Hello!

Desert

This blog is starting to resemble a photographic wasteland.

Reasons.

1. Now that my office/storeroom is once again a bedroom (for the next 6 weeks) I can no longer leave the Photographic lights and the "tent" set up ready for action. Taking photographs isn't spontaneous any more, it requires planning.
2. There hasn't been much to take photos of. The Baktus is finished. It was fun, but I'm not sure I'd do another one, the endless garter stitch got to me about 10cm from the end when I rather lost the will to live.
3. I've been dyeing my socks off and designing new colours for the shop. Unfortunately I can't operate the camera with my rubber gloves on!
4. There is a new sock on the needles, in the new yarn which will be here next month. However I only have a Phone-photo of it and I really don't have time to get the whole shebag out and set it up to take a better one.

The yarn is an eight ply, 100% superwash merino, so it's quite different from any of my other yarns. It's exclusive to The Yarn Yard, which is very exciting. I'm knitting on 2mm needles and getting 8 stitches per inch. The fabric is smooth and bouncy with no gaps between the stitches... you know how sometimes when you knit a sock it looks wonderful, and then you put it on and you can feel all the bumps and ridges on the sole?  Not with this yarn.

There are some fabulous colourways for the Update this week on Thursday. I'll let you see them as soon as I stop the dyeing marathon.

n

PS  Have you seen the total in the sidebar fro p/hop? Marvellous. Thank you to everyone who has made a donation or told a friend about it.

Pete

Go and look at this.

Click to watch the film.

Amazing.

We did that.

Thank you.

n

PS If everyone who reads this blog, blogged it and twittered it, how soon could we reach the first £1,000 ?

Out with the old.

The-freezer-under-the-stairs which defrosted itself at the end of last year has done it again. We checked the fuse in the plug and it was fine. We fiddled with the temperature setting knob just in case it had been knocked by over zealous Dyson-hurling into the cupboard and it fired into life... for about a minute and a half... before turning itself off again. We considered getting it repaired, but in the end decided that it was largely redundant anyway. It was bought at a time when there were four of us in the house, not three, and when we were both commuting, so weekend batch-cooking and a monthly Mega Supermarket Shopping Expedition was the norm. Now, with a veg box, we are using hardly any frozen veg at all and we cook from fresh most days apart from veg-box-day-soup-making-for-the-week-ahead on a Thursday. So it has been taken to the dump. I don't think there is much call on Freecycle for non-functioning ten year old mini chest freezers.

I like Freecycle.

A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to be Freecycled some knitting needles. The elderly lady who was giving them away could no longer see well enough to knit, and was looking for them to go to a new home, and I was delighted.
Gradually, as I have acquired new needles, these donated ones have been passed on to new knitters, and who knows, they may in turn have passed them on a second or even a third time.

In the box with the needles were a number of patterns. I would guess that this lady was in her eighties so the patterns spanned many years.
Despite the Bloke Sweater, I don't consider myself a knitter of large garments, but I have kept these patterns in a drawer, and now I'm wondering if they too need a new home. I am a bit of a hoarder, but I'm definitely not going in for vintage pattern collecting, so I'm offering these up for p/hopping.

There are twenty five patterns, of which these are the most venerable.

Skinny rib sweater. Look at that pocket!

Phone box not included.

His 'n' Hers matching weekend wear.

I think this one is actually quite "retro" and similar to patterns in books on vintage knitting.

 

The older gentleman obviously grew up in a pre-orthodonic era.

The rest are really 1970's and 80's patterns and probably less interesting. All are for jumpers or cardigans for adults (with the occasional mother and daughter ensemble).

If anyone would like them please let me know via ravelry and I'll pop them in an envelope in return for a p/hop donation (I think the minimum using Just Giving is £2.) I'm pretty sure there are no hidden gems, just everyday patterns (and some screamers).

The French sock is progressing quite quickly. Now that I am taking a daily Knitshot I feel that I need to make some measurable progress each day and I find myself adding a few rows here and there.

Time taken for computer to start - 32 stitches (half a round).

Time taken for kettle to boil - 2 rounds. Having five cups of tea a day produces 2 whole centimetres of sock... who knew?

At the moment I am about seven cups of tea away from the heel, so I am off to make a brew. Every little helps.

n

mugshots and MSF

I am officially a geek and I have a new app for my iPhone.
It's called daily mugshot, and will work for any mobile phone which has a camera and can email.

Gavin has been using it for ages but I thought that just having photos of me was a bit boring (he travels with his job so he gets to take photos in exotic locations like airports, train stations and Orkney (!).

So I've been wondering about a theme. I can already blog on the run with the typepad app (although I tend not to), but to me the beauty of the mugshot app is that it needs no setting up, or fancy equipment, just click and post the photo.
I wondered about taking a photo of the garden each day, or the horizon, or the amaryllis (which with hindsight would have been an excellent idea, but it's bursting into flower now so it's too late).

Eventually it has been a case of getting-back-to-the-idea-you-first-thought-of which was to use it to catalogue knitting progress. Even if it's just half a dozen rows it will be fun to see a sock grow in front of my eyes.
I just have to work out how to get it into the sidebar.

The MSF p/hop project continues to grow and evolve. There is now a ravelry group for it and in the manner of all projects which are "owned" by the community, it has expanded into a grand destash and redistribution of books no longer needed.
There are more patterns on the way too.
And... as you can see from the widget we are nearing the £500 mark which is fabulous.

n

Amaryllis II

There has been knitting (of which more later).
There has been spinning.
And there has been growing.

My cut-price amaryllis which has such an unpromising start is a source of daily delight.
I think that if I stood still long enough I could actually watch the cells replicating in the growth tips.

Isn't it amazing?
All that growing in just 12 days.

I also have other progress to show you.

Meet Euridice.
She is a fleece I have had stashed away for about a year, waiting to be turned into a Gavin-thing.
Originally I thought she would be a jumper, but now that he has one of those, knitted by my own fair hand, she is going to be a waistcoat instead.

She was carded on the drum carder using the no-system-at-all method and has become a rather interesting thick and thin rustic yarn. This is the first 100g, about 170m, varying from sockyarn to aran in a single skein, which is entirely intentional.

He has put in a request for a simple waistcoat, and after seeking the advice of my own personal knitting advisor I'm not going to knit it on circs, but in pieces, because the side seams will add some stability and help to stop it drooping. Which has to be a good thing, really.

There has been other knitting but I can't reveal it until later in the week because it's with the prototype sock club yarn and it would completely give the game away if I showed it to you... I can reveal the pattern, which is for the the Primavera socks, and it's lovely. I always thought that stocking stitch socks were my kind of knitting because they let the yarn (and the dyer) do the work, but these are just such fun to do. The pattern is free.
I find myself doing "just one more repeat" - which is only six rows - and they are fairly flying along. The heel is turned and the gusset decreases are half completed.
There will be photos later in the week, probably on Friday.

I will leave you with the last Amaryllis photo.

Look!
A second shoot has emerged.
How wonderful.

n

PS  Check out the totaliser in the sidebar (I am a Blue Peter kid at heart).
£308.13.
Over 60%.
Thank you so much to everyone who has donated.
Ruth is having a blogiversary raffle with excellent prizes linked to p/hop donations. Why not download the Primavera pattern and donate 50p... go on, you know you want that pattern, and every 50p will make a difference to the life of someone who really needs it.

Very Clever Knitters

Just a quick post to show you a couple of things recently finished by Yarn Yard knitters.

Sue chose some yarn at Woolfest and I dyed a solid or two to go with what she had selected.
The main body of the jumper is in mauve and variegated, the sleeves are in mauve, variegated and lime green, and the collar is in mauve and lime green. 
This is knitted in bonny, my simple sock yarn.

Isn't it fabulous?

She told me
"It was cobbled together from a pattern I saw in a Noro book, an old Vogue pattern and an M&S jumper.
I used 2 hanks of mauve, 2 of multi and 1 green. 

The back and front have a welt in garter stitch and I did several trials to get a stripey pattern that I liked using only mauve and multi.  The sleeves also had a welt of garter stitch and were done in reverse stocking stitch, one row of each of three colours.  The cowl neck was in stocking stitch, 2 rows each of mauve and green and had to be made in a funnel shape to get the right look ( I did it straight first and had to unpick the lot!)  If I was doing it again I would do the neck on four needles to avoid having a seam."

I love it.

And Harriet, who won the MSF ticket to see the Yarn Harlot in August, has been knitting these.

They are not knitted in Yarn Yard yarn, she says that they could be, but that they would come out man-size knitted in bonny and these are done in 3 ply instead.
I just had to show you them though.

They are called the Sanquhar Gloves.

There seems to be some feeling that "little-and-often" shop updates would be preferable to once a week events. Check out the comments in the post below. So many people have said that they are out in the evenings or that they are tired or even (shock) that they are knitting and not computer-ing.
If I put yarn in the shop I will post on the blog and on ravelry.
Unless significant numbers of you have major difficulties with this, it will be what I plan to do for the next wee while and we'll see how it goes.
It won't be every day, but I think it will be several times a week at varying hours of the day and evening.

n

p/hop

I have a widget for you.

Click on "donate" to read more.

The first of the new patterns offered with added p/hop is coming soon!

n