Ten Random Things

I am a big fan of Annie, a lovely lady who blogs as Knitsofacto.  You may ask how I can be so certain about her character if I only know her from her blog (and you would be right) well it is because she has responded to every comment I make on her blog.  Sometimes she will make a comment here and, once when I asked her a technical question about Blogger, she e mailed me the solution.  How kind is that?

Recently she has written  a couple of posts with the title 10 Random Things and in her post on Easter Day  invited other bloggers to do the same - so here we go...

1. I'm delighted to accept Annie's invitation as I was wondering what to blog about this week

2. I am prone to Arthritis in my hands and it terrifies me  that I could, one day, not be able to knit or sew

looking after the tools

3. I love travelling, despite having a panic attack at the airport/eurostar station almost every time I set out.

How could I miss this? (Aphrodite's rock in Cyprus)

4. I have bouts of compulsive tidiness, folding linen in the airing cupboard with folds all facing the same way and hanging clothes in my wardrobe by category

folded (the wardrobe is going through a messy phase)

5. I buy far too much makeup but hardly ever wear it!

too much?

6. In my garden I have several plants grown from cuttings that I have stolen from parks and open gardens (my mother always said this was OK as long as no damage was done to the main plant)

The mother plant

7. For lent this year I aimed to walk 10,000 steps a day, drink more water and stop snacking (80% achieved) Next year I'm thinking of giving up sugar

FitBit

8. I have known my husband for 42 years (married for 37)

JTH sharing a photo with one of my favourite interiors

9. I have a tendency to over commit (to projects, organisations and work) until one day I come to a full stop and retreat into my burrow for weeks on end

three current WIPs (not counting those in the cupboard) and about to begin another

10. when following instructions (knitting, sewing cooking, you name it!) I go off piste with very variable results

frogging the last experiment!

Random facts, anyone?  If you decide to accept Annie's challenge please let me know (a link to you blog in  the comments here will be good).

xx

C

silky dilemma - frogs and mods

Although I did talk about finishing my silky vintage cardigan a week or so ago there have been a few problems.

Firstly the button band was floppy.  Well of course silk is floppy but the pattern called for knitting the button band at the same time as the main body of the work.  This meant that although the ribbing was mainly knitted in 3mm needles and the body in 3.75mm the button band had also to be knitted with 3.75mm.  So it flopped and the button holes sagged.  I solved that one with backing the band with grosgrain ribbon. But there is a bigger problem.  I just can't get the neck to sit elegantly.

Either it shows too much of the workings

Or it is too high for comfort (and style)

And while I like it sitting just like this...

it quickly flops back to version 1.  It's not that I  dislike the contrast, although I am willing to admit to there being other opinions on contrasting colours for linings, I quite like it.  No its the way the neck sits and the way it shows a not-very-elegant-inside.

So what should I do?  As I see it there are four options

1. Wear it as it is, never button it up and readjust constantly (I think that is a bit of a shame after dressing and a quick check in the mirror, I like to forget about my clothes and it is so silky soft it is one of the few cardigans I actually could wear without a shell top underneath)

2. Frog the fronts to midway between the second and third buttons and knit a new lower neck line (too sad, could I bear it?)

3.  Steek it, machine the neckline profile I want, cut and knit a new neck band (too risky)

4. Unpick the i-cord bind off on the neck, knit on a double thickness neck band and rever facings.  This would cover the back-stage elements and have it as a collarless rever opening (may be too bulky)

I'd love to know what you think.

When I have solved the problem I will write up a modern set of instructions and post a pdf on ravelry

xx

c

secret languages

How amazing is language?  Not just the sounds of different languages, or my love of French that I speak ever so imperfectly, but also the languages within language, so many words, too many for one person to know.  Dr Johnson might have got close; but now the Oxford English Dictionary has a whole company to work on new editions, plus public contributions, and a committee to decide what's in or out.  

My younger son (ever after referred to as DS2) loves language and new words.  Reading out loud to him one day I reached for the dictionary, not only to find out what the word meant but how to pronounce it.  The book was The mouse and his child 

(image from Amazon)

the word CHTHONIC.  It became DS2's word of choice to 'test' teachers using it where ever he could and always delighted  when it was assumed he had made the word up.  As he moved classes we would ask if his teacher had 'passed the chthonic test' yet.

A couple of years ago, I found myself working for a company based in the USA in their city of London office. On their intranet they had a 'word for the day' from Websters Dictionary one or two of us began to collect them and then see if they could be slipped into an internal e mail (we didn't always escape notice)

Slumgullion -  prolix – chawbacon -  eldritch -  exculpate

So I don't know why I was surprised that the knitting world has its own language. A little while ago I asked here how FROGGING came to be a term for unravelling

One or two people suggested that when you rip back knitting it sounds like 'reddit reddit' (or is it 'ribbit ribbit'?).  One non-knitting friend suggested that the way unravelled yarn becomes curly is a little like frogging on a hussars jacket. 

Then there is TINKING

Which also means undoing, as in knitting backwards, (well almost) I have chosen to think this is unpicking stitch by stitch rather than ripping with (non)gay abandon.

I may not have known what it was called till recently but I certainly understand STASH

You probably noticed there is a bit of a theme going on here, all the large, project, sized yarn is in mauves, greens and blues.  My stash usually lives in a large plastic box with a moth proof (I hope) lid but I rather enjoyed setting my hoard out here miser fashion.

I have always had some sort of crafty project on the go - boxes and baskets of half finished hats, pictures or cushions hidden away in the bottom of cupboards.  As a teenager it was a bit touch and go as to whether I would ever finish one thing before beginning another.  I do try to finish my projects, I really do.  But multi tasking is in my nature, it is the same with reading, I think I have already mentioned that I have a tendency to have several books on the go.  Right now I have a number of interesting woolly things ON THE NEEDLES

Paper chain scarf

cardigan for granddaughter

And vintage cardigan (still not finished)

I realised last night at a new knitting group, where the delightful conversation ranged from world book day to afghans, hand spun yarn and power walking that I need another project - something that I can knit and not worry about forgetting the increase row.

All those partly knitted hats, socks, afghans and jerseys are sometimes also called WORK IN PROGRESS.  This always makes me smile.  As a lawyer in private practice I would be pursued to increase my work in progress, ie number of hours logged against client work.  The target was 1600 hours a year (if there are any city lawyers reading I can hear cries of 'you were lucky!) I was always behind.  Now I do a slightly different sort of legal job and WIP no longer engenders a feeling of dread, instead it represents a choice of what to pick up and knit with this evening (but I'm still far short of 1600 hours)

Do please add words you know to the comments below.  Meanwhile, does anyone know what the word is for 'no-good-at-calculating-how-much-yarn-is-required-for-the-project'?

Just one simply will not do!

xxx

C





Frogging

I learned from one of this blog's readers last week that ripping out knitting is called frogging because of the sound it makes 'ribbit ribbit' when the work is unraveled.  I rarely unravel with wild abandon, mainly I unpick stitch by stitch as I am always a little fearful that I will go too far.  But it occurred to me that, in the style of Chinese whispers, rip-it rip-it sounds like ribbit ribbit.  And this is what I did last night.

A little while ago I made a hat, muffler and mittens for my granddaughter in one of my favourite yarns, Baby Cashmerino by Debbie Bliss.  I knitted free hand and you may say that is where I went wrong

But I loved the knitting particularly all the fiddly bits, the bell frill at the bottom of the muffler

and the bunch of hare bells on the side of the hat (the same flowers as I used for my Knitting a name project)

But the hat was far too small for the baby girl who has a beautiful shock of thick light brown curls

So I frogged it...

And am making something much bigger

I hope it is not too big! The circular needle is 18" from needle tip to needle tip, the first hat had a circumference of 18" so I am hoping I am OK making it 30 stitches larger.

Happy weekend everyone!

xx

C