Rite of Spring

Like most of you I am looking forward to the end of winter and the proper beginning of spring. In fact, looking forward so much I may a) fall over on my face or b) my eyes are going to pop out from looking forward with such enthusiasm. I was out with the dog today trudging through the mud and drizzle, but noticed the birds are already singing and there are small hopeful changes afoot...

There are buds on the trees...(this one, I think, some kind of maple)

Flowers on the winter jasmine in the (considerable) undergrowth in our garden (Monty Don, get your arse round here, there's stuff to be done);

Catkins on the Filbert (sing this to the tune of 'Tiptoe through the Tulips' and you can pass hours of otherwise idle time in musical joyfulness!);

Snail-eaten primroses...(our garden would make Kew's head gardener blush).

So - spring. Big deal. Stuff's growing. Well, it also means this.

Time to spring-clean the horror that is my craft room floor. And of course, most exciting of all, soon it will be warm enough to wear my (shock!) finished Liesl:

 I'm getting frighteningly good at actually finishing things. Hmm...with the possible exception of cleaning up rooms and knitting purple cardigans :-)
 

Diversion

Bonus points if you have spotted that this is not knitting. This week, I have been mostly stitching and sketching:

If I don't know what to embroider, I'll muck about with pastel or paints for a bit, to a) procrastinate a bit longer and b) to try out ideas. In the City & Guilds courses (a grand total of two courses I took but never finished. That's another story), they taught us to use the sketches as starting points. I've been afraid of drawing for years, ever since I left school with a miserable excuse for a qualification in Art. When I did the C&G, I learnt that sketching and drawing were just a means to an end, and that your sketches weren't supposed to look like Dürer's. Which is just as well, really.

Knitting vs stitching: well, of course, you can't watch Corrie and stitch simultateously, so I can only say that I've heard but not seen recent episodes...whereas I can enjoy the full spectacle when knitting.

I'm not sure if I've finished this or not, so it's sitting in a frame but isn't on the wall yet.

I think I'll keep going back to it. But there is the small matter of a purple cardigan that might just get in the way...

Something for the weekend

I am such a fickle knitter. I have the attention span of a caffeine-fuelled flea so have to have two or three projects on the go (purple cardigan, socks, some crochet and now this...). Here's what I'll be working on this weekend.

It's Liesl, by Ysolda Teague. I was looking at it longingly on the website the other day, and after a few checks on yardage and whatnot, realised I had enough wool in my stash for it! Ah, the benefits of needlessly and endlessly buying and stashing wool...I'm using the Cascade 220 that I originally bought for this hat - a lovely hat which my tiny mind couldn't figure out how to make! But wait, I seem to be knitting lace of all things...how can this be??

Nope, I don't know either...it's like knitting magic though. And there are enough rows of straightforward knit and purl without pesky counting, so it seems that this knitter of little brain can actually do something more complicated than stocking stitch after all.
Apart from knitting, I'm going to try to work on what's inside these tins...

Berries Beads!! They're Czech glass, so they're a bit on the heavy side, so what better thing to string them together than:

Barbour's Shamrock Linen CARPET THREAD!! I was rummaging around trying to find something that wouldn't leave me embarrassed in public by a snapping into a shower of beads, and this old thread I found in a biscuit tin (well, what do you keep in your old biscuit tins? This is a much loved tin full of stuff I inherited from Mr Yaffle's Aunt. Nearly all of the stuff has come in useful, I'm amazed at how handy it's been), will probably do the trick. Why waste it on the carpet, I say!

Rip it up and start again

I have one thing to say on the subject of purple cardigans, and that is AAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH. I've started two, and neither are making me happy. So it is with pain and humiliation (steady on woman! God knows what Google search will bring you to this blog) that I am doing this.

Unravelling. Both of them. There's no-one to blame but myself, either. I couldn't face another vast tract of stocking stitch in the first cardigan, and for the second one, I just couldn't make the wool from my stash work with the pattern. Ho hum. So here I am, unravelling (in more ways than one, hahaha).

I'm unravelling it onto a niddy-noddy so I can make it into a nice skein. The sodding stuff is then going to get a good wetting, followed by a severe heating on a radiator, then I'm going to wind it all back into a big purple ball, ready for the next cardigan. But I'm not bitter *grinds molars*. I've chosen this as my next disaster pattern - Lacy Ribbon-tie Cardigan by Erika Knight (I can't find a non-ravelry link! Sorry!). It's from the 'Baby Bloom' book, but don't panic - I'm not even remotely 'blooming' - I just liked the pattern :-) It has lacy bits in it, so it has to be more interesting than stocking stitch! Oh, and I refuse to unravel next time. It's going in the loft if it doesn't work, the yarn must be cursed!

 

Colour therapy

I was the lucky recipient of some vouchers for our local quilting shop, Country Threads (no proper website sadly) last year as a leaving gift from my work (thank you everyone!) and I only just got around to spending them yesterday - spectacularly tardy of me, I know. I wanted to be sure that I made just the right selection of things for something special. I never make anything too posh for the house because I don't want to see it destined for the sole appreciation of arses, spilt beverages, melted chocolate and mucky paws! So...this time I'm going to make a wallhanging so none of the above can reach it (unless...oh no, don't go there!)

They're batik fabrics, mostly by Hoffman, I think. I'm such a hippy at heart. When I was 14 I did my first tie-dye experiment and never looked back. Nothing in my wardrobe escaped. I even wore tie-dyed socks to school...(can you get ASBOs for fashion crimes?). The lust for tie-dye and batik has to be fulfilled somehow though, so this is the socially acceptable way of getting my fix.

Love or loathe them, they certainly add a bit of colour to a grey day. I have a little pile of my own hand-dyed fabric (not tie-dyed, mercifully) which seems to fit the bill too.
 

oh..., plus the *cough* considerable stockpile of other batik fat quarters I've had squirrelled away for a rainy day. I'm so glad I don't pass the quilt shop on my way for a sandwich at lunchtime any more (actually, it was more like: obtain sandwich, then wander round the corner, away from the direction of work, up the cobbled street and - oops! - I appear to have stumbled into Country Threads, as if in a tuna-and-sweetcorn-induced daze! Well, now that I'm here..., etc)...or this pile would be even bigger.

Like all things I start, it will end up in the huge 'wip' pile of course, along with the eleventy billion other projects I have 'on the go' as it's euphemistically termed...!

Bodice-ripping

I have unpicked, re-sewn, unpicked, gathered, sworn at, hacked at, and re-sewn the bodice of this so many times this weekend.  I couldn't get the gathers right at first, so had to undo it. And undo the wretched thing again when I found that, after gathering it, it still didn't fit my non-existent bust. (Summed up by my experience of first buying a bra in Littlewoods in Barnsley, at the age of 11. The shop assistant laughed: "You what, love? What size???! you might as well wear a piece of elastic!!" Oh how I miss Northern candour) After all this ripping, the poor bodice is beginning to look like the dog chewed it.

 

I also had to undo the interfacing I'd lovingly sewn at the top of the dress too, because it gave the neckline all the softness of an Elizabethan ruff. So as I'd figured out how to gather things, I added some more round the neckline.

 

Now I'm just sewing the sleeves - with more gathered bits! This dress has more puff than all the pastries at Betty's Tea Rooms put together!

 

That took most of my energy (cold still apparent) so the rest of the time I've been sitting on the sofa finishing off my crochet blanket. That's right - something has actually been finished in this house!

 

I had to take it outside to photograph so the dog wouldn't sit on it. He is rather fond of the blanket, possibly more keen on it than I am...(it's primarily a leftovers blanket, and like most leftovers, it tasted much better the night before.) Right - after that Herculean effort I think I shall slump onto the sofa with the heavy crocheted monster and not move for a few hours...!

House of Idiot fashions

I've prescribed myself a short course of dressmaking to beat the post-viral blues and encourage me out of my tissue-strewn hovel. I've been inspired by watching repeats of fashion-house costume drama House of Eliott (on UKTV History every Monday if you want to join in) although my attempts at dressmaking are rather more like the French and Saunders version, House of Idiot and there's nary a bugle bead in sight, sadly :-)

Profuse apologies for the dark pictures. I don't believe the sun has risen today. If it has, someone show it the way to Somerset?

It's Simplicity 3807 dress pattern, a short dress with cute puffed sleeves. The fabric is two metres of Kaffe Fassett stuff. It's just too good for cutting into patchwork pieces so it's going to be a crazy dress instead. It's become the 'broccoli dress' in my head as they look like stems of broccoli to me. And that was before I was taking the decongestant tablets. Let's take a closer look.

Definitely broccoli. Hmm, with a hint of puppy-dog tail, I think?

Inevitable, I suppose.

The pretty tin of pins I'm using is inherited from my late mum and gran. They made all their own clothes (and mine) and passed their skills onto me, so there's always the pair of them at the back of my mind (and in this case they're shouting "£9 a metre? Bloomin 'eck! what's wrong wi' stuff from th'market?") when I'm sewing. I blame them for my sense of fashion being a bit wacky too.

 

Right, better go and do the boring bit of ironing, pinning, cutting...and see if I can get round to any actual sewing today...