Woolgathering

Mr L has really caught the sun today. He says that I have, too. I daren’t look to confirm this - I have seen his face, and his rather red nose…

The latest sock is mid-heel flap.

Nothing else to report, other than the need for a little rain. There’s none in sight. Nothing whatsoever to encourage a little sock-knitting instead of forced labour on the Windswept (sun-burned) Acre.

Today has seen little knitting - we have been in the garden again. It took five hours to mow the remainder of the front garden, only some of which was completed yesterday. FIVE hours! It’s around half an acre of rough grass and this was the first cut of the season. We have a petrol driven wheeled mower with a 22″ cut. That’s a lot of back and forth-ing.

It looks lovely now, though. While Mr L bore the brunt of that task I was to be found weeding and transplanting plants from nursery beds to borders, and hanging out laundry on the line. Occasionally I helped out with barrowing the grass clippings away. The dogs had a wonderful time. They fully approve the new shorter grass.

Now there is curry to be made (Butter Chicken - which has been marinating all day) and lager to be supped and feet to be raised for the evening. Perhaps just a little sock knitting…

The big question is - shall I start some naan off?

Right - I’m off to wash some rice. I am getting very hungry.

Tomorrow is a holiday. I think we need it!

More socks?

More socks!

Whatever for?

Damned if I know…

… actually, because I need new needles for Bread and Beauty. The cheap ones that I have to hand are far too bendy and much too sharp. So I have a set of Knitpicks needles on their way to me. Feeling in desperate need of that big hit/easy knit/fast project, I cast on for some Burning Rings of Fire (Ravelry Pattern Page) with some Opal yarn that has been stashed for the longest time…

Been fighting a migraine for the last couple of days so haven’t actually made much progress - am down past the rings and into the rib (just!) Did a bit in the garden today but felt guilty while Mr L was mowing so ditched the needles in favour of a weed grubber and wheelbarrow.

Natalie has come to my rescue on the Crusty Bread yarn, recommending a 100 grams course of action that happens to include the Cranford Mitts pattern. Told you that the woman is a genius - also some salesperson, eh? Though I did note that she failed to suggest an additional small skein for the edging on the mitts I am wondering if my leftover Arizona merino yarn would do that job. It’s not one of Natalie’s, but seems a very similar yarn.

And I must not spend another single penny this year. Not one.

Tell you what, though - that Crusty Bread is knitting up wonderfully well - and the colour is really gorgeous. Totally edible.

I just want to pause to congratulate the Ravelry team on disposing of their queue. A gargantuan effort!

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What are you waiting for?

I have decided to frog the Pomatomus sock - purely because I am unhappy with my workmanship. I will cast on again and knit more carefully next time.

With two froggings in quick succession I now need a “big hit” - a fast and easy completion. I thought I would knit the Hug yarn up immediately and I have cast on for a pair of Teosinte socks. Perhaps, in retrospect, not the ideal “big hit” project.

These are toe-up socks - because I continue to work at getting this method of construction comfortably under my belt. Once I feel competent at it I can safely leave it alone and return to my cuff-down preferences. I simply refuse to be defeated or to let the challenge slip away from me. So. Teosinte calls for the short row toe method that so defeated me in the Firestarters. I thought that maybe knitting it in a fatter yarn would help me to see what I was doing. Maybe. Maybe not. At any rate, I do now have a complete toe! It looks like the proverbial dog’s breakfast -  and is clearly not correct, since I seem to have acquired some excess stitch count (how?)

Frog?

Nah. I’ll fiddle the stitch count and carry on. Nobody will see the toes but me.

Yes. I know. But I said that I needed a fast knit and a big hit, so just let’s drop any pretence of being Ms Perfect Knitter here, shall we? I am sure that the second sock will be better. If I get that far because…

… when I calculated the yarn weight conversion on this yarn, I seem to have forgotten that is not the whole equation. In fact, I seem to have forgotten that  100 gms is somewhat short of 4ozs and, converted or not, is really rather… short of requirement.

We should ignore (please!) the fact that I seem to have converted the yarn weight wrong anyway and it is not actually spot on for my pattern, but a little heavy. The gauge seems OK, though - maybe 1 or 1.5 rows out on the (4″) row gauge, but it’s spot on the stitch count.

I emailed Natalie to see if she has a spare 50gms. There’s 100 gms available in the shop but, for the sake of 40 yards, I am reluctant to cough up £10.75 that I don’t actually have. If I do have to buy the 100 gms then I suspect that I shall have to re-knit this toe and aim for perfection… on a £21.50 pair of socks. You can’t fudge toes at that price, can you? :-}

What I want to know is - why would anyone in their right senses want to fashion one of these toes anyway? It’s so lumpy and stiff, not to mention really awkward to knit. I much prefer the Judy’s Magic Cast On toe.

One step forward for me was to replace the crochet provisional cast on that I tried with the Firestarters - this time around I used the Open Cast On tutorial at Knitty.

The saving grace of these socks will be the yarn - lovely lofty Merino, in a colour so subtle and refined. The colour is called Crusty Bread. Teosinte sports an “ears of corn” pattern - what a perfect combination. This project has been named Bread and Beauty - from a quotation from John Muir, the Scots born naturalist and driving force behind the creation of the USA’s National Parks.

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

Hopefully these crusties will be beauties too - I had to resist the temptation to call these Beth’s Baguettes, with reference to the size and shape of my feet.

I fell totally under the spell of the Lochan as I wound it. It was difficult to restrain myself from beginning the Rivendells immediately. What gorgeous stuff, so soft, so lustrous. And the colour? I was simply reminded what a genius Natalie is. It isn’t simply that her colour choices coincide with my taste - no, often they do not, but I can still appreciate the subtlety of the colour. Really, as I wound this skein I was in complete awe of Natalie’s colour sense - this is a stunning skein. 

It’s a good product too - never any tangled skeins and never, ever, any white patches. This is not true of skeins that I have bought elsewhere.

Go buy something - you won’t regret it. I am not affiliated and there’s no commission coming this way Just another happy customer.

Yes, it’s a fun machine - right from the start.

Very photogenic.

I am sure to have fun with it at some point. Right now - just a couple of snapshots

And some yarn

Yarn one is for these, yarn two for these, and yarn three is not yet decided but maybe these or, more likely, these

I am going to wind yarns 1 and 2 right now.

It says much regarding the priorities in this household that yarn was fondled first, footballs were inflated second, and only after Nell had played out with her new ball was the iMac unpacked.

More of the yarn later. I’m not certain where the camera was tidied away to!

We have spent our morning preparing for the “new” iMac, which we are certain must arrive today (it was tracked in Inverness 3 days ago.) This has necessitated the raising of much dust, and the scratching of two heads - not to mention much de-tangling of cables and reassignment of power and USB sockets.

Thus you find me here, marooned in a sea of tidy, dust-free-desktop - and feeling most uncomfortable. Nothing is where my fingertips expect to find it.

We have two large L-shaped Ikea desks, which sit back to back. The “returns” are at the outer edge, the narrower sides are toward the wall. A trolley/bench thing normally resides at the centre of the return end, with some shared resources such as stationery drawers and the scanner.

What we have done is to clear off that long end to make space for the iMac. Due to the shared corner leg of the desks being central to that edge of desk configuration, the new computer will have to sit to one side or the other. As Mr L is a working man and this office is his workspace, well… I have had to relinquish space on my desk. I am sure that this is entirely fair, as I am the one most likely to make effective use of a Mac. I traded off by suggesting that my graphics tablet be plugged into the Mac when it arrives. Yes, I know this is something of a flag waving activity. Yes, I have staked my claim

So, I cleared some workspace by moving the graphics tablet, but I have also lost an acre by accepting that I do all of the scanning in this household - and I now have the scanner in my workspace. I do not regard this as too much of a drawback as it may actually encourage me to use it more often and to try doing some scanned collage work that I have had on the back burner for a long time.

The shared resources trolley has moved towards Mr L’s end of the desk space (I give him about half an hour before the yelling starts, when he bangs his shins) - making life slightly difficult when I need labels or envies. I also feel far more hemmed in than I did and I have gained some glare on my screen but, overall I think that I came off well in this reorganisation.

All that I need to do now is to tackle my filing, and learn to live with just the one filing tray, and find a chair for the new workstation (we Freecycled two good office chairs when we moved up here - damn!) Oh, and fiddle my Anglepoise into a workable position now that the scanner has ousted it from its accustomed position.

And now, we wait. The ‘plane is due in a few minutes - the mail delivery follows in around an hour. How exciting!

Spinning may suffer for a few days, while I get to grips with the Mac OS. It’s a good job that I got plenty done yesterday

My bobbin is about two thirds full now and I am eager to attempt the task of plying and to see how the yarn turns out.

In Other News: did I mention that I had almost done my ATCs for the PS3 “Air” swap? I did them in bed the other night. I deployed that cone of grey Alpaca laceweight. What could be more airy than Alpaca lace? (Yes - knitted ATCs!)

Well, I managed to do some spinning today in between making coffee and serving cake (Date and Walnut, plus stem ginger cookies today) I am quite pleased with the way in which this fibre is spinning up, and so quickly too.  Still uncertain about the colour, though.

Still no football for Nell, no yarn, and no iMac. Last night was the night that the ferry stays here overnight, so there was no incoming ferry this morning to bring parcels before the postman’s round. Maybe tomorrow. In the meantime, I shall have to continue spinning.

I am still hankering for a trial run at weaving. It’s made all the worse by reading Lollyknitting Around. The Minou Wrap that Lolly made recently is just lovely - though I was equally taken with her denim doormat. Lolly is  the creative force behind Project Spectrum and she has a wonderful blog of creativity and great photographs - well worth a  visit.

Ran myself ragged this morning. I prescribe a nice quiet afternoon in the conservatory, with my wheel and the cats for company. And maybe just one more small slice of cake…

On my wheel, the Deep Fried Vegis batt.

I hope I am going to like this. Maybe it will look better once plyed…

I should use this lens more often.

Watching me while I work - Suzie. She’s looking old these days.

This is the best photo I have ever managed of Suzie - she’s really difficult to photograph, with that dark face. Needs more skill than I possess. This is nice, though.

I totally wasted yesterday - and not in a good way. Not the day that I had planned for myself at all. No yarn in the post, either.

Most of the morning was spent in trying to capture starlings, which is why I happen to have the telephoto lens on my tripod today. I was massively unsuccessful. Here’s the best of a bad lot.

I shot this from the kitchen, through the open window. I had the camera trained on the wall where the birds habitually perch to check for safety before entering the nest. I sat nearby on a chair at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee and the remote control.

I shall be trying again soon.

Later in the morning I went out onto the garden to see if I could capture the birds going in or out of the wall. What a farce! I have around 60 shots of assorted degrees of blurriness/birdlessness. This one is my favourite. It would have been a stunning shot, had it been pin-point sharp.

I got into a pickle with the Pomatomus sock as well.

I just ended up feeling grumpy and out of sorts after a day of pointless idleness and too much TV. I got to testing the iPlayer and Ch4 On Demand services on the new faster broadband. I watched several eps of Sugar Rush and last night we watched a totally silly film. The evening was rescued by a little gem of a programme that I found on the iPlayer - The Transatlantic Sessions. Just good music and nice images and nothing to spoil it. John Martyn, Eddie Reader, Aly Bain… and more. Lovely. I shall watch this week’s edition too, when it appears on the iPlayer. It seems to be old broadcast, material. I need to find the whole lot on DVD, I think.

I’m not doing much better today either. Pointless idleness seems to be all the rage this week.