Saturday 26th August - in praise of granny squares

 They are one of the most portable handicrafts around; a ball of yarn and a crochet hook in a little bag and you are good to go. 

My mother made hundreds of the traditional multicoloured squares, each bordered in white, on long haul flights when she was living in Indonesia and later in Singapore. Later she handed over the whole bag to my godmother (her very good friend and a superb needlewoman) to sew up.

 Almost perfect for travelling.

Almost? I made the blanket above a few years ago using adriafil knitcol dk wool on our long car journeys to my godmother every week, sometimes twice a week, as we did our best to support her in her final months. Instead of doing the traditional thing of choosing different colours for each round, I just let the self-patterning yarn do its thing, and kept going until the ball was finished. The lovely colours fascinated her, and she looked forward to seeing how it was progressing and changing each visit.

And even less to carry around!

I've just finished the Tunisian crochet square. It was a little small, so I went round and round a few more times in what might be double or treble crochet, or both, or neither (I'm a bit hazy and need to refresh my memory. until I finished the yarn.

I'm not too bothered either way, as it is only destined to be another dishcloth. I'm just happy it's another 'finished object' and another bit of yarn gone from from my stash.

Monday 14th August - blog admin, tunisian crochet, rice pudding, birdsong,

 The title lists the subjects for today in the wrong order.

Let's start with the birdsong.

I was feeling really bleah this morning - no particular reason, just bleah. As I opened the door and came down the steps I heard a brief moment of birdsong, so clear, so true, so beautiful, that I was lifted out of my grey inner world and transported to a full colour, joyous morning of sunshine. My surroundings were  drear (the hospital car park; I'd been for a routine blood test) but I hardly saw the tarmac for gazing up at the trees nearby.

Walking back to the car I spotted a corner of wilderness among the dilapidated sheds and stashed broken furniture in an unkempt corner;

Some of the blackberries are nearly ripe. I could have taken this photograph anywhere in the local nature reserve... indeed, it is a tiny, forgotten little nature reserve.

I have just about perfected my basic rice-pudding-in-the-slow-cooker recipe. Bear in mind that mine is a small slow cooker for two, or at a pinch, three people.

1 pint milk

2 heaped serving spoons rice (a generous 2 oz)

1 serving spoon sugar (about 1 oz)Cook on high for between 2 and 3 hours, stirring once or twice. At 2 hours it is still a bit thin. A 3 hours it is surprisingly thick - heading towards solid! 

This makes 3 portions. Of course, your serving spoons may be larger or smaller than mine... you might have to play around a bit. 

Flavourings; any of brown sugar, nutmeg, cardamom pods, bay leaf, lemon zest...

It is certainly the weather for a good rice pud.

Tunisian crochet - if you haven't come across it before it's a bit hard to describe. The proper crochet hook for this is as long as a knitting needle, and really needs to have a stopper of some kind at the non-hooky end. Also, the handle needs to be smooth all the way along. If you are making a dishcloth, or a strip, then normal hook is fine. Try going up one size - eg 5mm hook for DK. 

 

Having done the usual way of starting, ie a single chain, or maybe a row of single crochet which will stop it curling, you set off on the forward pass, doing a row of single crochet BUT KEEPING ALL THE LOOPS ON YOUR HOOK.

When you reach the end, do a turning chain, and then do a bind off until you are back where you started, with just one loop on your hook. You can see in this picture how I am binding off by holding the yarn round the hook and drawing it through two loops at a time.

You can see all the vertical lines created in the fabric, with chains running horizontally through them beneath the hook. When you get back to the beginning, with only one loop left on your hook, you are now ready to work the magic;

Do a turning chain, and go forwards again, doing the yarn over, and then INSERTING THE HOOK THROUGH THE VERTICAL LINE and drawing the yarn through, but keeping your new stitch on the hook. 

Then once you have created all the loops, do a turning chain and bind them all off again! Keeping going, backwards and forwards until you have finished.

I don't know how to do shapings and fancy stitches, and I don't have proper hooks but that's ok - this is fine for dishcloths and flannels. 

For properly detailed instructions I advise you to have a trawl round youtube, especially if you would rather look at right-handed photographs and videos!

Blog admin
   

I often whack out the blog on my tablet with Antiques Road Trip burbling on in the background, (unless I don't care for the presenters for some reason, or the commentary starts to drive my a bit crazy). But this means I have been very lazy with adding labels to the posts. Today I went through and labelled April, May and June, so hopefully July and August will get caught up soon.

Sue asked her readers a number of questions in recent blog post of hers  about what makes them choose to follow a blog, or leave a comment and so on. That set me thinking, and is one of the reasons I have gone back through and added labels.

Reading back through the posts was interesting - I found I had already consigned most of the events into dusty corners of my mind (oh, how quickly the dust, real and virtual, accumulates) so it was good to do a little remembering. 

I have to say that if you prefer a blog that doesn't skitter about from one subject to another then you are out of luck, because that's not how my mind works! It also set me thinking about 'who am I writing for?' I will come back to this when I have done some more thinking - that's if I don't forget in the meantime.

(One vicar at our church, long moved away, was convinced I had a 'gift' for organisation and admin... he was serious, but everyone in earshot who heard him say this were convulsed with laughter, including me...) 

Sunday 27th August - Now, what has been happening?

Let's see - last post was 10th August. I've enough for a score of posts since then - every day, it seems, except today, has been packed full.

So, I'll start with today and work backwards.

Nothing - well, almost nothing has happened. I guess the main event has been high-speed croissants for breakfast - but more of that in yesterday's post which will be coming up next.

I have learned how to crotchet - well, that started last night, after I ripped back the scarf I had been knitting while in Northern Ireland. The scarf was a failure - I was going round and round on circular needles, and when I cast off it rolled itself up into a nasty narrow snake.

I'd always thought of crochet as a Dark Art, and apart from a roundish coaster which I made in the August-of-making-something-every-day a few years back, hadn't really done anything. (I'm not counting the Tunisian Crotchet Blanket Project, which has stalled at the sewing-together phase).

And perhaps late at night, after a glass of wine, and in poor light, was a bad time to start. But, it seems to be going ok for now.

 
The peace and quiet of today has been blissful. I haven't had to talk to anyone (except BB) all day. He's had to sort out next-door's computer, (which was just checking that the neighbour next-door had got the order right for his new machine. He's finally moving off XP, which I gather is Significant.)

But apart from a few pleasantries with the other neighbour on the other side, I've had a day off "peopling". I'm beginning to feel human-ish.

Right. It will have to be new posts for the other days - too, too much for just a single news bulletin.

Mon 30th Dec - Update on a Good Day

Today is ending well. I have got some work done in preparation for the new term which is approaching at a deceptive speed. I have quilted two more squares of the current quilt, and added some more inches to the current Tunisian crochet strip without having to then rip it back again.

The trebuchet and the catapult are complete and fully operational. Hey! Look! I've managed to upload a videoclip!

That one only just missed the cat who was asleep at the other end of the room.

We have supped on slow roast lamb. A sort of Jamie Oliver recipe as follows (posted here for daughter, who partook of the repast, and son/father who might like to have a go at this sometime);
Preheat oven to 200C
In the bottom of a roasting tray, put a bay leaf or two, some sprigs of rosemary and a handful of parsley, if you have them. On top, lay a shoulder (or a half shoulder for just 2 or 3 of you) of lamb. Surround the lamb with chunks of leek (1), quartered onion (2), chunks of carrot (3), and celery (2 sticks). The numbers in brackets are how many I used this time, along with a whole shoulder. Add all the cloves from a head of garlic - I peel them which isn't too tricky if you ever-so-slightly crush them, enough to loosen the papery skin. Add liquid - in this case a whole bottle of mediumly decent red wine. You could use tinned tomatoes - I would have done if we'd had any - as part of the liquid, or dry cider, or decent stock. If you have a half leg in a smaller baking dish, then use less liquid.
Cover with a double layer of foil and put  the oven, turning it down to 170C. Leave it alone for three and a half or four hours. The veg will be soft, the garlic delicious and mild, and the meat falling off the bone.

He would have followed this with Christmas Pudding (that's why I timed the meal for an early supper) but ate too much lamb and so has no room.

Maybe we'll polish off a mince pie a bit later on.

Wednesday 6th November - Pay Attention in future...

This was really, really annoying.

I'm making another strip for the Tunisian crochet blanket, in a boucle yarn which was chosen for the blue colours that remind me of the water above and below the Niagara Falls.

I laid it out on the table to admire my progress...

and instantly spotted that it has lost a substantial amount of WIDTH.

To rip it out, or not to rip it out? The difference in width is actually nearly an inch.

So, I ripped. Ow! It hurt, really badly. All that work, gone, gone, gone.

About half of the strip returned to a single strand. It would have been a good idea if I had checked what I was doing more often.

At least, with Tunisian Crochet, you only need to pick up ONE stitch.

BUT, tempted as I was to pretend that "it will be all right when I sew the strips together", I knew that it wouldn't work out. So I'm glad I managed to take the path of righteousness, earlier rather than later.

Moral - PAY ATTENTION to what you are doing!

Tuesday 15th October - Update on the Tunisian Crochet project

The concept of the Tunisian Crochet blanket/throw is beginning to look plausible - there are seven completed strips now, eight, if you count the double-width cream-coloured one twice. That one is a souvenir of our stay in Dover Castle last May - seems like months ago. Oh, that's probably because it WAS months ago.

I am part way through one of the Canadian yarns I brought back with me, the strip on the extreme left, chosen because of the greens and blues which remind me of the colour of the water thundering through the gorge below the Niagara Falls.

It looks a bit dark with the others above; here it is again, with the tawny yarn I bought at the same time for the "Fall" colours.
.

 I like the idea of having a souvenir blanket of the year. Several of the strips have extra meanings because of where I bought the yarn, or where I was when I was crocheting it.