Tea and Cakes

Pattern: Little Arrowhead Shawl from Interweave Knits Summer 2006 “Sweet Somethings” staff projects (pattern is at the bottom of the page and is a pdf).

Yarn: Mountain Colors Mountain Goat (55% mohair, 45% wool) in the Mountain Twilight colourway. (Go look at it on their website, it’s really pretty colours)

Needles: 4.5mm Addi Turbo 100cm circulars. These were perhaps a little slippery – a few yarnovers tried to jump around, but they help me to knit loose, which is a good thing.

Pattern changes: Worked one less repeat of chart 1 as I didn’t think I’d have enough wool. I think I was right. I have some left, but I don’t think it would have been enough. The shawl is as big as I wanted it to be anyway – it’s about 40 inches wide and 20 long.

Notes: I used stitch markers to mark the selvedge stitches and the centre stitch, but not for the pattern repeats – as the shawl increases as you go the repeats shift a bit, and you’d need to keep adding more in which would get annoying. They were very useful where I had them though.

I loved knitting this, although I have absolutely no idea when I’ll get to wear it – as you can see here, it doesn’t really fit with my overall lack of style.

The next lace project will be a stole of some sort I think. Hmmmm, maybe I do need to buy Victorian Lace Today.

Ahh, the sock. I’m at the heel flap, and have been there for over a week. Bad sock knitter. Bad.

I became obsessed with lace, and the sock simply wouldn’t cut it. The lace is finished now though, and before I cast on for another lace project I’m going to at least get the heel flap finished and the heel turned ready for more round and round stockingette. I’m deviating from the pattern very slightly to use a heel stitch on the heel flap, and it’s great – it’s a bit tighter to knit, but it’s producing a thicker, padded fabric which’ll hopefully extend the life of the socks a little.

The shawlette is blocking, pics will come when it’s good and dry.

I sort of follow rugby. Not as much as I used to, but I’ll still happily spend an afternoon up at the club when I’m back home, stood in the cold with a pint of warm beer, or sit down and watch an international of an afternoon on occasion.
Today was just such an occasion. England versus Ireland in Croke Park. Croke Park is the main Gaelic games stadium here in Dublin, and is being used for rugby and soccer (or ‘brit ball’, as I’ve heard them called) temporarily while Landsdowne Road is being refurbished. Understandably this has all been a bit controversial, with most of the current objections being about God Save the Queen being played (seriously, we need a new national anthem). God Save the Queen was already played at Croke Park during the special olympics, but it’s a much better story if that’s not mentioned.

Anyway, England-Ireland. It could have been a close one. England have been playing atrociously, but we have Jonny. Ireland have been doing better, but really shouldn’t have lost to France the other week.

The mood at the beginning was sombre and respectful, and, rugby fans being on the whole a civilised bunch, everything went off fine during the national anthems. We started well, Jonny scoring early. And then? Well, we don’t need to talk about that.

So, what’s an English girl living in Ireland to do on an occasion such as this?
Why, bake scones of course.
(All basic recipe from Delia Smith’s Book of Cakes)

First up, some cheese scones, with sun-dried tomato and mixed seeds:

Followed, naturally, by sweet fruit ones

To be served with jam and cream and large mugs of earl grey tea

There, that makes it all better.

This week’s delay in Flickr Fiction (which, believe it or not, is supposed to be here on a Friday) is brought to you by lace surgery.

I made a mistake.
I got to the end of the row and was a stitch short.
I counted, and counted again. Still a stitch short.

I unpicked for a while, and recounted. Unpicking “slip 2 as if to knit 2 together, knit 1 and pass 2 slipped stitches over” is tricky at first, but gets easier. Did I mention the mohair content in this yarn? Mmmm, fuzzy.

Eventually, and I really mean eventually, I worked out what was up. I’d missed a yarnover about 3/4 into the last pattern row, which was 2 rows back.

Right. My options were:
a) Unpick 2 rows, add in the yarnover and carry on.
b) Ignore it, increase a stitch so the pattern would work from here on in.
c) Drop the stitches down, add in a yarnover somehow, and pick them back up.

I went for c:

(I did briefly wonder about the wisdom of unpicking purple stitches while leaning over purple pyjama encased legs, but not for too long)

Option c involved a crochet hook, something I’m not particularly good at wrangling. Also, having some idea of how to add in a missing yarnover would have been helpful.

I twisted the crochet hook around a bit, possibly in the way that someone who doesn’t know how to crochet might if they were called to crochet in a film or play. I ended up with this:

There’s an extra stitch there, but the row below is wrapped around them both several times. Almost the opposite of a yarnover.

I unpick again. Wave the crochet hook around in the knitting a bit more. Eventually I end up with this:

To any non-knitters, that’s one pretty normal stitch. I’d spent 20 minutes getting back to exactly where I started from.

I took a deep breath.

And went for option b. Ignore it, increase a stitch invisibly, and carry on as if nothing happened.

Here’s a close up of how it looks now:

I can see the mistake, but I have to look for it.

Besides, mistake? Nah.

Personalisation.

(Sorry about the dodgy picture, I took it very quickly this morning with my phone)

The shawl is progressing. It’s slow, but mainly because I’ve been working on other things, and haven’t had much time over the past few days to just sit down and knit on it without distraction. I’m a bit of a multi-tasker, and like to be doing a few things at once, even if those things aren’t particularly difficult. Watching tv and knitting, taking a bath and reading, knitting and chatting, etc etc. I can’t do that (yet) with lace knitting, and I think that’s why I’m enjoying it so much – I have to stay totally focussed on it, which means that I stop thinking about everything that needs doing, planning ideas and the like, and totally lose myself in yarnover, slip slip knit, knit, knit two together, yarnover, knit, knit, knit etc. At the moment it manages to switch my brain off, which is quite an achievement.

Mmmm, pancakes. I don’t come from a religious family, so although we’d eat pancakes today, it’s kinda in a similar way to the way we celebrate christmas – it’s about the tradition rather than the religion.
Although Vegan ones are yummy, tonight we opted for non-vegan crepes:

I like mine with lemon and sugar:

And also with chocolate:

Pancake day brings up two strong associations for me.

The first is one happy memory of me, my brother and my mum in the house we lived in for a while making pancake after pancake after pancake and eating them all. I couldn’t tell you what year it was, or anything that would make it stand out, just that it’s one of my happy memories from my childhood – the three of us having fun together, doing stuff and laughing lots.

The other is from school, and when I learned that Mardi Gras, with all the celebrations, was pancake day. When I was nine I got into trouble a good bit at school. My teacher really didn’t like me, no matter how much I wanted her to. I was probably an annoying kid, but also I don’t think she was in a happy place personally. One time she made me straighten out all the dog ears on a bookshelf of books to teach me to learn to respect books properly after she saw one of my schoolbooks. What upset me most was the complete injustice of it – the very idea of damaging a book was completely alien to me, plus I was also in trouble that year for reading books that were too advanced for me (good thing I had the sense to keep quiet about having read ‘Forever’ by Judy Blume the year before).

Anyway, we had these books that had a mixture of factual and fictional short pieces to read, followed by a list of questions to answer. I never bothered answering the questions, as that would have taken up valuable reading time. I just went right on and read the next bit. I got in trouble for that too, and had to spend my lunchtimes answering the stupid questions. One of the pieces was about how Mardi Gras was celebrated in different places around the world. It’s the only piece I remember and I’m not sure why – possibly it was one of the ones I had to go back and do again.

Aaaaanyway, Happy Pancake day!

How do you eat yours?

Every bloody afternoon he’d be sat there, talking to the tree stump. It was just so embarrassing. I hated walking home from school through the park, just because of him. It’s not like I wanted to have anything to do with him, it wasn’t my fault that our mums were best friends. So, our families took holidays together. I didn’t have a choice in that. It didn’t stop everyone slagging me for it though. Tree hugger Terence, they called him. We’d walk past him, the group of us, and I knew it’d start.
“Hey Laura, there’s your boyfriend talking to the tree again. Why don’t you stay and join him? We don’t mind if you leave us”
I tried everything to get them to shut up – I ignored them, I got angry with them and stormed off, I laughed at Terence with them, but none of it made any difference.
Every day, we’d walk through the park. My stomach would knot and I’d get more and more tense as we got closer to the stump. If Terence hadn’t got there yet, or had been and gone I could relax. Otherwise it’d start up again. Most times he was there though. If the weather was ok enough for us to be walking home, it was ok enough for Terence to sit and talk to himself in front of the tree.

He didn’t used to be so lame. Terence, I mean. He was pretty cool for a while, and I was happy to be seen with him, and for people to think we were friends. Then his clothes just got a bit too odd, and he started liking shouty and moany music instead of the stuff that everyone else liked. And then he started talking to the tree.

I’d never admit it to my friends, but on holidays we still hung out. We’d always known each other, and he was like my brother, except a brother that didn’t get on my nerves at home, and didn’t try to blame me when he did something wrong. On holidays he was the same smart and funny Terence that he’d always been. He didn’t talk to plants on holidays.

I never mentioned the tree stuff to him when we were alone. I wanted to. I wanted to scream at him that he was making an idiot of himself and didn’t he care?, but something stopped me. I’d seen the look on his face when I’d joined in laughing at him with the others, and I didn’t want to see it again.

After a while he started bunking off school. I didn’t blame him, really. The slagging started up there as well, but really, he brought it on himself. He could have stopped it if he’d just started acting normal. Stopped talking to the tree stump. Instead he spent more and more time there. Mum started asking me questions about him at school – had I seen him that day, asking me to pass messages to his mum through him. I covered for him for a while – I bunked off too sometimes so I could pass on any messages without my friends seeing me.

Then one day I got home from school – it was pouring rain, so I’d got the bus – and his mum was there, sat at the kitchen table with my mum, both of them holding big mugs of tea steaming in the cold air.
“We need to have a chat with you Laura. About Terence.”

The school had rung. They knew he hadn’t been going. They knew about the tree. Terence had told his mum all about how the tree spoke to him, and how he felt comfortable talking to it.
“We’ve found a nice safe place for him to stay for a while. Somewhere he can get some help.”

~~

This beginning was inspired by This picture taken by Right Index from Flickr.

Written for Flickr Fiction Friday. Other Flickr Fictioneers who may have written about the same picture are: Donal,Elimare, Tadamack, Aquafortis, Chris, Valsha, and Neil.

Don’t worry, although the title of this post would suggest it, I haven’t spent the weekend in a shame spiral, shovelling brie into my mouth while crying. It’s the subject of a spam email I just received. I was so curious that I even opened the email, and it turns out that should you find yourself trapped in a cycle of self loathing that only cheddar can relieve, it’s probably because you suffer from erectile dysfunction. It’s ok though, because a small blue pill can help you end your reliance on dairy produce.

Knitting and Flickr Fiction coming later, if all goes well.

Once a year Avoca Handweavers sell off their unused yarns from the previous season. There are bargains to be had. I’d heard tell of it, but had never been. This year was going to be different.
Sara, Cheryl and I were going to make a day of it. I booked the day off work, we were going to get up early, head down to Avoca village in Wicklow, buy yarn learn about weaving, buylook at the pretty yarn, and maybe pick up loads of the odd bargain or two. Then we’d head back through the Wicklow Mountains, stopping off at Powerscourt House for afternoon tea before coming home.

However, sometimes plan have to change at the last minute, and, well, I couldn’t go. I pootled around at home, and as Sara and Cheryl are excellent friends, spent a long time on the telephone to them having a selection of yarns and colours described to me, so that they could buy some yarn on my behalf.

Then, because they’re really wonderful, they came and visited for afternoon tea! I had to choose between making cupcakes and cleaning up the apartment, and the cupcakes won. Yeah, housewife of the year, I know.

There are no pictures of the muffins as I didn’t ice them and they’re not that photogenic, but they were pretty delicious – vegan chai latte cupcakes from the vegan cupcakes book. They had a slight peachy tinge to them, as I could only get peach soy yoghurt instead of plain or vanilla, but that was ok. I think they’d have benefit from being iced – later on we had some with ice cream and that was really yummy.

Anyway, looky what I got:

Lots of yarn!
There’s some turquiose tweedy wool, some bright pink-with-a-twist-of-orange-and-green wool, some midnight blue chenille, some lovely soft fine grey/camel wool, and laceweight cotton/linen (possibly, there’s no label) in a soft grey, a pale blue, and a lovely lavender colour. I think I need to get swatching.

All in all, a lovely day. Thanks Sara and Cheryl. You guys rock.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Firstly, and most importantly, I’m completely in love with The Gurrier. (ok, soppiness over)
There have been the least subtle hints in the entire world about how he’d like a scarf, and how everyone else has scarves but he doesn’t. So, to rectify that I present:

Chunky ribbed scarf

Details: Kilcarra aran tweed 100% wool, two strands held together, about 300g total
Needles: 6.5mm Brittany birch short straights
Pattern: K2P2 rib

It’s chunky and warm, but needs to be washed and blocked, as this wool gets softer when it’s washed and I’d like it to be a bit wider. Knitting in secret I can manage, but living in an apartment means it’s a bit tricky to wash and block a scarf in secret.

The other thing I’m in love with right now is knitting lace. It’s wonderful. I fancied a bit of ‘thinking knitting’, so cast on for the Little Arrowhead Shawl in the Mountain Colors yarn from my SP9. This is how it looks after one pattern repeat and about an hour:

Not great really, but it’s ok, as it’s lace knitting, so it’ll improve considerably through the magic of blocking.
I had to concentrate, and I discovered that I’m not much good at conversation while I’m working on this, but boy is it fun. Wrangling the needles for the yarn overs and ssk’s, working with that yarn – now, I love plain and simple wool. It’s great. I wish Knit Picks would deliver outside of the US and Canada, really I do, but this. The sheen on it. The colours. The softness. It’s just lovely.
I’m in love with knitting.