On the fourteenth day of Christmas ...

our lovely friends came to play.

By virtue of some alphabetical wiztrickery, H and A were lab partners at university, realised they'd spotted each other before at church, and we've all been the best of friends ever since.  We count A as family, particularly now that he is Kitty's godfather, which mostly means that I don't sweat the tidying up if he's coming over. 

His better half, L, has an appreciation for the merits of Persephone books, salted caramel almonds from Hotel Chocolat and all things handmade, so we were always going to hit it off.

They came to spend a quiet cosy Sunday with us; a big roast gammon and sticky toffee pudding lunch, followed by Christmas presents, and an afternoon tucked up in my quilt collections, playing Sonic, eating sweeties, reading, knitting and playing shop with Kitty.  It was restful, fun and quintessentially English; if only we had a roaring fire and it had been snowing outside we would have been quite the picture postcard (well minus the computer games perhaps).

But you didn't really want to know about all that (and apologies to anyone whose New Year's virtuosity is wavering because I mentioned sticky toffee pudding (with ice-cream)).  Sunday was the unveiling of the final handmade Christmas presents for 2011.

First, there was a large, flat, square, squishy parcel for A, which Kitty assiduously helped him to unwrap.

A 'very useful quilt for snuggling under on cold winter's days when part of your house has a stone floor'

The pattern is Pandora's Box from the Jelly Roll Quilts book by Pam and Nicky Lintott, and the fabric is a Moda jelly roll that I bought from my very first Festival of Quilts.  It perfectly fulfils the criteria of 'colours that I have seen A wear' and in fact he turned up in a jumper that perfectly matched the orange border.

It's a really great pattern for jelly rolls and just generally; it's nice and simple to show of the fabric to its best advantage and as it's all mixed up together, the quilt doesn't suffer for the quilter not being able to separate the jelly roll neatly into light and dark.

It also lent itself to a piecemeal construction.  On one evening I took the jelly roll apart and did the first stage of cutting, another night I matched the strips into pairs for the centre sections, sewed them together during one nap time, and cut the second stage during another.  At the end of each stage, all the pieces could be tucked away from tiny fingers in a bag without loosing my place, or upsetting a precisely piled stack of cut pieces.

Once I'd sewn up the main quilt top I stood back and marvelled at the centre points of the blocks; my quilting has improved so gradually through little bits of practice here and there I forget that I can be pretty accurate now if I take my time to do it properly.

The border is a flaming orange and gold weave; it doesn't feel like a printed quilting cotton but is much softer with more drape.  There was just enough on the bolt at Quilter's Den for the borders or I would have been tempted to have a little bit more for a skirt in one of my favourite colours. 

I had enough white on lime green polka dots left over from my sampler quilt for the binding, so all that was left was to choose the backing, and what a backing:

Enough sunshine to chase away any rainy day gloom (also from Quilter's Den).  I really ought to pay more attention to the names of the fabric I'm buying I know.

I used a pure cotton wadding and quilted it all over with lime green thread in a square stipple.


I can't imagine life without my quilts, they have so many uses from extra blankets on cold nights to tents in the lounge and space to lie out in the garden in the heat of summer so I'm glad A and L like their very own.

And just in case he doesn't share -

L has a pair of handknit socks.  It's Regia (definitely Regia this time - I found the ball band) Circus Colour in Akrobatik, bought on my last trip to Liberty's.  L once borrowed a pair of my shoes on an impromptu muddy walk so I knit to fit me, using a 64st cast on and a slip stitch heel and I think they should keep her feet nice and warm walking around the stone floor of their kitchen on chilly mornings.

So there we have it; four pairs of socks, two quilts, a hat, a scarf and a jumper.  Not a bad turn out considering that I didn't start until mid-October.  Maybe this will be the year that I start a bit earlier (yes yes, I can hear your hollow laughter from here!). But first I have two new balls of Rowan Big Wool in a delicious deep pomegranate to go and squoosh.

In vain

I know the pattern is Seven Chakras, but to me it's always been a rainbow sock, which means that with a violet top and toe I've reached the end of my first rainbow, although sadly the pot of gold has failed to materialised.

After the orange 'herding cats' section the rest of the pattern felt like knitting garter stitch on fluffy pillows while cherubim bring you chocolate fudge cake and the yarn colours are, as always, beautiful. 

Now then, the important part, the things I need to remember when I come to the second sock.

Note 1:  add the extra row at the beginning of the blue section.
Note 2:  don't start the toe shaping until the first pattern row of the violet section, no decreases in the first two plain rounds.
Note 3: there are a good few errors in the pattern.  Check the errata.
Note 4: there is another error not picked up in the errata.  For the green foot section knit one stitch plain before and after the patterning - you have 72 sts for the large size and the patterning only covers 70 of them.

I do feel like I've knitted two socks because I've knitted each pattern twice so we shall see whether it takes as long to knit the second as the first.  The first sock just took me two years, six months and eleven days so I'm in no hurry and I suspect I'll be casting on again pretty soon because they are comfy cosy socks.

This is of course assuming that no one else has designs on them ...

And I have one final question; Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain, but if your history doesn't include a Richard of York, or he was victorious - what mnemonic were you taught as a child to remember the colours of the rainbow?

Can you tell what it is yet?

How about if I turn it round a bit?

Now that I've got a bit further along it's definitely easier to see how this is going to turn out to be a wearable sock; just two more sections to go, and no prizes for guessing the final colours.

As it is completely addictive knitting; you always want to do just one more section; I've been rather monogamous in my knitting and have nothing but intentions to show you, and they don't photograph very well.

Accordingly I shall resort to my fall back - a Kitty fix.

And yes I have turned into a Mamarazzi. With somewhat unintended consequences.

On Tuesday at the Vicarage pancake party we were organising pancake races up and down the garden; Kitty (in the sling) and I were one half of the finish line and busy watching the children trying to subtly hold onto the pancakes with their fingers until Kitty spotted people taking photos of the races at which point she wriggled around to face the camera and smiled angelically at them - the girl knows how to work a camera

Weekend

Kitty's lovely uncle C doesn't get much time off work, and when he does have time off it tends to be at odd moments, so when we heard that he was heading to Yorkshire to visit H's parents and collect his new car we decided to make a whistlestop trip up north.


Kitty met Uncle C for only the second time in her life and H got to hang out with his little bro,


and by hang out we mean of course, wrassle, play football and resurrect a Nintendo from the early '90s out of the attic.

Kitty also got to surprise her Great-Gran by turning up for tea and ginger-nuts on Sunday afternoon.


Great-Gran sang lullabies and played clapping games and she absolutely loved it.



And while Kitty was still hamming it up for the camera, and while the kettle boiled, we took one more photo;

Four generations of girls, all related to Kitty by blood and all related to each other by marriage - I love this photo.

As it is now decidedly March I have come up with some March crafty aims, and even made a start on one of them.

So, number 1 - finish my Tsuspense Tsocks.

It's the final sock from the 2008 Tsock Club that came out over the year in little tiny packages.

I'd knit the first Part but then it all hit the wall and something else came along by the time Part II landed and it became the very oldest WIP on my needles, so it's high time they were finished.

It's the most mind bending sock construction yet, starting with a heel and heading out in both directions so that with all the needles it looks utterly insane and rather like I'm knitting with an in-progress game of Pik-a-Stick.


H rates it my craziest knitting yet!

I've got some other plans, including some knitted dishcloths to aleviate the dishcloth shortage, and a plan to finish the top of a Christmas quilt I started at least three Christmasses ago but for the moment I'm just hooked on these socks.

The colours of the season

Warning: Actual knitting content ahead!

Yes, it's true, I have been knitting and even more than that, I have finished some knitting.  Ta da!


It's just taken me two months to knit a plain vanilla pair of socks for myself.  Chief in the acquisition of knitting time was Miss Kitty's decision that sleeping on Mummy is fun, and sitting in the baby bouncer kicking little legs and giggling gummily at Mummy is also fun.  (She also likes watching back to back episodes of Coast while Mummy eats supper with both hands which is wonderful!).

I'm not sure I could manage anything more complicated while she's asleep on me, and it's probably true that my baby befuddled brain couldn't cope anyway so plain socks it is.

Fortunately the stash reveals a collection of wonderful multicoloured sock yarn that needs plain socks to show off the colours to their best advantage.  Very few patterns would be strong enough to match up to this Fire on the Mountain so it isn't really worth the extra effort when these are pretty and soft and warm and so very cheery against the oncoming grey of winter.

They even outshine my sandals.

In fact I like this yarn so much that I couldn't bear to simply tuck the leftovers away in the scraps box, and as I've been meaning to make Kitty some mittens for a while to try to combat the Kitty-Mummy game where Mummy puts mittens on Kitty and Kitty tries to wiggle her hands free without Mummy noticing, I did a little scrap box diving for other STR leftovers:

And here we see that Mummy has won! Port and Starboard mittens for Kitty made out of STR mediumweight in Fire on the Mountain and Lucky and STR lightweight in Dragon's Dance. 

The bright colours are fun for her to look at, and they're big enough that she can wiggle her fingers to her heart's content without falling off, but at the same time her fingers will stay toasty warm.

As you can see she was wildly impressed with them!

We'd gone for a walk to find some autumn colour around Abbey Fields in Kenilworth and to introduce Kitty to the smell and crunch of fallen leaves.

I had a great time and enjoyed the change of scene (and the Scrumpy scotch egg from the Cotswold pie stall), and Kitty, well she had a little snooze:

until we went down one off the off road tracks and she needed to tell me in no uncertain terms that this was too bouncy and not acceptable.  I don't think there was anyone left in Kenilworth that was in any doubt that this was not a baby-friendly track by the time she had fully communicated her point of view!  Sorry Kenilworth.

What a difference a week makes

Slightly bigger daughter:


Slightly bigger sock:


With baby for scale.
In fairness madam la princess has grown quite a lot more than the sock and now tops the scale at a blooming 11lb whilst endeavouring to outgrow her 0-3 month babygros at the speed of light but this should not be a shock given that it directly correlates to the amount of time feeding vs knitting.

That there has been any knitting at all is a plus in my book - little lass has recently decided that a nice way to finish the post feed burping process is to snooze on Mummy's shoulder leaving my hands free to wield the DPNs.  The slight motion of my hands rocks her gently and we both think it's great although I almost had a rethink after a delicate burp was swiftly followed by a neat posset straight down my cleavage, avoiding both of our clothes until the regurgitated milk collected warmly in my bra. 'Coals to Newcastle' is I think the phrase that came to mind!


But the truth is that she is a treasure, with a smile to melt the stoniest heart and for all the projectile emissions that this little girl has mastered, I adore being her Mum.

Just in case

Well you never know how much truth there is in the rumour that babies wait for their knitting to be finished.  Even knitting that isn't for them to wear and has only a vague connection to their arrival.

So for my own peace of mind ...


I finished my team Girl socks.  They are now tucked into my hospital bag next to H's socks and the little pink cardie and hat ready for a little girl bear.

The yarn is Lorna's Laces in Tickled Pink, a present from my sister from a while ago when she decided (following I believe an intensive blog review) that I clearly didn't have enough pink socks.  She's quite right, I don't and these are gorgeous.

I wanted a pattern that wouldn't be overshadowed by the yarn variegation which runs all the way from palest whisper of pink to deep purply magenta, and although I eyed up (and Rav queued) lots of really sweet girly pink sock patterns, in the end I went back to a pattern that I've made before, Cookie A's Kai-Mei socks from Sock Innovation.  I think it was the butterflies that caught me; my baby shower had a butterfly theme so it seems somewhat fitting.


Kai-Mei socks (or in this case, Carie-Mei) are shown to their best advantage on actual human feet because then you can see the lines of flutter-byes dancing across the toes, but my feet and ankles are currently gargantuan little poofy sausages, with those mini Christmas sized chipolatas on the ends for toes, so they're staying well clear of the blog for the moment.


















Trust me when I say that they're pretty socks.

As H's aunt sent us the cutest little knitted bear in the post this morning, wearing a little jumper with the initials of Baby Our last name and I can't think of anyone else who could possibly be knitting me into a lengthy pregnancy, I think it's time for this little one to make an appearance, if for no other reason that I now have to choose either to cast on something new, which I'm itching to do but I want to knit a jumper and I have no idea what size I am, or I have to finish one of the three remaining projects on the needles, namely a shawl edging, the socks from my Cookie A Knit Nation class, or the socks from the Tsock Club that I started about two years ago - any suggestions?

Today's activites are brought to you by the colour Pink

It's been a colour themed sort of day for Team Girl.


Pink Matryoshka stitch markers (from Atomic Knitting via the Socktopus club I think),

Making pretty pink butterfly socks,

while watching a truly awesome pink dvd.  Seriously, the dvd is brilliant, I watched it 'cover to cover' this afternoon and apart from occasionally having to pause it so that I didn't accidentally put a tubular bind off on my sock heel, incredibly helpful - there are so many tricks that I want to try out next time they come up in a project - to say nothing of the deep desire I now have to cast on something in all the multi-colours under the sun, although my team Girl socks do seem to match Lucy's hair ....!

For a Daddy

In the unlikely event that you are married to me and reading this blog before the arrival of our little bear, move along sweetie, nothing for you to see here.

In the slightly more likely event that you know my husband - shh! don't tell.

I've been secretly knitting by proxy.  Admittedly when the person you're trying to keep a secret from goes out to work all day, and you stay home and pretend to have been sleeping, the deception is not so very difficult.  And whilst I could have been using this lovely extra time to turn our house into 'show home 2010', we all know that isn't going to happen any time soon.  My version of nesting involves making a nest out of the duvet and all the pillows I can find, propping the belly up on half of them and me on the rest, and working my way through the Poirot box set.  Incidentally I'm getting quite good at spotting the important clues; maybe I should try to claim CPD points (a work requirement) for it?

Today I picked up the importance of stockings in the ABC Murders and remembered the villain of Death in the Clouds, and at the same time I finished a pair of socks:

The pattern is Francie from Bowerbird Knits, available as a Ravelry download.  It's a really well written pattern and great fun to knit because each section has flow and rhythm, and an obvious conclusion so you don't have to consult the instructions every second stitch.  Because the pattern is essentially a rib, they're really nice and stretchy so although these are socks for H, I didn't increase the stitch count, although I did go up to a 2.5mm needle from a 2.25mm, just to be on the safe side.

They fit over my nice chunky late pregnancy ankles so with the little extra length I added I'm hoping for a good fit.
And the principal to my proxy...? Well although the little bear will of course be the most wonderful accomplished genius baby ever, he or she hasn't quite mastered knitting (yet), and I'd really rather he or she wasn't trying to learn with the materials currently available.  My hospital bag has a little blue wrapped parcel for if the bear is a boy, and a little pink bag for a girl.  What H doesn't know is that in each, as well as baby's new gender appropriate hat and jacket, is a little something for him; so his socks can declare our good news when the time comes, blue for a boy and red for a girl.

These are his girl socks:

Or if it's a boy, and I run out of time in the melee of life with a little person, I've just got a running jump on the Christmas knitting!
And as for the mother-to-be:

Well you didn't think I'd let them be themed without me did you?

[Note to baby: your mother has a lot of handknit socks. Several pairs of her socks are already in your hospital bag in case she gets cold feet. She will not be desperately unhappy if you choose to make a appearance before she has finished these socks.  Really, don't feel you have to wait. Please. Love Mummy]

Friday

Thank you for all the birthday wishes, both here and on Ravelry - the boy and I both had a wonderful and relatively relaxed day, and he took me for a steak supper at the pub; delicious steak, someone else cooking and most importantly, someone else doing the washing up!

If I knew what the collective noun was for birthday cards, we have one of those; a celebration perhaps?  H treated me to a bundle of crafty books and a very beautiful bracelet and generally life at 30 seems pretty good to us.

He likes his socks too,


Simple 72 stitch socks from Laughing Yaffle Sock yarn in the Blue Parrot colour.  It isn't the softest of yarn bases and compared to some of the buttery smooth fibres I've been making baby clothes out of it felt a little harsh.  It's a 75/25 wool/nylon mix and it softened up nicely after a good soak in Eucalan  H declares them warm and fluffy which explains why my only picture of them is pre-birthday - they've been on his feet in rare cool moments ever since.

I've been fairly industrious this week and I've knit a whole nother repeat on the baby's blanket (imagine it how it looked in the last picture but a bit longer), and started a little something as a gift.

If this looks fairly familiar, well it should, it's another Baby Origami (also known as Judy's Grandmother's Baby Jacket from Greetings from Knit Cafe) for a friend at work whose first baby (gender also unknown) is due in early August.  She goes on maternity leave at the end of the week after next so I thought I'd better get a wriggle on, particularly if I want to make cute little bootee-shoes to match.

The yarn is my new favourite; Sublime Baby Cashmere Merino Silk in SeeSaw (194), a cheery bright turquoise and so so soft and fluffy; I hope she likes it!

For those of you concerned about the pirate rescue, from the detritus on my kitchen work surface it appears that the pirates managed to blow serious holes in the side of the castle and at present the entire back wall has gone, complete with a rescue pirate, both princesses, some of the treasure, and the pirate king.  I hope they will all be very happy together - perhaps next year's cake will feature the pirates rehabilitated to life on dry land, having taken jobs as accountants (well they are good at counting) living in a suburban villa and with the hint of a little princess/pirate baby on the way?  On second thoughts, I have no idea how to render that all in cake - maybe it needs a little more thought!

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!

Baby Knitting

When H mentioned that he's been knitting more than me in the past few months he was for once being serious. He found a Baby Surprise Jacket stuck half way through a row, trailing yarn and looking perilously close to being tipped into a glass of fizzy ginger while the real knitter lay semi-somnolent and groaning on the sofa, and being a well trained man of yarn, he recalled that half rows were a bad idea, and polished off the end of the row with remarkably even tension.

It may have been a baby surprise jacket, but not for the little bear; I'm too cautious to count my bears before the scan! I did cast on something for our little one last week, but having knit two sleeves and a good chunk of the body, I have concluded that the colour is just all wrong and it's getting frogged. Having wailed at the poor boy about the fact that the yarn wasn't quite the right colour and that this clearly meant that I will be a terrible mother because I can't even choose the right colour yarn to make the perfect baby sweater etc etc (hormones make such a lovely addition to my usually perfectionist personality, oh yes!), H wisely concluded that the wrong yarn should go back into the stash to be knit for someone else that it will actually suit, and I should purchase the 'right' yarn. Phew, I'm so relieved.

The baby surprise jackets, for there are two, are for my two newest second cousins, both baby girls.

This one, which should be entitled 'Winter Sunshine', went to little L who arrived in January.



Whereas this one, 'Josephine's Coat of Many Colours' will hit the post tomorrow, going south to fairy princess T, who arrived rather quickly the week before last, much to the surprise of her father, who ended up doing the delivering - perhaps a BSJ is rather apt!

And just in case you thought I'd forgotten, may I present (drum roll please)


H's Olympic socks.

The eagle eyed among you will note from the bagginess and the soft and fluffy nature of the feet that these did not meet the camera for some while, and may perhaps have been stolen from H's feet while he was sleeping (I did put clean socks back on!). We are about to discover what Malabrigo thinks of my washing machine's wool cycle!

The pattern is a little subtle because of the variegation in the yarn but I think H rather likes it that way!

And finally, a massive thank you to everyone who sent their congratulations for our little bear-to-be; we loved reading every one of them and meeting a whole load of de-lurkers and I think I'll have to print that page some day and put it in the baby's book-of-random-thoughts-and-stories-from-Mummy-and-Daddy.