Happy Thursday Everyone

Good Evening Knitters! Welcome to another day on planet yarn!*


Firstly, as you see, I have completed the bananarama monkeys and they have (as of this lunchtime), been cautiously entrusted to the Royal Mail to deliver them to a birthday-girl to be. No two skeins of handpainted yarn ever end up exactly the same but I love that in the first sock (the one on the left), I've got clear strong swirls of unadulterated banana yellow, but when it comes to the second, the yellow has got a little muddier, with that 'few days out of the refrigeration unit' banana brown starting to creep in - a case of art unintentionally imitating art perhaps!

More importantly, I am now being stalked by babies. As well as the baby bear who is my joy and delight, there are another five girls in our office expecting a stork fly past sometime between the end of June and the beginning of October. It's not that big an office so that's quite a statistic.

Add to the mix a happy addition to some friends of H's in early June, and (to my very great delight) a first baby for another of my cousins in early October and it'll need to be a veritable squadron of ciconiidae to service the Midlands this summer. That or someone needs to start farming gooseberries - choose your euphemism at will.

Now not all of these peeps fall into the handknitting bracket but I'm good friends with two of the other girls plus bumps at work, and new family should always be welcomed with wool so I'm busily hatching my plan. Actually the e-mail from Mum announcing M and G's happy news concluded with: "get knitting girl", and all good girls obey their Mamma's (occasionally).

Anyway, this is where I need your help. M's sister received one of the many alphabet blankets of 2007 so whilst I want to knit a blanket, I've been scouting for other patterns, and I think we have a winner in OpArt from Knitty. For those that don't want to do the clicky thing, it's knit with two colours in horizontal stripes radiating in a square from the centre, knit so that they have a twist and the squares appear to be spiralling.

The question is which two colours would be best for a gender neutral baby, given that I need a decent contrast between the two to make it work. I'm thinking maybe turquoise and light green, or a coffee caramel and cream, or bright red and yellow, but the problem is that I don't have much of an idea what colours M&G favour, let alone the wee babe.

Anyway, please let me know what you think would look good. I might even try to add a poll if I can figure out blogger that far. And Mum, if you could tap up Auntie P next time to talk to her for any subtle hints, without telling her the whole project, that would be really great.

*Brownie points to anyone in the UK who now knows which radio station we listen to in the morning; utter bemusement to the rest of the world - just chalk it up to English eccentricity.

The Monkey and the Banana

Lest you were concerned that in the excitement and bouncing (gently) round the room thrill about the impending arrival of baby bear I had abandoned any idea that things could be knitted in a size above 6 months old and plunged headlong into the wonderful world of baby knits (and sews and quilts and .... and ....), please be completely reassured that I have. I've utterly and completely lost sight of any woolly objective other than keeping the wee bear nice and healthy as far as I can, and ensuring that when he or she makes their arrival they will have the best possible knitted ensemble that any baby of currently unknown gender could possibly want. (We're waiting for a surprise so I'm knitting gender-neutral).

However, H's Mum has a birthday in the not too distant future and as (a) she is exceptionally appreciative of knitwear and ranks very highly in the list of people that I like knitting for and (b) I've been waiting on the yarn for the baby, I thought a pair of socks on the needles might not be a bad idea.

H had the choosing of the yarn from a selection I extracted from the stash (he isn't allowed to see the whole stash at once of course!) and having decided that his Mum has lots of pink and blue socks, we've gone green and yellow to balance it out and a very familiar pattern.

The yarn is Shelridge Farm Soft Touch Ultra which is just wonderful yarn - H loves the pair of socks he has knitted in it and they've worn incredibly well. As I was winding it up I was running through the pattern options in my mind and it kept saying bananas to me, which led me, inevitably, to Cookie A's wonderful Monkey pattern, as knit by just about everyone in the woolly world I think.

I've been working on these socks in odd moments this week, and on the train back and forth to work, and I think they're exerting subliminal messaging.

What else could explain this:

A fresh loaf of Banana Bread (recipe from Nigella's Domestic Goddess), which somehow lost it's end before the camera made it to the kitchen. An answer might of course be pregnancy cravings but as they seem to revolve around olives and pineapple I'm sticking to my first theory ...

.... beware the power of the socks!

Happy Birthday to Us

Thank you for all your birthday wishes to both of us. As of about 10.30ish this morning and 1.30 ish this afternoon both I and H are 28. So far we have just about managed not to say Happy Birthday to anyone apart from each other - trust me, it's a challenge when in your home Happy Birthday is a bit like saying Merry Christmas in December!

It has been a WONDERFUL day. We woke up to the postman delivering a parcel from Zee and her husband and then they called to sing to us and demand that we open the presents in 'real time'. Zee gave me a cake tin to add to my collection - garden themed and you can see a picture here, together with a few tubes of icing to decorate. What made it even funnier was that my MIL (whom we shall call Beth) and I were talking about Lakeland cake tins last night as I cooked up a set of cars for our Birthday cake. We could remember the train tin and the beehive but forgot the garden gang until it appeared before me. Beth brings me back a cake tin from Williams-Sonoma for Christmas each year so I'm building a wonderful collection.

Then my parents called and sang and then H's sister called and sang and we covered the floor of our lounge with a sea of wrapping paper. There may also have been a little yarn (from H) and the means to acquire yarn (from both sets of parents and Gran) so I am a very happy (and spoilt girl).

We had breakfast-brunch courtesy of H's wonderful fry-up skills and oven baked French toast.


Mine (on the left) is Peach French toast from this recipe and it's going to be my birthday breakfast for EVER now - there's a good reason why it gets 4 1/2 stars.

Then we took Beth to Birmingham on the train to pop her on another train home and had a pootle round Birmingham including a trip to Lush for bath bombs and to Selfridges for Krispy Kreme doughnuts (mmm!).

And now this afternoon has been spent in a haze of happy smiles, birthday cake and playing with new toys - oh and a little knitting:


The swimmer is named Violet and is a present from H to match the swimmer Father Christmas put in his stocking - and also goes with the bath basketball H gave me today! And the yarn has been testing me. It started off trying to be a paid of diagonal cable rib socks. Then it got ripped out and we tried a mock cable wave and then I pulled that out at lunchtime and started my original instinct - the monkey you can see growing in the picture! They are for H's brother's wife next Saturday so I need to get those fingers moving!

A brownie guide does a good deed

It's perhaps almost 20 years since I was a brownie but somehow in my household, doing a favour to someone still counts as your brownie guide good deed for the day.

Today's brownie deed has left me shattered and if this post tails off into a sort of fkd;fihgdkjs.vfndjk.f zzzzzzzzz - you know I fell asleep with my face on the keyboard. For today was the infamous day of the church working party and I as am known to all as a compulsive volunteer (how do you think we ended up with the church youth group!!) I was fully in attendance.

Our intrepid gang gathered at the church armed with gloves, spades, garden bags and other useful implements. The observant among you may notice my lack of familiarity with garden terminology. My role in our garden is to weed; choose the plants and plant them - H does all the things he considers to be manly which fortunately for me includes removing moss from conservatories and power-washing the patio ( I think he likes playing with the toys).

My weeding at our house has been largely successful when actually carried out (I'm very carefully framing photographs around a giant thistle in the middle of the flower bed) but I've never quite lived down weeding out my Father-in-Law's primulas one summer.

Anyway I don't think the churchyard has had a working party for many years and with all the trees we have big gutter and gully problems. Vee and I spent today on our hands and knees in the gullies around the bottom of the walls bailing out leaves and then shovelling out 4" of mud/leaf mould and a whole load of worms - nice! I can proudly announce that as of 12.15 today the gullies were clear of leaves for at least 30 seconds before the wind blew again!!

All this plus a swim has left me curled up in a tired little heap, and what do tired little heaps do? they knit!

And now for our fashion parade tonight (cue lights and music - boom-de-de-doom etc). (in voice appropriate to 1930s newsreel narrator) Item one on our catwalk of finishing:

C's Christmas scarf:

This delightful alpaca scarf is pink and sparkly and very snuggly. It has not yet been blocked (bad knitter) but has found time in its busy schedule of waiting-to-be-blocked to take time to cuddle the Cosmos. Lets hope she likes it!

Ladies and Gentleman we are also please to present a work in progress - the back and a front of the Lady NaNoSweMo:

Progress continues apace on this cardigan-to-be which at present resembles an asymettric tunic top. Our sources reveal that it will block out a lot longer than it looks, and just look at that lovely stitching:

And finally, what you've all been waiting for..... a pair of Monkeys:

With a natty picot edge;


an eye of partridge heel and in pink, peach and slate blue how could any well dressed Carie leave home without them!

Other Christmassy things are on the needles and are in Ravelry but will remain anonymous for the moment so this is the little heap signing out!