Sunday 3rd April - To err is human...

The full quotation is 

'to err is human, to forgive is divine' - Alexander Pope

but it's the making of mistakes that I'm writing about. I was half, nay, three-quarters thinking of renaming this blog as 'A-couple-of-typos-from-home' as they are such a frequent characteristic of these posts. When the mistakes are underlined in red, then there's a chance of catching them. 

I was given a box of these brilliant pencils,, made by a company called Milan, although other brands exists,by my husband lat year or the year before;

red at one end, and blue at the other. Apparently they are quite a thing on the continent for marking up text, adding emphasis to notes. I hadn't realised, until I went hunting to see if I could buy a double-ended yellow-green pencil, because then I could colour in anything with just two pencils. No such luck; the other type of double-ended pencil is neon yellow and ordinary graphite - for writing and highlighting. I might get one anyway, sometime... I could do with red-pencilling a lot of what I write before releasing it into the world.

I have heard from several sources that quiltmakers in the Amish community incorporate a deliberate error in their famous hand-made quilts, because true perfection can only be attained by God. I agree with them in that true perfection can only be achieved by God, but I personally have no to add mistakes to my work just to ensure it was not perfect. 

I don't think I have made a perfect thing in my life, not sewing, knitting, crochet, nor playing, singing, teaching, cooking - nope, not a thing.

Here's my 'second sock' of the new pair. The pale stripe is where I shall add a heel later on, and the little yellow bulb-shaped safety pin is where I spotted ANOTHER dropped stitch, which I do something or other with needle and yarn later, to stop it running any further. (Top tip - whatever you are knitting, keep a crotchet hook, a size or so smaller than the needles, close at hand for hooking up dropped stitches). I have included a shot of the bendy double-pointed needles I am using; it means my stitches are across two needles instead of the more usual three or four, so I knit 30 stitches (I should count to see if I still have 30 stitches on each needle) before changing to the next spare needle to complete the round.   

The point of the picture being he dropped stitch; the other sock also has a strategic pin hanging onto a stitch that needs attention.

Of course, nearly everyone agrees that we have erred mightily as a nation, as a world, in a whole raft of major, serious issues. One of which is waste and climate and resources.

In a tiny effort to reduce paper towel usage in this household, I am using dish-cloth cotton squares to mop microwave spills, wipe worktops and so forth. These cotton squares were originally meant for a patchwork blanket, but I am NEVER going to finish it. 

Even after having taken a number for my own use, I will still have about three dozen left over. They are made from recycled cotton, and are around six inches square, and all probably have at least one mistake in them. They are perfectly hygienic to use as long as they don't hang around too long. (remember the stinky floor cloths from the broom cupboard at school? Ugh) I chuck them in the laundry at the end of the day, or sooner if that seems a good idea. Just beware - they are NOT perfect!

So, if YOU would like some - 3? or 5? maybe - comment with your address (I won't publish your address) and I will keeping sending them out until they are gone.   

Thursday 26th March - I had a title

I had a snappy title for today's post, but I've forgotten it.

Now, I have remembered to take a picture of the primula that I just managed to save in time;

There. It's fine now, which is a relief! Little happinesses like these make the days chug along.

The solar powered dinosaur has been completed,

and was taken out to strut its stuff in the sun. Leo (one of the cats) came to investigate; she was confised by the disnosaur's apparently random stop-start motion, not realizing that it coincided with her moving around and blocking the light onto the solar panel. But then she's a cat. What does she know about solar power? 

Himslef's unearthed the bigger chess set, not the little one I gave him all those years ago which didn't have instructions, but the bells and whistles and (I thought) better one. It takes half a dozen C batteries - that gives you an idea of its age, so first step was to find a charger that would fit and be the right everything electronical to make it work.

(The meccano car and the jigsaw are lined up as possible next projects)

However it is apparently too clever;  on the easy levels it is extremely simple, and as soon as you choose more serious levels it becomes 'very obscure'. So the hunt is on to find the original 1980s version, all green and red LEDs. And then there will be batteries and chargers to look for...

Now this arrived in the post for me today - a comment from a fellow blogger nudged me into ordering at long last. Not Peter Wimsey detective fiction, but a selection of essays. I'm looking forward to reading it in due course.

Reading and books is getting a little out of hand. I really should get on and finish one of the books I am partway through before I start another, or indeed, buy any more. I'm 90% of the way through 'Tragedy at Law' by Cyril Hare, and the murder has only just happened - but I have no idea who dunnit. There is a butler of sorts in the plot...

 Other than that, everything carries on. The weather improves - colder this morning, but warmer this afternoon, and more has been done in the garden. We're all fine - my father, Himself and the offspring.

My biggest problem is not the fact that I can't go out anywhere, but that I am staying 24/7 in a household where There Be Biscuits. It would be soooo easy to spend my time grazing on biscuits, snacks, nuts, this that and the other. But I am determined to try and end this period weighing no more than when I started.

Friday 21st June - the longest day...

It started with promising sun shine. Sort of warm, sort of cool, sort of sunny, sort of cloudy.

We took the cats to the vet this morning for their annual checkup and vaccinations. We were the only people there, arrived early, and yet were late going in... how can that be? Oh well, what else did we have planned? Nothing.

Leo got off lightly; she's got bad teeth and gums; if she were younger maybe we would consider dental treatment, but when a previous cat, at about the same age, had treatment, the anesthetic pretty well did for her; she came home very sorry for herself and unwilling to eat, and went to her eternal rest a few weeks later. So, while Leo can manage as she is, (which she can!) we'll leave things as they are.

McCavity has been diagnosed with arthritic hips - she certainly expressed full and comprehensive dislike for having her back legs manipulated. So she was carried off by a nurse, and returned later, looking very thoughtful and wrapped in a towel, having had a blood test to see if she could be given painkillers. Luckily, she can, and the plan is to conceal her medicine in her cat food. There is always the risk that Leo gets the painkillers instead of McCavity...

They have spent the whole day asleep; poor dears, they are all of sixteen years old now, which I suppose translates into Very Old Indeed, and clearly found the whole morning Too Much.

Apart from getting up, turning round, and lying down again, they have barely moved.

I've been practising watercolour sketching in preparation for the holidays. I print off photographs from the internet, and copy them. It is a lot easier than doing things from real life. For a start they are already reduced to two dimensions, and then everything is also frozen in time.

My other new acquisition is a little willow basket sort of thing. When we went to the Weald and Downland Museum last weekend, I made it - it was such a pleasure to make. I was enchanted by the developing twist along the sides as the inward spiral grew (you start at the open end).

I've hung it from a window hook at the bottom of the stairs so that I see it every morning.

Now, about this longest day... it is evening now, and so the day still has some time to go. We should be out in the garden. celebrating the solstice and all that...

Nah, that's not going to happen!

Scandi Wreath

Back in September, I went on a 'course' with a friend to make a scandi-wreath. I'm posting the picture of the page in the book that we followed as I am issuing daughter and a friend with the wherewithal to make their own;

from this book;

My kits consist of

nearly 100 pieces of fabric, each 6 inches by 1 inch, cut from four different fat quarters (I managed to get enough for three wreaths in all, cutting 72 strips from each fat quarter.)

some glitzy yarn in reddish shiny shades

three lengths of string, each 2m long.

some jingly bells - I've a whole cluster of them saved from Lindt chocolate rabbits. Knew they would come in useful one day. Here's the kit;

Here are the instructions;

Tie the three pieces of string together in a basic overhand knot so that they combine to make the string that forms the wreath

Tie the strips of fabric onto the three strands on the string. Tie them on in any order, and add any other Christmassy tinsel or whatever you like. When you have finished added bits and pieces, tie the end of the string into another knot.

Push the strips of fabric up to each other to cover the string, but not tight. The final length of the wreath will be roughly one and half meters. (Is that about five feet?)

Add the bells.

I've also added battery lights to mine...

Saturday 23rd December - Christmas Eve's Eve

I'm having to do two posts today just so that I can use the phrase "Christmas Eve's Eve".

An oddly quiet day in some ways - I haven't left the house, apart from swapping the bright white lights on the outside tree to replace them with coloured ones, so that I could use the white ones inside. It isn't easy to take a picture of the tree at this time of night. Here is it without flash

and with flash

You either get the lights or the tree in my photographs. You'll have to merge them in your mind.
I've put the bright white lights inside a pickle jar to make a table decoration

I hoovered the whole house, bit by bit. Himself is on light duties, pending a minor op, so the hoovering was down to me. I find it is one of the quickest way for me to get completely out of breath, so I took my time, doing a room, pausing for a cup of tea, doing another room, another cup of tea...

And we managed between us to get the cards up. We usually string them up at ceiling level, but lots of things are different this year. At the beginning of the week getting ready for Christmas seemed an impossible feat, but now - everything has been checked off the list apart from four emails, washing the kitchen floor and delivering a couple of presents. And there's still one more day before Christmas!

I've finished the little bit of Christmas sewing I wanted to get done - last year it was frantic Advent Calendar Completing in time for 1st December. This year it is a little surprise for Christmas Day. I've also made a sort of "cat's duvet" from various scraps of fabric left over from other projects, which has helped the "Upstairs Cat" spend more time downstairs this Winter. 

It's nearly bedtime for us. As soon as James May has finished trying to follow the instructions for making some stilts, from a vintage "Ladybird" book, we're off.



Oh, and the Jamie Oliver Crazy Fish Pie was worth making.

Friday 27th October - Half Term (2)

We have been out and about this week.

Sunday - about 10,000 steps

was a day in London. We caught a number 38 bus from Victoria, alighted (posh word!) near the British Museum but avoided the hordes of school children who were sure to be there by walking along to Lambs Conduit street, home of "Persephone Books", one of my favourite shops. We didn't stay long as we had no intention of buying a book to lug around London for the rest of the day. I just wanted to savour the piles of books heaped everywhere around the shop.

We had lunch in the cafe at The Foundling Museum, another great place to visit.

Onwards, getting ever-closer to our intended destination, but pausing at The British Library. They have a Harry Potter Exhibition at the moment,

https://www.bl.uk/whats-on

but we were short of time, so just spent a while browsing the main free exhibition. I was delighted by the music scores on display, including the manuscript of "Sumer is a-cumin in",

https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/sumer-is-icumen-in

Beethoven, Mozart and Bach, hand-written by the composers, and a Richard Rodney Bennet film score.

Thence (another posh word) to St Pancras station, to meet my father, returning from a Rhine Cruise. We hurtled back to Victoria in a taxi, caught the next train home and were joined by my brother and his family for a fish and chip supper later that evening. All very satisfactory!


Monday - about 300 steps

was the duvet day I'd been promising myself for several weeks. It was interrupted at 9am by the surprise arrival of a piano pupil - half term doesn't always register with people who have no connection to school life! I was wake, but still in bed, but threw some clothes on, brushed my hair and taught her lesson. I know she suspected something. I might have gotten away with it, if I hadn't made the same mistake the previous week. 


Tuesday -  about 4,000 steps

was a day for running errands. Things like paying in cheques, buying a few bits and pieces in town, various odd jobs. I did most of my lesson planning for next half of term.


Wednesday - about 7,000 steps

What a beautiful day! We didn't want to stay in again, but also neither of us felt very energetic, so we set off for Chichester Marina. The idea was a mooch around the marina ("flat, made up paths - sounds perfect"), have lunch at the cafe/restaurant and just generally get some fresh air. Perfect choice. The sky was blue, the "plink-plink" of halliards against aluminium masts made a gentle accompaniment to the little wavelets brushing against the shingle shore...


Thursday - about 300 steps

A stay-at-home day. Apart from lunch at "The Frog and Nightgown". There is a circular walk from there, but while is wasn't exactly raining, the air and the ground was all so damp we just came home. I did go and meet with friends in the evening, as I try and do most Thursdays, and got quite a few more rows knitted on my latest jumper. This is an old picture of the completed front. I've done the sleeves, and am most of the way up the back now. But I'm going to have to pull out the front as I've decided I want to make it longer.

Tuesday 1st August - Knitting Tangles

There is nothing like knitting for learning patience, perseverance, and all sorts of goodly and desirable virtues.

And also for increasing one's vocabulary of unfortunate and inappropriate words and phrases.

I've two main projects on the go.

This yarn is called Bamboozle

It comes in hanks, which have to be carefully laid out and rolled into a ball before you can knit with them. Notice - FIVE little balls of wool beside an the hank. That's because they came from a hank which had four joins in it. Unimpressed.

Here is the front - the yarn has random changes of colour and also of thickness - one moment you are knitting with slippery, silky-soft thin yarn, the next moment it has turned into something more like cotton wool. It is surprisingly easy to manage, though, and I love the finished texture. However, it is extremely difficult to measure how long or wide the piece is, which is why I haven't ended it off, but left balls of yarn attached at the top in case I need to add some more.

Which means I have to knit the sleeves next, in order to lay the pieces together to see if the armholes will be the same size for the front and the sleeves.

I could have shown you a finished sleeve. At the weekend I had almost completed it, but then I discovered a mistake right down at the cuff. And then another mistake right at the start, when casting on the stitches to begin knitting. I went through the usual process;

step 1; stop and consider whether it mattered
step 2; surely no-one would notice
step 3; actually it would show
step 4 rip out the knitting and gather up the mental strength to start again.

No matter. I have another WIP to turn to; a blue medium-weight jumper I started in the Spring. It is knitted using a method called "top-down". You use "circular" needles

 
which means that you can knit round and round in circles. So, for a "top-down" jumper, you cast on for the neck, knit down as far as the shoulders, leave stitches on a holder to add sleeves in later, and continue down to the waist. Then you get some needles joined by a wire, go back to the hole you left for the sleeve and put those stitches on the needle and knit the sleeve down to the cuff. Are you with me so far?

The other way of knitting round and round and round is to use a set of four identical needles, with a point at each end;



you spread your tube of knitting around three (sometimes four) needles, and use another one to knit with. So you knit the stitches off a needles onto the spare needle, releasing a needles to knit the next lot with. I thought I'd try this technique with the second sleeve. Big mistake - I was well down the second sleeve when I discovered that my knitting was now much looser, so this sleeve was about an inch wider than the other one.

Deep breath, and rip out the sleeve. So, my blue jumper looks like this at the moment;

Because of the way the jumper is constructed, you can try it on before it is finished, which I did. I'm relieved to discover that it is a good fit, and I like it very much indeed. Which is just as well, as on Monday morning, after several inches of knitting, I found that I was doing the pattern incorrectly. Sigh. Still, I'm getting good at ripping back the stitches, and then carefully picking them all up again (the secret is to use a finer needle to pick them up). Last night I discovered one incorrect stitch about ten rows back. Sigh. Yes, it will matter. Half-an-hour's delicate work with a crochet hook, dropping the stitch down and working it back up again and all is well.

The advantage of this form of construction is that there will be no seams to sew up - once I have knitted the last stitch and darned in the loose ends, it will be finished. The disadvantage, is that as I knit round and round the sleeve, I have to keep turning the whole garment to untwizzle the knitting. It is also quite a warm thing to have bundled on your lap, which is why I took a break from knitting it during the spell of baking hot weather back in July. I'm hoping I finish it fairly quickly before I forget what I am doing and have to start over again...

Monday 18th August - Making things

I sort of managed to keep going with the Make-something-every-day challenge whiile we were away in the holiday cottage.

I can't remember what I made when, through 8th-17th August.

Some trial paper cuts using a craft knife I bought on the first day of the holiday.

A papercut bird, using the pattern on one of the cushions at the holiday cottage as a starting point.

Some chocolate cookies (eaten before they were photographed, but I have the tightness of my waistband as evidence

A paper plait

Several inches on my current piece of Tunisian crochet (which then had to be taken back because I had lost 5 stitches of the width as I went along

An origami chicken (we were staying at The Poultry Cottage and there were pictures of chickens everywhere)

A chromatography flower using kitchen paper and ink from my fountain pen

The drawing for the next papercut bird, using the other half of the pattern on the cushion

Decorations on my Moleskine diary and notebook

A fruit cake

Some scones. More scones. All gone.

So I reckon I've been keeping on top of things. And I still haven't had to use my emergency extra make that I prepared earlier.

Today I made apple sauce using the windfall apples from our tree.

Thursday 7th August - making things - illustrations

I've kept the challenge going for 7 days now;

There is another quilted mat, and a square for the knitted blanket project for days 5 and 6.

So, here's the list
day 1 and 2 piano kit, crochet circle
3 free motion quilt sample
4 quilted mat
5 knitted square
6 another mat

Today's effort is a paper cut of a bird. I took the design from a book, and used my small, cheap embroidery scissors as I don't have a suitable scalpel.

One of the reasons for the challenge is to try out different techniques and ideas. I love paper cut designs, but have never done one before. I suspect that using a scalpel would be much easier - quite a few of the thin paper bridges between the cut areas are more fragile that I would like due to the clumsiness of even these tiny scissors.

I think it is the uncompromising contrast between the paper and the background that appeals to me. It is similar to the way I've always liked Arthur Ransome's illustrations for his "Swallows and Amazons" books,

and Tolkien's drawings for "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings".



The main reason I bought Gombrich's "A Little History of the World" was for the woodcut illustrations.

Woodcuts have that same cleverness in the way simple black and white space is manipulated to create a complex image. Is suppose the musical equivalents would be Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and maybe the pentatonic scale.