Wednesday 16th November- Survived the hygienist!

 We're home, and have have recovered. 

It wasn't that bad for me as it was only a hygienist appointment this time. Although it was probably about twenty years since the last one. My dentist used to do the scritchy scratchy scraping bit, followed by the high speed tickly toothbrush stuff, but he has retired and things have moved on. 

I felt fine (ish) afterwards; not so for Himself. He came out from the hygienist in reasonable good order, but went straight into the dentist for the first of several sessions to rectify a series of problems. 

He was only in there for three quarters of an hour, but it has taken quite a while, and a couple of pain killers, before he was ready for a late lunch. Very late. At 5pm.

Ah well. We shall put this all behind us and wait for chocolate o'clock, when we open the special box and have a little bit if chocolate each.

Oh joy! It has been restocked since I last looked!

(When is chocolate o'clock? Sometime after tea, whenever we decide)

Tuesday 15th November - a slow cooker story, not a knitting post

 I have rashly sent off for a small slow cooker. Our large family sized one sits unused on the work top, and should be removed to someone who could use it properly.

The tipping point was when I saw a 1.8l Crockpot on the Internet for £15; is this too good to be true? I shall know when it arrives in a few days. 

Our first ever slow cooker was one of the very early Crockpots, bought for us by my mother back in 1978. A great idea; except we were commuting together from York to Bradford, so out of the house from 6.00am to 7pm, so anything in the crockpot would have become soup! It came into its own at weekends.

We bought a small slow cooker when we were on holiday, back in 2010. We passed it on to my father when, after my mother had a serious stroke, he found himself having to be the cook. He never really took to it though, so we retrieved it and gave it to my daughter. She used it all the time, until the fateful night when the wall mounted kitchen cupboard became a floor standing one in the wee small hours, taking the slow cooker with it.

I  shall let you know how my wee £15 Crockpot and I get on...

Tuesday 15th November 2022 - knitting thoughts and calculations

 Skip this post if you are not interested in knitting - although the design and maths side might be interesting - or maybe even more off-putting?

Here is the Advent cowl from the mystery knit-a-long I followed last December;

 It was knitted as a long thin strip, 33-35 stitches wide and around - where's my calculator gone - 24 days and about 9 rows per day is about 216 rows. Each day I received an email with the instructions for the 9 or so rows. 

The finished size of this cowl is 74 cm around and 16 cm deep, and weighing about 45 g. I think the yarn was thicker than double knitting, probably aran weight, and acrylic. The gauge is 25 rows and 20 stitches to make a 10 cm square.

I don't want to knit a strip again, because I would like to have a fair-isle/scandinavian pattern this time, and the best way to do colour knitting is to avoid purl like the plague. I shall use a circular needle and knit it in the round.

I have ordered three balls of Drops Alaska from woolwarehouse, which is ridiculously cheap on their website. The specifications are;

Yarn Weight	Aran
Ball Weight	50g
Length	70 metres
Needle Size	5mm
Blend	100% Wool
Tension	17 stitches and 22 rows for a 10x10cm tension square using 5mm needles

I've got two in a darkish blue for the background and one in off-white for the pattern

So far, so good. Now the maths begins;

Number of stitches to end up  with a 74cm neck (assuming I get something close to the gauge) is 

hmmm. 1.7 stitches  would be 1 cm, so 1.7 times 74 is 125.8 stitches. Let's call that 128, which divides nicely by 4, 2, 8, 16 (This has implications for the pattern repeat)

Number of rows to end up with a depth from chin to neck of 16 cm is 2.2 times 16 which is 35.2 rows. I'll call that 36 rows. (This has implications for how many rounds have to be completed between 1st and 24th December)

I need to do some rib at the top and the bottom; say three rows each, leaving me 30 rows for the main part of the cowl

So, day 1 could be cast on and a row of ribbing

day 2 two rows of ribbing

days 3 - 22 the patterns, and plain rows in between different patterns (20 days, 30 rows)

day 23 two rows of ribbing

day 24 a row of ribbing and the casting off.  

I loathe doing ribbing - I think I'll cast on and knit a row, then do a 'mock' rib of one row single rib (right side) next row knit, and do these two rows again before starting the pattern. I'll do the same again at the neck. Anyway, I've got some leftover aran somewhere so I can start swatching while I wait for the yarn to arrive.

I'll post my progress...  

  

Monday 14th November - Random Comments

 It's King Charles' birthday today. He's 74. Me, I'd rather be retired, living my own life (as I am) doing what I want to do (as I mostly do) whenever I please. I hope he's allowed some peace and quiet on his birthday.

https://creativecommons.org/resource/birthday-cake/5045502202_41476791a4_o/

my birthday celebrations started earlier than usual when we met up with son and daughter on Saturday. We have nearly finished the Guy Lian chocolates - rationing ourselves to only two at a time, a couple of times a day, and Himself is fettling the Advent candle so it will stand up straight in the holder - it is the holder that is wonky, not the candle. These little creatures are watching my every move while I teach piano from their cozy egg-box home

I might make them their own special Christmas tree in due course.

The cat is beginning to look a little less moth-eaten; I my perhaps have trimmed off a little too much fur when trying to removed one of the clumpy lumpy bits;

but if I carefully smooth her fur down (rather in the way that our chemistry teacher at school arranged his hair) I can hide the bald spot quite well.

I've been hunting round the internet for a knit-a-long project for Advent as I so enjoyed the one I stumbled across last year. It was at www.buttercupminiatures.co.uk; every day through December I received an email with about ten rows of pattern across 30 stitches - just enough to go with a cup a coffee in the morning. This year their knit-a-long is for create a miniature jumper for a 1/12 size doll - not what I am interested in doing at all. I shall have to see what else is out there, or maybe create my own from the various pattern books I have.  

Maybe a different Christmas motif using up my double knitting stash... hmm. There are loads and loads of free charts (cue 'lost in space music') out there on the web.

I did make a very successful (and incredibly warm) scarf using two balls of yarn, of plain, and one multicoloured. I knitted it in the round, on a circular needle, using charts I found on the internet. Maybe I'll do something like this again. 

This was two different colours of King Cole Riot. I think I used two balls of mixed greys and one of random bright colours - another time I would use a uniform plain colour for the background as a couple of times the two colours merged and the pattern was indistinct.  

Now I've been looking... I'm liking the idea of 2 balls of Sylecraft Life (£3.50 for 100g) and King Cole Magic or Beech (£4.59 for 100g). My fingers are twitching over the 'add to your basket' button,  but luckily for common sense I need to start a piano lesson in 7 minutes.    

It was 96 stitches round, as I remember, so that would be about 4 rounds per day - a project to last until Easter, I think, Christmassy motifs at one end, Candles etc through February, early spring bulbs, and then Easter?

 

Sunday 13th November - Remembrance Sunday

It's a beautiful day for such a sombre occasion. I'm glad; the scene looks more hopeful than if it had been a dull, cold, rainy day.

We watched some of the Act of Remembrance at the Albert Hall (is that what it is called?) and I was particularly moved by the group of young people from the Falkland Islands who expressed their thanks and gratitude to the service men and women who fought to free the Islands. Would we do the same now? War is so evil, such a wrong thing, but, I think I hope that we would. Just as Ukraine is refusing to let Vladimir Putin walk in and take over their country. 

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing

 this quotation is often attributed to Edmund Burke.

from wikipedia;

The statement that "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" is often attributed to Burke despite the debated origin of this quote.^[In 1770, it is known that Burke wrote in "Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents":

[W]hen bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

In 1867, John Stuart Mill made a similar statement in an inaugural address delivered before the University of St. Andrews:

Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.

Saturday 12th November - What a beautiful day

 It started cold and misty - proper late Autumn, I thought, but by the time we had driven to our meeting place for a second breakfast with the son and the daughter there were signs that the sun was appear and the skies were clearing nicely. 

It turned properly warm and sunny by the time we had finished eating and we wandered among the trees to the picnic benches a little way from the cafe and sat in the warmth catching up on the news.

One thing we have been missing are our regular 'games weekends', when we would play 

Settlers of Catan

or Ticket to Ride

or Exploding Kittens

to mention just a few. It would have been warm enough to play some board games outside today, although the slight breeze might have been a bit of a problem.

Still it's an idea; I might stick a pack of cards in my coat pocket next time we meet up.