Suspended Animation

Jadis, Queen of Charn it seems may have followed my link to her wiki page and passed this way. 



I always envisioned that everlasting winter in Narnia, when Christmas never came, not as a place of angry blizzards and energetic storms, but a place frozen into suspension by her icy touch and cloaked in cold silence. We got a taste of it earlier this week when, as the rest of the country woke up to yet more snow, the cloud cover dropped, clammy, chill and silent.


Nothing could be heard, there was no wind, and with the freezing fog swaddling each little tiny village, there wasn't much to be seen either.  The only thing moving and growing was the ice.

Every point started crystals forming, even the whisper of a spider's web was highlighted by a dusting of frozen glitter, and trees which have long since dropped their leaves, suddenly bloomed.


Every leaf on every bush was outlined with a rim of crystal cold

This branch is smooth and sleek under the ice jacket, but now sports coral-like tentacles at all angles.

It was the deep deep cold of a silent, unmoving winter.

Only ended when the wind arrived to lift the fog and shake the icicles from the trees where they fell to the ground as powder; fools' snow in an otherwise green garden.


A little awe inspiring while it lasted, and certainly no fun to drive in, but now that we are back to our dull greens and frozen browns I find I miss the magic.  Fingers crossed Father Christmas brings some of his sort of winter wonderland.

Frozen Dreams

It is not a fact that has passed unremarked upon that I am just a tad keen on the fluffy wintery white stuff.  In truth, I may have dropped a few hints here and there that I'm rather partial to a quick dusting of snow to clean up the landscape and make the trees all glittery and Christmassy.  So when the country is in the grips of 'The Big Freeze' (again) and with H's parents reporting snow up to the tops of the car wheels and even my family in their clifftop eyrie in Devon sending through pictures of a sparkly carpet of white reaching across the beach to the waves you will forgive me for being a tad miffed that Warwickshire appears to be making a serious bid for the title of 'least snowy place in the couintry'.

All this is not to say that we are surrounded by green and pleasant land, and I still haven't planted any of the tulips bulbs, so Kitty and I went on an expedition to find some winter wonderland.  Jephson Gardens hadn't been gritted so we found enough snow to scrunch under the pram wheels.

I don't know what they've put into the fountains to keep them playing in this weather but whatever it is I'd quite like some for my car squishers, every plume was shooting straight up with only the occasional stutter to suggest a little bit of frost around the edges. 


The lake itself on the other hand is well and truly frozen, with snow drifting across the top of the ice so that the fountains appear to come from ice bergs, and the toddle up to have a good look at this strange phenomenon and the fountains patter down onto solid ice.
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Around the edges the ice has broken up into fist sized chunks


Leaving only the smallest ring of open water around the edges for any thirsty explorer birds.


It may not be the four feet of snow that we dream of but it has its own sort of icy magic - perhaps a little more the White Witch than Father Christmas but a promising start.  And in the meantime...



... we learnt how to herd pigeons.

White Magic

Well it turns out that intensive mitten wearing can make your dreams come true - we woke up to confirmation that I will not be spending the weekend planting the tulip bulbs:


A mere dusting it's true but enough for a very special first for our wee lassie.

Kitty, bundled up like a snow bunny courtesy of a hand-me-down snow suit from her second cousin, meets SNOW!

So what do you think of snow li'l sweetheart?

"Frankly Daddy, I think it's beneath me"

Despite all of the wrapping up, it was bitterly cold today so we didn't stay outside for long.  I tried to explain how wonderful snow was, and how it all falls floaty and soft from the sky, but I'm not convinced she's quite got it.



H's two best girls - one considerably more excited by snow than the other.

The Christmas Knitting

There were Elephants (lots of them), there was a hat, there were mittens, and most of all there were socks. Some of them (H's) I've already shown you but there was a little bit of necessary delay in revealing the rest of the family's woolly bounty.

This


Is my picture of the socks which I made for my Dad. As he called me on Christmas day and started the conversation with "guess what colour socks I'm wearing?", you may deduce that he was not presented with a neatly wrapped ball of yarn and a promise. The truth dear friend is that I finished these socks a mere 5 minutes before we left for Devon to tuck them under the tree; and I spent that five minutes trying not to tie myself to the coffee table in sellotape and answering the question "are we going to Devon or are we knitting!"

Happily, my e-mail has supplied a photo from the man himself - socks in action:



The yarn is my handspun; 100g or so of Blue Faced Leicester, split into three equal bumps, spun and then plied together to make my most favourite sock yarn. The fibre came from Spindlefrog via Etsy, although I subsequently encountered her at Wonderwool Wales last April (and may have added to the yarn-to-be stash as a consequence). The colour is Neptune, and calls to me as the colour of sunshine, rippling across the sea. It's the simplest sort of vanilla sock over 68 stitches, firstly to let the yarn do the talking, and secondly to enable me to finish in time for Christmas.

I think they're rather special, and it seems that the wearer agrees.

Also under a Devonian Christmas tree could be found another squishy package, addressed to my lovely Mum. After her birthday socks (cream wool-silk Fiori de Zucca), she declared for lacy socks; and I'm always happy to oblige.


The yarn is Artists Palette Yarns Smootherino which again came from Wonderwool; I found it in the stash when looking for something appropriate for Mum and realised that whether I knew it or not at the time, this yarn came with her name on it. Soft sage, apricot and a hint of blue, all perfect colours.

I think that you can see the pattern a little more clearly in this progress shot (from the beach at Portobello in November); it is Esther by Stephanie van der Linden (designer of a good chunk of my Ravelry sock queue). To me it looked like flowers from Mum's garden, just what you need for the middle of winter.

The final pair of the parental socky triumverate, went north to my Mother-in-law, and as you can see, was finished in time for the pre-Christmas flurry of snow still to be firmly in place on my windscreen.

The yarn is Fresco-coloured Colinette Jitterbug (I'd love to see the frescos that they found that matched these socks!) and the pattern is from Cookie A's Sock Innovation (a book I want to knit my way through - three down so far).

I have absolutely no idea why they pool and swirl so very differently on the two feet. I can say that Beth loves them and thinks that they are her perfect colours.

Happily, she is now building quite a collection of socks, because if she walked through these ones we might have a bit of an issue.

This

Is the amount of yarn which I had left when I finished the second sock. Knitting on a knife edge.

Did you think you were getting away without a snow report today? Did you think that perhaps the crazy travel situation in the snow and ice had dinted my deep affection for a wintery white landscape? You did....? Oops!

I would like to make two submissions in my defence.

(1) I did not take the pictures which I am about to show you - I pinched them from my Dad.
(2) Snow, whilst exciting and wonderful when it lands in Warwickshire or Yorkshire is not entirely unknown in those regions. In my county of origin it last snowed heavily in 1963 (my father recalls having to walk home from the train station in the nearest town on his return from university). Although I have seen the odd flurry, and one rather convincing hailstorm one Easter, and on Dartmoor I have seen sledging and snowballs, I have never seen this:


That would be the sea off the south coast of Devon, the cliffs, and the beach.


The beach has snow on it!!! Possibly enough to make a very tiny snowman. This is a thing of great wonder and joy - I'm just a little envious that I'm not there to see it in real life.

Oh, and Dad .... snowy sandcastle - it has to be done!

The White Stuff

One of these days I'll actually write a blog post with some knitting content in it - and you'll all fall over with the shock of it. And by all, I mean of course my mother who will be the only person left reading this blog after I've wittered on about frozen precipitation ad infinitum.

Actually, just to make sure, would you like to see some knitting before I talk about snow? Of course not; snow it is.

For it has snowed in the Midlands. It started yesterday morning just after I got into the office; tiny pin-head dots of frozen ice, building to wonderful feathery flakes which drifted lazily down from the sky to create a wonderful velvety blanket of white over the city. H reported snow further south slightly later, and then phoned to tell me that his office was closing because they were all having problems getting in and out of the car park.

We hard-core peeps pressed on until the end of the working day; I consider I was remarkably restrained not to spend the entire day with my nose pressed to the window. Of course once it got dark we couldn't really see what was going on; we only knew it was still snowing because the lights from other buildings looked flickery; and it wasn't until we got outside that we could see how completely and beautifully the city was covered.

Warwickshire is similarly tucked up for winter at present (which is why our car couldn't make it back onto our rather steep driveway despite H's best efforts.

Today my very best attempts could have got me to the office but the driving was horrid and with more snow forecast for this afternoon I requested a work from home day and it's been pretty productive; no doubt greatly helped by a walk around the village at lunchtime, plunging through the shin-deep snow on the playing fields where we encountered this fellow



Rachel commented in the last snow report that she finds my complete obsession to be a little bewildering, and it's something I've been pondering for a while. Not so much my personal devotion to the white fluffy stuff; that stems from a series of childhood winters spent on the South Coast where the naturally mild weather and high salt content in the air makes snow a real rarity - basically I'm making up for lost time. Even the people who aren't quite so crazy about snow as me, mostly look forward to it, hope it will snow, and are happy to see it falling. I think it must be the transience of snow in England; it's set to stay below freezing for the week so we'll be mostly white and dirty grey slush for a little while, but that's unusal. In my mind snow is a fleeting glimmer of wintry glitter that often disappears as fast as it comes, returning the green normal before you really get to enjoy it. We don't often get lingering snow, a feeling of having seen nothing green in weeks, and piles of dirty slush to slip through - perhaps we have the right sort of snow after all.



OK, I relent, enough snow talk, time for some yarn to warm the cockles of your heart, and some more of the Christmas knitting. Today's walk gave me a chance to photograph the last of H's knitted Christmas presents 'in the wild' so to speak;



the Cairn hat and mittens from Ysolda's Whimsical Little Knits volume 1.



Apparently mittens are for making snowballs and then trying to shoot them through the basketball hoop on the field!

It's another great pattern (can you tell I'm a bit of a fan) which responded rather well to my pattern abuse, swapping DK weight recommended yarn for Mission Falls 1824 (the brick) and Cashsoft Aran (the charcoal). I also added a couple of extra repeats to the wrist on each mitten to make them properly boy sized.

What more could you need when it's white outside.

Snow report: 2010

[Side note: if you live in North America, mainland Europe, or really anywhere where fluttery white falling from the sky is not uncommon, please don't scoff when I mention a mere dusting of flakes as full on snow. It's all we get round here - send sympathy and crushed ice-cubes]

From our Special Correspondent, newly returned from the great white north.

Happy New Year!! 2010 has kicked off to a great start - it looks like this:


And this:

(that's a different patch of snow, please note the slightly different glitteryness).

And this.


This is actually rather more special than the first two; as I opened the bedroom curtains this morning at H's parents' house in Yorkshire a tall grey heron stalked gracefully across the lawn and took off into the distance. These are his tracks.

Whilst this would explain the lack of fish in my in-laws back pond, and the rather self-satisfied air of the heron, I'll forgive him his meal for a sight like that.

H and I had decided that if the mountain wouldn't come to Mohammed, we should head north for the new year in search of snow, and so we went to my inlaws in Yorkshire, the only county I know where the Sunday lunch menu at the very nice hotel restaurant we frequented today runs starter, yorkshire pudding course, main course and dessert. It was all delicious.

It started to snow tiny hardened pellets of ice as we arrived on New Year's Eve, but as the calendars flicked over at midnight, the flakes must have begun to fall. We didn't really notice it until we were headed for bed; a soft powdery covering, just enough to blanket the front garden and the cars.

H insisted that we boot up and go out to play, which is why the car wishes all passers-by a cheery festive greeting - perhaps we felt someone in the neighbourhood is due some form of aural surgery:


And why I was outside in mittens and pyjamas at 1 o'clock in the morning.

Totally worth it though.

The sun shone in the morning though and our light dusting started to run away with the shadows across the back garden, and, despite the occasional and slightly mournful cheep of "snow!" from a member of the party who shall remain absolutely and completely anonymous and in no way resembles me at all, that seemed to be it.

Until Saturday.

I am becoming increasingly convinced that the power of Christmas miracles and festive good deeds induces snowfall. When we had a blizzard one lunchtime at work the other week, the heavens opened mere seconds after we finished decorating a colleague's pod for her and replacing a very dead plant that she was trying to nurse back to life, with a very vibrant poinsettia which appeared to be sprouting pom-poms.

On Saturday we headed to evening church in heavy sleety rain, that splatted on the windscreen and made every effort to find its way down the back of your neck. When we came out it was into a whirl of white. It was wonderful (and the "snow!" started to alternate with "so pretty!").

H and I booted up properly this time and went for a little walk up to the top of the road and back. In that brief jaunt we put some serious effort into our yeti-impersonations, what do you think?

I was made to shake vigorously before I was let anywhere near the inside of the house!

The snow stopped falling as we ate supper and it was really no more than an inch deep at best if I'm honest, but the frost held it over til this morning and added that magical crunch and the dusting of pearliest glitter across the top.

It also helps the visual effect that the roads around my in-laws are of the DIY grit variety (box of grit at the end of the road), and that no-one felt like doing any gritting.



It started snowing again this afternoon as we sat eating our Yorkshire Pudding course, gazing out over white fields to a spectacular pink and purple sunset; the perfect end to a wonderful weekend.

Wishful Thinking

How silently they tumble down
And come to rest upon the ground
To lay a carpet, rich and rare,
Beneath the trees without a care,
Content to sleep, their work well done,
Colors gleaming in the sun.

At other times, they wildly fly
Until they nearly reach the sky.
Twisting, turning through the air
Till all the trees stand stark and bare.
Exhausted, drop to earth below
To wait, like children, for the snow. - Elsie N. Brady, Leaves

The leaves are all fallen, the temperature has dropped. Winter you ask? Pah! I'm ready. Bring it on:



I finished my mittens. A declaration of intent on the top side ...


... and eye-crossing stripyness on the palms!

These are the Snowbird mittens from last Autumn's Vogue Knitting, made out of some leftover sock yarn - both Regia I think.

The pattern suggests 2.25mm needles, and although my hands are smaller than the pattern measurements, I went up to a 2.5 after a bit of trial and error because my tension in fairisle is tighter. The only other amendment I made was to keep going on the thumbs for about another 7 or so rounds each - knit to pattern they only made it to the knuckle.

I'm really please with the end result of the fairisle - when I was knitting it it looked a bit lumpy and uneven but a good soak in eucalan and several days drying on the ironing board did wonders.

I quite like the insides too.

The palm sides are equally stripy, and this I want to call "Mittens in the Blizzard"


You can just about see the trees through the white-out!

One tequila, two tequila ....

Three tequila, floor - or so the saying goes! I clearly would not know anything about the effects of tequila, having never imbibed said substance. Clearly. And indeed.

I'm holding out on you all for the final Lizard Ridge squares because despite all appearances to the contrary I have been playing with my other toys as well, and in particular my joyful Sonata.

My parents-in-law visited at the weekend and I pulled some fibre out of the basket to show off the wonderfulness of (a) spinning, (b) the wheel and (c) their son who gave it to me.

I have a decent quantity of different sorts of 'practice fibre', much of it delicious but sensible merino, blue faced Leicester or alpaca, and then I have my wild card.

Back at the Iknit day last September, which would be the day before I learnt to spin, I (and many many others) kept being drawn back to one particular stand which overflowed with baskets of tempting fibre mixed in batts of incomparable craziness. Rockpool Candy, whose tagline I love; "feed your inner fibre fiddler".

I came home with two 50g batts and it was for one of these that I reached:

Tequila Sunrise: 50g of (take a deep breath) merino, corridale, soya, silk, banana and angelina.

It's insane and I love it to distraction! I swear I spent most of the spinning time giggling at the fibres. This:

is the first 25g spun up, the rest is still waiting for me in fluffy form. I deliberately spun it much thicker than either the sock yarn or the laceweight singles and my aim is to have a 2-ply fluffy yarn with slubby poofy bits somewhere between DK and Aran weight.

What I think is the banana fibre isn't terribly soft, it feels a bit like the hairy outside of a coconut which means that there are patches where this isn't the softest of yarns so I think in the long run it might make a hat or mittens, probably as a crazy variegated contrast colour to make the most of the yarn.

Or I might just keep it as a pet - it is the perfect burst of sunshine for cloudy grey days (even ones with snow in them!).

I also think that it will have greatly assisted in the enspinneration of my mother-in-law, who was dropping some hints about how she might like a wheel - I offered her a go but she wants to keep practicing on the drop spindle first - famous last words uttered by yours truly amongst others.

And finally, my camera has revealed a secret and hitherto undiscovered form of life using the ice-crust in our garden to form a new habitat. I am English, and a westcountry girl at that, so I have little experience of the birds and beasties native to chillier climes because it doesn't get properly cold here very often. Accordingly I lay this one open to any dear reader who may be able to help me identify this new species:

Have I, could it be possible that I have here on film (or digi-thing-film-wannabe) the first record of the existence of SNOWBUNNIES?

They appear to be standing in formation - should I be worried?

Label me HAPPY!

My wish came true - and I haven't even started knitting the mittens of destiny!

Deep, beautiful, blanketing, and at least initially, white, snow. There's a road in that picture somewhere.

The only mark on the otherwise pristine fluffy blanket was a little trail of prints running across the lawn:



Given that it was about 12cm deep at this point I'm guessing that puss was up to his elbows at least and probably not enjoying it half as much as we did. Monday's snow day came about because while I could get to the trains, the trains couldn't get me to work. This snow day I have no idea whether the trains ran well or not because a quick tramp around the village first thing in the morning showed that our road wasn't gritted, the main village road (a hill) wasn't gritted and the main road to the train station wasn't gritted - I worked from home.

Our garden, which always looks a little shabby over the winter, was made beautiful by the snow:


Each holly leaf looks like it has been individually topped with a meringue.



Anyone for a rosemary scented freeze pop?



This, looking for all the world like a woolly pine cone is in fact our Christmas tree - still waiting to be cut up for the recycling bin.

I also got a great parcel to play with this week:


I'd been deliberating about having some personalised labels made for a while, usually every time I give things away with detailed washing instructions written inside the card and think how much nicer it would be to just pin or sew a label on! These are made by the famous Cash's name tapes, responsible for school name tapes across the nation (my calculator still has a school name tape stuck on the front of it to the great entertainment of my colleagues who know how long ago I left school).

I went with cream coloured labels (to make a marked difference from the school labels) and avoided black (my school tape colour) or red (my sister's). So now I have blue:



For handwash only. And green:


For machine washable. I'm really pleased with how they turned out - the inaugural blue label was pinned to my father's birthday socks but don't worry Mum, I didn't have them made just for you!