Hello!

Tagged and TdeF Packs

Vivienne has tagged me for the meme which is going around at the moment.

Here goes.

1. Five jobs I've had?

Remover of rust from paint tins when I was a student. I worked at a paint factory and the tins had been stored outside, so we had to use sandpaper to remove the rust so they could be sold!

Drystone walling and fencing. Six strand stock fence with butterfly tension? No problem.

Telesales at Sky. One customer phoned and asked about the "'late-night" programmes on a particular channel. I thought he was complaining about them, but he was actually asking me how to subscribe!

Nurse. All sorts of Nurse. 25 years worth.

Bar work during the Edinburgh Festival. Fastest weight loss ever, 12 pounds in three weeks. I was shattered.

2. What was I doing ten years ago?

Ten years. Well things have changed rather a lot in ten years.
I was a newly single parent of seven and nine year old boys. I was a nurse in a Neonatal Unit, and worked 12 hour shifts rotating onto night duty. This meant that a friend (another SP) did a sleepover at my house with her daughter while I worked the night-shift component of my rota, and I slept while they were at school. My boys went to her house after school on the day-shift part. We did 13 x 12 hour shifts in four weeks so I did have time off with the children but it wasn't a lot of fun. I had £23 a week for food and household laundry type shopping, and pretty much everything else as well. I went around Asda with a calculator, it's amazing how many different meals you can make with 22p bags of economy pasta. My husband (Fegrig) was horrified a year later when he was making packed lunches for school and my elder son told him that he needed to dilute the OJ half-and-half, and that two slices of skinny ham on a sandwich was enough.
The house was a building site. I had been left (literally) mid-project. Partially plasterboarded walls, wires dangling and bare concrete floors. There wasn't much I could do about the wires, which were safe but unsightly, so I got to work on the rest of the house and painted every single wall and ceiling white, I wanted to reclaim every single surface as mine.
The nuts and bolts of just keeping going were awful, but I did feel free of a huge painful burden which had been dumped on me, so it wasn't all bad.
Life is SO much better now.

3. What are five things on my to-do list today?

Well there are two lists, a work list and a non-work list.

The work list says
1. Dye 5kg fibre (this is quite a lot!)
2. Print, pack and post parcels
3. Put the TdeF options in the shop.
4. Order yarn.
5. Order blue bags because I've only got 17 left!

The non-work list says
1. Make something nice for tea because my mum is coming.
2. Listen to the Archers.
3. Do the quick crossword on the back of The Guardian g2 section.
4. 20 minutes on the erg... the rowing machine.
5. Plant the bluebell bulbs my neighbour gave me yesterday.

4. Snacks I enjoy?

Olives, twiglets, marmite-on-ricecakes, salted crisps (flavoured ones are an abomination), peanuts, bombay mix, sardines on toast - more of a meal really, might have that for lunch.
Cheeeeeeeeeeese.

5. Places I have lived?

In no particular order... Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bingley, Newnham, London, Birmingham, Kidderminster.
I flirted with the idea of working in Zurich, but decided against it in the end.

6. What would I do if I was billionnaire?

Like Vivienne I'm going to assume Bill Gates type levels of billionaireishness.

This is quite tricky. I mean a million pounds is easier, isn't it?
Billions... hmmm.

Okay. I am not technically minded, I can work a mac (sort of) and run a website, I can knit (which is engineering of a kind) and spin, but ask me about the workings of the internal combustion engine and my eyes glaze over.

Last year on Dragon's Den I saw this.

It's a water filtration system which is powered by the movement of the wheels.

You can see the DD clip here. If you didn't see it, do watch. It's the first philanthropic product on DD.
The designers, Red Button Design have gone from strength to strength and won all sorts of awards.
They are part of Engineers Without Borders, a student organisation which is worldwide, and focuses on appropriate technology to solve problems in areas of the world which do not have our good fortune.

The charity in the UK which mirrors this closest is Practical Action. Their website is fascinating, and they do all sorts of good stuff like developing biomass stoves for women in Darfur.

I think that if I had billions, I would set up an integrated programme which encouraged this low tech, sustainable engineering approach at lots of levels, from primary school right though to college courses and University research. The teenagers could visit the Universities and the College students and Professors  could talk to the six year olds. A billion pounds is a finite amount, but the difference this could make would be infinite.

And yes, I'd make knitting a compulsory part of the curriculum from 5-18 as well!
All that right-brain, left-brain stuff has to be good for you, doesn't it?

No knitting today for me though, I have fibre to dye!

n

PS. I forgot... I have to tag people.
I'm going to tag anyone who doesn't have a blog.
Leave your answers in the comments!

PPS. TdeF packs are in the Shop. They have their own section here.

I have been thinking a lot about TdeF colours for both yarn and fibre.

I know some people are doing both Tour de Fleece and Tour de Knit, but most are doing one or the other. Some are aiming to knit fast… which probably means a bigger garment and not sock yarn, so I think that those using sock yarn are probably looking to learn a new technique (toe-ups, cables, lace or colourwork), or are going to knit lace (and will need to see the stitches).
Those who are doing the Tour de Fleece are also aiming to do something to stretch them a bit, to spin laceweight, or art-yarn, or to spin enough for something like a BSJ.

So with all these various needs in mind I have come up with a plan.

I did consider (briefly) the red, white and blue of the French flag but have decided against it. The TdeKnit has a French theme but I think we can be a bit more subtle than the Tricoleur. Instead I’ve decided on a classically French, elegant neutral shade.

THE PLAN
… is to offer TdeF and TdeK “packs”.

These will comprise

1. Two 100g skeins of Bonny semi-solid yarn, with a little more light/dark variation than the almost-solids you get in the Club yarns. One will be the neutral, the other will be brighter. Those wanting to knit texture or new toe/heels and who need to see what they are doing will be happy.

or

1. Two 65g skeins of Mist laceweight. You could have two different colours, or they could be the same for a bigger project. (Or you could just use one for the TdeK and keep the other for something else entirely.)

or

1. Two skeins of Lochan (different or the same), semi solids just like Bonny.

or

1. Two skeins of Caber (ditto).

And for TdeF spinners the Fibre will be either

1. BFL superwash because it’s the most flexible

or

1. Merino Tencel

I will send you 200g of fibre. This is enough for those who want to spin fat yarn to get a useable quantity of knittable stuff at the end. I’m planning to send (about) 150g of the main neutral shade together with 50g of contrast brighter fibre, perhaps in more than one colour. You’ll be able to add splotches, lumps, or to mix the colours along the length of the single for a more subtle effect, or you could spin a fat single with the neutral and ply with a fine single from the brighter fibre. Or you could spin them completely separately and get two different yarns to mix in your project. If you have BFL superwash in other stash-braids you could add fibre from that as well.

I’m planning to dye it all on one day (next Monday), and to offer the packs at the bargainous price of £15 plus P&P for which ever of the options you choose. I can only do the lower price if I dye it all on one day, and post it all at once, like a Club.

So, I need feedback…

n

PS. I can’t do Club discount on it, sorry.

PPS.  I will put it in the shop as a TdeF/TdeK pack. To save time I’m just going to put it in once and it will be up to you to tell me in the Comments section, which of the options yarn or fibre-wise you have chosen.

The only question really, is whether you want to know the colour of the neutral before you decide… or do you want it to be a surprise?

PPPS. You thought I was kidding about the pencils, didn't you?

 

n

Saturday Stumblings

Here are a few sites for your entertainment.

What do you use as a bookmark?

This is strangely mesmerising.

Why the choice of biscuit matters in a business meeting, and how many biscuits is "polite"?

What to do with 700 aluminium ring pulls. Scroll down to see a rather posh frock!

Greenovia. This site just grows on you! Click on this and that and see what happens.

Check out the fruitbasket on this blog. And the goth gloves.

And finally, yesterday was National Free Doughnut Day in the USA... where's mine then?

n

Do you doodle?

Are you a doodler?

I have this theory that we doodle in a way which is dictated by our names.
People who have curly names like Claire and Olivia and Simone, doodle with grand sweeping flourishes. Their doodles are fanciful and decorative and feminine.
People like me who have names like Natalie and Leonora and Winifred are functional doodlers of buildings and rooftops, of flags and quilt blocks and even starry, starry skies.

I'm a pencil person. I like the sharpening ritual, the scalloped edges on a hexagonal pencil, and the curly shavings. I've been known to keep sharpening beyond usefulness just to see the frilly wooden shavings form. It's a bit like peeling a cooking apple and trying to get the entire fruit peeled in one go.

The humble pencil does have other uses though.

Who says you can't take your knitting on an aeroplane?

n

The wheel fell off!

In case you were wondering about the television collapsing incident, we have a rather elderly and therefore heavy CRT TV. Working on the premise that if it ain't broke it doesn't need to be replaced, we have never been tempted by a go-faster aerodynamic flat-screen TV. It's not as if it's going to move anywhere, is it?

The TV (and yes, we also live in the dark ages and have managed to bring up two teenagers with only one TV in the house) stands on an ordinary IKEA type wooden thing which has had a castor on each corner. While moving it slightly one of these wheels had somehow moved out of the hole it was designed to go in. It's difficult to see how this happened really, because just like the not-yet-purchased flat screen aerodynamic TV, it's not as though it goes anywhere. A few centimetres this way to allow a Dyson nozzle to suck the gubbins from underneath, a few back in the other direction afterwards. Twice a year, before the first log fire of the winter, and again after the last one in the spring, it is moved so it doesn't have its CRT fried beside the stove. But really that's it. I can say, hand on heart, that it has never been used as a surrogate go-kart, never been stood on to change a light bulb or paint a ceiling. In short, it has had a sheltered life.

So when I came downstairs in the middle of doing the shop Update and realised that it was sitting rather drunkenly with one wheel collapsed, two wheels on the ground and the fourth sticking up rather jauntily in the air... and the TV (for all I knew) hanging on for grim life and potentially about to slither onto the hard tiled floor (we don't do carpets either), you can see, can't you that it was a bit of an emergency?
I mean, we are in the middle of a Doctor Who two-parter, and it's the penultimate Apprentice tonight. I want Lucinda to win, by the way, she's the only potential knitter in the group and I can just see her embracing Fair Isle tams and making unique, one off, designer tam-knitting very, very cool.
I wonder if Surrallan wears hand knitted socks?

Things have been pretty busy here chez YY, so there hasn't been much time for knitting.
I have got as far as the heel on the Stashbusters though (even though it's only the first sock). Mine are toe-up, and short row-heeled.

I might need to start to knit the second one when I'm about half way up the leg to make sure the balls for the second sock were the same size as the ones for the first I suppose. They aren't perfect, I have been rather enthusiastic in my tightening of the yarn at the "corners" which has left ridges, but I think some of that will block out and even if it doesn't, who is going to be looking that closely at my feet?

Who is your pick for the Apprentice then?

n

Fibre in the shop.

This will be at eight, not seven, there has just been a TV stand collapsing incident I need to help with!!!


The Fibre has been added to the New Stuff section in the shop. Most of the yarns which are left on the shelf are single skeins and going fast.

The shop loads with a default setting of 30 different items and there are 37 yarn and fibre colourways to look at so remember to click to page two, or adjust the number of items shown at once to 50.

I will make it live at 19.00 this evening. Off to post things now.

n

PS  The new shop is on the way, verrrrry exciting!

Eleven hours...

So, how was your weekend?
For us, Saturday was spent in the garden in the lovely May sunshine, forking over veg plots (me) and discovering a field-mouse nest (unoccupied) in the lawnmower in the shed (himself). We rewarded ourselves by sitting outside with a glass of red wine (me) and a smaller glass of Glenkinchie (himself) and watched the bats swoop around the garden and the sun set.
For the whisky lovers, Glenkinchie is described thus
"The standard 10 year old Glenkinchie is a fairly typical lowland whisky in that it is fresh and light in character, with notes of lemon and cut grass. A sweet nose and a hint of peat make this a good introduction to the world of single malts."
Me, I am not a whisky person. At. All.
 
We had planned to spend Sunday doing similar things, but woke to a June downpour, and then spent the rest of the day "assisting" with CV production and job application paperwork and the like for a son who had completely underestimated how long it takes to do these things from scratch (the without-a-thought-in-your-head kind of "from scratch"). Eleven hours after we started - which included buying new Interview Socks, a crisp white Interview Shirt and a matt black leather belt with a brushed pewter coloured buckle for holding up the Interview Trousers - it was finished.
I love him to bits, but I hope it doesn't take that long the next time, I might need to book a holiday to recover.

Today will be filled with packing parcels from Friday's yarn yomp, and admin-ing the next Club (new password on the way once I have done the lists).

These are on their way to the shop today.



Dazzle




Gather




Toasted

Mmmmm. Toast. What an excellent idea.

n

PS Every year that I have lived here, sixteen Springs, the house martins have arrived at the end of May. Sometimes it's the 19th, sometimes it's the 21st, rarely it's as late as the 27th. This year they still aren't here and it's JUNE for heaven's sake. Come on chaps, where are you?