Thursday February 2nd 2017

Hi Everyone,

So, what has been happening since the last letter?

The trip to the Netherlands for later in the year has been sort of sorted out. Dates, flights and hotels are all organised. I am now waiting for my GP to complete a form certifying that I am "fit to fly", and I have reserved an oxygen supply for the flights. Travel arrangements while we are there are a bit vague, no, let's be clear, they are totally unknown. We could get a train and a bus and a taxi, or maybe someone will give us a lift, or maybe... Who knows!

But that's all weeks and weeks and weeks away. Sufficient unto the day is the trouble thereof.

I'm in a knitting mood at the moment. I spent months trying to find a jumper in a style and colourway that I liked, and ended up buying this yarn (I can't call it wool because it is acrylic);

It has several things in its favour; someone I know who is a Serious Knitter is using it to make herself a cardigan, it is cheap, it uses big needles and few stitches, and it is knitting itself into a sort of stripy pattern, which usefully disguises any uneveness in my knitting. Most of my jumpers are reddish or wine-ish or orange and I wanted something blue-green for a change.

I've also finished knitting a cushion cover in a wool which is designed to look like fair-isle when you knit it up. I've used it before in a slightly different colourway.

I'm just waiting now for that moment when inclination, a a few hours spare time, and daylight coincide in order to sew it up.

This may very well be the Year of the Knitting Needles. It also needs to be the Year of Finishing Off as there are various "WIP"s (Works in Progress - the bane of all knitters) waiting for finishing touches.

The other day I was at the hospital for lung function tests and clinic appointment. The results are slightly down, but consistent with being withing 10%, and also I do tend to score lower in the winter compared to the Summer. I saw a new consultant, who, having gone through me notes, was clearly set to "amber" and moving towards "red", as in Something Needing To Be Done, but after discussing things and checking things, moved back towards "amber but probably green" as in "Keep an Eye on things, but nothing needs doing now". Good. Back in six months - August - and hopefully the results will be better.

It was a fairly dank and miserable day, and the clinic was running very late for some reason, so once we escaped the clutches of the medical world we scrapped our plans for the V and A or any other excitement, and just meandered home, looking in at Peter Jones to buy urgently needed knitting supplies.  But not wool. Or needles. Not on this occasion.

I'm trying to implement a sort of rule that something gets finished before another thing gets started. Cushion covers and jumpers excepted.

Well, I'm all the bettter now for a cup of coffee after a day of teaching - Chinese New Year (again).

I found a box of small nylon squares, in neon colours, so dished them out to the little children to pretend to be dragons and use as wings to fly around the classroom. In various guises ("just the pink dragons", "only dragons wearing green jumpers" and so on) this activity lasted pretty much the whole time and everyone (including me, which is the MOST important aspect of any teaching that I do) had a good time.

https://www.vecteezy.com/vector-art/129208-lion-dance-chinese-new-year-design

.Oh wait, that's a picture of a lion.

"Find a job you love, and you need never work again" so they say. (But probably not Confucius). I'm just about to teach two more piano lessons and then "work" will be done for the day.

Friday 14th February - Knitting

This wasn't the kind of knitting of the "Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care"  type. (Macbeth Act 2 Sc 2, for those of you who don't feel like googling).

More like the stuff of nightmares - I must have unravelled as much as I ravelled when making these squares.

I made them all over the last week and weekend, when I was off work with the kind of chest infection which doesn't make me feel ill, but means I am supposed to take it easy.

So, I took most of Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off, (did a bit of piano teaching in the evening,  because, compared to class teaching, that's not really "work"), and went out for lunch at Wagamama on Saturday (ginger chicken udon - yum yum) and a brief tour of Waitrose.

Then, because it would be really inconvenient if I were not able to work on Monday (I was going to be Observed, and also it's a been a bit tight squeezing in the contracted number of sessions this term), I tested my stamina by doing Sunday School - that went OK, so I decided that  was better.

Back to work on Monday then.

Meanwhile, through the long tedious hours of daytime TV and radio and so forth, I completed five squares of the patchwork blanket project, started nearly two years ago, and lying fallow for months.

 
I seem to have used up nearly all of the bright coloured yarn, and have mainly blue and khaki left. Time for a trip to the wool shop.

Oh. I forgot. I'm supposed to be resting. Again. Because, yesterday, Thursday, I started to load the car ready for samba and ukulele and recorder and class teaching, and suddenly my legs turned to jelly, and I realised that I was not going to be able to strut my stuff with my samba drum and my samba whistle, or whang out a tune on my uke. So I rang in sick, and went back to the Doctor.

She said I should REST. As in DO NOTHING. I whinged about piano teaching not being real work, but she was insistent that anything that requires CONCENTRATION is work. So that definitely rules out knitting. The sixth square will have to stay on the needles for another couple of days.

I've gone back to bed, with laptop, mobile phone, Kindle, tray for tea-making - everything I need to a low-concentration day. This has made the Uptairs Cat very, very happy.

Saturday 16th November - Another project started!

All craft projects are now on hold;

the blanket made of knitted squares,

the quilt

 the Tunisian crochet blanket

 until the latest Top Secret Project, started today, is finished.

I'm saying no more to anyone about it, so don't ask. I'll let you know when it is completed. If it gets completed.

Tuesday 9th April - Crafty Work - Finishing Off bits and pieces

Over the years I have started many, many craft projects. I have also finished many craft projects. I have knitted jumpers and scarves, made curtains, patchwork quilts, cushion covers, sewn skirts, dresses, blouses, shirts, dressing gowns.

I have got five of my various fabric wall hangings up in various places around the house, and at the moment we are using two of the quilts on the bed (the warm one on my side, the lighter weight one on his side) - so I'm not completely hopeless at finishing things.

However there are a lot of things that are still "works in progress", and these came to light when we were doing "extreme bedroom tidying" a couple of weeks ago.

I have been staying in for the past few days because of having a chest infection - not enough to make me feel properly ill, but I am taking no chances. So, an ideal opportunity to finish some things off, or at least make some more progress.

Here's the cushion that I started back in about 2007 (or was is 2006). It uses a yarn called "Crofty" which has cleverly been dyed in such a way that when knitted up it looks a bit like fair-isle. I was a little worried about sewing it up as that is usually my weak point, but I managed it!






 
 











The patchwork cushion next to it is one of several that I made when I was in my "crazy patchwork" phase some years ago.

Now, these next two pictures are of patchwork blocks for a quilt I started back in - 2001 maybe? I am bodging it together using a method called "quilt as you go". Each square made with its own backing and wadding, and then somehow, once they are all done, I have to work out how to join them together. There is no rhyme or reason for the choices of fabric, colours, design, or anything!

The owls are left over from a quilt I made for a friend's daughter as an 18th birthday present, and also for taking with her to university. Her quilt incorporated leftovers from her bedroom curtains as well as lots of owls. The blue block below (trying saying that without losing your teeth) uses bits and pieces of the same fabrics as the quilt on his side of the bed. 

I finished these blocks a couple of days ago - just three more to go and I will have made them all.





 
 



I have knitted some more blocks for "the Knitting Project" which I started last Summer


The one with the heart motif will probably have to go. I knitted it while watching a Dr Who episode, and had to pull it out about three times. In spite of all the corrections, it's still too full of errors - too many even for me. I might keep it, though; I like the blocks to have memories attached to them.

Sunday 17th February - The good side of mending

He's busy upstairs, mending the drawers in his chest of drawers, after one of the drawer fronts came off in his hands a while ago. Which is an opportunity for a bit of a clearout. The problem is that we have lived in this house for nearly 30 years, so everything just gets put somewhere, and stays there...

We filled the bedroom bin to overflowing.

We found all kinds of buried treasure; old photographs, old letters, fifty 10p coins, a jersey I actually managed to complete, presents made by the children over the years, and souvenirs of decades gone by.










There's been a fair bit of "oh, do you remember when..." and "so that's where it got to..." and other surprises along the way.









We filled one bag with clothes and bric-a-brac, and another with rags, for the charity shop, which neatly deals with keeping up with my New Year's Resolution for this month.


The drawer fronts haven't yet come off my chest of drawers, but there is a fair bit of repair work to be done, as the bases of the drawers are parting company with the back and sides. That will have to wait for another day.

As will replacing the bedroom carpet. He reckons that there is about three years' worth of full-time work repairing, renovating, decorating, everywhere, all over the house lined up for when he retires...

    

Knitting Project Block 4 - here's one I made earlier

I managed to make two blocks in one day, and saved the post for a really bad knitting day. Is that cheating? Maybe..... who makes the rules round here anyway?

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In the past I have tackled major knitting projects. I even knitted an all-over Icelandic patterned jumper  for my husband in the early years of our marriage, and he even wore it. (True love, and all that?)

The patterns on this block are made by slipping stitches onto the needle without knitting them, so that they stay they same colour. This method of making patterns was new to me, and much easier than the fair-isle method which I have done before. However, like the very first block, there is a price to be paid for using colour; each stripe, and there are ten of them, means another two ends of yarn to be darned into the back.

It is very tempting to leave them until later, and do all the ends of all the blocks in one go. My husband says "It's hard work being lazy". And he is often right.

I hid all the loose ends under the block when I took the picture. That feels a bit like sweeping the dust under the carpet. That's just storing up trouble for tomorrow. I think I'll darn them in now.

The Knitting Project Block 7, no, 9, no 15. 29?

Grrr!
Soddit!
Bad language and red rage.
Tight-lipped and determined patience.
Cold fury, gritted teeth and horrid, horrid thoughts.

Tried the block with a simple cable pattern but lost my way. hey - I don't give up easily, but after ripping it out four times .......

How about the slipstitch two-colour stripy thing? Somehow the slip stitches got themselves hopelessly intertwined with the knit stitches and the whole thing became a solid mass. Perseverance is a quality I aspire to, but clearly fall far short - three goes at getting this right were enough.

So, here goes - an easy peasy knit and purl pattern with just one colour. Unfortunately it depends on my being able to count to 33. Fail. I might have a degree in maths, but that just means I know the Greek alphabet (all that algebra and geometry). It doesn't teach you to count real numbers, only imaginary ones.

Finally, late at night, I cast on stitches, counted them three times, got him to confirm that there were really, truly, absolutely, definitely and without question, 33 stitches on the needle.

Then I went to bed.

Knitting Project Block 3

This is my first ever piece of lace knitting. One of the reasons for choosing this project is to have the chance to have different little adventures and try new experiences, but in tiny "taster" amounts.

I find the topology of knitting fascinating; how is it that a single piece of "string" can become a dense fabric through a process of looping and looping and looping itself into rows and colums? It is one of the processes which can "unmake" itself; just pull the unfastened end of the knitted fabric and, hey presto, string again!

Poor old Sr Patricia tried her best to teach me to knit and sew at the convent prep school I went to. It was a real trial of wills between us; I hated, hated, hated needlecraft lessons with a passion. I can still remember her reaction to my first knitted dishcloth; a misshapen thing of holes and knots and tangles, put to the back of the annual end of year display. She's got the last laugh; the legacy of her lessons is that I CAN sew and knit, and the unexpected bonus is that I actually enjoy needlecraft. How did that come about?


Now I can have holes in my knitting on purpose! I even understand the magical formula

* K4, K2tog, yfwd, K1, yfwd, S1, K1, psso, rep to end *K4

from this block I have learned to think of Sr Patricia with a little kindness and gratitude in my heart.

Knitting Project Block 2

On the face of it, this block should have been even simpler than the previous one.

It uses just one stitch, "knit". You create enough stiches for two sides, and by decreasing in the middle of the row, cause the lines of knitting to contract along the diagonal, until you reach a point. What a nightmare that turned out to be - keeping count, losing track, getting lost.

I thought it would be so easy. I looked at the square from time to time, but thought that it could probably be worked into shape. I reached the end and cast off the last stitch.

I had to admit that the finished square was no good. There were too many mistakes along the way, and the finished piece of knitting wasn't even the right shape.

This became a test of character. I wondered about using it anyway, but hiding it in some less noticeable corner of the blanket when I came to sew all the bits together.

Then I gritted my teeth, unravelled it, and started again. I was really pleased that I managed to persuade myself to redo it.



From this block, I learned

how easy it is to underestimate a task

that I should have made the decision to start again much earlier.

the difference btween perfect, good enough, useable, and really not up to scratch. OK, so it is only small square of knitting; but a thought to carry forward into other tasks ahead.  

Knitting Project Block 1

I began the project on Maundy Thursday, 5th April, so there will be a couple of posts in a hurry to catch up with where I've got to. Don't worry, I have no intention of turning this into a blog for crafters and knitters! If are interested in the details, there is a separate page. I realize that knitting blogs are desperately boring for anyone not interested in knitting.

And yet...

Knitting creates space to reflect. The repetition is like telling beads on a rosary, or singng the chants in a Taize service.

This first block was so simple - just a row of "plain" stitches and then a row of "purl", the very foundation of knitting, over and over, until completed. Every so often the pattern is interrupted by the introduction of a new colour, requiring a sharpening of focus and concentration, jolting one out of the routine. Somehow, the rhythm of the routine has to be maintained while absorbing the interloping threads, so that the overall pattern of stiches and shapes is not lost.

The last row was not the end of the work. This pattern, a simple 6 inch square piece of fabric, resulted in over twenty loose ends to be invisibly sewn in to the reverse side. This process took nearly as much time, and a good deal more patience that the actual knitting.



From this first square, I learned that

repeating an action, or words, is calming, an aid to meditation. It frees the mind to float beyond the words or actions and pursue other lines of thought.

this freedom of thought is a fragile thing; something will come along to burst the bubble and bring you back into the present moment.

finishing something completely usually means two stages; at the end of a piece of music there is often a coda, and at then end of the knitting comes the "making good".