Getting carried away

In the final years of the last millennium I bought and moved into a wreck of a house in a semi-rural location in Berkshire. I don't remember doing any knitting there.

But I had discovered gardening. That's not quite true. Gardens and outside space had been important to me in all my first-married and subsequent family houses.

And I'd always loved visiting gardens wherever I travelled.


But this was the first garden that I had to create from scratch.

Curious and curiouser

I'm not a natural completer-finisher. I'm a recovering perfectionist. I'm consistently continuing to practise the art and expertise of procrastination. And my usual strategy for procrastination is displacement ...

But something curious is happening. In the last seven days there have been continuations, new beginnings and things brought to completion. What is perhaps most curious is the speed with which some of the new beginnings of the last seven days are also on the list on the things brought to completion.

So - what's the list for this past week, that's knit and stitch related ...

1. The warp and weft carpet cushion is complete. Not just finishing the  knitting of the main event - but knitting a striped back, weaving in the ends, blocking, sewing it together, putting it around a cushion pad - and finding it a place in my London apartment. (true completion)

2. I knitted on a flight from Marseille to London (new beginning ... I've been trialling bringing knitting and needles through security for probably 6 months .. this was the first time I actually brought it out to knit on the flight!). (new beginnings for works in progress)

3. I've finally fired up my newly bought London-based sewing machine (a John Lewis entry just-one-up-from-level-entry-machine that has a lot of the same logic as the Frister Rossman Cub 3 that was my 21st birthday present from my parents and is still going strong, albeit with a tendancy to be temperamental on tension - but aren't we all after 36 years of usage without enough servicing / tlc?). (new beginning)

4. Having got to a complicated bit on an angora tunic for E ... it's been temporarily put aside .. as other needs started to press - though the fact that I have been putting the work in progress into a scrappy freebie cheap cotton shopping bag (through security and on the previous flight) has been part of the triggers of this week's completions. (work in progress)

5. I decide to attend the Stitch Crawl event in London for WWKIP (world wide knit in public) on Saturday 11 June (so I needed another decision for a knitting project to take)

6. I had to decide on a project to take with me: the angora tunic I reckoned would need too much concentration - so I thought I'd get a head start on an Xmas present for L (fingerless gloves with mitten cap is the request - so I started on a hat, of course!) (new beginnings)

7. Finished the hat ! (oops - completion of something that should have been work in progress ... but the fingerless gloves with mitten cap that would complete the set looked far too complicated to start ...)

8. so spent Friday evening looking for a simple pattern for something to knit on Saturday ... found one and started it off (new beginning)

9. In the meantime  - I think on Friday - started and completed making a bag (from a kit bought cheaply in the sale, partly because of the fabrics that I knew the intended recipient would love! , also because I knew that I would be able to use the kit as a template for other bags (new, in progress, finished!)

10. and over the next few days worked on prepping and stitching a patchwork quilt that had been work in progress for 7 years or more

11. Saturday - went to the Stitch Crawl for WWKIP  in London and came away with 2 new friends (only 6 rows done on the new beginning scarf ---  but that wasn't the point) and a real sense of connection with the variety of people who are  involved and contributing to the world of knittery and stitchery

12. Saturday - returned home and, from start to finish, completed a sewn "project bag"

13. Sunday - added bling to the aforesaid project bag, and completed another bag - including knitting i-cord. Both bags were from totally recycled stuff that I already had.

14. Sunday - and then tidied up the mess before S returned.

So what's the completion tally for the week;

- cushion (completed)
- 3 bags (started and completed)
- hat (started and completed)
- patchwork (restarted)
- 2 new connections
- sewing machine (learning curve mastered)

plus lots of tidying up and organising, and doing the washing,  so that my flatmate Sarah doesn't come back to complete chaos!

I have to return my energies to the day-job tomorrow. My personal challenge is how to get the same energy for creativity + implementation into my commercial life .. when so often the paymasters play lip-service to innovation  ... which is ok as long as it doesn't rock the boat ... and demand instant results without understanding the creative processess or the time things actually take to do.

The warp and weft of our lives

My tangle of yarns has been living in bags and boxes in france for the last 8 years, a riotous rummage of mixed colours, weights and textures. The project on the needles - both a cause and a consequence of my magpie tendencies - was a "something" based on the carpet pattern by Kaffe Fasset in his 1985 explosion onto the design scene Glorious Knitting.

The mid 80's. I think I was knitting a lot of traditional fairisle /intarsia at that time ... But life was too short and too busy in 1985 with 2 very young children and a thesis to finish writing up to seriously think that I would ever complete the 'Crosspatch' sleeveless pullover in 4 ply Shetland wool. I did about 6 inches ... And then it languished in the bottom of a drawer, as a testament to misplaced enthusiasm untempered by practicality.

I think it was finally culled and sent to recycling sometime around one of my moves.

The fact that it was being knitted for my husband - who at the time of the moving cull had become my ex-husband -probably hastened it on its way.

I don't remember my intentions for this 'something'. It was definitely a post divorce project. I guess it was a symbol of journeying into some sort of unknown.

Whereas in the past I would have played safe by sticking to what the pattern said - even a designer like Fassett gave exact yarns to buy and charts to follow - here I had started branching out by incorporating different weights and textures and following the inspiration rather than trying to complete a garment that would look exactly like the one in the book.

I had been inspired to be more creative with textured yarns by a one-day free embroidery workshop I'd attended in Windsor. That embroidery project called on the same jumble of texture and colour in different weights of wool and ribbons: a far cry from the counted cross stitch and other meticulous embroideries and Honiton lace created by my paternal step-grandmother Dorothy.

Yet both this 'something' and the free style embroidery had been hiding untouched for almost a decade - probably since my impetuously impractical pursuit of the provencal dream. There's not much time to knit and stitch when you have a 200 year old crumbling wreck to restore, while still trying to run a business in the UK and continue helping the fledgings fly the nest. You don't need freestyle embroidery where your whole life is freestyling around you.

But knittery and stitchery are forgiving friends. When the time is right they call to you gently and once more the process of working in their colours and textures is a comforting reminder of how weaving in the threads of our experiences, dreams and memories of others is what creates the rich tapestry of our lives - Our work in progress.

Now I know that the "something" will become a cushion; and it won't take another 10 years to complete. That's a promise to myself that will be a joy to keep.

Blinged up knitted shawl

This piece started out as an idle bit of experimentation while in France, as I was starting to get back into knitting. It so nearly became a designer floor cloth. Odd pattern, straight needles that weren't long to take the necessary number of stitches to make the ruffled edge, textured yarn instead of variegated yarn, and only a half-hearted attempt at a tension square. And as I was in the middle of la France profonde I couldn't exactly hot-foot it to Liberty's or John Lewis.

And yet, amazingly, the addition of a bright red knitted flower, a button and a ribbon and voila, an original creation.

It appears that I have a tendency to bring the same attitude now to my knitting of scarves, shawls and bits and bobs as I often do to cooking. I read the recipes as a start point - and for guidelines on techniques, cooking times etc, and then adapt and substitute as I go along. I'm not so sure about the chefy techniques of artistic plating up (usually because I don't plan the presentation in advance). Dinner's served - now - is the usual cry, and can you lay the table as well. My food presentation wouldn't make it much beyond the first couple of rounds of Masterchef.

And I must here confess that I passed over the task of adding the finishing bling to E (though I had knitted the little red flower corsage myself). And a very nice job she made of it too.

Stolen Moments

When you live a busy life (who doesn't these days) slumping in front of the tv of an evening is sometimes all you want to do. But a diet of sitcoms or reruns of CSI and NCIS, House - or even the Mentalist or Numbers - can leave you feeling just as jaded and life-lagged at midnight as you had been four hours earlier.

Watching soaps can be even worse for the soul - kitchen sink doom and gloom. (Mind you, I must say that I am looking forward to Dallas returning to our screens. I hope the script writers have their tongue firmly in cheek).

At least with a knitting project on the go, you do have a sense of fulfillment at the end of the aforesaid evening of indolence.

However, if your project is for someone else, and has a deadline attached (in this case, the stole in question was the finishing touch for a wedding outfit where E was to be bridesmaid), then it is a question of stealing moments whereever you can, in order to reach the deadline.

This stole was knitted in 2 balls of Rowan Kidsilk Haze, a whispy beige colour, on size 5mm needles (I think) from a pattern from the book Boutique Knits by Laura Irwin (available on Amazon here).



The finishing touches (Sarah's idea) was the addition of a few beads at the points of the stole - a bit of bling to weight down the corners, and to finish it off.

The wedding in question was this weekend .... perhaps there will be some pictures of its first outing to follow.

Moebius - a metaphysical approach to knittery and stitchery

Yeh, well, I'm in charge, of this blog, so I can go off on a tangent, or deeply into the fundamentals if I want to: it depends on your own spin on life if you want to read on, or pass swiftly over to the next blog with pictures and pattern details.

The moebius loop is the loop of infinity: what is on the outside affects the inside, and the inside affects the outside.

And yes, the moebius cowl has become a la mode: you knit it in the round and deliberately introduce a twist; or you knit it straight and incorporate the twist in the fabric as you sew it together. Whichever technique you use - you end up with the same result: the inside is the outside and the outside is in the outside (except that knitted in the round means that it is literally seamless).

Even if what we feel or have experienced is 'buried' in our internal unconscious ... it still affects our external self - our actions, our feelings, our motivations, out energies. Likewise, what we choose to do on the outside affects our internal selves.

Complicated, hey!

Yet so simple.

I know that my return to knittery and stitchery is a spontaneous reintegration of who I have been, with who I am currently - and who I will become. Metamorphosis through remembrance and re-integration.

But worry not, dear reader, this blog might be blogging about all things: the journey, the explorations, the metaphysical meanderings; but above all it's about me expressing myself, outside in and inside out ... seamlessly I hope through the crafts of knitting and sewing. Life in the round. Through time. And the time to knit and stitch.

Where's the button box?

While I really appreciate at-your-fingers yarns to drool over (the internet listings don't really do it for me, unless I've fingered it in the flesh ...) in today's yarn stores, I have a real throw-back problem. Buttons.

What's with buttons - tiny, plastic, not very nice - at a minimum of .20p a go? I'm sorry. Where's the button box of yesteryear?

The button box was not just to be raided for knitting or sewing projects. It was the staple for Christmas (and other occasions - if we were lucky) gambling card games. No button box - and no real gaming. Pasta shapes do not work. Nor do plastic poker chips. Nor penny coins, whatever the currency. Yes, there was a frisson on Christmas day itself when there might be some sweets around to play for the instead of aforesaid share-out of the button box. But all gamers know that it's the winning of the game, not the buttons or the sweets, that's the real prize! And anyway, in my family, the easy pickings players knew better than to gamble away their sweets. They'd rather do the washing up!

Yet there was such a ritual to choosing your favourite 3 pieces for Chase the Ace; or your 20 pieces for Newmarket (and you card players of mixed gaming heritage - don't invite me along to facilitate the agreement of house rules for Newmarket or the like. Now, I know better. You'll find me nursing a large gin, or doing the washing up!). And winning, for me, in Pontoon, was all about getting the best buttons.

Not cribbage, of course, we didn't need the buttons here. This was another of the domains of Sam, my maternal grandfather. The cribbage board had as its markers spent matches. And I'm now pretty sure that when I won, it was because Sam was as adept at throwing the game that mattered as he was at winning it. That's a true grandfather gamer!

It was the button box, everytime. My mother's button box was a 1950's (I think) baby milk tin. I'd know it if I saw it. Blue writing on white. Probably given free on the health service.

The charity shop bin bag has its downsides. What's the ethics of chopping the buttons off the garment that's due for the charity bag just for the button box? Of course you can't - because then the garment would just be junk.

But oh, the sadness now of knowing that before the age of vintage revival, most of what you gave to the charity shop ended up in landfill - what about the buttons?

Of course, whenever you needed a full set to finish a project - sod's law said that the button box would only give you 3 of 5, or 4 of 6 ... never enough. And you couldn't change the pattern to suit the button box? Could you? No, of course not.

But these days - thank goodness - buttons are more often bling, finishing touches, part of the creativity not the functionality. But at what price for plastic?

I don't know about you - but I so regret the buttons that went to landfill and the button box that could now be a treasure trove of remembrances of times past ...

So, my friends, and my metaphysical soul sister The Kisser of Frogs, think button box before you commit your torn and shredded garments to the landfill. And if you have buttons that are in want of a good home - let me know, send them to me, and they might well feature in a future project. Or pass them over to a fellow knitter and stitcher.