How to knit with your puppy! A handy cut out and keep guide!

1.Take your puppy and place it well out of the way of knitting.

2. Knit smaller.

3. Don't start ambitious projects.

These are Monkey socks. Bearing in mind the word sock and  the phrase 'pattern other than stocking stitch'  have never appeared together on the same playbill in this house, this is ambitious on a grand scale. I may regret this.

4. Get other people to knit for you.

These lovelies are from my kind and talented friend Elle. She made them with Hummingbird colourway too! (I love them, Elle, thanks :D ) Hmm, these were a surprise...I wonder how much a commission would be?!

5. See (1) - a reminder for all those not present at the beginning of this lecture - keep puppy away from knitting!

6. Accept fact that Monkey socks may not see completion until 2011. 

Oh, yeah, hilarious!!

Dog ownership is bad for your knitting!

It's true and I can prove it! Here's what I knitted/finished off during the time we were without our Dylan:

 

And here's what I've managed to knit while we've had Trixie.

I've also managed a paltry amount of dyeing this week, and I think some of this lack is attributable to a certain little minx.

I swear she's laughing at me in the picture below - right after I've cleaned up the chaos of tangled yarn and dog-spittle covered knitting and skeins (don't worry, that's my sample skein you see there, she doesn't get to clamp her jaws around the Good Stuff for sale, kept under lock and key. Imagine the complaints I'd get!) 

In between picking her off the box of mis-dyes (tasty, apparently) and getting her out of the box of dyeing pots, I managed to dye a few skeins. My fave this month is definitely Festival:

 

I was thinking of Glastonbury tie-dyed outfits (some of which I am partial to myself. In fact, it's probably better to call this skein Ali but there you go) when dyeing this I think! I do crave colour in the winter months. It makes me wear brighter clothes - not quite in the Zandra Rhodes league, but getting there. I'd love to have pink hair, mind.  I find it fends off the winter blues!  Another favourite this month:

 

 Always up for a terrible pun, I called it 'Crocus Pocus'! I haven't managed to grow any crocuses (crocusiiiiii?) but got crocus envy when I saw a beautiful patch of purple and orange the other day in someone else's garden. When gardening fails, dye yarn instead I suppose!

A 'tail' with a happy ending!

Thank you so much for all your comments and thoughts on my last post, you're all very kind :) It was so sad for a while back there, but we are OK now, thank you, and life in the Yaffle house is already looking a lot happier. You see, we couldn't cope without a dog around the place (what? No-one to babble onto while I'm working? No-one to listen to me play piano and appreciate it? No one to chatter inanely to while dyeing? Nah, I couldn't cope). So we now have this little mite to keep us company.

Her name is Trixie, and she's 9 weeks old. If you're a doggy person you'll understand just how empty your house feels after a dog has gone...and how you can't replace your beloved pet but you can, somehow, if you're feeling up to it, replace the 'dogginess'.  (if only you could do that with dear departed humans. I'll rent out Michael Palin for a dad, and possibly Maureen Lipman for mum please. A side order of Tony Benn as a replacement grandad would be ok too, when do you think you can deliver? Tuesday? oh that's great! thanks!)

 Trixie is already showing an early appreciation of handmade blankets and cushions.

And enjoys the occasional cotton reel too.

She's really quite tiny. Here's our remote control to give you a sense of scale...

Her favourite foods are old, knotted socks

And of course hands and fingers - nomnomnom!

Expect more gratuitous pup pics soon...I've yet to find a way to do the dyeing while she's on the loose so that should make for interesting images...!

Taking the 'Ruff' with the smooth in life...

We had to say goodbye to a dear friend yesterday. The house feels very empty indeed. If I'm a bit quiet for a few days, do forgive me, I'll be in a basket somewhere licking my wounds.

New Yarn!

I've just updated the shop. Here's my fave for this update...

It's called 'Bazaar'! It just reminded me of the beautiful colours in the Bazaars we saw on holiday in India. It also made me think of the Hindu festival of Holi, where you have lots of fun throwing brightly coloured pigments at each other. Would you get, perhaps, cake-throwing at a C of E party instead?! bah, our holy-days are so dull by comparison!
If you missed out on 'Carnival' last time, there's a similar one I've just dyed up:

It's called 'Northern Lights'. I've never seen those, except on the telly like. I'm not about to get all Joanna Lumley and go in search of them either. The cold was bad enough during the snow we had lately, never mind sleeping in a cave full of the stuff! brrr! Anyway, enough wittering. See you later!

Knitting, flitting and wittering

Hello Blogger-readers! Thanks for joining me. I've changed from TypePad because *deleted due to the Boredom of Readers act 2010, clause 3* If you're stranded over at TypePad, I'll send a search party over later! Let the waffling re-commence!

I succumbed and snaffled myself a skein of 'Carnival' (see previous post). I dyed up a rejected skein (underweight, poor thing! but sufficient to make a pair of socks) and cast on. I love it so much it's going fast for me.

Yes, that's fast. I'm usually still in the ribbing stage for two weeks after casting on. I love the skein in its cake-state:

Yum. I love the rainbow of colours sitting inbetween the turquoise. I'm a sucker for colour. Although as an old school-pal on Facebook pointed out to me the other day, it is hard for her to imagine me in anything other than black - I was a hardcore Goth during my teenage years. All crimped hair and thick black and green Siouxsie Sioux eyeshadow ("what were Goths like in the 80s Gran?" - "Well my dear, sit down and I'll see what I can find in the dressing up box. Here's an armful of 5p bangles from the market. Ooh there's a pair of torn black trousers with stripey tights to wear underneath. But most importantly, look at this. Harmony Hairspray! You'll need lots of that after you've backcombed your frazzled, crimped black hair!"). I'm sure you don't want to see those images so here's a closeup of my sock instead.

Apart from knitting when I've had chance I've been making gradual progress on a new dress. I think I've had this fabric for about 6 months...and I've not had a minute to make headway into the pattern. Time is such a luxury don't you find?!

I managed to get the bodice and the skirt done. And added some puffed sleeves!

I love puffed sleeves - they are so pretty. A pain in the arm to execute but the result is worth the fiddling with elastic and seams and safety pins. I've been using my old Jones...but for Christmas my dear husband bought me a project to keep me busy. Here it is:

Ahem. Another. I love fixing sewing machines, and this was being nearly given away...so now I have it to mend. And keep me out of mischief. Well, not exactly, as I've already tripped the electricity twice by using it. Dodgy foot control, which is a cinch to fix! I have an inkling that it's this man who is to blame for my mechanical fascination.

 

They're both pictures of my Grandad, hard at work maintaining the engines (and boiler I think, not so sure!) in Manor Mill, Oldham:

When I visited him as a kid, he used to take me round the mill with him while he worked. I was fascinated by the machinery but terrified at the same time. To a 5-year-old the engines are frightening! The noise of the machinery was overwhelming and I can still smell the cotton dust to this day. However, it's left me with a very real fascination by machinery and all things oily so I am very grateful to him! I only wish he could see me now and lend me a hand with my gears and cams ;-)

Right - I'd better go and re-skein some yarn. There are some new colours on the way. I got a bit behind this week with one thing and another so the update's scheduled for next week - I'll send out a newsletter when it's all ready!

Miles and miles of squares.

Admitting that a particular Idea is not of the Good variety is hard. BUT, rising like a phoenix out of the ashes of the Different-Sized-Squares-Blanket-Idea comes...bingo! Same-Sized-Squares-Blanket-Idea! After working out that I'd need to do, um, a lot of working out in order to make the different-sized granny squares fit together into any semblance of blanket-shape (and not Abomination shape) I decided to add a few rounds to each and be dull and practical.

I can't bear sitting and working things out when it comes to knitting or crochet. I like mindless, therapeutic, stress-free yarn craft. Hence I've never managed to graduate past Grade 1 sock knitting (I passed with a distinction in Stocking Stitch). I can't concentrate on the inimitably witty dialogue in Corrie (sadly bereft of Blanche of course) if one of my lobes is wrestling with the 'beauty' of symmetry and other mathematical horrors. I can't follow subtitles if I'm fiddling about with cables and counting rows. So same-sized squares it had to be.

Excuse the poor light. (brought to you courtesy of the last tungsten filament bulbs in the house). Even the dog is unimpressed. ("I'm positively sallow! The horror! Get me into Make-Up now!")

After hours and hours of crocheting squares, I then had to find a way to join them together. I couldn't bear sewing (a bit like: never mix the grape and the grain. Never mix the sewing needle and the crochet hook) so I hooked them together. It took me right through the Christmas holidays and into the New Year but here it is, finished, looking more like itself than it did under the tungsten light (hmm, I know the feeling):

It's in the snow in our back garden, although it looks like a magic floating blanket due to my impeccable skills in photography. Talking of snow, (and poor photography!) the only good thing I've found about it is that it's brought these into our garden:

It's a redwing! I usually only get to see these and their pals Fieldfares out in the distant fields in winter, but the snow's covered up their usual food supply and both have been forced to the Hamnett Bird Restaurant (an extensive menu featuring niger seeds and apples. Book a table early to avoid disappointment). I've been transfixed. My dyeing table is right next to the window so I've been spending lots of time bird-spotting in the warmth (the best type of bird watching!). Here's my fave from this week's dyeing session:

Carnival. It's so bright and cheerful...I want to cast it on now! The dyeing table is calling again so I'd better go and get some more bird watching more dyeing done now...!