Work in Progress

A rainy Sunday: who would have guessed that this would be a rare event? Our allotment is drinking in the moisture and all the dormant weeds are getting ready to pounce, but a window opens for blogging.

I usually only post finished items, but it would be a long wait for this blanket. I had the idea before we set off for Sweden last year, having read of Elsebeth Lavold's translations of Viking knotwork from standing stones. We saw plenty of those, although travelling and complex knitting do not mix for me.




Instead, I chose to use two knotwork designs from St*rmore's "Celtic Collection", from the sweater called "Cromarty". It is wonderfully ornate, looks great on the waif wearing it, but would make me look very squat indeed. As a set of knots , however, it's fairly straightforward. So then, the notion is to alternate these complex designs with strips of narrower, rope-like cables, either in natural aran or in pale terracotta. I am drawn to the latter because, in West Cumbria, there are to be found some Viking crosses covered in Celtic knotwork, the material of which is red sandstone. The cross at Gosforth is particularly famous as its slender shaft carries four different stories. I am hoping to create some kind of visual reference to these crosses in the cabling on the blanket.

At present, however, what I have are two seven inch strips of knotwork in pale duck-egg blue. Symmetry will almost certainly demand that I knit at least one of these again to create a matched pair. It's a work in progress, as I say.

Reading about Uk Ravelry Day on Jean's blog, I havered over pros and cons: Coventry is a two and a half hour's drive for me, but Meg Swansen and Jared Flood were to be there. Then, Jean directs me to go, and I buy my tickets without a second thought. How to explain that reasoning to others? I don't have tickets for Jared's sessions - already full - but only for Meg's big presentation. Now the question is, whether to book for the September I-Knit event with Alice St*rmore? What does Jean think?

Living in hope

At last: a finished item. A cardigan knit to Sirdar 9074 for myself.
In fact, the light does the colour no favours, as the yarn, bought fronm the Trefiw Woollen Mills in Snowdonia, is a lovely dark heathered purple, very rich at close quarters.

I bought 14 balls and tried a couple of patterns without feeling convinced. This one is very simple but the front borders are picked up and knit from tiny side fronts. Then it's just feather and fan, four inches deep. I could see a number of ways in which this might fail dismally.

What's more, a week or two ago I popped into Oxfam and spotted a turquoise rendering of this pattern, freshly knit and obviously sent in depair to the charity shop. Something about the setting in of the sleeves, it might have been. So I wasn't totally convinced that this would fit, especially as I seem to have at least five balls left over - how can that be?
In fact it fits neatly and looks great, the scalloped edge of the feather and fan forming a pleasant edge to edge effect.
Today, the first mowing of the lawn as Spring moves ahead. In the garden, pear blossom just bursting through, and grape hyacinths in full bloom.

On the allotment, we have put in parsnip, beet, carrots, leek and lettuces, and planted the first row of early potatoes. Onions and garlic are already established. It is only a week since we ate the last of the parsnips, the flesh sweetened by the frosts. Parsnips seem much more resistant to pests than carrots which everything else eats before we get them.

Seed Beds

Can it be so long since I posted? A lowering chest infection, allied to a visit from friends requiring a major house-clean and followed by the long awaited Ofsted inspection - all these have prolonged the hiatus.

First up, the Noro scarf. This was interesting to knit, though how people knit three in a row, I don't know. There were several knots, involving quite sudden colour shifts. And it was bought at full price, which isn't my usual practice.


However, it does turn heads and surprise people, because they may be everywhere in blogland, but not in Braintree.

The colour shifts are quite lovely, and I was surprised by how one colourway did not repeat the same colour sequence in the second skein, but introduced new mixes.

The most downbeat response I had was from a fellow knitter who told me that her mother used to knit scarves like it from her scrapbag. I don't think she can have looked properly.




Next, I found myself knitting a tea-cosy, almost an exact replica of one in our kitchen drawer knit by my late mother-in -law many years ago, and which we never use. This one was requested by one of my team, a young man who described his ideal Saturdays as lingering over the papers with a pot of tea. I was pleased to be able to oblige.

Quite a cheerful effect, and knit from leftover yarn, so costing nothing.

In between, a dark green ribbed scarf for another colleague, but no picture to go with it. With double knitting used double this was a quick and very effective knit.

So then, the allotment. Three weeks it has been fine enough to dig and we have made good progress, even though we have to ease ourselves back in to this level of physical activity, after the winter.

My husband, planting up the onion bed.

Images of the allotment tend to focus on its scruffy side, but to be up there as a fine March breeze blows across to dry the soil, and to be pottering about from job to job in the Spring sunshine - most of all, to be ready to go home, tired but content: these are some of the pleasures of life - or,at least, of middle age.

Little fingers

Fingerless gloves in pink for Katie, aged six. An acrylic/polyester mix called Stretch, and a pig to knit with.

Just what the Christmas holidays need to give a sense of purpose: focused knitting to clear requirements - pink, purple, green - without that doubt which surrounds knitting for actual gifts. As someone said, simultaneously too much and not enough.



In purple, for Holly, aged eight. This time a variegated wool yarn with more cling, so a more forgiving knit.
Finally,


in dark green for William, aged five.

The delight with which these were greeted made the separate picking up and knitting of those forty little fingers and thumbs worthwhile - forty, as Amy already had hers.

On a different tack, I called at Indigo, in Penrith, on the way to our cottage. A moment of pure indulgence in treating myself to four balls of Noro Silk Garden to knit the inevitable ribbed scarf. Not sure that it really holds the attention to the extent that I would find it worthwhile knitting another, but I had to have it after seeing the photo of Franklin outside the Ritz wearing one.

New Year's resolution: At this point, after two weeks of rest and recuperation, making the effort to be more sociable seems like a realistic plan. After two weeks of school, doubtless previous reclusive habits will prove irresistible. The world is too much with us, late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers...

Visible and Invisible knitting

Comes the Christmas hols at last: long hours snugged down with little to do - ideal knitting time. So this is the time that the itchy rash on my left hand kicks in severely enough to keep me awake at night. I consider a work glove for my left hand only. I'm convinced it is shampoo which is the cause as it's only my left hand. Washing in rubber gloves is very odd.
Just an odd suspicion that it could be fibre related, although why just the one hand is the mystery.

My last pair of Newfoundland Mittens, in Jamieson and Smith scraps of Autumnal colours. Running out of one dark earth colour, I combine two strands of a brown and a deep mauve. I am amazed to see that it blends in right away. All these pairs have now been gifted.


Next up was the invisible knitting: black cashmere and merino linings for my red Komi mittens. A thin wind blew straight through these on the Lorton walk last year, so the lining is essential. Let's hope the weather allows for airy but not damp walking.



Then, a project I have been putting off: Fingerless gloves for a 10 year old. Short fingered gloves actually, and very fiddly to make. What's more to the point, no child's hand to check out the fit. But, with the body in two by two rib, these are very forgiving, and seem to have passed the cool test. Bit too cool for me in mid-winter. Now I only need to knit a pair for the 8 year old, the 6 year old and the 5 year old.

Among my souvenirs

What would the collective noun be for mittens? A clutch? A handful? These are Newfoundland Mittens,the beauty of which is that they are knit in one colour at a time, the slip stitches suggesting otherwise. And they use hardly any of each yarn, so the remnants from sock knitting or that odd skein bought some time ago, turn out to be perfectly adequate. Add to this a quick turnaround, with a finished item always in view and they form the ideal winter project.

Summer, however, usually finds me searching for that elusive textile treasure. Having once picked up a stunning white quilt in France for under twenty pounds, I remain convinced that neglected gems are still out there and find myself incapable of passing a Brocante without checking it out. The quilt, it turned out, was English, seventeenth century, and not unlike one in the Burrell collection.




Here, we have a sampler, found in the scruffiest of village vide-greniers in the Auvergne. It was filthy, stained, crumpled. Gradually, I noticed that the same three letters are repeated in different styles. Who was this girl, and why did she stop where she did, when the letters are so very ambitious and the stitching so very regular? After a little pre-testing of a thread end, I boiled it in Persil, not without trepidation, and it was transformed.

Odds and Ends

That's an awful lot of pumpkin. My first soups, pepped up with curry spices, didn't get over the essential wateriness of the vegetable, its tendency to puree without being blended. It need something very pungent to permeate its blandness. A small amount of bacon scraps, fried to release the fat and brine, had just that smoky saltiness it needed. That, and the roasting of the cubed pumpkin to dry it out a little. A bowl of this was very welcome on a wet November evening.

Then, what about pumpkin pie? Trawling the Net for a recipe proved how many variations there might be on this theme. My local shop was out of some key ingredients, such as maple syrup, and pastry is something I've never mastered. Instead, I believe I have invented a completely new dessert here. Most of a pack of Hobnobs with about two ounces of butter to make a crust. Two eggs beaten with milk, brown sugar and cinnamon to bind it all and roasted pumpkin as the filling. Baked for forty-five minutes, by which time the biscuit of the crust has assimilated with the egg mixture to form a kind of parkin around the pumpkin pieces. I could see us having this again, or maybe something else completely unexpected, dependent on the store cupboard.