Can you tell what it is yet? (said in best Rolf Harris tones for probably the fourth time!)

I bought this yarn probably about two years ago, when I was first learning to knit, it caught my imagination and I had it imported from America when we in the UK had such an excellent exchange rate, seriously it was cheaper to import from the states than to buy in our own shops! Its Noro Iro and we didn’t have colourway 58 available to us in the UK, I loved the drama of it, it really sings to me. And so I kept it for a very long time in my private stash, no one looks at my stash apart from me.. (no one else is interested!) but its mine and I’ve admired it for such a long time, waiting, just waiting until the time was right.

There were three patterns that had caught my attention to knit with this yarn and for about 18 solid months I had not been able to narrow down which would be the best for me and the yarn. For several different reasons I loved all of the patterns and so for that reason and that reason alone I sat and waited, hoping that eventually there would be some guidance.

and guidance there was…

Firstly it was flippin’ cold this winter, certainly much colder than the winters of late, so I narrowed it down to being a coat with a large collar or hood, that narrowed it down to two patterns.

and then, the realisation of how warm a hood might be started to dawn on me. I’m not a hoodie person, in fact, I think the last hooded type garment I wore was a bright red velvet coat with a hood that my Mum made for me when I was 11 to visit London on a day out with the school. I think she was working on the fact that as I was as blind as a bat, that at least if I wandered off people would be able to spot me in a crowd. (I didn’t put any photo’s with my hood up, sorry about that, blame the photographer!, trust me, when I put the hood up, its so snuggly warm, its lovely)

And then I got pneumonia, so very little knitting was practised, well at least for a month or two but just before Christmas I realised which of the patterns was for me. Then disaster struck, I didn’t have enough yarn, you see, I’d bought this yarn when I was first learning how to knit, I had no knowledge, just a passion. So, I searched on Ravelry and found two ladies that had two skeins each of this colourway in the same dye lot. I approached them both, well nothing ventured, nothing gained.

They both came back to me and agreed to sell me their skeins. I was overjoyed, it was the best thing that had happened to me for a long time. So, antibiotics not withstanding (and no alcohol) I cast on, on New Years Eve, I needed something bright and something beautiful and this fit the bill on both counts. I knew that I had skeins winging their way to me from the states and that I would have enough to complete my garment. And I am so glad that I asked both of these ladies, because after I’d colour matched as carefully as I do, I needed two extra skeins just for that purpose. So, thank you ladies I really appreciate what you did.

Can you tell I love it so?

And then there were the buttons to choose, I knew in my mind what would suit my Fletcher, I wanted dark, but not too dark, a rich chestnut toggle, with some design to them, not just plain, some age to them would have been perfect. I looked and I looked and I could not find anything that suited what I was looking for.

And then… I spotted these, well, lets put it this way, there was no hesitation involved at all, they were right (or as good as I was going to find…. anyone with antique chestnut coloured toggles please say Aye!)

they are Knit Picks, Tapered Bar Buttons. Having knit with with Knit Picks Harmony needles I knew how they would look and I knew what the quality would be like, I was not disappointed.

And so the dream, came true…..

There are some things in life I just don’t understand. And this is one of them.

One evening this week a person or group of people broke into 39 sheds at our allotments. They have caused much damage, we got away lightly with just a broken window, they didn’t manage to gain access to our shed although they have caused damage. If you really want to get into a shed, nothing is going to stop you, you just kick the wall in. Fortunately with our new found glass cutting skills the window was not a problem to us.

But, there are others who have doors ripped off and it has caused some of the older members of our little community much distress. Did they steal? Was it for money? No, nothing was taken, apart from a new wheelbarrow which was recovered at the end of the drive, which leads us to think it may well have been youths.

So it was just for kicks, just to see whether they could.

You wish all sorts of evilness on these individuals when something like this happens.

I have been lucky enough to have been personally invited to join a local sewing group, I am completely amazed by the skill and talent that these women have. Its a lovely little sewing group and I am looking forward to getting to know everyone individually as time goes on.

One of these ladies called Jean Baggott had what could only be called a life changing moment on 31st December 1999 when she vowed that from that point on her life would be devoted to the happiness of “the girl on the wall” … I’ll leave you to read the rest of her story, her success is wonderful, she was in the Daily Mail on Saturday this weekend,
Daily Mail Saturday

She has told her story on both television and radio in the last day or two and has an interview with Woman’s Hour this afternoon.

I’ll leave you with her blog.

The girl on the wall.

… “If I could walk with the animals, talk with the animals,
Grunt and squeak and squawk with the animals,
And they could squeak and squawk and speak and talk to us!”

The other alternative I have for a song to set the scene is…

“If a picture paints a thousand words,
Then why can’t I paint you?
The words will never show the you I’ve come to know…”

And with those songs in mind. What does this picture say to you? and if you could talk to her, what would you say?

I am sure without any doubt that Florence and Eric’s previous owner was a knitter or just liked knitted and mostly wool at that garments. Florence understands the beauty of wool and has since the first day she found her paws under our kitchen table. There is no hesitation in her mind, she saw the sleeves placed there for sewing up, marched over to them and carefully positioned herself such as that even her tail is carefully tucked under her near the wool, this in a centrally heated home where a cat can stretch out for a tummy tickle and not in any way feel the cold.

That is a cat that knows what wool is all about.


Eric on the other hand..

Eric likes quilts, especially goose down quilts. (its the cat in him!) Eric was a little bit frightened of the dogs when he first arrived. I remember the vet asking me how the dogs had got on with the cats and I replied, “Oh the dogs are fine, they just see a running cat in front of their noses, and say to each other.. “Oh, speeding cat!” Where upon my vet laughed and remembered we had sound cat friendly dogs. It took the cats a little while to realise that the dogs were actually okay. Hubby has seen (but sadly not photographed) Eric in the arch between Pip’s (dark lurcher on the quilt) chin and his legs all cozy together.

And life would not be complete without a blog post about Charlie, which is actually why I have decided to post this evening.

I’m over 80 percent improved since the worst days of the pneumonia and the cracked ribs are just about healing, they still cause pain at night whilst getting into bed, laying down is a problem. In the 3 months that I haven’t been right, but especially the last 2 months I have asked for my family to groom Charlie, he needs it so. There have been attempts, I knew they were half hearted, but I had to say thank you very much and keep the peace. Both children ignored my pleas completely. And I can’t whinge at hubby too much after he’s done a full days work, cooked supper and cleaned the place a little bit.

Today the sun was shining and the sky was blue (and how often do we see that) and I felt well enough to do what I knew was going to be a big job. Basically I couldn’t put it off any longer, it was making my heart bleed just seeing the state of my well loved dog.

The top and sides of him wasn’t so difficult, although a fair amount of fur came away, but I realised I needed to groom his belly and legs, Charlie is very furry underneath and I could feel huge soft knots of fur. I tried to get on the floor with him, but the pain in my legs was too much (polymyalgia, fibromyalgia) and I had to give up. (Charlie licked my hand at the very moment that I gave up, he knew that I couldn’t do it) So I had to invent a new plan, because I couldn’t leave him like this. And there is one thing I know about this dog, if he can do it, and if I can portray to him what I would like him to do, he will do his utmost to accommodate.

Now Charlie is not normally allowed on the kitchen table. Its not a place you normally want a golden retriever to go, but bearing in mind Charlie and I used to do a little bit of agility when we were both much younger I knew he would master what I wanted from me fairly quickly. Bearing in mind that he is 10 now, there is no way I could run him to jump onto the table. So I placed a kitchen chair by the side of the table to use as a step and it only took me three attempts before Charlie was safely laying down on the table, legs akimbo waiting for a tummy tickle. Snip, snip, snip, brush, brush, brush and you have this…

I reckon we could knit a small poodle out of that.

and a scrunched up, just about to go into the bin photograph.

Charlie looking much happier.

“Look into my dark brown eyes”

and a quick rendition of Charlie’s version of “If I could talk to my two legged friends”

I really look forward to one Saturday out of every month, my quilting morning, where my friend Carie and I are making a patch a month to eventually make a quilt out of. I am very new to quilting, Carie has rather more knowledge than I which can be very useful, but if the truth be known we generally end up giggling like school girls after I’ve made yet another error. This Saturday was no exception, it reminds me of my school days where I was once separated from my best friend Mole, due to too much giggling.

But even though we are giggling, we are still working, and we are making very beautiful squares.
(mine is on the left, Carie’s on the right)

These are our first squares which we completed in January. I really like it that even though we chose our materials quite independently of each other and last I’d heard Carie was thinking of greys and pinks, we both have a nice strong red in our colour scheme. You could quite easily have these patches as cushions sitting happily side by side on a sofa. These patches were made using triangles which were made simply by putting two squares of material together face to face and sewing two lines diagonally a 1/4 ” each side of the center diagonal line and then cutting them in half and opening them up. The design is then up to you.

This month a little hand sewing was in order. This is what we are trying to achieve.

We were taught how to make a design called building blocks, as usual I engaged my brain rather late and ironed the freezer paper onto the wrong side of the material! Start again Mandy…. !! I didn’t know freezers had paper! But after a lovely couple of hours spent with very good company, may I present….

(again I’m left, Carie is right)

I’ve spent a lovely couple of hours this afternoon doing a little sewing, I’ve lost the light now, so I think I’ll knit for a while this evening.

Without fully describing my religious views, which I think are very private for most people, I thought I would follow the idea my friend Diane had last year, which was not to cast on over lent. I remember her saying it focused her mind and she managed to finish so many of her projects that had been put to one side.

I’ve also mentioned this idea to a few of my knitting friends over the last couple of months, the main response was one of ‘madness and disbelief’ – about me, not them… And so I’ve been wondering whether this was the right idea. So, two weeks ago, I thought I would start early and continue knitting what was on the needles, yesterday I finished knitting my Fletcher, there is much to be done in the finishing but the heavy work is finished. Also I’ve been working on my Lizard Ridge blanket, I find this hurts my wrists and tonight I was tempted, really tempted to cast on a plain vanilla sock, because a vanilla sock is a lovely thing to knit when either you’ve had a bad day, or your aches and pains are particularly bad (mine are dreadful at the moment, the worst I’ve been in months) so you can’t knit heavy or complicated items, or your just really tired and all you want to feel is the soothing aspect of the yarn and the gentle movement of the needles.

There was a discussion with hubby about the rights and wrongs of casting on at this late stage, quickly followed by another discussion with hubby, a walk to the yarn cupboard in the kitchen and a poke around the sock yarn there, a ball of sock yarn was chosen.. and even came back with me into the living room where I started looking for needles. And then I stopped, looked over at hubby and had another discussion with him about what I was doing. And I truly stopped and put everything away.. And I felt good.

Small things, just small things…

I have no way to express just how much this hurts. To lose a pet is one thing, to lose ones family so quickly, this, no matter how well you prepare yourself, it damn well hurts, – well what can I say, but we have just lost three family members in six months.. I know this sounds odd, and you are only going to be an animal person/owner to understand this, but some of these animals are nearly as old as my children, and I loved them so. We lost Holly today, she was nearly fifteen, there was nothing more we could do.

Some of our favourite photographs, of when she was in her prime.

Good night Holly, God bless. Sleep tight I will miss you so.

Sometimes its not a hardship to put together seasonal ingredients. Our hens are laying extremely well and the first pink stalks of forced rhubarb are in the shops. Yesterday we had rhubarb and home made custard for pudding. Which left me with lots of egg whites, well there is only one recipe that springs to mind in those circumstances, a pavlova and with some nice tart rhubarb left over I thought it would make the perfect pud.

I’d baked the rhubarb in a glass of pink fizz with a little sugar, if you bake it gently in the oven you keep the shape and it doesn’t all become a grey mush. Pavlova is one of the easiest sweets to make if you have a large electric mixer, mine is a Kenwood chef which was made in the year 1953 and has seen continuous service since.

The sharp eyed amongst you may notice that there are huge chunks missing out of this pavlova, that was the handy work of my second born son. They ask, you say no, its for later, and they take it anyway…

Look at that squidgy centre, it was perfection.

I am into my second month of cold sheeping. I have not splurged on yarn in all of this time, which for me is impressive. On the other hand my library is increasing…

I have noticed some lovely things during my travels around the net. Toft Alpaca have started to make lace weight in baby alpaca. Fortunately they only have very pale colours, (pale colours would be destroyed in my house) which will be absolutely dreamy as the lightest Alpaca’s have the softest coats. Although on second thoughts I think I could manage the oatmeal..

And I’ve noticed that Sundara yarns are always available these days, but their postage was prohibitive to the UK, well they’ve changed their rules and now,, (I am not even sure if I should say this) if one were to purchase $200 of beautiful yarn (and my choice would be mainly in sock) the postage is…. FREE!!!!!!!!!!

I was quite excited by this idea and I started to think of my sock knitting friends and who I could email and where else I could post this new to me information. And who would be most probably likely to buy a couple of skeins at least… And then we could have had a big huge packet winging its way to us and we would have to put pennies aside for VAT and Customs.. But it was all doable…

And then I woke up and remembered I am cold sheeping.

So I’ll have to make do (if you saw the amount of sock yarn I have you would laugh at those words) with the one skein of Sundara sock a kind Raveller sent to me last year.