Project: Checkmate Blanket

 It feels a bit weird sitting here writing for something that isn’t my portfolio, and I feel a bit guilty because if I’m typing this then maybe I should be writing about non-verbal communication or starting my HIV presentation, but I don’t feel like it today, I feel like listening to Taylor Swift and writing a post for my blog that I’ve not felt like for a few months. So that's what I’m doing. 

Drinking makes everything better

Spring is kicking off here, the forsythia has been in flower for a while, the daffs on their way out and the tulips are in flower. And the blackbirds have either started nesting in the hedge or are just marking out their territory, either way they’re noisy little bastards that wake me up now the clocks have changed. The corner of my house is clearly a great spot to sing from, it just also happens to be the corner of my bedroom. I’ve been feeding the birds, I want to get a flat table so that I can feed the blackbirds and robins, but as I went out to top up the feeders this morning and have a nose at the flower border to see if my anemones had come up yet, I saw that the apple tree has blossoms! Last year it didn’t flower and had a growth spurt instead and I was worried that it wouldn’t flower this year either. I pruned it in the autumn, which was a bit daunting but I don’t think it had ever had one before and would probably explain it’s really weird shape. Obviously the Wassailing we held for it helped as well, because who doesn't feel better for mulled cider? I also gave the cherry a trim when I did the apple and I don’t think that has worked as well because I’m still getting pom-pom style bunches of blossoms and no new growth, yet any way. Maybe it was jealous and I need to Wassail it as well next year (hmm, cherry brandy in warm cider? Could be a winner).

Checkmate Baby Blanket

I saw this blanket on LetesKnits instagram when she designed it for her own baby. My cousin is due to give birth in a few weeks and I’d been trying to decide what to make her when I saw this. It looked simple but with just the right amount of something to make it stand out. 

Try and spot the mistake.

Yarn:

Paintbox yarns, wool mix aran in Marine. I couldn’t find anything I liked at my YLS (online, because they’re still closed for lockdown), so I bought this from Lovecrafts.com. I wanted something that had a lot of wool in it for all its benefits, but for a baby blanket I wanted to make sure it could be machine washed because babies are grubby and hand washing a blanket every time it gets dirty will get very old very quickly. This was really nice to work with, soft but didn’t seem to be felting on my horrible dry hands, and coped well with quite a bit on tinking. 

Needles/Gauge:

The pattern gauge is 12.5cm wide by 12cm high for one pattern repeat on 5.5mm needles post blocking. Mine is 11x10cm on 5.5mm needles but pre-block. I know it’ll grow a bit with a bath, but even if it doesn’t I’m happy with the material and size I’ve ended up with. 

Modifications:

I only made one mod for this, I slipped the first stitch of every row knitwise. I just like the edge this gives the garter ridge border.

Difficulty:

Can you knit and purl? Then you can do this. The cable-like stitches are simple and well explained and the pattern was easy enough to remember after a while, especially if you find it easy to read your knitting (I can read my knitting as well as I can read my handwriting, which is why I have a couple of ‘unique features’ in some of my squares where I’ve got a stitch twisting the wrong way). I did find it helpful to have a whole load of stitch markers separating the squares though.

Worth repeating:

I would definitely make this again, because it was in aran it knits pretty quick. It fits in that nice ‘simple enough to knit while watching tv’ but not ‘so simple it’s boring’ sweet spot too.

Books

I had a week off in February to use up the last of this years annual leave and I read a lot of books. It was really nice. I treated myself to some more of the Invisible Library series by Genevieve Cogman, waiting to collect outside my local bookshop seemed a bit weird - there was a queue of us outside going just inside the door one at a time, like picking up books was illicit (which might be apt given the books I was buying). I read each of the first four books in the series over about five days, I haven’t done anything like that for ages. I read the next two in the series over Easter weekend. I really like these books, I think they’re well paced and funny. And I’m kind of annoyed that I’m nearly caught up and soon I’ll have to wait for the next one to be written. 

Food

Ten finally!

I was given ‘Sweet’ by Yotam Ottenlengi and Helen Goh ages ago hadn’t attempted anything from it (but it is a lovely book  just to flick through it), so for Hubs’s second lockdown birthday I made him a surprise birthday cake - Coconut, Almond and Blueberry Cake from it. I didn’t have any lemon zest, I missed it in the ingredients list when I went shopping, but it still tasted pretty good. Nothing complicated in this recipe, and it lasted quite well for a couple of days.

Project: Arachne

 Arachne by AndiSatterlund 

This jumper was released as part of a set last year and I have been thinking about this jumper ever since. I decided that this was going to be my project for October, I'd knit a long sleeved jumper in 4ply in a month, I thought I could totally knit one in DK with time to spare. The 'time to spare bit' I was a little short on (there was also a plan to crochet a matching Tarantula but she is still a WIP).

Awkward selfie!

There were some bits about the pattern I wanted to change from the off, the original has a very high neckline with I'm not a massive fan of generally, t-shirts sometimes feel a bit claustrophobic, and I didn't want long sleeves as I tend to run a bit warm. The pattern was written for sport weight which isn't hugely common in the UK and I'm not sure my LYS stocks any, so there was some working out of which size I needed so I could make it in DK.

I've done some stranded colour work before, I have a lovely pair of wrist warmers made from a Third Vault Yarns  kit, but the floats were only ever a few stitches long. WoollyWormhead posted a great video on her instagram that I found really helpful and I used this every 3^rd stitch or so. I think this might have been a bit overkill and made the fabric a bit inelastic, but I'm hoping with a bit of wear it'll loosen.

Yarn:

My LYS is Sew Much To Do (who doesn't love a pun), and although it is mostly a haberdashery they have a decent enough selection of yarn. I picked some West Yorkshire Spinners Colour Lab DK, which is 100% wool and reared/sheared/spun in the UK. I picked a rather garish green MC and a purple/pink CC (I have a set of 50 colour pencils and didn't have a matching shade for my notebook). It smells a bit sheepy and doesn't specify a sheep breed, and not currently the softest yarn, but also not massively scratchy.

Needles/Gauge:

Using 4mm needles I got a post blocked gauge of 22st x28rows in stst. If I had been knitting the pattern as written I would have been making an XL, but I worked out a L in my gauge would be the same.

3.75mm DPNs for the arm holes and 3.5 crochet hook for the neck.

Modifications:

Arms: I picked up the stitches as per the pattern, knit 2 rounds, then all in 1x1 rib [knit 1 round, decreased 2 under the arm on next round] twice then did a stretchy bind off.

Body: I only did about 20 rows of rib at the bottom, and had to switch to the purple because I ran out of green. I'm on the short side so if I'd continued the rib it would have been too long for me.

Neck: I had to do something with the neck because it was curling over. The pattern calls for picking up the stitches and knitting the neck band, but I didn't want a high neck line. Instead I used my crochet hook to double crochet two rows in the purple. This gives a slightly stand up collar which I maybe could do better, but right now I'm ok with it.

Difficulty:

Bit tricker than what I knit normally because of the stranded colour work, but the general construction wasn't difficult, maybe because this was not my first jumper, not my first pattern from this designer, but I felt the instructions were very clear. I'm not the biggest fan of knitting from charts but writing it out for all the sizes probably would be a nightmare to do and follow.

Worth Repeating:

I'd be happy to make this jumper again, but as I bought the whole pattern set I'm thinking of making a Morticia at some point – those sleeves!

Books

I worked pretty much non-stop on this jumper all October so no blog posts, no art, no gardening but I did read some amazing books. 

Kindred by Rebecca WraggSykes. This is a really interesting, thoughtful, compassionate round up of all the science and archaeology of Neanderthals. It's aimed at people who know nothing and people who might know about one aspect of the Neanderthal story but not other parts. It looks at the story of their discovery, which is an interesting story in the history of archaeology, how they've been portrayed by historians and how they may have interacted with Homo sapiens.

MexicanGothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. I wanted something spooky for Halloween and I'd seen a lot of people saying positive things about this book, and now I am one of them. It's a classic gothic country house style story, think Northanger Abbey, but set in 1950s Mexico. Given the chance I could have read this all in one go, unfortunate I have to work and reading in bed means sleep sometimes wins. I still hold the opinion that reading in bed can be an extreme sport, there's always a risk of dropping a book on your face.

AFatal Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum by Emma Southon. I really enjoyed her book about Agrippina, and this is just as good. It looks at all the ways it was ok to kill people in ancient Rome (and there were a lot of ways) and stories of the people who committed these non-crimes. I love the way Emma shares history, making it accessible and fun. I don't know how she'd feel about the phrase “Horrible History for grown ups” but that's what it feels like.

Garden

This is the after, honest.

I said I'd neglected the garden during October, but I managed to get in it yesterday to clear the flower border and plant some bulbs. I'm so sore today, but as it had forecast rain today I wanted to get it done. Of course the weather seems nice now but if I'd left it I'm sure it would have been miserable. I trimmed back some of my perennials (no idea how they'll feel about that), split and planted some goats beard and something else with white flowers that I was given by my aunt last year, not split plants before so I hope they survive too. I had a whole load of tulips and daffodils planted last year, so they should come back and I've set a whole load more tulips bulbs as well as ranunculus, alliums, anemones and eremurus. Putting bulbs out feels a bit like planting hope, almost the same way that making jam in summer feels like bottling sunshine. Fingers crossed for some interesting germinations. 

Knitting Along

 

Sunday morning and I'm sat at my kitchen table with a lovely cup of tea from Bird and Blend. I have a bit of a collection so today is Earls Paradise, a riff on Earl Grey but with exotic fruit. Usually I use this little bit of time to read an Almanac, do some drawing or Netflix and knit. Work is still super busy, no suprise as there's a pandemic on, but this morning there's breaking news that my organisation may go through a restructuring, seemingly out of the blue. I know I've not been super into news recently trying to stop feeling overwhelmed, but if there had been any inkling of this it would have been mentioned at work. And as a civil servant I should probably stop talking before I get myself in trouble.

Anyway.

Since I wrote last, which wasn't years ago but a mere 2 weeks, I've taken the final step to delete my Ravelry page. Anyone that knows me would probably tell you I'm pretty indecisive, I don't like doing things that can't be undone (or pick where I want to shop, or what to have for dinner, or what time to meet for drinks...) but given the continued ambivalence towards accessibility, I want to call it violence and aggression which I know some of the activists who have been very vocal about this have been experiencing, but it's the indifference that TPTB show that is just as bad. But then that is just another type of aggression, and something I'm sure disabled people are unfortunately used to dealing with. Anyway, it's big and scary and very disappointing, but that sums up this entire year.

FFFS flat lay, how very insta.

In an effort to build a bit of knitterly community away from there, I've been really enjoying the Everyday Knitter group on Mighty Networks. Louise Tilbrook set up the group on Facebook a few years back and I joined but it was a bit much to keep up with. The new format is really nice, ad free and it shows all the things that have happened since you last visited, which is nicer than the Facebook algorithm. Currently we've got a knit-a-long (KAL) to celebrate the move, we're mostly knitting one of Louise's patterns which she kindly made free to the group, the Fuss Free Festival Shawl, or FFFS. I'm using some yarn I bought from a local knitters destash, it's from the Witch Fibre Co, who are a new to me dyer, and it's called Dream Country inspired by The BFG. Normally when I buy yarn it's in a skein and you can see all the colours and have a bit of an idea of how it's going to look knitted, but I've only seen this as a cake so it's a bit of a surprise. I'm loving it though, and although I did intend for it to be a Christmas present, it might be a bit hard to part with. What was fun though was having an official cast on party Monday night, Might Networks has a chat feature, although knitting and typing aren't things you can do together easily and there was talk of maybe using Zoom for the next online event. 

Gnicki the Gnome to be.

I'm also trying to keep up with the Imagined Landscapes Gnome-along. Where the EK KAL is a pattern is just a normal pattern we all make together, and you can see the finished object (FO) before starting, this one is a mystery or MKAL. I know it's a Gnome called Gnicki, I know the designers style, and that I needed 4 colours of fingering weight yarn but that's all I had to go on before buying the pattern. The colours I've picked for my Gnome was inspired by the summer moutain meadows seen in the Sound of Music, the designer said they'd chosen some of their colours to keep the idea of the Gnome being a mountain creature of ice and snow, but sometimes mountains are covered in wildflowers. I've used some miniskeins from Mothy and the Squid, specifically “Squeaking Silk Moth” (yellow), and “Springtime” (purple/blue), and some yarn from stash, the white is from Belinda Harris and the green is the last of my very precious SparkleDuck “And The Forest Began To Sing”.

Some people really don't like the idea of not knowing what you're making before starting, but I quite enjoy it. Maybe it's to do with the indecisiveness, when I feel like making a hat there are so many hats out there how to I pick one? Also it's fun seeing a project some together with lots of other people. So far I'm up to clue 4, I think clue 6 was released today so best get the needles out.

Food:

No bread from me recently, and I really should feed Doughsophine the starter, but I made some cake with greengages that were left at work for people to help themselves to. Greengages aren't usually commercially available, I don't think I've had any since Hubs and I found some growing in a Shropshire lane many summers ago, and before that in my Little Nan's garden. Some people at work hadn't heard of them before. This is probably why it was really difficult for me to find a recipe for greengages in my bookcase, but the River Cottage Fruit Handbook had a really nice ones for Plum and Hazelnut cake, which became Greengage and Walnuts because I didn't have any Hazelnuts either. I love using whole (or half fruit in this case) in cake because it just explodes in your mouth when you bite into it. 

While looking for recipes I had a flick through Ruby Tandoh's “Flavour”, and I'd forgotten how many good sounding things there were in there. So now I have Coconut and (homegrown) raspberry ripple ice cream in the freezer. I started it yesterday and it took a bit longer to freeze than I was expecting so I added the raspberry ripple earlier than was recommended but I had to go to bed and thought doing it this morning would be too late. Update: just checked and it's frozen solid so this was the right move.

Books:

I visited my local and lovely bookshop Toppings the other week and purchased a whole bunch of books. The first I read was “The Masked City” by Genevieve Cogman. I accidentally bought the sixth book in the Invisible Library series first, so I'm slowly getting them in order so I can read that one. Luckily I really enjoy them, this is the second book of the series and I just didn't want to put it down. They're fantasy books, the Invisible Library is set in a pocket universe/dimension that connects to lots of other world of varying degrees of chaos (under the influence of fae) or order (influence of dragons). The Library is there to collect unusual works of fiction from across all these worlds by sending out Librarians, and the novels follow one Librarian, Irene, and her apprentice Kai. Magic, fae and dragons, how could I not enjoy it.

I followed this by reading the Witcher Book “Sword of Destiny”. I'm not a gamer so only came to the Witcher because of the Netflix show. I enjoy Sci fi and fantasy, but it's much easier to find sci fi TV and movies than it is to find fantasy ones (like, proper fantasty a la LotR, not GoT). I would have thought it easier to make fantasy than sci fi, but I guess more people like space. I really enjoyed the TV show and decided to read the books, and I'll be honest they are not exactly what I was expecting. The Witcher on tv doesn't say much, there's lots of fighting/killing monsters and sex, the sort of things you would expect from adult fantasy, and a game series I imagine largely aimed at men. But through the books (the two I have read anyway), where Geralt the Witcher is a bit more talkative anyway, there is a long running thread where he loves one woman, Yennefer, and is constantly longing for her, but knowing that because of their individual issues/occupations (witcher=mutant, Yennefer=sorceress) that they can't be together. I thought it was nice/weird to see in what I expected to be a more fighty/killy/sexy book.

Still reading the Philosophy Queens book too, and I might even read a proper philosophy book or two at some point to enjoy the full work of some of the women I've learnt about.

Garden:

Not gonna lie, it's still out there, and has slightly fewer brambles but that's about it. Apart from the odd courgette that I find, normally once they're huge. There's been a heat wave, it should be lucky I watered it. 

How did I miss this?

Rebooting

Ok, so anyone wondering how the Eat The World Cup (last post over 2 years ago), it didn't. Life, as always, got in the way. I did watch more football, we went to Oxford for a few days because it was my 33^rd birthday and there was a Tolkien exhibition on (10 points for getting the significance). Visited lots of pubs, most of which claimed to be the oldest, but were all very pleasant. So pleasant in fact that we took the FIL last year because he briefly lived there when he was 18 and hadn't been back since.

So why after 2 years am I back? Well, if you're a knitter you probably know about the changes at Ravelry and I want to move away from the platform, and if you're not a knitter its drama that would take too long to explain, I'm probably not the person to explain as I'm not personally affected and there are people out there who could do a better job I would anyway. Just it turns out our inclusive knitting platform is not very inclusive after all. So I hope this will be the place I share what I've been making and that my project notes and pictures will be of use to anyone that needs them.

I was in a really good place on Friday, everything I needed to do at work slotted together like clockwork with out me turning into a stress head and I even managed to come up with a post-Rav plan.

1. New email so I can sign up to all my favourite designers newsletters and have them all go to one tidy place. - Check.

2. Revive blog. - Check. Even managed to change the default email to match the new one I created.

3. Create database on Airtable to replace Rav. - This is work in progress. Lots of data entry luckily just the sort of mindless task I'm quite good at, helped enormously by the template from here. Still getting used to the set up, and the order patterns/projects/library need to be loaded but I'll get there.

4. Download Library from Rav. - this one feels a bit daunting but someone posted a video of how do to it with Downthemall. Also the bonus of creating a new email is that I have more cloud space so I can try and fit all the files in one place and not the three I think I have them at the minute.

So there we go, I have a plan, what could possibly go wrong.

So what am I working on at the minute?

Knitting:

Starflanket  by Stephen West. If you don't know Stephen West then he is a designer who loves shape, colour and texture and designs things in ways you probably wouldn't think of. And his favourite colour is probably neon. I've made one of this designs before, Spectre which is a spiral shaped scarf, but have plenty more in my queue. This is a DK weight blanket and I've tried to use lots of scraps to make mine, in either left over DK or fingering held double. I'm currently on a brioche section which I can't decide if it's working or if I'm doing something wrong. I put in a life line before I started so if it is wrong I can safely, and sadly, rip it back. It's over 3m in circumference now so each row takes a long time to do. I've been recording how much yarn I use for each section which I'll put in a blog post when I'm finally finished.

Reading:

I'm on GoodReads if anyone wanted to see what I want to read or have read.

I've just finished reading Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages by Tom Holt. Not a recent release, just something I found on my bookshelf, but I needed something silly and comforting last weekend and I didn't have time to read all of Discworld. I always enjoy Tom Holt's books, they're all silly and funny modern fantasy.

Also reading The PhilosophyQueens which is a book I funded on Unbound. If you don't know about Unbound it's kind of publishing via crowdfunding, the funding target covers the first print run and costs of setting up a book. The premise of the book is to highlight the overlooked women in the field of philosophy, from Ancient Greeks to modern day. I've never had much to do with philosophy other than what Chidi from The Good Place managed to impart, but this has been an interesting book, if a little heavy going for bed time reading some days.

Hubs also had a book published this year, also by Unbounders, so in case you need 100 mostly helpful robots, Small Robots might be of interest to you. He's also on Twitter @smolrobots.

Garden:

Oh my Gourd!

So it turns out I'm a very lazy gardener. If you look back at posts on here you'll see past me being very hopeful and enthusiastic with plans. This year I can't even get at the veg beds because the brambles have taken over. The border I put in last year is a bit more successful, it looks very chaotic, and I did set some veg in when I realised the raised beds would not be ready so I've had some courgettes, which have done better in the border than they did in the proper beds. I've also got some Uchiki Kuri squash, which I did not realise were climbers and at this point are trying to take over.                

Food:

 Just adding this quickly at the bottom because I've just had the most amazing sandwich from my home-made bread. I know with lock-down everyone started getting into sour dough but, and I'm going totally millennial hipster here, I started November last year after a really enjoyable talk by James Morton of GBBO fame. The local book shop, Toppings, organises a lot of talks, I've seen the Hairy Bikers, Brian Blessed, Neil Gaiman and others, and was excited to listen to James. Fantastic bit of marketing as he bought sour dough starter with him so you could get started almost immediately. I really enjoy the book (Super Sour Dough) and have made quite a few bits from it, banana pancakes are made quite regularly, the spelt batons I made a few weeks ago were delicious and this weekends seeded sandwich loaf is stunning. The only real failure I had was the epic buns, more or less chelsea buns, but I think that was my fault rather than the recipe and now I've a bit more experience should give it another bash. 

Got papped by OH meeting a famous.