Author Archives: Heather

Just for fun

Louisa Harding and Debbie Bliss

I was intending to post this on Monday, which was my day set aside for doing a bit of organising round the house and catching up. Monday started fairly well, I got up early and put the sheets in the washing machine and got the vacuum out. As I was vacuuming near the utility room I noticed that the washing machine wasn’t moving round, and thought it must be near the end of its cycle which meant it had washed pretty fast. A while later when the cycle had actually finished I went to move the sheets into the dryer and thought they felt very wet. I put them back in the washing machine for a quick spin to try and sort them out, and noticed as I set it going that it was making all the usual washing machine noises but that the drum wasn’t actually spinning. It turns out that the washing machine has decided that spinning is over-rated and that it isn’t going to bother anymore, which unfortunately makes it rather useless. I had to rinse out the sheets in the bath because they were still rather soapy – it certainly makes me appreciate the machinery when it is working!

Monday ended up being spent in research on and shopping for a new washing machine, which we found and ordered and will be arriving sometime on Thursday. This one has a bigger drum than the previous one though it takes up the same space in the utility room and is more energy efficient which will be good. It even has a little display which tells you how long the washing has til it finishes!

Just to add insult to injury I managed to crack one of the heads of the vacuum while swapping heads, although I don’t think it will make much difference to the functioning of the vacuum (it is a pretty useless vacuum at the best of times). I don’t think I am cut out for house work!

Back to knitting related things.

I have been to a couple of great events organised by Kareen at the InterKnit Cafe in Farnham. Unfortunately I completely failed to take any photos, but I have photographed the things I bought 🙂

First, on 27th June was a talk by Louisa Harding, and second on 13th July was a talk by Debbie Bliss. They were both very interesting and I enjoyed myself enormously. They talked a bit about how they had come into knitting designing, and about how they approached their designing and their inspirations for their upcoming autumn pattern books. They also both brought with them loads of garments which will appear in their new pattern books, and Debbie also brought garments from her current pattern books. We were able to have a good close look at all the knitting and also try lots on – which I did gamely despite all the samples being made to fit a 34 inch chest and me being quite a long way from 34 inches anywhere!

I am hoping that Kareen will organise some more of these events, I had a great time and it makes such a difference to actually see the garments. However fantastic the photography in a pattern book, knitting is such a 3D tactile activity that nothing can beat seeing the garment there and being able to feel the drape and see all the stitch detail. It was also very interesting to see lots of people in all different shapes and sizes try on the garments, sometimes a garment looked completely different on people of different proportions even though they wear the same dress size. I have come away with lots of ideas and quite a few unintelligeable scribbles in my notebook!

I did buy a few little bits and pieces while I was in the shop 🙂 First at the Louisa Harding day:

The ball at the front is actually chocolate brown Rialto DK (100% merino) and the toffee colour is Louisa Harding Fauve (100% nylon) which is a kind of suede-like thin ribbon. There is a lovely pattern for a cardigan in the Rialto book which I am going to have a go at (although having tried the model on I will alter it a bit), unfortunately I can’t find a picture of it on the Debbie Bliss website at the moment.

At the Debbie Bliss day I also bought:

The purple is Rowan All Seasons Cotton (50% cotton, 50% acrylic I think), and enough of the Cashmerino DK to make a cardigan – it is the most fantastic kingfisher / peacock colour. I am looking forward to trying all of these new-to-me yarns.

Lace Knitting Exhibition

Four Things

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I spotted this on Dee’s blog and thought I would have a go.

4 Jobs I have had in my life:

Entry specialist (I always think this makes me sound like a burglar, actually it was computer programming)
Administration assistant at a University
Co-ordination assistant for events
Knitting technical editor

4 films I can watch again and again:

Hello Dolly
One of our Dinosaurs is Missing (a childhood favourite and I adore the music)
What’s Up Doc
Casino Royale (the old one with Woody Allen, I haven’t seen the new one)

As you can probably tell music plays a big part in the films I like 🙂

4 places I have lived:

Hertfordshire
North Yorkshire
Oxford
Surrey

4 TV series I watch:

Grand Designs
Location Location Location
Time Team
Actually I don’t watch much TV and I can’t think of anything else at the moment. I am better with series’s where it doesn’t matter if you miss one!

4 places I have been on holiday:

Brittany
The Loire
New Jersey
Hadrian’s Wall

4 things I do every time I go on the Net:

Check my bloglines to see who has updated
Read my emails
See what specials Elann has today
Follow the links other people have mentioned in their blogs

4 things I would NOT eat for anything in the world:

(I’m going to limit myself to things which actually class as food here 🙂 )
Oysters
Raw meat
Raw egg
Eels

4 places I would love to be right now:

Actually I am quite content to be here now, so I will fill in 4 places I love:
RHS Garden Wisley
Locquirec Brittany
Just about anywhere with Roman ruins
Oxford

4 people to tag:

If you would like to do this then consider yourself tagged 🙂

I am very flattered that Diane has nominated me as a ‘Rockin’ Girl Blogger’ ! This may well be the first time I have rocked at anything 🙂 I am savouring the moment. It is very hard to decide who to nominate. My bloglines has 159 feeds at the moment, and I love them all for different reasons. Today I will nominate Fiona, Mary, Liz, Dawn, and Sue. These are all bloggers who I met first in real life and then discovered they had blogs.

PS. Sue I did manage to get home before it got dark, but have since worked out how to put the car lights on anyway so I am saved from turning into a pumpkin.

Patchwork knitting workshop

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We are having a surprisingly rain-free day, so I have been catching up on photographing my knitting.

Way back on the 13th of May I went to a workshop on Horst Schulz style patchwork knitting taught by Rosie and hosted by Jill (who I think doesn’t have a website yet). It was a nice intimate workshop with people working on various different techniques depending on their level of experience and what interested them. Rosie handled the differing projects very well, making sure everyone had as much help and guidance as they needed, while allowing time for people to experiment with the techniques. I had a lovely day, and it was a great opportunity to see many different directions the same basic methods could be taken in.

I had a go at some short-row work. This is the most recent design idea that Horst has been working on.

And also some shells.

Apologies for the horrid choice of colours 🙂 This was what I had in my knitting bag at the time.

Better go and get ready for bed. I am going to the Knitting and Crochet Guild AGM tomorrow which unfortunately means getting up appallingly early in the morning. Say hi if you see me, I will try to be awake, and not too traumatised from the drive! Someone drove into the back of Paul on his way home from work last Friday while he was driving the shiny new car (it wasn’t even two months old – boo hoo) and we collected the hire car this afternoon to replace our car while it is being fixed. The hire car is an automatic (we used to have an automatic but that was several years ago) and is a Toyota Corolla. It is quite different to our car which is a Nissan Note, and the Corolla is going to take some getting used to! At least I should have a good long time to get the hang of it on the way to Cheltenham and back.

Exhausted

Stitches East

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Well I think I have just managed to sign up for Stitches East . This is part of my birthday present and I have been looking forward to going to something similar for ages. I found the registration system somewhat stressful, as it took me about 1/2 an hour to actually choose all the classes I wanted and put them in my basket (no doubt due to a large number of the knitting population all trying to do the same thing). Then when I finally came to log in to pay it turned out I couldn’t login using Opera (my internet browser of choice). When I switched to Internet Explorer of course it didn’t remember any of the classes I had chosen so I had to do it all over again. Luckily I have managed to pay and hopefully I have signed up to all the classes I meant to. Time will tell, since it is another couple of weeks til the confirmation should arrive in the post.

In the mean time I think I shall go for a bit of a lie down …

Crochet

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We have been having a go at crochet at the knitting group that I go to once a month in Ash, Surrey. So here I present my first go at a granny square:

and a variation on the traditional granny square:

Made out of the most horrid yarn known to man! (with the possible exception of some truly awful nylon stuff left over from my Nan crocheting ponchos in the 70s, which has now been relegated to stringing up the Christmas cards).

The crocheting has been good fun, and very useful to know how to actually read a pattern. I am rather a self-taught crocheter, and the sum of my knowledge comes from the Ladybird Book of Crochet (for those of you not familiar with the Ladybird books, they are small hardback books, the size of a thin paperback with about 20 – 30 pages, and lots of pictures, aimed at introducing children to various topics). I don’t think I will be abandoning the knitting any time soon though. I like the fabric produced by knitting more, although crochet does certainly have its uses and is handy to know.

Speaking of knitting, one and a half samples left to go for my City and Guilds homework … (and a lot of painting too).

Opal Hundertwasser socks

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Thank you for all the lovely comments on the finished shawl. Finishing something has spurred me on to have a go at some rather neglected things on the needles, after all if I finish them I can actually be wearing them. I have been making some progress, and here are some finished socks:

The yarn is Opal Hundertwasser, the colour is Silver Spiral, and the pattern is my standard ribbed sock with short row heels and gussets in the leg and foot. My sister bought me the yarn for christmas along with a couple of other colourways and it is lovely. I love the idea of yarn inspired by a painting and I love the colours used and the long colour repeats.

It has been a busy few weeks since I last posted. Some very long days at work, which weren’t so good, but it was also my birthday last monday which made up for it. I have now reached the grand age of 30, not that it feels greatly different to 29 🙂 The knitting has been progressing rather slowly in the last week due to a rather unfortunate run-in with my new bread knife (birthday present from my parents). It is surprisingly hard to knit with plasters on 3 fingers of your right hand! Luckily the cuts weren’t deep since the second I grabbed for the knife falling off the worktop I realised that it was a very stupid thing to do and let go, so they are pretty much healed completely now.

I have been plodding through my samples for this months City and Guilds class, and they are coming along well, only two left to do now. If I am feeling brave this afternoon I am going to have another look at my Patchwork jumper (scroll down to the bottom). I think I must be the slowest Knitting Olympics participant. It has got to the point now that it is so close to being finished it is just ridiculous. I would really like to finish it before the weekend when I am going to Rosie’s workshop on patchwork knitting. Better go and get a move on …

Finished shawl

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After all the excitement of dying the yarn, I’m afraid I disregarded all current works-in-progress and jumped straight into knitting a little shawl with it. Progress wasn’t actually that fast, but that is mostly due to the fact that I had to stop and admire it at the end of each row 🙂

Since I wasn’t sure how far my yarn would go I opted for a simple triangle starting in the centre back neck and increasing at each edge and twice in the middle on every other row. I went for garter stitch since I like scarves to be reversible, although I suppose it is less essential on a shawl. I also added a simple lace tree pattern I designed. Although as Diane pointed out the trees are actually upside down when you are wearing the shawl. Oh well, I like it anyway 🙂

So now onto the delight that is blocking!

First we have a shawl in its unblocked state, looking not very lacy and rather wobbly round the edges:

And as if by magic with the addition of a few million pins, ta da:

A gratuitous close-up of my upside down trees:

And even closer – you can tell I am enjoying this can’t you 🙂

This is being blocked on my new super adjustable blocking system, otherwise known as a set of foam recreation mats for 3-8 year olds from the Early Learning Centre . They are 60cm (2 foot) square and fit together like big jigsaw pieces. They come in packs of 4 and I bought 2 packs so I think that will be sufficient to create shapes to block just about anything I can think of. Also they fit down the back of the spare bed when not in use, very handy.

And, finally the shots of me wearing the new shawl:

I was worried that it would be too titchy to be of any use and was very pleasantly surprised. It is a pretty good size, not bad considering it is only 100g of 4ply weight cotton.

I’m afraid I appear to be pulling a strange face in the next one. I am probably instructing the photographer 🙂

Now I am going to be good and go back to all the abandoned projects, and also do my City and Guilds homework before the night before (next class is a week on sunday, I have already done half of the knitting part of the homework).