Saturday, 28 February 2015

Mojo no show


Have you ever had one of those times when the bounce has gone out of your bungee?  When things don't work out the way you want or need them to ?  Because I've been a bit like that.

Firstly there was theatre.  Since finishing my MA in September last year, the last thing I've wanted to do is anything related to the theatre.  The new season at The National Theatre was released; I was only excited by one show.  Admittedly I've seen two of them elsewhere; Waste at The Almeida in London (too long) and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom at The Royal Exchange  in Manchester (would watch again).  But still, for a new season of a well established theatre, two is not a great hit rate. 

Then, there's the knitting.  It was sort of chuntering along, sometimes going right - often going wrong.  I think the number of times I ripped it back and started again was somewhere in double figures.  It was almost as if the yarn didn't want to be knitted into that particular pattern.  I don't know how many times I'd ripped back to start again, but it was somewhere in the double figures.  It always seemed to be somewhere between 100 and 200 stitches, which is a lot to start again.  Yes, I did try tinking it back, but have you ever tried to tink back a YO k2tog?  It's not something you do to keep you sane!

So I made a silent agreement with the yarn.  I'd find something else to knit it into, if it didn't mind me finding another yarn to do the current project with, and we seem to have come to an agreement.  So what started off as this:





Has now ended up as this...





(scraps for a scrap sock yarn blanket) 

...and has now been re-started as this:





I'm now somewhere well over 200 stitches which is the best indication that this yarn wants to be knitted into this project, which makes me indescribably happy.  

Last weekend, I went back to Sheffield, to see Blasted at Sheffield Theatres.  As I was walking in to the auditorium there was a moment when I got that tingle down my spine, when I remembered why I loved theatre and gave up two years of my life to study it.  At the end of the play, I remembered what amazing theatre feels like.  It gave me sparks of joy, which is what I'm going to call the neon project, which I want to wear when I go back next month.


Sunday, 8 February 2015

A Guide is Thrifty


I may, or may not have mentioned the ten Guide laws which existed when I was a Guide.  (I think it was in a post which didn't quite get published).

Anyway - one of the ten Guide laws when I was a Guide was, 'A Guide is Thrifty', which probably came from the 1940s austerity. It's not there now, although it probably should be. 

This is the dress which I bought and wore for my grandfather's funeral, about 18 months ago.  It's got a lot of wear since, which explains the rather grey colour.  A new dress would be upwards of £20.00; a bag of dye from the local supermarket costs £5.00.




Now this bag of dye can just get shoved in to the washing machine with dry fabric and run on a normal 40 degree wash cycle.  I'm used to the boxes of dye where you have to wash the fabric first.  There are no before and after photos, as a wet and faded black dress looks pretty similar to a wet and dyed dress....

Have a picture of a black dress; I'll leave you to guess whether it's the before or after:




Wednesday, 4 February 2015

Tick-tock, tick-tock


Some people knit well to deadlines; I'm not one of them.  Given that I was aiming for one big project a month, I've not yet completed the first sleeve of January's project and we're already at the end of the first full week of February.  The idea of finishing this, before casting on for my grandmother's cardigan, to complete my grandmother's cardigan before mid March is looking less and less likely.

I still need to get rid of the stash.

Bearing in mind that I don't like the yarn I've set aside for her cardigan either for me or for her, and I haven't yet found a decent alternative.  Even if I had, there really wouldn't be room to store it.  (I mean, there really wouldn't be room to store it.  There's hardly room for the important stuff).

So as I still need to get rid of the stash and it's clearly not going to be knitted, then I'm making the brave decision to sell it off.  It's what ebay was made for.  Of course, this involves me being organised enough to take the photos, upload the photos, write the descriptions - and that all assumes I remember my log in details.... 

In the meantime, have some ripply redness of my current project. 




It has grown just a little bit from that photo - by about a hundred rows or so.

Oh, and Royal Mail have finally got round to delivering The Principles of Knitting, which is generally bigger, thicker and heavier than I expected and looks like it's going to be an amazing read.


Sunday, 1 February 2015

This week's challenges...


In the grand plan of de-stashing (or as I like to call it, yarnmaggedon), I’ve cast on a something in a sock yarn.  I think it’s going to end up as a shawl/scarf type thing, but whichever it is, it’ll be colourful.  It’s based on the Gallatin scarf pattern (Ravelry link), just without the rows of stockingette and reverse stockingette.  I may do ribs when it gets to near the end.  By that point, I may well have given up the ghost and do something else instead.  I really don’t want to think about how many stitches I’ll be casting off, or even which cast off I’m going to have to do or how much yarn it’s going to take when I get there.

Anyway, head down in my 2.25mms and yarn on the train this week, I realised that I was at the antepenultimate station to home, just as I’d started the next row.  Looking down, my first thought was ‘how many stitches’ (124, as it turned out), closely followed by ‘how am I going to get this done before I get home’.  

The penultimate station home, and I was only a third of the way through the row (or at least it felt that way).  So I put my head down and sprinted – or whatever the knitting equivalent is.  Luckily with that many stitches, it was easy to get into a rhythm; YO, k2tog, k2 etc.   (It’s a pretty basic pattern.  I don’t need to insult anyone’s intelligence by repeating it).

Everything was going well until I had to pull out more yarn, just as we were coming in to the station.  Had it not been for that, I would have got to the end of the row before getting to the end of the train journey.  Every Olympian knows the ‘if only’ and that was mine.  If only I’d had enough loose yarn to get to the end without having to give a yank.  If it wasn’t for that delay, I would have completed and arrived on the platform triumphant.

When we finally got to the station, I left the train with bag over my shoulder, coat in one hand, knitting in the other.  There were a grand total of eight stitches on the needle; so near and yet so far.


(dramatic reconstruction) 

It's perfectly normal to be the last person off the platform, because you've just got the last of the row to complete - right ?

The following day, I was knitting at work, explaining how easy the pattern is about ten seconds before realising I was out by a stitch.  One.  Freaking.  Stitch.

Husband had a look at it, as, in his words: "I'm anal about numbers".


He found where he thought the problem was and I tried to tink back the row...



Only somehow the yarn got tangled at the end of a row, I dropped a stitch and it all went a bit Orange Juice; I had to rip it up and start again.  I'm trying to convince myself that it's all a learning process, and at least now I have fewer stitches on the needles, knitting between train stations is a lot easier.


Happy 2020

This blog seems somewhat neglected, but I promise I've not forgotten it.  Both life and knitting have happened, and plans are being made...