Memories and Adventures in York

On Monday, we went to York for the day. I first went to York when I was about 12 on my first visit to the UK, and hadn't been back since. G had never been. I have lots of half-remembered memories about that trip, and it was interesting to see what came back to me. In York we met my mom, who is currently on tour in the UK, and she was able to fill in some of the memory gaps and details from that first trip as well.



Maybe it's the North American in me, but I love cities with medieval streets. There's nothing quite like them back home, where pretty much the oldest permanent structures date from the 1700s. It may be cheaper and more efficient to have straight roads and concrete, but it certainly isn't as charming.





We paid a visit to York Minster and climbed all the way up the tower, as has become our habit when traveling. On that first trip to the UK, I remember going to the top of several cathedrals, but not in York. So there's a new memory added. I hope I never get tired of climbing to the top of things and looking down at the tiny world below.



I remember walking on the city walls on my first visit - this time, as we walked on the walls, I imagined what it would be like to have such a monument in my backyard.

Like so many old European cities, York is a fabulous place to explore on foot, and that is my favourite kind of exploring. The old part of the city is compact enough that it is easy to get around, and it's not overwhelming for just a day trip. Of course, there's more to any place than what the tourists tend to focus on, and I certainly wouldn't mind spending more time there.

A crafter's visit to York would not be complete without a stop at Duttons for Buttons, but that adventure is for another post!

WIP: wee flags

The stranded colourwork portion of my Sweet Bunting cardigan is complete. Next up - i-cords.



I did the colourwork back and forth, as written. Previously, I've only done stranded colourwork in the round, so this was something new. And you know, it wasn't as horrifically terrible as I imagined it would be!

I've never steeked anything either, and I thought that for 8 rows of colour pattern, I could probably stand doing it back and forth instead of rewriting the pattern to involve cutting and slicing. Rowan Pure Wool DK seems like it would be a terrible yarn for steeking in any case - it's pretty smooth and not at all sticky. Have any of you steeked with it? How did it go?



The main problem I had doing colourwork on the purl side was that apparently I can't purl in "English" style for the life of me. (This is funny because I know I've heard some English-style knitters say that they can't learn how to purl continentally. To each their own...) I'm a continental knitter (a picker) normally, and for colourwork I hold one colour in each hand. My right hand knits English (throws), and my left hand knits continental. On the purl side I ended up holding both colours in my left hand so I could "pick" both of them. This probably could have done all sorts of terrible things to my tension, but it looks okay, so I'm not going to worry about it.

More WIPs over at Tami's Amis

Happy bug earrings

Trawling the internet one fine day, I found some stud earrings with buttons on them. I was seized with earring-love. I thought, I can make something like these!

Button-shopping followed, but without a clear idea of what I wanted, I ended up walking away with some adorable lady bug buttons, rather than the standard round, two or four hole kind I initially considered. I soon acquired some earring posts, and I was on my way.

A few hours later, I had these:



Because I used buttons that have a loop at the back, rather than a flat surface with holes, I engaged in some cutting and slicing. The red and black parts are separate pieces of plastic that can be taken apart and snapped back together. The loop in the back was part of the red piece, and it held the two parts together snuggly. Once I had removed the plastic loop with some wire cutters, the two pieces slipped apart easier, so I glued them together with superglue. Then I glued the whole lot to a gold-filled earring post. Here I balked slightly while trying not to glue myself / any of the bits to anything, and ended up enlisting the help of DH who is a superglue pro. I've mentioned before that we're both makers, and in this case I'm proud to say he had a hand in my excellent earrings!

Tada!



They are a bit larger than I generally go for in earrings with posts, but I do love them. Next time I try this with a button this size, I may get posts with a larger platform. I'm not convinced there is enough contact between the two surfaces, and I keep expecting the lady bugs to snap off.

I still want something like those other button studs, though. Good thing I have loads of earring posts left, and plenty of button-finding opportunities ahead.

Cuppa yarn

I like tea. Between the two of us, we drink a substantial amount of it - since living here I have definitely acquired a tea-drinking habit. Can you blame me when it is July and today the sun made its first appearance in weeks - for about 30 seconds - before going away again. Tea drinking is essentially a comfortable/comforting activity.

I started saving used tea bags in the freezer for the purposes of dyeing yarn a while back, and then forgot about it. The yogurt containers full of dodgy-looking frozen teabags sat forlorn in the freezer for months taking up valuable space. When Pumpkin Spins started her series on dyeing with food safe dyes, I remembered all that saved tea, and had a dye evening.



It turned out rather nicely, if I do say so myself! This is 75% wool 25% nylon sock yarn that was originally a natural shade of white.

I followed tiina teaspoon's tutorial, sort of. I have no idea what weight of old tea I used to get this shade, but I had about 4 medium-sized yogurt containers full of the frozen bags. Several of the bags got punctured at some point in the process, so there was some loose tea floating around as well. Although I strained the dye bath before I put the yarn in, some of the loose tea was powdery enough to slip through the strainer, which meant it got caught in the yarn. I fear I'll never get it all out! Oh well.

One interesting observation was the tea's effect on the cotton string I used to tie up my skein. Since dyers also use tea to dye cotton, I figured it would dye as well. It barely picked up any colour, however. To be fair, I didn't wash the string beforehand, so maybe it was coated with something that repelled the dye. Or maybe cotton is just more difficult to dye.

Another thing I wasn't prepared for was how terrible it would smell while dyeing. When I have dyed yarn in the past using food colouring and the like, it hasn't smelled amazing, but for some reason the combination of wet wool and stale tea was incredibly gross. Still, I'd do it again. It was fun, and I'll never lack for used tea bags.

SWAP zomg

The weather here has been grim for the last little while. Rainy, or when it isn't raining it's foggy, or gray, and dark - even though we still have many hours of daylight. I try to stay cheerful in the face of awful weather, since there's not much else I can do about it, but I have to admit that it's starting to get to me.

A ray of cheerfulness and excitement permeated the grim, gray morning today, though, since it was opening-up day for the swap I recently participated in on Ravelry. The idea behind the swap was for everyone to send their parcels off on or around a certain day, and then we'd all open them on the same day. Unfortunately, one or two swappers still haven't received their parcels, but they were gracious enough to let the rest of us open up today anyway.


I've had this parcel taunting me for a few weeks, since my swap partner was super-speedy about sending it to me. To resist the temptation, I kept it hidden under piles of paperwork, but today it came out.


Then I opened it, greedily.


And took out all the goodies. Note the postcard that shows a KFC shaped like a chicken. Whahey!

Required in the swap were yarn, a pattern (gifted through Ravelry on the day), a postcard from your home town, and a local item. My swap partner Jen aka phantominblue, lives in Georgia (the US state, not the country), and filled the package full of lovely things with attention to local details.


First, some gorgeous Shibui sock. Despite the fact that it is so grim outside and there's no light, the colour turned out fairly close. It's full of beautiful greens. She also made some stitch-markers that match the yarn. I do love green. There's also a Gone With the Wind magnet - the author lived in Georgia, and it features prominently in the story. I'm ashamed to admit I've never read it, though I have seen the film.


Moving on to the consumable items, there's peach tea - because of Georgia's famous peaches, and some local honey. Mmmm honey. Georgia is also home to Coca-Cola, so Jen included some soft-drink-inspired candy in the form of 7-Up jelly beans. In her note, she mentioned that even though 7-Up isn't part of the coke brand, she thought the candies would probably taste better. Fair enough! I'm not a cola fan, in any case, so it works out.

To round it all off, she sent a ravelry gift of Martina Behm's Magrathea pattern. This is a beautiful scarf / shawlette, (with added bonus of being Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy themed) and I'm looking forward to casting on.

So, thank you Jen! This totally made my day, and I feel so spoiled.

WIP: bunting for baby D

I'm knitting a baby sweater. Hard to believe, but this is the first ever baby-sized garment I've made! It seems not too many people around me are having babies, which probably means they'll all start having them at once some time in the future. Anyway. It's for my little cousin/niece/small person(-once-removed-in-law?) who will be a year old this winter.



The pattern is Sweet Bunting by Laura Chau, which has an adorable colourwork bunting pattern around the yoke. Having done the body section up to the underarms, I'm working on the first sleeve. I haven't reached any of the exciting parts yet, but the stockinette is soothing, and I do enjoy the little seed-stitch cuffs.

Since I've never knit for babies before, I have a question for those with baby-dressing experience. The pattern as written has i-cord ties at the neck to hold the cardigan closed, but no other fastenings. Does this make any sense for a baby garment? In my brain it seems like it would come untied and slip off pretty easily, given baby squirmings, but I don't really know. I'm thinking of adding buttons, since it seems like they'd be more secure that just a bow, but that means adding button holes. What say you, experienced baby wranglers?

swag - fairly restrained edition

After teasing you about my Woolfest swag, I feel I should preface this post with a simple fact: despite the abundance of amazing things present, I didn't buy very much at Woolfest. Part of me isn't even sure why, though it probably comes from two directions. First, I'm not a big spender at the best of times, and I'm still coming out of my unemployed-for-nearly-two-years cheapness hole where I felt guilty about each nonessential purchase (and sometimes guilty about the essential ones). Second, the event was so overwhelming that I didn't know where to look or what to look for.

Anyway. I went to Woolfest with one yarny item on my shopping list: red aran-weight wool yarn for a hat for my Grandma. I came home with the following:



See the red yarn? I thought not.

The yarn I did buy is from Sparkleduck - it is called Stratus, which is a BFL/Silk/Cashmere sockweight yarn. The colourway is Mallard, appropriately enough. It is semi-solid - there's more green than shows in the photo, and it is decidedly not dull-looking in the least. I will probably make a scarf or shawl from this, since there is no way I'm putting a yarn this fancy on my feet. Sparkleduck's entire stall was filled with amazing colour, and it took me ages to pick one to take home with me!

In the above photo, you can also see my fancy houndstooth Woolvember badge, that I purchased from Kate Davies' stall. (She wasn't there when I wandered by, so I was spared an awkward starstruck tongue-tied encounter, I guess. More on this theme later.)



I also bought some fabulous buttons to add to my growing collection of buttons I have no idea what to do with. The ceramic one is large and chunky and would be a good accent on a hat, I think. The wooden square ones are made of reclaimed floor boards, and I just like gazing at them, so who knows what they'll be. I'll enjoy them in the meantime.



Speaking of starstruck encounters, Lily and Amanda France (whose blogging and designing I follow avidly) stopped by the Ruth and Belinda stall, and I blurted out "HELLO! I KNOW YOU FROM THE INTERNET!" or something equally eloquent, and proceeded to babble for a bit. Apparently I was the first to recognize and accost Lily at Woolfest that day, but I'm sure it happened many more times. Haha. Anyway, they were obviously lovely and not phased by my awkwardness.

I also met Heather from the Nude Ewe, and had my mind totally blown when we realised we'd gone to the same high school in Canada. Small yarn worlds! We weren't at high school at the same time, but in any case that has never happened to me before. Amazing. I'm ashamed to say that although I'd heard of the Nude Ewe prior to Woolfest, I hadn't a clue what they were all about. Now that I know, I'm fascinated - yarn spun from the fleeces of conservation grazing sheep. Genius.

In summary, yay for Woolfest! I met so many interesting people, saw so many beautiful yarns, and had great fun communing with the woolly beasts. Now I see why fibre events are such a big deal.

And... Woolfest!

I have returned from Woolfest! It was great fun, exhausting, overwhelming, and inspiring. Also, cold and wet - it poured all day on Friday, causing flooding and transportation difficulties the following day.

Here are Ruth and Belinda selling their wares. It was lots of fun helping them out, meeting lots of great people, and being surrounded by lovely, squishable yarns all day. Because of the awful weather, it got quite cold in the Woolfest barn on Friday, so we all wrapped up in the samples to keep warm.



When I had the chance, I explored some of the other stalls, but found it all quite overwhelming. Aisle upon aisle of yarn / wool / fibre / animals / craft materials... It was hard to know where to look first, and difficult to focus! I admire those organised people who kept track of which stalls caught their eye so they could find them again later. I wasn't so smart, but I bumbled through and saw plenty nonetheless.

I loved seeing everyone wearing their own creations. It occurred to me that I look at lots of knitwear online, but in my everyday life don't see many handknits outside of knitting groups. A fibre festival gives people the opportunity to really show off their handiwork, knowing it is perfectly acceptable to accost strangers and admire their gorgeous shawl or cardigan.


I also saw lots of creatures. These hebridean sheep are possibly the strangest looking ones I've ever seen.


And alpacas. Awww.

One memorable encounter was with an older fellow who was going through examining all the wooden buttons / shawl pins / accessories on offer and identifying all the woods used. He said he wasn't a knitter himself, though he used to help his mum out when she was losing her sight by picking up her dropped stitches with a crochet hook once she'd put the knitting down for the day. He was wearing a gorgeous cabled sweater in perfect condition that his mum had made for him when she was 89. He was in the process of reconstructing the end of the sleeve of another sweater she'd made; it had come unraveled in an aggressive spin cycle, but he was reverse-engineering the pattern using a crochet hook and some pliers. Well, damn. I'm impressed!



I'll be back soon with another post on swag and the rest of Woolfest.

Bread and WOOLFEST

I made some delicious bread last week - definitely the most successful bread I've ever made. The recipe I used was Paul Hollywood's easy white bread from the BBC food site. I don't watch tv so I have no idea who this Paul Hollywood fellow is, but the recipe turned out rather well.



Mmmm crusty bread. It didn't actually burn on top - it got a bit dark, but for some reason the pictures make it look charred.



The recipe calls for 40 g of butter, which seems like a lot... I've never made bread that had butter baked into it before, but it was tasty. Next time I might try with olive oil, since it is easier to deal with. Though maybe the butter is what made it so good.



One thing that I always feel unsure about is kneading. Specifically, how long to knead bread. I've heard various things about how the dough should look / behave when it is kneaded sufficiently, but I can honestly say I've never managed to get it to pass the window-pane test. (Even then, it has usually turned out okay). In this case, I think the dough was too stiff, since it was difficult to knead and I was at it so long that my arms were aching. I eventually gave up without knowing if it was enough... but it rose perfectly, so whatever. Next time, more liquid? Bread-baking experts - what do you say?

In other news, I'm going to Woolfest this weekend! I'll be there Friday and Saturday, helping out at Ruth and Belinda's booth. Come say hello if you happen to be passing by! (I'm the one who is neither Ruth nor Belinda. Obviously.) We can have an awkward/joyous "I know you from the internet" moment. Anyway, I'm pretty excited, since I've never been to an event like this before. Especially since I've been working a lot lately, so I might even get to spend a little money on lovely yarn.

Festivities

Yesterday the Olympic torch relay came to Edinburgh.



We caught up with it in town. I'm ashamed to say I haven't a clue who the torchbearer we saw is. But everyone was pretty enthusiastic, with even the motorcyle cops that preceded and followed the procession arousing huge cheers.

What you don't see on the BBC torch-feed are all the sponsorship buses that head up the procession. It was a bit weird seeing these buses with cheerleaders standing up top, and people walking beside to hand out promotional goods... all this took probably twice the amount of time the torch was actually in view.



Most of my pictures are pretty terrible and blurry, or have other people's body parts obstructing the frame. However, I quite like this one I accidentally captured, with the reflection on one of the torch buses.

Just because

In the spirit of silliness, and inspired by your comments on my last post, here are the latest adventures of my hungry Pomatomus sock.

Considering an apple

YAY A MUFFIN. Socks like muffins.

Tea tastes best in a silly mug

I promise I'll have something other than these socks to show you next time, but thanks for indulging my madness!

Choices

There is something extremely liberating about waking up early and then finding out I don't have to work until this afternoon. All those hours that were previously scheduled and spoken for now open up ahead of me with possibilities.



I could clean the house, or go running, or start writing a novel, or something. But I think I'll just sit with a larger-than-usual cup of tea and plow through the rest of this gusset.

(I don't think there is a flattering way of showing a sock at this level of completion - is there?)

Glorious

It's summer here! We've been enjoying the beautiful sunny weather the last few days, especially given the unpredictable nature of weather here. This may be the only summer we get, so I feel obligated to experience it to the fullest. This means exposed limbs, sunscreen, iced coffee / tea, windows thrown open wide... and picnics!

Yesterday, we cycled up through Holyrood Park, and spent the afternoon picnicking on the grassy slopes.



One of the best things about Edinburgh is the possibility to escape to the hills right in the middle of the city. The gorse is blooming brightly, ducks and swans abound, and we even saw a kestrel hovering, on the lookout for rodents / lunch. (But didn't get any photos of it. Ah well).



I've gone for walks here many times, and fancy myself quite capable on the hiking front, but this is the first time I've cycled up - apparently my cycling muscles are non-existent! (Seeing as I can't remember the last time I rode my bike, this shouldn't be surprising. Still, it was difficult.) In any case, the outing forced me to make sure my bike was still roadworthy, so next time I take it out there will be less work to do. I'm hoping this is an incentive to bike more often.

Miles and miles of i-cord

A while back I showed a wedding-craft teaser, trying to be enigmatic about its possible purpose:



I thought I'd be able to show proper pictures of the finished product in wedding context, but as it turns out nobody took any pictures of our i-cord table numbers. So here's one out of context. It got a bit bent out of shape when someone shoved it in a box post-wedding, but you get the idea.



We made 6. DH measured, cut, and twisted the wire (incidently, the same green garden wire we used to make our Christmas tree.) I did the i-cord out of some leftover Cascade 220. Teamwork! Yay! I don't recommend this wedding craft, really, unless you have a knitting spool/loom large enough for the yarn you want to use. My knitting spool is a bit small for worsted weight, so I just did plain i-cord manually, and it got a bit tedious. Still, I'm happy with how they turned out.

And we didn't stop there! Haha. We also made our initials to go on top of the cake. This time I used thinner yarn, and it was much faster - the letters are pretty small compared to the numbers.



Cake in context:



I think we managed to represent our shared love of making stuff pretty well.

Happy Friday, everyone! Go see some more FOs at Tami's Blog.

WIP update

Last month I wrote about my plans for knitting on my honeymoon. I thought I'd bring two sock projects and a shawl - in the end, I didn't even bring the yarn for the shawl. The two sock projects are going well, however.

First up are my yellowy-orange fish socks.


The ubiquitous Pomatomus by Cookie A. - I'm really enjoying the pattern so far, though I know if I stop paying attention I will easily cause a disaster. I am about to start turning the heel on these, and so far I haven't made any mods.

Next, some boring boring man socks. (Not socks for a boring man, though!)


The yarn is actually dark green. I intended to make Mr Pitt's Socks by Kaitlyn Wong for my husband (husband!). These are a close approximation. Amidst my frustration at having to restart several times, I completely ignored the pattern which begins with 2x2 rib for the cuff, and did 1x1 instead. This isn't a weird mod or anything, but it's strange for me since I'm not a fan of how 1x1 rib looks when I knit it, so I don't usually do it without being asked! (Yes, I should really try out combined knitting which may fix my problem - maybe some day I'll get around to that, but today is not that day.) Anyway, not a big deal, but just a little bemusement from me.

More WIPs at Tami's Amis!

FO: the Shawl of Happiness

In my month's absence from the blogosphere, my whole family descended on our neighbourhood, I got married, went on honeymoon on a boat, got some more freckles, and came back. We've been back for almost a week, and I'm still trying to remember what passed for routine before the wedding stuff took over. All that to say, I have a long-overdue FO to share.

My wedding shawl! I didn't have the presence of mind on the day to request that our photographer get some shawl wingspan shots... But here are a few photos that show the shawl in its appropriate context.



Pattern: High Seas by Kieran Foley

Yarn: Fyberspates Scrumptious Lace



Notes:
I added an extra lace repeat to make it a bit longer, but otherwise didn't do any modifications. The pattern is very clear, despite the complicated lace chart; stitch markers between chart sections saved my life. Also, I obsessively used lifelines every half-repeat. I did make plenty of small mistakes, but since none of them were massively terribly, I never bothered ripping back.

Before blocking, the shawl was about 130 cm long. With blocking it stretched to almost 2 m along the longest angle. If that makes any sense - it's a parallelogram, and I measured it across its whole length, not just one side. I'm sure there is a better way of saying that. Whatever.



The shawl kept me warm in the chilly Scottish spring - although part of that was probably my adrenaline and excitement keeping me heated. We did have perfect weather, though, or as perfect as you can ask for in Edinburgh. That is, it only rained while we were inside. Pretty much. In any case, I have since used the shawl as a scarf, and I know I will get plenty of use from it that way in the future.



Photos are by Rod Irvine.

More FOs at Tami's blog!

Golden scales

Oh hello WIP Wednesday. Been a while! I've finally got something new on the needles.

My sunny pomatomus socks have been a welcome contrast to the gloom and rain over the last few days.



After spending many months on my wedding shawl with its long rows and very long repeats, this sock feels speedy in comparison. Had I started these socks after a relatively simple project, I'm sure they would seem much more difficult. Funny that. I haven't finished one pattern repeat yet, but it still feels like I am making progress.



Go see some more WIPs at Tami's blog!

gathering wool

I'm at the point in wedding planning where I am so ready to be done with emailing and phoning people to sort out logistics. In all honesty, I've been tired of that since I started, but I'm really sick of it now. Although I still have some more telephone tag to play, I can't do it on Easter weekend, so I'm distracting myself with fun planning.

Yarn planning! The best kind of planning.

We're going on our honeymoon starting the day after the wedding, and we'll be spending many days on a boat. Honeymoon knitting follows logically in this progression, so I've compiled a few too many projects to take with me.


First up, socks for my will-be-husband. I toyed with the idea of making him wedding socks, but that never materialised, so honeymoon socks it is. He requested simple and green, so I'm going to make Mr Pitt's Socks in basic workhorse Regia.

I've also got some socks for me planned. The yellow-orange yarn shown below is now reserved for Pomatomus by Cookie A for me. I have had my eye on these socks for years. I saw a yellow "goldfish" version on ravelry ages ago that convinced me mine should be yellow as well.



Thirdly, I think I'll bring along a shawlette project, to make a change from socks. Annis by Susanna IC has been on my radar since it came out, and I've never made a shawl in that shape before, so I think I'll try it. As for yarn, I have some lovely blue and green Yarn Yard Cairn that I bought soon after moving to Edinburgh and haven't found a project for.

Hurray! It feels good to plan something that I actually have control over and doesn't rely on other people phoning me back or sending me (or failing to send me) necessary documents. (Sorry, does that sound bitter? :P)

finished?

My wedding shawl is done! I think. Bound off, removed all the lifelines except one, bunged it in a bath. (Perhaps more like "placed gingerly" in a bath...)

Braaaaains

Not going to lie - it looks a little small, even though I knitted one more repeat than called for. I'm optimistic that blocking will make it expand to fit my imagination, but if it doesn't, I've still got a lifeline in there and plenty of yarn left, so I can add some more lace.

Lumpy pre-blocking shot

I love watching the transformation of blocked lace, and I'm very excited about this piece in particular. It is definitely the most complicated lace I've ever knit, so I hope it will be worth it. Exciting times, people!