing) and a sweet little card but also some gorgeous pink champagne truffles and some posh leaf tea which is apparently a Newcastle specialty.



I was so excited to find out that the truffles actually are pink and so yummy. I shall be having posh tea breaks all this week.

"Z" is for zipper

I finally got around to putting a zipper band and zip onto Laurie's striped cardigan this weekend, just in time for her to take it back with her. This was my first zipper and it wasn't terribly easy. I managed the first side OK using the sewing machine but the second side was a nightmare. On my first attempt I broke the needle (turns out I was stitching over the teeth). On the second attempt the tension was completely out and I had to take it all out. For the third attempt I stitched it on by hand and made such a good job of it that I was nearly tempted to take out the first side and redo that by hand too.

Doesn't she look cute in it? I hope she'll enjoy zipping and unzipping the zipper too.

On a little dishy

Here's my finished item for the six counties project. I was so pleased to finally find a use for some of these beads that I picked up at Ally Pally two or three years ago.

My first weaving

I borrowed Megan's rigid heddle loom on Saturday. I've been wanting to try weaving for some time and I have a bunch of stash yarn that I think would work better as woven projects than knitted ones.



This is my first go - I warped the loom with purple Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock and used the same yarn for the weft at first and then some plain light purple Jaeger Matchmaker Merino dk. I really liked the lighter weft against the darker variegated warp. It also seemed a bit easier to get an even weave with the heavier weft yarn.



This is my second go using Helen's Lace for the warp and some more Matchmaker in 4 ply for the weft. I've had this yarn hanging around in the stash for ages and it felt really good to use it up. I rather messed up the finishing as I put it in the washer to neaten up the selveges and completely felted the fringe. I managed to create a not-too-bulky edge by cutting off the felted fringe and folding the edge under and hemming a seam. It's even purple so I can put it into our guild's display for the 6 Guilds Challenge. Our guild's colour is purple and we have an under the sea theme which I fulfilled by stitching a little purple fish bead and some glass bead air bubbles onto one corner. Photos when I have some decent light.

Kicks and flicks

I'm very excited! It's jive week in Strictly and I have new shoes.



They're ecoSneaks from Simple Shoes. I came across them in Schuh this evening and I was rather taken with their ethical policies and use of recycled materials (including old tyres and milk cartons). However, I have to confess that although I love the idea of ethical shoes the main factor was that I loved the pink laces against the grey suede and thought that they'd look rather fabulous with my collection of knee length skirts.



Now all I need are the fabulous stripy grey tights I saw in M&S earlier.

I'm also very excited about the OGWSD guild meeting tomorrow. It feels like ages since the last guild meeting in the summer so I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone and settling down to some quality time with the wheel. I've got some Shetland singles on the wheel which I'm about halfway through plying and I think I'll take along the Welsh grey and Massam fibre to go into my British sheep breeds handspun blanket. This isn't because I'm running out of Shetland fibre, in fact I think I might already have enough spun and plied for the rest of my Arisaig cardigan and I don't want to have too much two-ply left over - I have already have enough leftovers in my stash.

Autumn days

We had the most glorious October day yesterday. It was so sunny that I was almost too warm sitting outside with my knitting at lunchtime.



I'd been a little concerned that I might struggle a little to find my bearings when I picked up the left front of the Arisaig cardigan after a break of a couple of months but the simple lace pattern and the fact that it's easy to count the increases and decreases by the repeats of the lace meant that I was able to carry on as though I had never left off.

The very steep decreases for the front neckline meant that every row was a little but shorter and I was able to make really good progress before the end of the day. I would have made even better progress if I hadn't got so carried away that I knit about 2 inches past the start of the armhole and had to rip back to the right place (oops!). Having had sizing issues with lace cardigans in the past (yes, I'm talking about you here, Katharine vest) I thought that this would be a good moment to block the back and check that the lace and ribbing really would stretch out to the required dimensions.



Yay! I even held a real piece of clothing up against it to make sure and so can now knit on with confidence.

Cookie monster

The boyfriend was keen for me to blog the oatmeal and raisin cookies he made for dessert this evening. Despite us substituting white granulated sugar for brown sugar and not quite knowing what was meant by "1/s tsp" baking soda they turned out splendidly - nice and squidgy in the middle and crispy around the outside. The recipe is from Lucy's Kitchen - our go-to blog for North American cookery - and I'll be making them again for a quilting or knitting get together in the not-too-distant future.

Talking of quilting I met up with some of the other members of the quilting group this evening for a mammoth cutting session. I cut the remaining fabric for the Carolina Lily block and also the fabric for a new block using Celtic applique. I'm very excited about doing some more applique - it's really great to stretch my hand-stitching muscles. I'll do a post soon to show off my beautiful hand sewn seams when I have a chance to take some photos in good light.

To market, to market

I spent yesterday with Felix and Ruth (who came along for moral support and the knitting) at the Sunday art and craft market at the Oakford Social Club in Reading. I was so pleased with the lovely display that we were able to make for the owls using the luggage tags and stamps that Felix had brought along.



I like that the stamping prevents any of those awkward questions about "what is it supposed to be?". Business was pretty slow for most of the afternoon - I think largely due to the absolutely miserable weather in Reading for all of Sunday lunchtime (constant drizzle is not good going out weather) - but Felix made quite a few sales by the end of the afternoon and I sold two owls (one of them to a complete stranger).

At least the fact that we weren't rushed with customers gave us lots of time to get on with our projects. I finished the big moss stitch scarf (one mass of bulky yarn moved from the stash to the FO box) and got started on a simple hat in Rowan Purelife British Sheep Breeds chunky in Grey Suffolk. I had purchased a single ball of this along with some needles in John Lewis as I realised by the time I reached Oxford the station that the remainder of the scarf would not keep me busy for the whole of the day. I cast on on 48 stitches in the pub with the intention of making either a neck-warmer or a hat - depending on whether or not it was fitting over my head after a few rounds. Felix was working away on the mansweater - luckily Mark was on hand for occasional fittings - which is now looking excitingly close to being finished. By the end of the day Felix was raring to be getting home in order to check out the instructions for steeking the placket.

I really enjoyed my afternoon at the art and ctaft market. The guys in the pub and the other artists were really friendly and I had a lovely time sitting and knitting with Ruth, Felix, Mark and Phil (the latter two not knitting) and eating the Oakford Social Club's yummy sandwiches. I might go back again before Christmas but in the meantime I will be taking the owls along to the OGWSD meeting next week for the sales table and also looking into a way to sell them online via the blog.

I'd finished the hat by the end of yesterday evening (hats in chunky weight yarn take no time at all) so there will be pictures of hat and scarf and probably a pattern for the hat coming your way in the next post.

Craft market research

I'm sitting here (in the lovely new computer chair that the boyfriend bought at the weekend) feeling pretty smug that I got in from Bluestockings this evening and did all the laundry before either doing any blogging or yet more knitting. To be honest, laundry was fairly necessary after a ketchup related incident at the pub. Amazingly and in defiance of all the laws of knitting physics the only place that the ketchup didn't go was on new knitter Amy's cream lace project. I'm not sure she'd have come back if that had happened!

We had a really great knitting night. There were 4 (four!) new knitters - Amy, Jenny, Jen, and Meryl - Felix came over from Reading and Helen arrived with her new dog Poppy who instantly became the centre of attention. She is a German Spitz and is just the prettiest dog ever and very well behaved. It was our first night in the new reserved spot by the bar and I think it was a success. There was lots of light all evening and enough space for all the knitters. There was even a little spot for Poppy to zonk out - I think she was exhausted by all the petting.

I took advantage of all these knitters to conduct a little market research on my owl brooches ahead of the craft market on Sunday and I'd like to ask you guys the same questions.

First question: do you prefer the goggly eyes?



or the sleepy eyes?



Here's a picture of the two owls side by side to help you out.



Bear in mind that these are actually little brooches so do think about what you would prefer to wear.

Second question: how much would you pay for a little owl brooch at a craft market? (Assuming you wanted a little owl brooch that is.)

For this one there are a few points to think about. The brooch is handmade (each one takes about an hour to make) and I don't want to sell myself short, or undercut other artists and crafters at the market some of whom will be doing this to make or supplement an income (rather than just as a hobby). On the other hand, I know from experience (my own and that of others) that very few people will pay an amount that would be a fair recompense for the time, skill, and materials that go into making a handmade item.

I have a figure in my own head which I think I'm going to charge but I'd be really interested to have your comments on this.

Edited to add: Thanks for all your lovely comments so far. One or two people mentioned that pricing might depend on the size of the owls - they are around 2 1/4 inches high (5.5 cm).

A blast from my (knitting) past

I had an hour and a bit to kill between work and an athletics meeting so I holed up in one of the Oxford Bluestockings' old haunts, Oxford's Jericho Cafe, for tea, knitting, and a little bit of something.



I've missed the date and ginger flapjacks (nom nom nom) although not their custom of flicking the dimmer switch at 6:30pm.



All this week I've been working on these little brown and white owls. I ran out of knitting (!) on the train back from Bolton on Sunday so started experimenting with the leftover yarn from the striped fliptop mittens. A magic cast-on, a few rounds, try one thing, try another thing, a couple of decreases and all of a sudden I had something that I could take to the Oakford Social Club art and craft market this Sunday. I'll be there from noonish with Felix and a whole parliament of little owls.

WIN/FAIL

I have been biting my nails this afternoon - FAIL
I had my first driving lesson today and it went really well - WIN
I've finally packaged up beet heid to send to Kate - WIN
And I found the needles that I thought I'd lost - WIN
But it would seem that I've lost my lovely Radley brolly - FAIL
I bought a chocolate brownie this morning and left it in the cafe - FAIL
The shop at work sells choccy digestives though - WIN
I'm off for a run now - AND A GOOD THING TOO!

On fire

Last weekend I sorted out my stash. I bought four under-the-bed storage boxes from the local supermarché and put all the yarn, fibre, and half-finished projects into them. I even had a system - box one is for stash yarn (surprisingly this is the fullest box), box two contains fibre and handspun, box three has WIPs and UFOs*, and box four is the location for finished objects (mostly as-yet-ungifted items and my shawl collection). The main aim behind the operation stash was to clear up some space in the corner of the living room which had been pretty much taken over by plastic bags of miscellaneous yarn and to ease my lurking fear that the carpet moths** which haunt our bedroom would tire of the all-carpet diet and seek out new prey.

However the exercise has had some unexpected benefits in that seeing all my WIPs and UFOs (and there aren't quite as many as I'd thought) in one place has really motivated me to work on them. Just this week I have finished off two pairs of socks, nearly finished the striped yoke baby cardigan, finished one mitten, and made really good progress on the second.



Remember these guys? I last knit on the Pomatomus socks (below) around the time of Woolfest. I had got as far as the heel of the second sock when I got so enthused by the whole British wool thing that I put them down for a while and then they always seemed just a bit too tricky to take up again afterwards. In fact it took just two days' knitting to finish them off and I was weaving the ends in by Thursday evening this week.

The handspun Monkey socks (above) were spun and knit on a schedule to be displayed at Megan's stand at FibreFest at the end of August. I was so pleased when I finished them a whole day before I was due to hand them over to Megan, then slightly less pleased when I realised that I'd somehow missed a whole repeat out of the second sock, d'oh! They might have been good enough to display but they weren't good enough to wear and they hung around in a paper bag with the leftover yarn for a whole month before bringing them out into the light motivated me to sort them out. These took only a couple of hours to finish off.



This baby cardigan was heading towards UFO-dom as I was afraid that I would run out of the cream yarn before I reached the cuffs, let alone the button bands. However, I faced up to my fears, ripped out my swatch and managed to finish both sleeves with the remaining yarn, phew! I don't think that there's enough left in the ball to make a button band so I plan to find a zipper in either pink or brown to match the stripes and finish the front edges in that colour. My niece just loves zipping and unzipping the zippers on anything from mummy's fleece jacket to her own sleeping bags so I think she'll be thrilled to have her very own zip-up cardigan. I just need to find a nice big zipper with a chunky toggle that her little fingers can grab onto.



Finally I popped these flip top mittens into my knitting bag along with the striped cardigan to work on on my trip up north this weekend. I started the first mitten in Geneva at the end of August and had started the second by the time our plane landed at Heathrow but I had to suspend work on them as soon as I got home in order to work on the Sheep Yoke baby cardigan for Clara. Now I'm down to the cuff on the second mitten which just leaves around twenty rows of ribbing, the thumb, and the finishing to go.

The really exciting thing is that once the mittens and the zipper for the cardigan are done this only leaves a Trellis cardigan to be sewn up and a fingerless mitten project to be completed before I can concentrate on the WIP I really want to get back to, my handspun Shetland Arisaig. Either that or I can create a whole new load of WIPs.

* the difference between WIP (work in progress) and UFO (unfinished object) can seem a subtle one to non-knitters but if you've not picked up the needles for a month or more then you're definitely heading towards Area 51.

** this is a big admission for any knitter to make as fibre-eating beasties are the STDs of the knitting world.