links to interesting things

ome interesting things that have caught my eye this morning. Firstly the Persephone Post (the blog of Persephone Books - a great book shop which is situated 5 minutes from where I work and which I am yet to frequent despite reading their blog, and in their own words "prints mainly neglected fiction and non-fiction by women, for women and about women.") had a great picture from the City of Edinburgh Museum and Art Galleries called The Fair-isle Jumper. Dan's been getting into his fair-isle recently, he wants a fair-isle jumper. The hat in this picture is pretty killer too though, those pom-poms are awesome....

ther interesting finds - I had a flick through "blogs of note" on blogger. Last time I did this it didn't yield anything to my taste, but this time I got Darkmatters, a stop motion animation blog which is home to some very cool stuff. Cool in my world anyway, possibly a bit dark and creepy in other worlds, but I enjoyed my visit.

purple spuds

'm just trying to distract myself from the horrendous (and unjust) bank charges I've just discovered in my bank account (which, rest assured, someone will be getting an earful for on Monday), so I'm going to think about potatoes instead. The front garden of our terraced flat was basically a weed patch. I'd optimistically installed a hawthorn hedge when we moved in (3 years ago), and a few other scraggy bits of hedging have found their way onto the patch since then, but basically it was heavily compacted complete with some serious clods of clay. It annoyed me that the land was wasted (and ugly), but at the same time it was a tough habitat to start with and not very relaxing to work on, being on the road. I concocted a plan...

e spent a considerable amount of time weeding the patch and something had to be planted to keep the weeds down so our work wouldn't be wasted. Because of the compaction though there was really only one candidate - potatoes. They'd break up the soil and hopefully keep the weeds down a bit, who knows, we might even get a crop (not that we got anything out of our new potatoes on the veg patch after the cats dug them up and killed them).

o I went down the new fangled minituber route - grown in a lab. Three varieties: 5 tubers of Fortyfold; 5 tubers of Champion; 10 tubers of Congo. The patch isn't great, doesn't get much sun, and the spuds were almost entirely neglected once put in. No extra watering, no fertiliser of any kind and only one attempt at some half-hearted earthing up. However, surprisingly enough, we did get crop! 2.02kg of Fortyfold (the star performer), 1.16kg of Congo (0.58kg relatively) and 0.85kg of Champion. Unclear whether Fortyfold was so good because of plot position (getting the most sun) or variety, but I'm pretty sure Congo is not a high yielding variety - it's more for the intense purple colour, which runs right the way through.

straight from the ground.

in the pan, turning the water bright green.

a better view of the spectacular blue-green colour. Sadly my inexperienced clueless dying experiment with a scrap of unbleached muslin (shoved in a pot of the water) yielded no stain.

teeny tiny baby

ycling home through London last night was a bit like cycling through a war zone, a great many bangs and whistles and flashes of light. Fireworks have certainly been going off a lot round here in the metaphorical sense. It's never bloomin' quiet round here it seems. My brother's wife had her baby ten weeks early on Wednesday, but things are going well it seems like and baby and Mum are getting stronger. Baby was so early Mum and Dad hadn't got as far as names for her, so she is just Tiny Baby at the moment, all 2lbs 6ozs of her. I've just about managed to stop feeling incredibly anxious about the whole thing and started to feel excited about having a new niece, gonna crack on with some teeny tiny baby hats and boots asap.

he Ishbel shawl is whizzing along nicely. I hate hyperbole, but I do love my new Knit Pro symfonie wood interchangeable circular needles I bought this year. Expensive, but brilliant to use: very smooth and light and just the right kind of pointy-ness. They literally make me smile as they slip through my fingers. I'm using Debbie Bliss Pure Silk, which I'm kind of undecided on as a yarn generally. The deep jewel tone colours are very tempting, as is the overall gloss of the skein. It's nice to work with certainly and drapes very well, but it seems to lose some of that magic as you work with it and it develops a light fuzz.... hmmmm....

Where the Wild Things Are

here the Wild Things Are was out in the US while I was over there. I convinced myself that it was out here too, so I was bummed to discover I can't see it till December. I've been consoling myself over at Terrible Yellow Eyes instead.

Chicago

o it's been a little while since I posted, mostly due to a hectic work schedule that had 10 days in Chicago, IL in the middle of it. The photo at the head of the post is from the Signature Lounge at the top of the John Hancock building last Saturday evening (pretty spectacular).

  got back to London town on a massive wave of relief. Chicago was nice enough and I had fun, but I haven't been that homesick since I was about 10 years old on a week long Brownie camp. Dan met me at the airport and kept me awake for the day to help me avoid a bad bout of jet lag (though honestly I don't think I ever really converted to Chicago time, I slept so badly while I was out there). The week since then has been a bit crazy - I had exceptionally good work related news on Wednesday and I've kind of been bouncing around kind of elated since then. For the first time in about a year and a half I don't have something to feel incredibly anxious about (as a consequence my overpowered, stress fueled, immune system took a holiday over the weekend and I finally fell prey to a cold).

ot that there haven't been things to talk about: purple potatoes, pumpkins, a slightly random conviction that a had to make a crochet blanket right now, the start of an Ishbel shawl (rav link), OCD bookshelf tidying and sloe picking. Enough to keep me out of trouble for a bit at least...

the view across grant park from our 49th floor apartment

kitchener

potted on the London Underground last week (sorry about the fuzzy picture), a poster for the National Portrait Gallery. The poster reads "Knitter: Lord Kitchener was the familiar moustachioed face of the First World War recruitment posters, which read ‘Your country needs you.' As Secretary of State for War, he enlisted and trained many thousands of soldiers - but he also had their comfort at heart. He is credited with devising the ‘Kitchener stitch', a knitting technique for seamless socks, designed to be gentle on those marching feet."

was slightly over excited when I saw this. We were coming home from a secret midweek trip to the seaside for Dan's birthday and we were kinda pretty tired. But I think when I saw this I grabbed hold of Dan while I finished reading and then yabbered on about how the socks he was wearing at that moment were finished in kitchener stitch. Then took a picture. I made a bit of a fuss on the platform. Geek.

a birthday card for Dan

an and I hit on an agreement not all that long ago. I would knit him a jumper if he made me a new (old) lighter bike so I stood a chance of keeping up with him on the occasions we cycle out together. I love my bike, but it weighs a frickin' ton.

or his birthday last week I knitted up a fair-isle-ish swatch to make a card as a token for jumpers to come. Although after a flick through one of my Rowan magazines (!) Dan decided he liked the look of Furrow by Marie Wallin (ravelry link), which is without doubt one of the best mens patterns from Rowan and looks kind of fun to knit too.

nyway, my new bike frame arrived yesterday, so the knitting reciprocal is going to have to get serious soon. (Cue Dan's chance to get excited as dozenoaks temporarily transforms into a bike blog)

Autumn cycling capelet

t's about time I blogged (I think it's the first time I've used that word, how odd) this really. I finished the actual knitting part of the capelet weeks ago (it was really quick), then spent about another week fannying about adding in extra detail with the Haiku and making pom-poms (for about a week there I was slightly randomly obsessed with pom poms as might be guessed by the bicycle clips). It's basically finished now except for the ribbon for the neck tie to which the pom-poms will be attached. I didn't have anything the right length or colour in my ribbon stash, but I got paid today so it's off to the haberdashery before the cash runs out (again).

Ravelry link to the project page

anthro

spied recently that anthropology are about to open a store on Regeants Street. I am excited! Still no actual date for opening, but I have pinned down the location of an anthro for my upcoming trip to Chicago to keep me happy in the mean time.... (I also made my own set of drop caps to play with. Geek.)

my new favourite blog

rawn! The illustrating and cartooning blog. This brilliant portal has already provided me with my new favourite toy, odosketch and a highly amusing 'toon based on the quintessential jam making song (which has been sung in this house quite often of late for obvious reasons).

ven more delights though - yesterday featured the video for the Department of Eagles "No one does it like you". Produced by the Directors Bureau, directed by Patrick Daughters and Marcel Dzama, and featuring costumes and sets designed by Dzama. This is so cool I've even gone to the trouble of embedding it.

my new spiritual home is going straight to the 'inspiration' links on the right ---->

nd incase you were wondering, the brilliant drop caps were also found through Drawn, and are from Jessica Hische's site dailydropcap.com Sadly the drop caps aren't looking quite as sexy as they could because of my mini paragraphs. Let's stick a bit of something extra on the end to improve the aesthetics of this last one. Quisque suscipit congue neque id adipiscing. Vivamus ornare nisl id lacus egestas quis varius dolor vehicula. Cras ac lacus in massa sagittis sollicitudin quis in lorem. Aliquam et diam ac massa convallis tincidunt. Aenean convallis consequat tincidunt. Vestibulum lobortis, nibh at sodales eleifend, nunc lorem sodales arcu, sit amet sodales diam felis ac nisl. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. In arcu ante, adipiscing nec pharetra ut, cursus vitae lorem. Nam eget mauris eget neque sagittis vulputate. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Donec diam enim, pretium iaculis elementum id, faucibus non lacus.