Spring flowers...

Apologies to those of you still waiting for the thaw.  After that false Spring at the end of February we have had high winds and rain, hail and sleet.  But here we are at the end of March and everything is getting back on track.

Snowflowers still going strong alongside self-seeded primroses.

 Grape hyacinths - that lovely strong blue.

And daffodils under the window of Paycocke's House in the early evening sunlight, the incised carving showing to perfection.

Cables

Remember this?  This is a sample panel knitted from a mystery chart posted on a Facebook group I belong to.  The sweater it relates to uses two of these panels side by side up the front to create a very modern take on the cabled sweater - asymmetric and unusual.

I prefer a balanced, symmetrical approach, but I also like a challenge.  Someone at the Spinners and Weavers group asked me if I chose my knitting patterns solely on the basis of the level of difficulty.  Perhaps I do, but this would not qualify - it's a very straightforward chart with only one cable crossing at a time.

So then - how to make it into a jumper since there was no pattern as such?  I had decided on a DK weight yarn and went out to buy a denimy blue.  I bought 700 gms of an unusual colour somewhere between a mustard and an acid green.  It actually took about 425 gms, but better safe than sorry.

I knitted a little swatch - cast on thirty stitches and knitted about ten rows.  Then I checked how many stitches per inch I was getting.  Answer 7.  So I just multiplied half my hip measurement by 7 and that gave a notion of how many to cast on.  I used a twisted rib.  The panel was 41 stitches wide so two plus a one stitch divider gives 83.

We scanned in the original chart and found a way to flip it so that the cables could be mirrored rather than placed side by side.  This was a good decision, since it added the symmetry I was looking for.

The armhole decreases followed a standard shape for a set-in sleeve and then I had to decide where to scoop the neckline.  This took two tries since at first it was too high when I offered it up. Alongside the front I began the plain back in reverse stocking stitch and finished that at roughly the same time so I could tack the pieces together to test the fit.

So then the sleeves.  Measuring my biceps gave me the target width for the top of the sleeve, multiplied by 7 which was the stitches per inch.  Measuring my wrist gave the starting point for the cast on.  It happened that the row gauge was also 7 so I knew if the sleeve seam had to measure 17 inches how many rows I had in which to increase from the cast-on stitches to the top of the sleeve measurement, so that gave the rate of increase.

I did try picking up the sleeves and knitting top-down but the pick up looked ugly in the reverse stocking stitch  so I went with separate sleeves.  I knit them both at the same time flat on straight needles.  I used the instructions for the sleeve-head of Geiger as it is a complex shape, but once I had sewed them in place it was clear that they were too deep so I took them back and shortened the sleeve-head by doing the same number of decreases but in fewer rows.  They fit much better now and should settle in wear.

I decided to use an applied I-cord to finish the neckline - simple and quick.

All this is why knitting is not what you might call a mindless activity.

Malmesbury

To Malmesbury, an ancient town along the M4, once  the site of an abbey.  The town stands on a hill between two rivers so it was an obvious choice as a settlement.

This is what remains of the abbey church.  In about 1500 the spire, taller than Winchester's, collapsed.  Then the dissolution of the monasteries saw the abbey buildings sold off and bought by one William Stumpe, an immensely rich clothier.  He gave the nave of the church to the parish as a parish church, meanwhile building himself a rather nice mansion using the abbot's house as its base and robbing out stone from the church itself and causing the tower to collapse.

It's still an astonishing building.

The porch, with its romanesque arches, is particularly fine.

Once there would have been a procession of pilgrims coming to pray.  This strange little cabin was apparently an early surveillance system manned by the monks.

So this is what we had come to see: a memorial plaque to the lady we have been researching this winter.  She died in 1631 and one of her daughters put up this plaque to her memory.  She was a grand daughter of Thomas Paycocke, the clothier responsible for the building of Paycocke's House where we volunteer.  The man she married - or one of them - was the second son of William Stumpe, and they lived in the Abbey House.

Malmesbury was a centre of conflict during the Civil War, but the ancient town walls are still clearly evident.

It is a really interesting place to look round and well worth a detour.

 

February

February, and one of the warmest on record.  We continued work on our allotment, planting up the whole onion bed.  Usually, February brings the rain and in Essex that means that all the field paths are turned into quagmires.  But not this year. No good will come of it, as someone said.

We enjoy walking along a secluded ancient lane - Pantlings Lane - several miles from our village.  Oddly the village church is clearly visible in the distance, even though it is at the other side of the village.  There is a small rise leading up through the churchyard but it certainly does not stand on an obvious hill.

So far, so bucolic -   but look the other way, over the hedge and there is this enormous gravel workings excavating the gravels laid down by the River Blackwater.

After all that charity knitting, something new.  Someone posted a link to a site in Russian which included the chart for an unusual cable design.  Now, I'm not really a fan of asymmetry, but this one has some appealing features.  On the original, the cable panel was repeated twice across the width just placing the panels side by side.  I decided to mirror-image the panels which introduces some symmetry.  As people used to say: you won't see yourself coming and going in this.