Valentine

I know it's a little late but this is the valentine I made for Dan this time around

Potential

I have a lot of work right now, but this arrived in the post and it's so tempting...

New project

I've been wanting the make another cardigan for a while, but something lighter I can wear more often than the last one I made, which is really more of a jacket. After much thinking and flicking through Ravelry I settled on Alice, by Kim Hargreves (Rowan 35). I cheerfully cast on all 339 stitches of the bottom edging (less cheerfully towards the end there) on needles about six inches too short... After hoiking my way through that lot and doing all the cast offs for the frill effect, I'd pretty much decided I didn't like that particular detail - too fussy by far. I've cast on a sleeve instead, just three rows of straight garter stitch for an edge - less fussy, but prettier I reckon. I've yanked out what I'd knit on the back panel now, but you can see the comparison below. My new resolution: always start on a sleeve so you can really see if you like it or not before you've committed too many (wo)man hours!

Inspiration Wednesday - Animal Yokes

So, not that long ago I came across the owl jumper by Kate Davies and fell in love. This is firmly on my to do list. Even more so after encountering a method of doing cables without cable needles via Mason-Dixon. Shockingly I've never done cables, mostly I think because I've never seen cables I really had to knit before. As the pattern calls for circular needles too, the cost of investing in a circular needle set (I like the idea of interchangeable needles, I've put off buying any circulars at all so I could justify this to myself when the time came) and cable needles was somewhat prohibitive.

Almost immdeiatly after that first encounter with the owls I then spotted this gem on eBay (from this seller, brazenoleoman). I wasn't the lucky bidder, but it got me thinking...

...animals on yokes. A bit of hunting on Ravelry found me some squirrels and reindeer too.

Cycling socks

This weekend just gone (Sunday evening in fact) I finally finished the second sock of my second pair of cycle socks. Kind of ironic given that I crashed my bike on Saturday morning - going to fetch my new Rowan magazine from the parcel office too! Spent a goodly portion of the weekend saying "ouch" repeatedly whilst watching my bruises go from pale blue-green to deep purple. 

Anyway, back to socks. I struggled with these to be honest and largely I think it was my needles. It seems to be very easy to forget that bad needles equal a bad knitting experience, you never think on it. A project just seems 'hard'.

I knitted my dad some socks for Christmas out of Kaffe Fassett 4ply Regia yarn and invested in some 5" Brittany sock needles too (because my sock needles were elsewhere engaged). I could not believe what a difference these made! My old DPNs were metal 10" jobbies and the strain and awkwardness working in the round with just twenty stitches per needle was not apparent to me until I got hold of the 5-inchers, I was whizzing round by comparison. Not to mention the added portability, sock knitting went from absolutely-not-bus-knitting to the perfect handbag carry-along, instantly. Today on the bus (hurts a wee bit too much to cycle still) I missed not having a pair of socks to work on...

They're Hedera from knitty. I like the lace pattern, nice and stretchy, ideal for cotton socks. I like the idea of the reinforced heal, but I think in reality this is too big a feature for the kind of shoes I wear (who am I kidding - the only pair of shoes i even own right now). I might do a toe up version with the same lace pattern (all be it in reverse).

New Year

So, New Year, new blog resolution. Write Something! Make Something!

Part of the reason for a total lack of enthusiasm was a terrible work load towards the latter half of last year. Another reason was the theft of my laptop. For a time I even gave up knitting (in the mistaken belief it was stopping me working)!! After going slightly mad for a while, I'm back on the knitting and some lovely christmas presents have me inspired again.

Amongst the goodies:

Embroidered Flora and Fauna by Leslie Turpin-Delport and Nikki Delport-Wepener...

...Rob Ryan Skirt from Cloth Kits...

...and a much coveted swooping swallow necklace from the Etsy shop Verre Encore.

As well as that, after barely having a minute to walk down the garden last year either, January gets me thinking of spring....

So, here's to the New Year and avoiding the financial crisis by making bread, knitting socks and growing some killer veg!

the garden in june

Due to excessive amounts of work and minimal amounts of crafting or anything vaguely interesting the only post I have to write is a garden update. (The sewing machine is out and I'm sort of making a skirt, but it's a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants affair and only time will tell if it's actually wearable, or photographable)

The hydrangea is turning blue,  a petal at a time. Except for the one rogue pompom head which insists on being pink. This is now a pretty big thing with countless flower heads  but even last year it was small and sick looking. It had been pruned very badly I think and half to two thirds of the plant had died off. More considerate pruning and a bit of TLC have brought it back to something of a more vigorous nature - I think it's root stock must have been relatively intact still.

Last year I brought a foxglove in flower from home in the hope it might sew itself about the place in addition to all the wild ones I grew from seed. I did this because the genetic population back home has some recessive white genes lingering in the foliage. And so, amid all the mammoth pink foxgloves - one white one.

We did'nt inherit many things to work with in this garden except excessive weeds, but there are two fairly substantial an ill pruned roses and a very healthy peony. This peony seems to specialise in growing exceptionally tall and uses the neighboring rose for support. Before the blooms get spoiled by rain it's just about perfect.

Foxgloves

Our garden was started almost literally from scratch not all that long ago. Last year a attempted to grow a great many things from seed because we didn't really have any money to spend on the garden. This approach is not for the impatient, but I think my foxgloves were worth the wait. The are huge great triumphant things, which get a smile from me every time I look out the door.

small items of domesticity squeezed from the week

So over the course of the week, despite really having no time for this sort of shenanigans whatsoever I have managed to squeeze out a few bits of crafty goodness.

It started with  making a birthday cake as a gift to a joint birthday party last Saturday. A simple chocolate sponge with vanilla butter icing. This was so successful however, that in a effort to lift spirits at home a little I immediately had to make a batch of similar fairy cakes on the Sunday. I was chuffed to bits with how these came out. Super soft and fluffy in the middle with just the right amount of pale green icing on top.

Please excuse the grill pan which doubles up as my cooling rack. And I had to eat that one before the photo was taken because it was all deformed and ugly. Honest.

During the week I started my second pair of cycle socks, this time in light blue. And for some reason, after an afternoon spent in the vegetable patch yesterday I decided to break out the headband. It's the remains of a shirt color of an old liberty shirt I picked in a charity shop some time ago that have been sat on top of my dresser for a year a least. Last night I bound the rough edge with some vintage bias binding I've always had in a lovely sage green, added an elastic grip across the opening and embroidered over some of the flowers with odd buttons from a rapidly dwindling stash and silver thread. I have to say I rather like it. The silver thread just seems to lift it slightly out of being just a scrap of cloth which is what I often wear in my hair.

Practical Cookery

"Practical Cookery and The Etiquete and Service of the Table" cost me the grand total of 80 pence in one of my local charity shops. This brilliant little book was produced by the Department of Food Economics and Nutrition, Kansas State College of Agriculture and Applied Science in 1932, although this is a 16th edition from 1936. Wow, is all I can say. I haven't got the faintest idea how such a thing ended up in north London.

It really is an amazing thing, with such highlights including: the inner workings of an all manner of stoves and cookers; cooking from very first principles; detailed tables of boiling times for vegetables; scorecards for bread and dinner parties (though it doesn't say if this is to mark your own work or other peoples); detailed place settings and pictures of every knife, fork and spoon you will ever encounter.

However the true treasure is the handwritten brownie recipe on the back cover page. This reads as follows:

1/2 cup Spry
2 oz choc.
3/4 cup sifted flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup nuts

Melt Spry & choc. together over hot water. Cool.

Sift flour with b.powder & salt

Beat eggs until light, add sugar, then choc. (unknown word) and blend.

Add flour, vanilla & nuts & mix well.

Bake in 8 x 8 in. Spry greased pan in moderate oven (350F) 35 min.

Cool & cut unto squares. Makes 16

Now I have to admit I was flummoxed over 'Spry', I looked and looked again and that was definitely what the word said. A little detective work has revealed this and this. Spry is some kind of vegetable shortening used to back cakes - potentially in exactly the same period this book was printed, which is what I was most excited about. There's no date with the recipe, but the Spry, handwriting and ink makes me want to think it's circa 1940's too.