Meme!

Audrey has tagged me for a meme, which is very exciting! It’s a long time since that has happened!

Here we go:

The Rules: Each player answers the five questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

1. What I was doing 10 years ago:

10 years ago I was a wee thing of seventeen. I was studying for my A Levels and was a veritable bubbling cauldron of teenage angst!

2. What 5 things are on on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):

• tidy my room (I’ve actually done this, apart from vaccuuming, but, as my flatmate is still asleep, now seems like a mean time to do that!)
• read some Hebrew
• reply to some emails
• write up some of my thesis reading
• go for a little walk in the sun

3. Snacks I enjoy:

• chips (with cheese, with mayonnaise, with salt and vinegar, with tomato sauce…not fussy!)
• melon
• salted Kettle chips
• cheese
• houmous
• strawberries

4. Things I would do if I was a billionaire:

• buy every book I wanted
• pay to have my parents’ house finished
• knit a Kaffe Fassett design in the recommended yarn
• buy a house (to live in, not as an investment!)
• Give lots of money to charities I care about
• Create a scholarship for female doctoral students in my field
• Open a library (which would have to be called “The Antediluvian Library”. This would amuse me.)

5. Places I have lived:

• Canberra
• London
• Colchester
• St Andrews
• Durham
• Manchester

I am tagging: Christina, Penny, Susan, Elizabeth, and Jess.

Feeling A Little Blue?

I recommend spinning! Today I couldn’t quite face the outside world. I couldn’t quite face studying. So, I spun. Now I have my lovely Woolfest purchases, I felt I could finish up the gorgeous purple fibre I got with my first spindle. I find the spinning very relaxing, and a great way to clear my mind of all the silly nonsense that stores up inside. So, it was perfect for today! And having finished the spinning I got to ply. I have never plied yarn before. The singles from my first spinning attempts were far to thick to make it viable. This time, however, they were definitely thin enough. I have to say: I love plying! Even though I was plying yarn wound around two toilet rolls that kept making their way across my living room floor! I might do it the sensible way next time! But even so. It is massively satisfying! In fact, last time I checked the time it was about 4pm, and now it’s 8.30pm!

I now have four beautiful little skeins of yarn hanging from my bathroom door drying off. And I will post pictures in due course.

The question is: what do I spin next?? Or should I actually consider eating some dinner…?

Sheep! Day

Anyone who has been on a long journey with me (those by car, bus, or train, anyway. This rarely occurs when flying…) will know that I tend to commentate the sheep we pass by. For those in the know, it doesn’t come as a surprise anymore, but it can sometimes confuse people when, mid conversation I suddenly say “sheep!” in a high-pitched and excited voice.

Yesterday was Sheep! day. Yesterday was Woolfest 2008. Well, so is today, but I’m not there. Which is probably just as well, considering how much I bought yesterday!

It was a long trip, it has to be said, but I got a lift from a very kind friend, which was brilliant. Without that, there is no way I could have gone. We probably got there around 1pm, and had a good wander around, talking to some sheep and alpacas on the way. In fact, I have photos of sheep and alpacas. Here. Enjoy.

Aren’t they all beautiful!? I’m especially fond of the sheep with straw on his head. I would have brought him(?) home to live on my balcony if he’d have fitted in the car. Or the sheep at the stop standing on the bale of hay. That was an intrepid little sheep!

So, yes. I loved that side of the day! But there was also rather a lot of shopping…

I went with a couple of ideas in mind. I wanted to get some naturally coloured fibres, and where possible, I wanted to get some British fibres. I managed both to a certain degree. I won’t give you photos of the individual things I bought, but here is a job lot photo:

I got:

• 1kg of undyed merino yarn (a massive bargain, it cost me only £25!)
• 100g each of Shetland roving in natural black, grey and white
• 100g of green English sheep roving
• 100g of delicious multitoned green merino roving
• 500g of natural angora/merino yarn
• A packet of oaty biscuits, gloriously without wheat (and purchased at a farm shop on the way, not at Woolfest)
• 60g of smoke coloured angora rabbit fibre (not in the picture, but there is a pic in my Flickr)

So…overall rather more merino than I’d like. Well, I like merino, but I would have liked to do better on the British yarn front. Still, there is no point in knitting a jumper out of Herdwick just because it’s British, because if it touched your skin you’d want to cry. Well, I would. But I did manage to get a couple of jumpers worth of natural coloured yarn, even if both include merino. There was a dearth of dark coloured undyed yarns. I wandered around a couple of times before I bought the alpaca/merino and it was my favourite, but out of a very small number of contenders. I don’t have a plan for the alpaca/merino yet (apart from that it will be a jumper), but I have something specific in mind for the undyed merino. Which doesn’t include dying it.

As for the roving…wow. There was so much, and so so so so many colours! Lots of merino and Blue Faced Leicester. I bought merino only where I was absolutely in love with the colours (and clearly I was having a green day), that I came home without BFL was just an accident of fate. My favourite though is definitely the natural shetlands. I’m so excited about them! The angora bunny was an impulse buy, really. I have no idea what I’ll do with it! Well, spin it, obviously.

So, that was all absolutely wonderful, and I managed to spend under my budget. It was a rather generous budget, but I didn’t overspend. And besides, it included entrance to the show itself and then to the Tatie Pot dinner and the knit/spin in, as well as the bits I bought at the farm shop on the way there, and whatnot. So…I’m pleased. But I am most certainly not buying any more yarn for some time to come!

The Tatie Pot dinner was really nice, and we ended up sitting with some people who had come from London and were also on Ravelry, and who were really lovely. It was an absolutely lovely evening, and I got to watch people spinning. Almost everyone was better than I am. Which is fine. But I was looking for tips! And we were all ogling spinning wheels. Oh, and I have concluded that I would absolutely love a Golding spindle, as one of the women we ate with had one, and proved that they are just as beautiful as I had suspected from seeing a picture of Christina’s!

So…yes…we had so much fun! Eventually we had to come home, and that took a while. It was a long way anyway, the weather was shocking, (and I was feeling quite carsick, which probably made it feel longer!) so it was after midnight by the time I got back in. Well and truly worth it though!

Typically, I woke up at 6am and couldn’t get back to sleep. But at least I have lots of lovely yarn to play and knit with. I want so much to get on with my cream jumper, but I’m very reluctant to do that until I’ve finished the Tangled Yoke cardigan. So I’m going to try to get on with that today. I will put on a film, and just knit.

Knitting? What Knitting?

Lately there hasn’t been a lot of knitting. There are just periods where nothing satisfies me, and so I knit nothing. Or rather, I start something, hate it, and rip it out. Yesterday I had a play with my Kaffe Fasset designed Regia sock yarn. There are two things I cannot understand about this yarn. Not the yarn inherently, but about my decision to buy it. I cannot understand why I chose the colourway I did (Twilight) and I really cannot understand why I bought Mirage and not Landscape. Not that the Mirage versions aren’t lovely, but it really doesn’t do justice to any pattern, and no pattern does justice to the yarn. In my opinion anyway, and I’ve had quite a hunt. Whereas the Landscape yarns have a bit more potential, and I’ve seen some really lovely socks with them. Which leaves me, really, with a plain stocking stitch pair of socks. Which I manifestly do not want to be bothered with right now. I feel a need for something a bit more challenging; a bit more rewarding.

So, yesterday, I decided I would have  a play with this yarn and see what I could come up with. I had an idea which was, actually, not bad, but I think I over complicated it. So I ripped out the sock and, at some point, when I feel less opposed to banging my head against a brick wall, I’ll give it another shot.

A similar problem was had with the remainder of my Cherry Tree Hill yarn from the Jewels socks. I started a toe-up sock, in the hope that there would be enough for a trainer sock or slipper. But there is not, I fear. Although the upside of that is that I found a toe-up cast on I don’t hate! I have only ever knitted on toe-up sock (and never its mate!) because I hated the cast ons so much. They were fiddly and stressful, and I don’t need that from my socks! However the round-toe cast on, I don’t hate. It isn’t necessarily the toe I would pick for a sock, but it isn’t a bad toe, and as one that doesn’t make me want to stab things with 2mm needles, it’s worth noting!

What has been going quite well, however, is spinning. I haven’t been doing a great deal as I am swiftly running out of fibre, and don’t want to finish what I have until I have more to hand! But I am getting a much more consistent yarn now, something that I could even feasibly ply (the previous tries, of course I could have plied but, the resultant yarn would have been so thick that it would have been basically unusable, and what is the point in yarn you can’t use??). And I absolutely adore my lighter spindle which is both useful and beautiful and so both I and William Morris are happy!

I think that the time has come to take one of my many skeins of yarn and ball it up, so that I can start something new. I quite fancy starting a jumper, but perhaps late June isn’t the time for wooly jumper knitting? But, it occurs to me that I have the beautiful yarn that my belovedest of Christinas dyed for me. It’s sock yarn and it’s a single colour. So I’m sure I can do something beautiful out of that, and which will keep me interested and entertained as well. Aha, a plan!

Knitting in Public

I missed World Wide Knit in Public Day. Last year nothing happened in my area, and this year it did, but I was on holiday. I was really disappointed about this. It seems like the first time in years I go on holiday, a whole raft of things ended up occuring while I was on holiday. Such is life… However, I did knit in public, I just did it on my own!

On the way to France, I started a pair of socks for my Mum. I’d promised her socks for many moons, and never quite got around to measuring her feet. But since I had her feet captive for a week, I decided it was the perfect opportunity. So throughout the holiday I knitted away at various points, but really wanted to finish them before I came home. So on World Wide Knit in Public day I was to be seen, first on the TGV and then on the Euro Star knitting a pair of socks. I managed to finish them somewhere under the English Channel, apart from the grafting, which I got done at home that evening. Here are they:

They’re knitted in Panda Cotton on 2.75mm needles. I’m quite happy with them, although I suspect one is slightly too short in the foot. Mum won’t admit this though, so what can I do!? In the end this doesn’t make the sock unwearable, most of my earliest socks were too short in the foot, and I still wear them all the time!

I have all but finished the pink striped Regia socks. I just have to kitchener up the toe, and I can run around in them to my heart’s content!

I really need to finish that cardigan. That should be my next task. And then I can actually start something new with it wrapped around me and not hanging over my head making me feel guilty and lazy!

Knitting Update

Later this week I am off on holiday to France, so I thought I would do a quick update before I go.

I am knitting a pair of pretty stripey socks. I’ve knitted the first one, and the second has been cast on. I think I might finish it on the train home as it’s DK weight. Here is the first sock:

Despite what the Flickr name says, these aren’t Fyberspates at all. They’re Regia. And I have some Fyberspates yarn somewhere that is vaguely similar, but not similar enough to account for the silly mistake!

They are going to be definitely fraternal as my two yarn balls do not match at all, but I don’t care about that sort of thing at all!

I have also (nearly) finished my first baby item. A friend of mine has a baby due over the summer. I thought to myself: What does every August baby need? A wooly jumper. So here it is:

Clearly there is still some weaving in of ends to be done, and I need to join the underarm stitches, but on such a small jumper that really isn’t going to take long. It’s the Child’s Placket Sweater that was published in Joelle Hoverson’s Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I love this jumper so much. The pattern goes from tiny baby sized to big ten year old sized, plus it is impecably cute, and I want to knit one for myself! I’m sure someone has done that… The yarn is RYC Cashsoft DK, which is lovely, and interestingly, I only needed 2 balls for the jumper. I like it when that happens!

I am going to be taking some yarn away with me. I will be doing down south by train, and then we’re going to France on the Euro Star, so lots of knitting time! I’m taking some yarn I got to knit some socks for my Mum, and also these lovely skeins of Handmaiden Casbah which I bought recently.

I’m hoping these will keep me very busy!

Right now, however, I need to get my head down and work hard, as I’ve promised my supervisor a draft chapter before I go away!

Pattern Alchemy

I think a wonderful thing about blogs and one of the best things about Ravelry is the ability they have to make you reconsider patterns. A pattern which, initially, made no impression on you — or in fact, a bad impression — can suddenly be made to seem infinitely desirable. By seeing how a design looks in different colours, different sizes, different yarns, and on different shaped people you can see how the design could be for you.

An example, of this, for me is Mr Greenjeans from Fall Knitty 2007. This is a cardigan which really passed me by when it came out. I certainly didn’t hate it, it was nice, but not my kind of thing. However, today I came across a post on a random blog: Woolydoodles Knits, with a picture of this cardigan, and thought: wow, that’s a lovely cardigan, how did I miss it? Then I went to Ravelry, and looked at the huge number of variations on the Mr Greenjeans theme, and have come away with a great desire to knit it.

I suppose it is because we all have certain prejudices that make some things seem Not-Quite-Us at the outset, and lead us to miss their potential (or is it just me?). In my case it was probably because no matter how beautiful the yarn is, I prefer garments in solid rather than variegated yarns. Of course, I know, technically, that this, or any other, garment can be knitted in another yarn, but blogs and Ravelry allow you to see exactly what it could look like — and to see past your prejudices.

And now, thanks to these sources, I know I want to knit this. I know I want to knit it in either a dark or earthy colour. I know I want to knit it with more ease than otherwise. I know I want to make the sleeves slightly longer and slightly tighter at the cuff.

Although both blogs and Ravelry are really good from a knitting-community perspective, I think I love them (and especially Ravelry) best for the way in which they manage to perform this sort of knitting pattern alchemy.

Presenting…

…my completed Hypoteneuse!

I am really pleased! It is slightly shorter than I would have liked, but I expected it to be, as I had less yarn than the pattern recommended. I am also really impressed by how well the blocking worked, as you can see, the improvement in pattern defiinition is amazing! I was very careful about blocking it, as I had read things suggesting that wet blocking pure alpaca could be counter productive, so I pinned it, spritzed it until it was suitably damp and left it to dry. The spritzing was by far the most entertaining part of this, as we had no spray bottle, and so I ended up using the spray mechanism on our iron! Hey ho!

It also became apparent, as I worked that my skeins were absolutely not the same dye lot, and you can actually see this in the shawl, if you look close enough. I do not intend to! It is warm, and soft, and I am really happy with it!

This afternoon I have also finally gotten around to spending the Kangaroo voucher I got for my birthday last year. I bought a couple of skeins of Hand Maiden Casbah yarn (one in blackberry and one in seastorm. I resisted peacock only by reminding myself of the beautiful yarn that Christina dyed me for my birthday — as yet unused), two balls of the Kaffe Fasset Regia, and some yarn for to make a baby jumper for the forthcoming child of a friend.

Hypoteneuse Update

This morning I began on my fourth skein out of five. Unfortunately, I am back to unknitting. I am having a repeated problem with this pattern. It is absolutely nothing to do with the pattern itself, but with how much I am paying attention. The pattern is deceptively straightforward, which means that I lull myself into a false sense of security, and stop checking my stitch count. That there is a problem only becomes apparent at the end of the pattern repeat, and then I realise that at some point, I misplaced a K2Tog and missed a YO, and so I am a stitch short. Being a perfectionist, I can’t leave it. It doesn’t actually show, but it affects the rest of shawl, and so…Yes. For the second time I am unknitting the greater part of a pattern repeat. This is deeply frustrating.

The other frustration is that I have been encountering a lot of knots in the yarn. As the shawl really doesn’t have a wrong side, I can’t hide them there, which means I keep having to untie them and join in as if a new ball. This means that I will have more ends to weave in at the end, and is also losing me a little length each time. Obviously not much, but given that this shawl is destined to be a little shorter than I would have liked, just because of how much yarn I have, it irritates me.

So…I still love the pattern and the shawl, but I am frustrated by the yarn, and by my own carelessness.

Spindle Spindle Spindle

Today my postman brought me my new spindle! I am very excited about this, as the brief play I have had with it confirms my suspicions that the problem I was having with the original spindle was that I was trying to force it to spin thinner yarn than the weight of the spindle justified. As a result it was quite inconsistent, and where it was consistent, it was thick enough that I couldn’t imagine what on earth I could do with it — especially if I wanted to ply it! I am just not a thick yarn person. I use aran weight occasionally, but otherwise I prefer my yarns DK or 4-ply.

So, I talked about it with some of my spinning friends, and decided to hunt down a lighter spindle. I didn’t want to get one shipped from abroad, and I did want a pretty one. I didn’t want to spend too much money, but I decided I’d rather pay a little more for one I really liked than get one for £4 which could only be described as utilitarian (as is my original Ashford Student Spindle). I don’t have a picture of my new spindle, as my camera is, as is its wont, asleep (it eats battery power like nobody’s business and invariably shuts itself down when I really want to take a photo of something!), but I will put one up eventually. It comes from Whorl Drop Spindle, and came from there with brilliant speed. It is incredibly lovely, and is made of Sapele Sycamore and Yew, or so I gather from its label.

So far I am very happy about my new spindle, and it has cheered up an otherwise disappointing Friday!