Reupholstery

Remember this?  Last summer we bought  two chairs at a local auction.  They are Ercol chairs in a style we now know to call "Mid-Century".

The frames were sound, but the covers had seen better days.  New cushions from the company itself are available - for over five hundred pounds per chair.

We decided to continue the duck-egg theme since these are for the renovated front room in our Cumbrian cottage.  I found the fabric on an e-bay shop site  - it's intended to look like wool tweed but should withstand some wear.

First, I removed the old covers and unpicked them to use as pattern pieces.  I saved the zips to use again.  I cut out the pieces.

Assembling the seat cushions was a simple matter: insert zip, assemble complete side panel strip, stitch panel to top and bottom in turn.  Prise open zip and turn through.

The process for the back cushion was more complex, as the piece for the back and the piece for the front were completely different shapes yet had to be sewn together.  This is to accommodate the 3-D shape of the back cushion.

It seemed like an impossible task - and yet, it worked.  I pinned  and tacked the pieces to be sure that they would fit.

The final manoeuvre was to stitch the small curved base in place between the front and the back.  Fortunately, this went without a hitch.

So this is what they look like now:

You'll notice that the smaller chair has a buttoned back, as in the originals.  It took some pondering and some useful you-tube videos before we worked out how this was done, but we managed it this morning.  It does distort the check pattern, so the other chair may remain as it is.  We'll see.

Climate change

On Friday last week we had lovely weather: blue sky, sunny, so warm that we ate our salad lunch out on the patio.  So warm, I was thinking of suncream.

We went up to Marks Hall, knowing that the weekend would be spent on duty at Paycocke's House.

We saw lots of primroses,

daffodils

and ducks engaging in curious mating rituals, bobbing heads in unison under the water.  Spring was here at last.

I say "was" because on Saturday morning we woke to snow. The temperature had fallen by ten to fifteen degrees overnight.  In the house, the chill was intense.  Now we know why they needed all those layers of woollen clothing.

When icicles hang by the wall....

As the thaw started so we saw some spectacular icicles on our kitchen roof.  It's all gone now of course, but on exposed country lanes the snow is still banked up at the edges where it had formed drifts.  Surprising how quickly the whole country can be shut down like this.

While the snow coverage was at its height we actually had a pair of fieldfares in the garden.  These are ground feeders and they floundered about in the snow.  This is a song thrush: a pair of these appeared for the first time in years.  We saw evidence that they had winkled out some snails.  Here, he - or she - is just sampling some of my home-baked bread.

This is the Odds and Ends hat, this week's effort, with bought faux fur pom-pom.  

And, finally, the collection of hats made from Milarrochy Tweed.

Tweedy

This week's hat: Tweedy.  The yarn is called Milarrochy Tweed and this has a tweedy look to it.  I have alternated panels of broken rib with panels of dogtooth check.  Then the crown is just little squares and rapid decreases.  This one fits better than the other two and is very cosy as the ribbing makes for a thicker fabric.

In my many years as an English teacher I must have read the play "The Thwarting of Baron Bolligrew" many times.  In it a diverse group of characters set out to paint a basket of eggs for the market to a time deadline.  The actual egg-painter produces his usual quota of professional eggs, the quixotic Mike Magpie produces a few works of great imagination and the hero, Sir Oblong Fitz Oblong, knocks out a large quantity of rather ordinary eggs.  

Looking at the entries for the hat competition one can see all these qualities on display.  There are certainly some very polished efforts and one or two quirky works of genius.  Mine are at the Oblong end of the spectrum. I realise that, although I don't often knit to a pattern these days, what I habitually do is bodge together bits from a range of sources.  This is fine when it's an item for one's own use but can hardly be done for a competition.

And yet...  I do wonder what kind of copyright applies to collections of patterns such as Barbara Walker's first book.  Or what about Co Spinhoven's charts for Celtic patterns?  If you corner the market in charting out these designs, can no one else use them in a design?

While thinking up ideas for these hats, I wondered about knitting in some text and came up with some catchphrases - "Walkies" was a case in point.  Looking on Ravelry, I find that someone has already designed items under that name.  Do they then have copyright on it?

It has to be said that there are thousands of hat patterns out there and the chances of being totally original without being plain outlandish seem pretty remote.