Familiar paths

To Cumbria, for Easter and a family gathering to celebrate a group of birthdays - or, as my husband said, anyone who has had a birthday this year.  I think we felt that, after the gathering for my mother's funeral in September last year, it would be good to meet for a happier reason.
This image of Sale Fell shows the gorse blazing away.  The weather was not very kind to us, but it held off admirably as we walked one of our favourite routes.

Another day saw us on the Lorton walk, where we were pleased to see the little red squirrel still in residence.  He must think that this is his own pantry.  Certainly he does not trouble himself to move for the odd walker going past.

Around Loweswater and to the Kirkstile Inn for lunch, we were struck by this dramatic scene.  In fact we missed the snowfalls as we moved up the country, but they added an edge to the higher ridges, as here.

And the Solway coast, just north of Allonby.  One of the great empty places; miles of beach with no one else in sight.  We took our lunch, looked for sea-glass, and watched flocks of oyster catchers.  On our last evening, it had warmed up enough for an evening picnic, watching the light change over the Scotch Hills. 

Small Things

Knitting small items has its own satisfactions: easily portable, quick to complete, small design challenges to manage.

These little gloves have been made to match the scarf.   Twisted rib gives a nice neat effect.  I knit these flat, on two needles, adapting a couple of patterns. Somehow I always need the support of a pattern for the technical aspects, such as rate of increase for the thumb gusset, and how to construct the fingers on two needles.  But it is very satisfying to be able to try on the item to get a good fit.

Last Friday, I went up to Oxford on the train for a reunion with a college friend who married a Canadian.

I have not seen her these thirty years, but she was the same in all essentials.  All those years ago, she and I made the costumes for a production of "Royal Hunt of the Sun" in New College.  I recall the versatility of lining fabric; shredded, it did look like feathers when attached  to a cloak, or we thought it did in our innocence.

On the way, I paid what might be a last visit to Annabelinda, which is due to close.  The lovely dresses in there are a delight, although their prices make my eyes water.  I decided I could afford a card of their buttons, covered in antique Chinese braid.  I can see these on a plain brown jacket.

  Covering buttons is an easy and satisfying task.  The second picture shows a button using silk tie fabric from the local silk mill.  I could imagine these becoming addictive.

Design Inspirations

Recently, I met up with a group of my old college friends.  A few hours spent catching up, eating, drinking...and admiring the lovely merino scarf worn by one of them.  Very subtle discreet patterns in a lovely yarn...  so that when I was looking for a small, portable project to knit on the train as we went into London last week this idea popped into my head.

This is a 4-ply yarn, so it is giving me very good stitch definition on these little patterns from Barbara Walker's "Treasury".  In fact these are such simple patterns that I have taken to inventing my own later in the strip.    I've not finished one 100 gm ball yet, so the yardage is excellent.  Very satisfying as a piece of knitting too.

We went to London to see the Grayson Perry exhibition at the British Museum, which is just finishing.  Certainly an interesting idea to curate artefacts from the collections alongside his own work, although the items chosen tend to be folk art.  More problematic, for me, was the assertion from the outset of the role played by his childhood teddy, Alan Measles.  I think I prefer my art more inscrutable than that.  I'd at least have liked to be able to work out that the bear was a recurring theme for myself.

And here we have my husband's latest production: a shoe-rack for our hall.  Nothing inscrutable about this; it does what it says on the tin.  Yet it has a pleasing honesty and integrity about it, in the grain and texture of its material.

Golden Years

Finished objects have been noticable by their absence here in recent months.  This is because I have been working on a secret project for a special birthday present.  You may recall the strip of Celtic knotwork from Alice Starmore's St Brigid, which appeared some time ago here. 

The first strip was the deep cream of  oiled wool, and fortunately a skein of Blue-faced Leicester, which I had in store, was a similar cream, although a lighter weight.  For the contrasting colour, I reclaimed the wool from the giant Starmore Aran that I had made for my husband, but which had never been worn.

Many of the cables are taken from "The New Knitting Stitch Library" by Lesley Stansfield. One is the central motif of an Aran jumper pattern by, I think, Hayfield.   I have tried to give some continuity to the design by including a ladder pattern on each taupe strip.

Since the whole item is intended to celebrate a significant birthday for my younger sister, I added the year in i-cord.  I was ten, and had always considered myself as the little one in the family, when my sister was born.  Fortunately, I have enjoyed her company from the first moment she came home from the hospital - how can that possibly be so long ago?

Remarkably difficult to get a full shot of this throw, and not to lose the definition on the patterns. 

Bright sunlight the other day cast bars across it, but gives a better impression of the liveliness of the whole.  I hope it gives my sister as much pleasure as it gives me.

Snow fields

Last weekend we went to the Cotswolds on our regular visit to my husband's step-mother.  All down the M11 the information boards warned us of severe weather to come. We recalled the time we drove across the A66 just before the closing of the snow gates.  I always felt that the words would not be out of place in a work of magic realism.

 It was bitterly cold in Stratford - -8 outside, we were told.  We stocked up with provisions -  I even invested in two travel rugs -  then ate the earliest possible lunch before setting out on the return journey.  Not a flake of snow fell on us before we reached home, fortunately; but, by morning, Essex was transformed.    This is a view across the fields to the village, some days later.

And here's my current project.  I would like to say I am making progress, but this would not be true.  The reason for being stuck lies in a shift of method in pattern-writing.  Some years ago, I knitted a lovely blue cabled jumper for my husband from this Hayfield pamphlet.

  It came out really well, so that when he wore it on our visit to the Aran Islands themselves, it drew comments.

However, in the intervening years, I have got used to reading charts of cabled patterns, so that returning to this one, where the picture is on one page and the instructions on two different pages, written out as panel patterns line by line, I find myself getting lost very easily.  Can this be another example of the increasingly visual culture in which we live?

I also feel this may be more in the modern idiom with the neckline adapted to make it a gilet, instead of a Vee-neck waistcoat.  We'll see.

Coronation

This sampler from my little collection commemorates the coronation.  Like many others, my parents arranged to visit a cousin who had just invested in a television for the occasion.  We lived up on the edge of Cold Fell.  Electricity was still some few years away from us, so we had a wireless, but no tv until I was ten.  Last week we replaced our analogue tv with a digital model.  Not only is this slim and a fraction of the weight, but it allows us to do amazing things such as linking the netbook to the monitor so we can see images on the big screen, or watch programmes we have missed through i-player or 4od.  We are enjoying exploring the possibilities.

More detail on the drunk driver story: the self-employed painter and decorator who demolished our front wall had been paid for a big job that morning - one thousand pounds in cash.  When arrested he had two pound coins on him.  Apparently, he had already paid off a couple of people whose cars he had clipped before exiting the pub car-park.  Of course, he was driving with no insurance, and in fact had a court case pending for a similar offence, although that one also involved an assault.   When it came to trial he was sent down for three months.

We were initially very alarmed  when the crash happened, as it looked as though we were under attack, and we had been woken from sleep.  However, when it became clear what was happening, the whole thing took on a different character.  The drunk himself was sitting in his white van which was at right angles across the street.  With the other car still attached to the front.  He was trying to reverse so as to drive away.  The clockmaker who lives along the street from us managed to reason with him to hand over his keys and we all then waited for the police to arrive.

 My husband took some amazing photographs which were published in the local paper along with the story.  In order to walk down the street, it was necessary to climb through the white van, as the road was completely blocked.  We spent a long weary night working with the county surveyor, the electricity board and emergency builders to ensure that the house was safe to go back into and secure.  We were a little astonished to be asked to give an assurance to the listed buildings person that we would not convert the hall into a garage now that we had seen that a car would fit into it.

On a happier note, I received this cute card made for me by Pat in Alberta.  Pat and I are about the same age, so her stories about the music of her younger days would be the same as mine.  But in almost every other respect we seem to be complete opposites: Pat has seven children and a host of grandchildren who are clearly the love of her life.

I have made this card for Pat in return.  I was impressed some years ago by the work of Margaret Talbot - silk embroideries rich in detail, using the inspiration of the flushwork patterns on East Anglian churches.  These are patterns made by alternating flint with masonry and they are usually religious or heraldic symbols.  Something about the reverse of this piece of silk, woven for the tie industry, suggested heraldic shields.  My partner's family initial is M, so I used a piece of gold thread for that.  Beneath is the card from my village, showing the National Trust merchant's house.

Samplers

Recently, one of my very small collection of samplers was mentioned on a blog called Britsamplers, which seems to seek out all the various renderings for a specific occasion.    That was a sampler commemorating the birth of Princess Anne, but this is for a quite different event: the abdication.

I love the homeliness of this piece.  Imagine having worked up the sampler for the Coronation, no doubt from a pattern offered in a magazine....  all the detail of armed forces uniforms and the various royal palaces.  All the flags of the Dominions - all that detail.  Even applying the stamp for the new king...  You have just got it all done when the announcement comes: a Nation's Disappointment, indeed.

Little wonder that the maker added this text along the sides.

Top half in detail:

and lower half

Over Christmas I unearthed this little sampler project.  The notion originally was to use the miniature blocks to make a frame for a mirror for our hall.  I remember choosing a sampler pack of silk in Sweet Pea colours from a trader called The Silk Route at a textiles fair.  The colours would have just fitted in nicely with the deep burgundy flowers of the hall wall-paper.

 I can date the abandonment of the project precisely to the moment  when the wallpaper, indeed the wall itself, ceased to exist.  It was past midnight when we were woken by an enormous crash from downstairs.  In our hall was the front half of a car - how could this be?  And more than that ... it was moving back and forwards - but with no driver in it.  The stuff of nightmares?  It was certainly surreal.

A self-employed painter and decorator had been paid in cash first thing that morning and had spent the day drinking, to the point where he was beyond drunk. He got in his white van, clipping a number of vehicles as he left the car-park, and arrived in our street unable to notice the line of parked cars.  He hit the first one so hard that it shunted two others along before pivoting through our front wall, still attached to the front of his van.  Then he tried to reverse out so as to drive away, hitting the shop opposite several times in the process.

Amazingly, although the damage to the cars in the street ran to thousands, no one was injured, not even the drunk.  In our house the front wall was gone but ours is a very old house and the main timbers are  some feet back from the frontage.  We park down the street, so our cars were safe.

 The only thing smashed was a large brown pottery jar, which at first seemed to have vanished.  When we located all the shards my husband was able to reassemble the whole thing, so that no one would know it had happened - unless they looked closely.

Now, I am thinking that the silk blocks might be assembled into a cushion cover, with a little sashing.

Stately homes

To Crewe Hall, Cheshire, for an overnight stay, courtesy of my elder sister and her family.  Not that they live in this extraordinary mid-Victorian pile, of course; we were there for bed and breakfast on our way north to Cumbria.

This is an ornate interior, with every surface heavily encrusted with pattern and texture - a wonderful backdrop for weddings and big events.

A library, a Long Gallery, and its own chapel,  not to mention an extensive conference centre built in the stable quarter.

Before we left home, a surprise.  My younger sister is given to sending unusual vouchers as gifts, so I thought to return the compliment, ordering a selection of sausages and ham from a company called Dukeshill, to be delivered to her address on Monday, 19th December.  All morning I imagined her surprise on receiving the parcel.  Would she be able to fit it all into her freezer?  Would that much sausage be a welcome addition to their diet?

Just after lunch there was knock on our door: a delivery man with a familiar looking box.  Somehow the parcel had come to us, not to my sister, who lives in another part of the country.  In sorting out this problem, the company very generously sent another box to my sister, leaving us to wonder whether we have room in our freezer for all that sausage.  Not often that you get to give your sausage and eat it. 

In Cumbria, a combination of drizzle and high winds.  We did some of our regular walks under irregular conditions.  Sale Fell, above Bassenthwaite, in very high winds.  We thought it best to walk round the end of the fell and through the woodland, rather than going to the summit of even this modest fell.

Here, my husband at the site of the old Wythop church, a sheltered spot where we often eat our sandwiches.

 

And, finally another home - this time a deserted farmhouse, just beginning to lose its windows.  We often speculate as to which of a combination of factors - access roads, mains services, ownership - proved crucial to its abandonment.

Ramblings

On Sunday, we gave the allotment a miss, and set off around a network of lanes just north of here.  It was sufficiently frosty to harden up the inevitable mud, at least on the way out.

There was still plenty of colour  - here, an oak clinging on to its Autumn foliage.

 And here, sloes, glowing surprisingly bright blue in a hedge.

Cascades of red berries - can they be honeysuckle?  The red here may be a warning of poisonous intent as these are remarkably intact.

 The gnarled bark of an ancient tree

And an even more fascinating stump, full of craters and caverns.

The most amazing sights have no pictures.  Not far out, on a roadside property, we saw a male peacock in full display mode, facing out a guinea fowl which looked singularly unimpressed. 

A blur of bird rose in front of my husband.  Just then we met a keen photographer equipped with tripod who commented that we had "put up a woodcock."  Not that we would have known.

Half way round our planned circuit it came on to snow heavily.  We were glad of all our hats, hoods and scarves which had seemed excessive as we set off.

Penny pinching

This week, a consultation with a financial advisor - a process I hate.  He needs a clear idea of my regular expenditure in order to advise me.  We run through what I spend on bills and petrol.  He comes to "entertainment".  I have nothing to say.  How to explain to someone the pleasure to be had from popping across to the Coop and finding the week's meat at half-price, or snagging a bargain in a charity shop?

I went off shopping on Tuesday, thinking vaguely that a brown coat would be nice, brown with a fur collar like the one I had ten years ago.  It would go well with my Autumn Leaves mittens.  But shops almost never have the thing you are actually looking for, especially if the colour or style is not of the moment.  But there, in a charity shop, was the exact coat I was thinking of.  It was brand new, but had no sign of a label that I could see.  It was lined with brown fur fabric and, curiously, had pockets on the inside too.  But it was said to be a much smaller size than I need.  However, it fitted like a glove.

Further inspection at home revealed that the label was in the pocket, because it was made to be reversible, so that the brown fur could be worn on the outside. Perhaps this is to allow for cold or rainy days. It explains the second set of pockets, too.  All this for ten pounds!

At the top, my most recent bauble, this time fitted over a styrofoam ball, which gives a better shape. This is destined for the Secret Santa at my local Guild, where I suspect there will be more than a few interpretations of this idea.