Tea and Cakes

“I’m not knitting anything for the wedding,” I said. “That way madness lies,” I said. “There’s enough to do already,” I said.

Then I bought my dress. I love it. It’s perfect. And now I want a hand-knit shawl to wear in the evening, after the ceremony.

While I was pondering this, R rang. there were still spaces left on a lace knitting class with Carol Feller at This is Knit. (I’m blogging from my phone and can’t work
out how to get links in but Carol’s website is called Stolen Stitches, and she has fabulous designs, so do look for it). Carol has a design that is perfect for the wedding. I hadn’t signed up for the class before as I was supposed to be working that day, but the schedules had changed and I was free. If I was that way inclined, I’d think that the universe was trying to tell me something.
Carol very kindly allowed me to work on the non-class pattern during the workshop, but I’m also completely in love with one of the class shawls and will be making it at some time in the future.

Next then, I needed some yarn. I don’t wear silk, which limited my choice for laceweight. However, TIK have a lovely laceweight yarn called Cashwool, which is 100% merino, really soft, and great value, with 1.3km of yarn per skein. No white left in stock though. It’s ok, I can deal with that. Lilac then. Very me.

I was all set to swatch when I got an excited text from R. D had the cashwool in white, and would pass a skein on to me. To top it off, R, who works something like 23 hours a day, finished work for the night, kidnapped D, and like wonderful yarn ninjas the two of them arrived up at my place with a late night emergency delivery of white laceweight.

So now I’m knitting for the wedding.

The last couple of weeks seem to have flown by. Work, college, life, eh, it just seems to have been a never ending stream of things to do.

This morning (just) I checked twitter, realised it was the day of the Dublin monthly spin-in in Powerscourt, grabbed my spindle and headed in. I ran out of the fibre I had with me just before it was time to pack up, so I did a bit of knitting too, and spent a very relaxing few hours in good company playing with fibre. It was super, and just what I needed. The spindle was spinning instead of me.

The consensus on the cardigan is that it is indeed too big for me. (I say consensus, and what I mean is everyone thinks so except the eternal optimist R, who insists I’m just wearing it wrong). So, friends and family, anyone want a cardigan? It’s lovely. I’ll even put a button on it for you.

So, here’s me in the cardie. Granted, it doesn’t really go with the dress I was wearing today, but it was a quickly grabbed photo. It also doesn’t have a button yet. It needs one, at the top.

See? It’s lovely, it’s just too big. It’s very squishy and stretchy, and it swamps me a bit.

Frogging it is not an option. There are 10 balls of yarn in there, plus 2 out of every 3 balls had a knot, so there are many, many ends that I sewed in. I’m not ripping it out. Shrinking it won’t work either – the yarn is machine washable, and really, it’s too lovely to mess around with like that.

So. I’m thinking. I don’t think it’s meant for me. Which means I need to work out the best way to go about finding the right home for it. I’m open to any suggestions.

This is my Six Nations cardigan.
It’s a lovely pattern (Shalom Cardigan, from Involving the Senses), and lovely yarn (Rowan RYC Cashsoft Chunky), but I do not love the cardigan.
It’s too big for me.
This is the sort of project where that shouldn’t really matter, and I made it slightly smaller than called for anyway.
But it’s still too big. (No, I didn’t swatch, but I don’t think that would have helped, it just doesn’t suit me).
Right now it’s drying, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. I don’t see myself wearing it.
So now I’m a bit stuck, as I don’t really know what to do with it.

To cheer myself up though, I’ve cast on for some Garter Stitch Mitts for myself, to replace my Fetchings as spring/autumn wear, as the missing one never showed up. I love this pattern. It’s simple, pleasingly constructed, and works really well in the tweedy yarn I’m using.

In an attempt to start blogging again, I’m copying Chris, and posting a list of things. This is mainly because I have too much that I want to say, and don’t really know where to start, and I’m finding it a bit overwhelming. I’m finding a lot of things overwhelming, at the moment.

Thing 1: I’m supposed to be studying right now. I’m not though, clearly, but I’m not beating myself up about it. Instead, once this is done, I will make myself a cup of tea and sit down to read some more of my book.

Thing 2: I’m currently reading The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood, and for the life of me I can’t work out why I haven’t read it before. It’s hard to tear myself away from it to do the other things that have to be done, like housework and washing clothes.

Thing 3: Even though the sun has gone in I have clothes outside on the patio on the airer. Technically this is against the rules, and it’s probably not much use anyway as it’s a bit chilly today, but I do like my clothes to get some fresh air every now and then, and if the sun would come out for just a little bit too it would be super. So much nicer than clothes dried in front of a radiator.

Thing 4: I should really also be sewing the many ends in on my Six Nations cardigan, which I finished yesterday. It started out as my Knitting Olympics project, but I didn’t finish in time, and worked on it in front of most of the rugby matches instead. I should be taking advantage of the long weekend to get it washed and dried while I’m home and can leave things outside to dry. I’m not sure I like it though. Which is often how I feel about the bigger things I have knit. I will get it finished and washed and dried and I will take pictures.

Thing 5: I got engaged. Or rather, we did. That was a little while ago now, but it’s been more than a little while since I blogged. I have a beautiful ring that’s from my paternal grandfather’s family, but right now it’s with the jeweller waiting for the goldsmith to have a look at it and see if it can be re-sized down enough to fit me.

Thing 6: I’ve spent some time finding out about family recently, and have some lovely photographs and interesting histories, and I might put some here, for me to remember.

Thing 7: This is me. I’m quite fond of this photo.

You know, I was going to come here to write all about the fantastic day I had on Saturday with Kneehigh and ChicwithStix, but I’ve been beaten to it: Read about the morning from ChicwithStix’s perspective.

I shall continue anyway. We headed off not so bright and early on Saturday to Ashford in Wicklow, to visit The Yarn Room. Oh My. Close your eyes for a second. Imagine your perfect local yarn store. Mine has a comfy sofa to knit on, big windows to let the light in, lots of lovely yarn in bright colours, friendly people dropping in, and a nice cup of tea.
The Yarn Room has all of this. (Unfortunately the 45 minute drive when there’s no traffic means it doesn’t really count as local).

While we were there we bumped into Nic, who was teaching a mother and son to knit down at the back of the shop, and met Pumpkinknits and Jenna from Ravelry.

I got to try out the Ashford Knitter’s Loom, which I want very much indeed, but can’t afford (yet!) and don’t really have the space for at the moment, even though it folds up and is very portable. I really had to drag myself away from this, I was having loads of fun weaving.

Then we sat and the lovely Stephanie made us tea and we ate the yummy cookies Kneehigh had made and we knit and chatted and could have spent all day there quite happily, but we had another appointment to make…
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Our second appointment was to pop in to visit The Constant Knitter. This is a new online shop in Dublin, and we went along for a little yarn preview. Rosemary stocks Garnstudio yarns, which are really good quality and excellent value – it’s great to have a supplier in Ireland. The Constant Knitter is the only place I’ve found that stocks pure linen yarn, very reasonably priced too, so I bought a ball to have a play with, along with a few other bits and pieces of course.

Rosemary made us tea and lovely cupcakes too, and again it was hard to drag ourselves away!
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After fueling up with some delicious lentil soup we popped into the lovely This is Knit, to pet their lovely yarns and so I could gt a new options cable.
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Phew! Three yarn shops in one day. All we could do at that point was head off to Kneehigh’s, drink tea, eat tasty snacks, and knit and spin the evening away. Super.

Last night This is Knit organised a yarn tasting evening in the city. Yarn tasting? Yes. Yarn tasting.

New seasons yarns and some old favourites wound into sample balls. €20 bought me 20 vouchers, which I then exchanged for 20 sample balls. ‘Shopping’ was so much fun!

I tried to pick up colours that I wouldn’t normally use, and I got to try out some yarns that I’ve been curious about but haven’t been able to justify buying.
Rowan Kid Classic for example. I’ve eyed it a lot, but now I have a tiny ball in a lovely forest green to try out and see how I like it knit up. Rowan Cocoon I stroke every time in the shop, and I have a voucher for This is Knit waiting to be spent on some to make an Owls Sweater. However, I’m only buying the yarn once I’m ready to cast on, so now I have some to try out first and pet at home. Mirasol Qina is a new bamboo/alpaca blend, which is beautiful and soft and just adorable, and now I’ve knit with it I’m totally in love.

I also picked up some Louisa Harding Sari Ribbon, which isn’t something I thought I’d ever pick up or buy, but last night was all about sampling new things, so I picked a bit up to try out. More on that in a while.

Here’s my haul:

As well as the yarn samples there were sample knits from new pattern books to try on. And I fell in love:

Imagine it without the cords and black t-shirt underneath, and perhaps with an inch or two more length in the waist…
It’s from the new Louisa Harding collection called Little Cake, and it’s knit in her new Thistle yarn, which memory tells me is a wool and alpaca blend, but I could be wrong about. It was certainly warm!
(Looking at the photo there the cable twists seem to be sitting nicely on my boobs. Would have to fix that.)

After the yarn tasting we retired to a hotel bar where I had a very fancy ginger tea:

This is where the sari ribbon comes in.
Two of our lovely hostesses were with us, and knit stripes of the sari ribbon into some swatches, and all of a sudden I can see how it could be used.

Here we see the sari ribbon sample relaxing in the company of a butterfly pin and some kid silk haze.

This was Kneehigh’s sample, and I love it, because it shows the different effects that could be had: my favourite is for the bottom stripe, which is just knit normally. In the middle the texture of the ribbon itself was used to knit through, and at the top a crochet stripe was added in. While I probably wouldn’t knit a whole garment out of it, I really like it for a bit of a shimmery accent.

This year we spent our summer holiday in the South of England, spending a couple of days driving down to where I grew up, and visiting lots of touristy things while we were there.

The Circle, Bath

Roman Baths, Bath

Stonehenge

The Long Man of Wilmington

HMS Victory

For some reason I managed not to take photos of a lot of what we did – we spent a day up in London at the V&A and just wandering around, but I didn’t take any photos, and a day in Brighton, a night in Swanage, and an afternoon in Arundel, all undocumented. However, all will be much repeated, I don’t get tired of any of them. If you visit Brighton do pop in to the Pavilion – despite living just down the road I’d never been inside before, and it’s really something to see.

One of the downsides of not blogging so much is that I’ve become a bit disconnected from friends and a bit more hermit like and anti-social. It’s a fault of mine, that I try to keep an eye on. I think I could be quite happy living in a cottage by a beach on an isolated island, even though I like having all the conveniences that come with city life.

This week I received a lovely surprise in the post. I came home one day to a missed delivery notice, and went to the post office to collect what I thought was my new copy of Vintage Baby Knits – in fact that arrived the next day, and is OMG full of the cutest baby patterns, and is just a beautiful book to own.

Anyway, instead the man in the post office handed me a big green padded envelope that arrived as a surprise package full of lovely things from Sweden – thanks to Catrin, a lovely internet knitting friend. A while ago Catrin had been looking for some Irish loose tea, and I’d sent some on, not expecting anything in return. It was a lovely surprise and really brightened my day.

Looky:

There’s some lovely tea, a recipe book that includes the recipe for the delicious cinnamon buns that we became a bit addicted to in Finland and Sweden when we were there, a book, sweets, and a beautiful skein of yarn, that I’d been admiring on Catrin’s blog when she got it, but I had no idea was intended for me. I’m hurrying to finish the socks I’m working on at the moment so I can start on another pair with this yarn. It’s really soft and I adore the colours.

Thank you Catrin!

So.

Hi there.

It’s, erm, been a while.

I’ve found that in the last few months I’ve been more of a consumer of the internet, and less of a participant. I think Twitter may have broken me, and any input requiring more than 140 characters is too much.

Sorry about that.

I’m working on it…