Denim Cables

At last, a finished object!

Some time ago I trawled through Ravelry looking for complex cable projects.  There was an unusual jumper someone had knitted using a photo of a commercially produced jumper as the source, but without a pattern.  She posted the source photo.

Enlarging it revealed the label: Derek Lam.  This is an American designer of seriously cool and expensive items and this had been in his 2012 collection.

I can do this, I thought.  I bought the yarn - Stylecraft Bellissima because I liked the colour and the slight hint of variation in it, in a denimy sort of way..

Enlarging the photo meant that I could virtually count the rows, certainly enough to start off.  I knitted the back and sleeves alongside so as to have some simpler knitting to fill in.

As the front progressed it became harder to follow exactly what was going on.  How many rows to work between each cable crossing was the big question.  Just after the armholes, I stalled.  Eventually, I decided that it did not matter exactly how the cables were placed and I just finished it off.  It was a relief, though, to reach those plaited cables at the top and to be able to consult Barbara Walker for the pattern for those.

So then, the finishing.  Thankfully, the set-in sleeves went in without a hitch.  But when I tried it on it was obvious that the back neck was too low.  Nothing daunted, I picked up the stitches along the back neck and worked short rows to fill the gap with ribbing before finishing the whole neck with I-cord.  This is probably the thing I feel most pleased about as it does look very neat, and exactly like the sort of detail a designer would have planned.

Peasant food

With our allotment in full production we are often eating peasant food these days.  On Thursday we had Borscht for lunch, followed by our own tomatoes.  For supper, we had omelette with our own potatoes and onions, accompanied by the first of the new sweetcorn - delicious!  Then a dessert of blackberry and apple foraged from the hedge.  All very healthy.

Friday, however, saw us at Le Maison Talbooth, a swanky restaurant just outside Dedham, to celebrate my husband's birthday.

It is right on the riverbank affording a tranquil view of the river bend.

My husband had a starter of cod followed by duck.

Whereas I chose the roast guinea fowl.  It was tender and delicious.

Desserts were set out to be as pretty as a picture.  This is some serious chocolate.

We ordered coffee.  Even this came with a piece of theatre:  a waitress arrived with a shiny black casket.  Inside a choice of chocolates to accompany the coffee.

About as far from peasant food as it is possible to get.

In summertime, on Bredon....

A. E. Housman has a lot to answer for...  Inspired by his poem, I booked three nights in a holiday cottage at Cow Honeybourne in the Cotswolds, thinking that we could walk on Bredon Hill and "see the coloured counties" below us, as described in the poem, after visiting my husband's stepmother in her care home.

Alas, this is as close as we got to the famous hill, although we did some walking in the modern Cotswold countryside.

We began by taking our elderly relative out to tea at a garden centre close to her care home. All was going well until we pulled out of the car-park and the car simply ground to a halt.  There we were on a very busy road, traffic whizzing past, and with a 92 year old lady in the car who cannot walk without a walking frame.  After several phone calls, the care home sent out a rescue vehicle and the AA was on its way.  Several hours later, we were in a taxi to our rented cottage and my car was being towed all the way back to Essex, a journey which had taken us four and a half hours.

So then things looked up.  We were in a converted barn, very modern and comfortable.  But more than this, and purely fortuitously, there was a railway station not ten minutes walk from the cottage.

Next day, we took the train to Evesham.  At one time Evesham was a centre for fruit-growing and asparagus - and still is.  It once had a very powerful abbey, and there are still interesting buildings to be seen there. This is the Almonry Museum which houses a very extensive collection of the specialised tools of many trades.

Curiously there are two churches within a few yards of each other and with a stupendous bell tower between.  These once served separate parishes, but now one is redundant.

Inside one of them this item, dedicated to a river god.

And, my goodness, did it rain.  We were completely soaked by the time we got back on the Great Western Railway train back to Honeybourne.

The National Trust manages many properties, and in the next village, Bretforton, there is a pub owned by the Trust.  We set off to walk across the fields to have lunch there.

Acres of strawberry fields and liquid mud did not make for pleasant walking, but the pub lived up to expectations.  We enjoyed a leisurely lunch and took a taxi back to our cottage.