Am I still a blogger?

Well I guess I am. Although this year marks an all time low in terms of posts it actually reflects a high amount of activity and a bit of diversification.

even moving away from fabric, yarn and fibre

But first a question... I have not blogged since 18th May and until recently my weekly hit stats were going down week by week.  Generally when I am a busy blogger they are at about 300-500 a week but quite understandably the numbers were heading into single figures by mid July.  Then. WHAM. suddenly they began to climb until today, as I write they are at 1,016!  How can that be?  The focus of attention seems to be this post about knitting buttons into a cardigan as you go.  The post was featured in the Knitty blog soon after but otherwise I can see no reason why it should be so popular.  I have scrutinised my stats, the hits seem to come from the East. This happened once before, at that time a scurrilous tabloid columnist with a similar name to me was hitting the headlines but this time???  I have no idea.  Do any of you (particularly if you use the Blogger platform) have an idea?

Still Knitting, this is the Reyna shawl, knitted entirely from stash (yarn chicken was played)

SO! To the real business, getting back to blogging and some diversification. When I retired I believed that it would enable me to spend more time with all things crafty. More sewing, more spinning and above all more knitting. Then I got a bit stuck, too much stash acquisition for a start. My attempts last year to buy less yarn were only replaced with buying books, equipment relating to knitting and building up my fabric stash. Epic fail.  

Far less stash acquisition this year but this is a recent purchase to finish a very old WIP (see below)

Then there was that sudden realisation that I no longer felt I had a role in society.  My life, by spending more and more time on my fairly solitary hobbies, had moved to the margins, away from the mainstream

It was time to get a grip. So I took on a couple of volunteering things, one at our local Citizens Advice and the occasional day helping out in a local school.

Cleaning sinks in the art department can be creative when you spot hints of Jackson Pollock

When you can't photograph a class in action you can still take an after shot (featuring Teacher's Pet)

And there has been some diversification in my crafting too.  It's true I have always sewn some of my own clothes as well as knitted but these past few months I've not only made clothes for myself

Merchant & Mills Camber Dress (Ikat fabric from John Lewis)

Detail of my standard shift dress (heavily modified Simplicity pattern)

but embarked on a big patchwork project

Mostly hand sewn quilt but I always enjoy hand hemming the binding (am I odd?)

Finished 50s style from Quilting Modern

Then something totally new - watercolour painting.  I have played with it for some time but last year my friend Vandy encouraged me to take a short course with her (it's on again this year and I going again) and I was off! Even producing some fairly pleasing results

Watery Greek Island olive tree 

Passion flowers in my garden

 Finally I picked up a crochet project that I began over five years ago (I'm aiming to get this finished this August)

Beach Blanket

And all (or nearly all) of this makery is from materials I have in stock.  Yes indeed I am making great inroads into the multiple stashes <<smug face>>

xx

c

All this activity, it's all so exhausting

A woman for all seasons? 3KCBWDAY4

I have to admit that there are times and places when knitting or crochet is just not what I want to do.  There are hot afternoons, lying under the grape vine's shade with distant sounds of cocks crowing and the voices of people calling to each other across the valley just reaching my ears, when knitting a woolly sweater is farthest from my mind.

But even when this sort of activity is in prospect I still pack yarn and some sort of tangling implement in my bag.  But the yarn will be the least woolly I can get and the project small, small enough to fit in my handbag and the 'implement' blunt enough to avoid the eagle eyed security men and scanners at airports.  Thus last summer as I set off for Paxos I took some assorted colours of cotton, a wooden crochet hook, and a tiny pair of nail scissors.

Not that I was going to avow long siestas with a book falling from my hand as I dropped off to sleep.  But I can always find time to do a little bit of something, and not just on the way to the airport!

However, although I pottered about (crochetly speaking) for a week making squares in combinations of all the colours I took with me, when I had a pile of them I was not sure.  The colours not as good together once made up as in a pile of unworked bargain bin skeins.  They were fire and water

Suitable symbols for a Greek island in high summer, perhaps, but the more I looked at the pile of squares the more I thought of only water, the beautiful limpid shallows in shades of green and the deeper water fading from turquoise to navy blue.  So when I got home I put away the fiery squares and bought a lot more shades of blue (and some greys and pinks for pebbles) 

Once I had made enough I began to lay out the squares to get the colour effect I wanted

At this stage I was really not sure whether it would be a master piece or a total muddly mess.  But it came together

And looks rather fine on the beach that was in my mind's eye as I made it

xx

c

A lesson in Crochet

I spend over two hours a day on my daily commute, so if I do something useful on my journey the total woman hours of slightly more than 250 a year seem not such a waste.  This week I am crocheting. 

I am embarking on quite a big project with the granny squares I blogged about last week.  It was something Tracy over at prosestitch said that got me going, that and the photograph of water at teh end of last week's blog.   More of that later, the thing is that I seemed to gather a bit of attention as I hooked away at my watery project on the train yesterday.  The person sitting next to me said (after about 30 minutes) 'what ARE you making?'  I explained briefly, after saying something nice about the colours she said 'how sad that crochet was a dying craft'.  Then on the way home another woman, about the same age asked me what I was knitting!

A dying craft?  I don't think so judging by the number of new yarn shops springing up all over the place.  And with all the books and magazines on the subject I think lots of people are learning new crafts and certainly know the difference between knitting and crochet.

I know I could have looked at one of my books on crochet but when I wanted to make something based on granny squares I worked it out by trial and error so I thought I would blog a little beginners tutorial.  Experienced crafters look away now, or perhaps just skip to the last paragraph.

The Tutorial

Start with a slip knot and pull it up gently to fit snuggly around the hook.  All crocheting is based on drawing the yarn through the loop on the hook to form a chain.  Hold the hook in your right hand and the work in your left in a pinch grip with your index finger and thumb.  The tail of the yarn falls down the palm of your hand towards your wrist and the yarn you are working with goes from the chain over your first three fingers and under your little finger. It's your little finger that keeps the tension on the yarn.

Make five loops (chains)

Join the chains into a ring by slipping the hook through the first chain and drawing the yarn through both chains then make a three more chains.  The granny square is made entirely of a stitch called treble crochet and chains.

This is how you make your first treble stitch

Wind the yarn once around the hook then pass the tip of the hook through your foundation chain ring drawing another loop through, you will have three loops on your hook now

Hook the yarn through the first two stitches, then...

Hook it through again.  That's your first treble

Make one more treble, then two chain then three more trebles

Continue making three trebles then two chain until you have four groups of three trebles two chain (in patterns this is written *3tr 2ch, repeat from * three more times). You now have a circle.  You begin to form the corners of the square in the next row.

Begin with four chain then *three trebles, two chain and three trebles  into the two chain space then one chain, repeat from * twice more.  Work two trebles into the last two chain space then link up to the third chain of the 4 chain with a slip stitch

Keep making rounds like this with one set of three trebles in every chain space on the side and 3tr 2ch 3tr into each corner.  You can completely finish the squares to the size you want and sew them together but you can also link as you go...

by slip stitching into the corresponding  chain space of the previous square as you work the last row.

There are all sorts of designs for squares (I have just bought Jan Eaton's book 200 crochet blocks ) and I intend to incorporate some of these in my project.

This morning Alison, who blogs as plus 2.4 blogged about her first efforts at crochet , in a few weeks with help from a friend and some on line tutorials she has produced some brilliant brightly coloured squares (and a very funny picture of her first effort) .

Its simple when you know how!

xx
C 

Travelling light

Last week I escaped our rainy shores for a few days sunshine, blue skies and turquoise sea with my lovely friend the writer Elizabeth Speller  .  We were staying in her perfect little house in the olive groves of Paxos where  this year JTH and I spent almost all of May.  As well as looking forward to a week with my friend and reacquainting myself with the kittens, born behind the mirror in the garden during my last stay,

I needed to think what out of all my various works in progress I would take with me.  Now you might be forgiven for wondering why I would even bother to take knitting or crochet with me to a Mediterranean island in high summer.  But there would be early mornings and late evenings, when we sit and chat, to say nothing of the travelling (nearly ten hours each way counting check ins and waiting for connections) when I could be making something too. Something in this beautiful Sublime Cotton DK from my stash, eight balls, eight different colours bought in a sale in January, £1 for 50g

But what should I make?  Not only should there be no complicated pattern to follow but what about needles and scissors and security?  I was travelling with hand luggage only and ever since having an operation that left a large chunk of metal in one of my hips I have had a bit of bother with airport security.  I set off the alarms so often that I usually walk through the security arch and straight up to one of the women with the hand held metal detectors, not waiting for the beep.  Then there is the time I set them off at JFK in New York and was placed in a glass cubicle until someone was free to check me and another time when I missed my flight when the 'patting down' woman  did not believe me and I had to be taken to a private room and show her my scar!  So I am very careful about my hand luggage, at least I can make sure that does not offend.

I had already decided I would crochet and use a wooden hook but what about scissors? It was then I discovered this helpful website and found I could take scissors as long as the blade was no longer than 6cm, needles both knitting and sewing variety are allowed too.

I decided to make a throw with granny squares, separating the yarns into two colour groups, strong and light.

I have about 30 squares made up to now and have probably used about a third of the yarn

I have 25 pale squares and when I have completed the same amount of the other colour-way I may mix the colours up again.  I have quite a way to go before the afghan is finished  and I haven't decided what the linking colour will be yet but what with all the other things we did (eating, sunbathing, dozing, reading and occasionally dipping in the sea) I did not spend a lot of time on it.

I have been visiting Paxos for ten years now and have photographed it in every season, capturing processions of icons and tiny wild flowers as well as breathtaking views and kittens and goats so this visit I left my camera in my bag most of the time. Instead I took a few pictures that might inspire some of the things I make.  I'm not sure yet what ideas I will take from this close up of the sea lapping against the restaurant decking as we piled tzatziki and taramasalata  onto village bread but for now it is just good to look at and remind me of a perfectly clear, warm, turquoise sea.

xx

C