On fire

Never know how much I love you
Never know how much I care
when I wrapped that yarn around me
I got a fever that's so hard to bare

You gave me fever
When I cast on
Fever when the knitting's right
Knitting in the morning
Knitting all through the night

Sun lights up the day time
Fire lights up the night
I lit up when I spent time knittn' you
I'm knitting on the train tonight

you gave me fever
through the lace work
fever through the tail transition
Fever on every commute
Fever when I'm in the station


Every sock can give me fever
That is something you all know
Knitting isn't such a new thing
Knitting caught me long ago

Firebird socks were quite a challenge
Second one was just the same
When I put them on my tootsies H said
Carie babe your feet are aflame

I cried "It's fever!"
From the knitting
Knitting a flame picot band
Fever, such embroidery
Never seen before in this land

Now you've listened to my story
Here's the point that I have made
Tsock Tsarina gave me fever
I'll be clear, it's true I am fair game

Socks give me fever
when I knit them
Fever when I pop them on
Fever, no more storage space
But what a lovely way to burn
From this fever I shall never return
From this fever I shall never return
From this fever I shall never return
From this fever I shall never return ....



In other non musical news, this is how I spent my weekend:

Stars shining bright

It's been a while longer than I thought - blame the sunny weather and a hectic schedule! Picking up where we left off, I believe I promised pictures of my newly planted garden and after a number of false starts and smudgy photos taken too early in the morning, here we are:







There has also been knitting - I finished the knitting part of the Firebirds on Friday


And now I'm onto the embroidery part (which is taking a lot longer than you would think). I've found it best to put the sock on the blocker to get a bit of stretch on the fabric but as my feet are slightly larger than the blocker it's an inexact science. What I can say is that despite all the effort it makes a huge difference, but I'll save the pictures until I have a finished pair!

When not melting in the wonderful warmth this weekend I have been picking up on my Star quilt-along. Amanda-Jean published the last star this week and I realised that I'd run out of steam at star 6. So on Saturday as H headed off for a boys golf game I set up my sewing room.

I have decided that when I'm grown up I'm going to have a house with a wide veranda with power sockets so I can sew on the veranda and also I'm going to have a cutting table at the right height - my desk is officially too low (creak).

Several hours of sewing later (and very early this morning) all the stars were finished and it now looks like this:


As you can see I have another 6 setting squares to sew plus sashing and then the whole quilting issue. I know you'll say 'famous last words' if I claim that I am aiming to sew one quilt at a time but it's true - I've got until Christmas to finish this one at which point we're going on a long distance fabric shopping trip for the next one (and yes I have chosen it already - it's here but that's not a very good picture. I also admit that if we go to the NEC festival of quilts in August I may slip up!)

Anyway, having finished the stars it seems only proper to allow them to parade. So, in week order we have:

Week1 - I don't know what this star's called but it's pretty

Week 2 - again no name
(well there should be a picture here but it seems I forgot to take one. Imagine one for me please :))
Week 3 - the Ohio Star - I'm guessing that's a big clue as to where that block originated!

Week 4 - Sarah's Choice - who was Sarah and what did she choose?

Week 5 - Another no-name but I'm going to call it nightmare - this is the one that had a do-over because the first effort was so atrocious.

Week 6 - Aunt Addie's - another mysterious name, I'm going to have to get a book on quilt history to find out where the names come from.

Week 7 - Star of Hope a variation on the Ohio Star and the first of yesterday's marathon effort

Week 8 - the Maple Star

Week 9 - Optical Sawtooth

Week 10 - Martha Washington Star - named for the first First Lady of the USA, although wikipedia fails to mention whether she invented it herself. I love the pinwheel in the middle and this is probably one of my favourites.

Week 11 - the Amish Star

Week 12 - the Indian Star

and finally


Week 13 - appropriately named Right Hand of Friendship

I've really enjoyed this quilt-along and I think my technique has been steadily improving. The blocks aren't all the same size but I'll play with the sashing until it's all right and we'll take it from there!

Twinkle twinkle and goodnight

To a firebird

Hale to thee, blithe spirit

Bird thou never wert

That from Heaven or near it

Pourest thy full heart

in profuse strains of unpremeditated art

(Percy Shelley)

The bird is taking flight. In this picture we have almost all of the tail feathers and at the moment I've just started the body (after an surprisingly hard time trying to decide which precise part of my ankle bone I should be measuring from to get the length right). There has been much debate from those who have gone before trying to decide whether to use the moss stitch or diagonal basketweave stitch - at the moment I've gone for the basketweave because it's new and different. I'm doing the large size and my gauge is a smidgen on the loose side so I'm hoping it will all pan out - plus a lifetime of giving commercial socks a good yank over the ankle means I'm not broken hearted if I can't pull it on with a little finger! Whether I can manage the intricacies of basketweave if of course an entirely separate question.

For the moment than I shall knit on, amidst the soothing scent of beautiful sweet peas

H is for Husband

Over the past few years and through 9 years of exposure to me, H has acquired a good deal of knitting lingo and this evening he agreed to put it to the test in "Non-Knitter Mastermind"

Your name: H (not from Steps)
Your specialist subject: being married to a knitter

Our questions start now:

Do you know how to knit?
Yes.

So will you be knitting your own socks from now then?
Kind-of.

What do you mean kind of?
Well when we got married we became one; so if you knit my socks then I knit them. It's the same way you mow the lawn.

How many pairs of socks is too many?

It's not possible to have too many socks - keep knitting; you've stopped

Do you think I have too much yarn?
No - more yarn, more pretty yarn I want

So can I knit you a sweater?
NO!

Please
NO!

But what if it was a nice ...
NOPE!

How about some mittens?
Maybe

Which is your favourite of all my knitting?

The Funky Monkey is quite cool - where is my monkey?

I have to order more yarn to make it
Well go on then, order some so that you can make my monkey.

Do you know what frog means?
Ribbit ribbit

How about tink?
Yes - backwards knitting

Is gauge important?
Not to me

In our house, how far away from yarn are you at any one time?

I'm wearing socks, does that answer your question.

And the final question, do you know where all of my yarn is?
Yes
Are you sure........?

In other news it appears that if you start a fire you might just get a Firebird:

It arrived on Saturday and I couldn't be happier - I'd really started to worry that the second parcel had gone astray. This yarn


Is the first parcel for the Flock Sock Club and is a Tsock Tsarina pattern. Needless to say it will not be a travelling sock!

And although the temptation to cast on straight away was pretty high, I've started another little something. Last autumn I knit the Argosy scarf with luscious silk yarn that H bought for me in Paris on our wedding anniversary. The yarn was lovely, the pattern was lovely - but the two just didn't work together - the yarn was too heavy and drapey to hold the pattern and it ended up with the scarf stretching into a thin little strip. So it had to go.

I've been eyeing up this shrug from Dream in Colour for a while and this silk is the perfect weight for it. So I did a little internet shopping on Friday night and frogged the scarf. I have to say that Alice amazed me with the speed of delivery on this one - I requested the pattern be sent by e-mail and put in the order late Friday night expecting to get it Monday maybe, what with it being the weekend and all - by the time I'd finished looking at all the pretty things in her shop and gone to check my e-mail it had arrived! Well with auspices like that you just can't ignore them, so after the yarn had a little dampen and a little rest on my swift I cast on.

At lunchtime today it looked like this:

And now I'm nearly six repeats through and loving it.

And now for my final question for you - any guesses what this is?

Two feet - Green

“Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it.”

C'est finis! Bare sticks and a bit of string have produced these:


My Lucky Leafling socks, finished this afternoon on the train home and with the end wounds in at the traffic lights in the car on the way home from the station (I wasn't driving I promise! and you know there's no stopping a knitter with an almost finished sock!).

These


Yes these

Are the March socks from the Rockin Sock Club in STR mediumweight. The fit is truly lovely which is partly down to the lovely yarn and partly down to the genius of the Cat Bordhi inspired pattern - we likes it, we loves it, we wants it ... oh, hang on, that's something else.

The other thing truly wonderful is that I got home in the daylight to take pictures - hurrah for Spring -sort-of!

I must admit to you my dear friends that I may perhaps, perchance and possibly have had an ulterior motive for finishing the socks. I am awaiting the arrival of a Firebird and as it's already arrived a little bit further north I thought I could tempt it to arrive with the promise of empty needles and a train commute.

Alas no, it was all in vain. Having said that I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that the Firebird might need a bit more attention than train knitting offers so I left off looking for the birds in the leaves, went to the stash and found:


The Ocean!! Gorgeous sea coloured Arucania Ranco from H at Christmas and (more) Cat Bordhi - I'm making the socks at the bottom on the book cover.

(I bet the Firebird arrives tomorrow!)