The Sock That Didn't Want To Be Knitted

Hello, thank you for popping in to read my musings.  I was away again over the weekend, staying with family in Wales and being well and truly looked after.  My diary is beginning to fill up - actually, it's not, there are only eight events planned betweeen now and the end of August but after so many months of staying at home that feels busy and it's making me feel a bit anxious.  I shall have to pull up my big girl pants (Kay, that's knickers, not trousers!) and be brave.  In the meantime, there will be some soothing domesticity at home to keep me grounded. 

So here is the tale of a sock which didn't want to be knitted.  I knitted the first one without any problems at all but as my needles were weaving the yarn and the sock grew I realised that it was a long pattern repeat and that matching up the yarn for the second sock might be difficult.  I do like socks to match each other, although I know that some people are not as bothered as I am if they don't, and even though these socks were a gift for somebody else I needed them to be identical twins.  Had I known how difficult this would be with this yarn I wouldn't have bought it, although I love this colour and I am almost (but not quite!) wishing that I had bought some more of it for myself.  This is Drops Fabel 672 and the colour is called Bourgogne.

Having finished the first sock, I started winding yarn off the second ball until I reached the place where the colour matched the first and I could begin.  I wound and I wound and I kept on winding.  The colour change was subtle and I couldn't be sure of the exact point at which to stop.  Eventually I found it, at least I thought I had, and I cast on.  After knitting sixteen rounds of the cuff I realised that I had not found the right point so I pulled out my needles, undid all my work and began winding off more yarn until I found what I thought was the right place to cast on again.  This time I had found the exact point and as the leg emerged it matched the first sock beautifully.  Hooray!  

Everything was going well until my yarn became tangled up so tightly that I had to cut it.  That wasn't really a great problem as I made a beautiful, invisible Russian join and spliced the two ends together...except that I joined the ball of yarn to the tail at the top of the cuff instead of the working end!  Grrr.  I cut the yarn again and made another invisible join, this time using the right ends.  Off I went again, around and around the needles.

I finished the leg and began to knit the heel flap over thirty stitches.  I made a serious mistake at this point: I did this while I was at my daughter's house and after knitting six rows I set the sock aside and went upstairs to read her children a bedtime story.  I really should have known better.  When I came downstairs and picked up the needles again there were only twenty-nine stitches!  I counted several times, in horror, in the hope that my counting spell would cause the missing stitch to reappear but alas, there really were only twenty-nine stitches and I couldn't work out where the missing one had gone.  There was nothing for it, I had to pull out the needle, take back those six rows and start again.  Harrumph!   This time I ensured that I was at home, by myself, with no distractions as I counted every stitch, and after thirty-five rows I still had thirty stitches.  Phew!  However, it was apparent that the pattern on this knitted heel flap did not match the pattern on the first sock; I must have knitted one row short on the leg and although it didn't show up when I finished it, knitting the heel flap over only half the stitches made the difference glaringly obvious.  Again, there was nothing for it, I had to pull out the needle, frog those beautiful thirty-five rows and knit one more row on the leg of the sock.  I was, to put it mildly, quite frustrated!  The third time I knitted that heel flap, at home, by myself, with no distractions, I was successful but I was beginning to curse the sock.

Once the heel flap is complete I always feel that I am on the home straight with a sock, unless it needs to fit a very large foot, in which case I have sometimes been on the verge of losing the will to live, and I was able to complete that sock without any further mishaps.  The pair of identical twins were duly wrapped and posted off to Scotland, where the weather allows woollen socks to be worn for many months of the year, and their new owner reported that they were a perfect fit and she was beyond delighted.  I think that makes all the splicing, frogging and reknitting worth it - but only just!

  

Some of you may have struggled with some of the terms I have used in this post, and I have never met a non-knitter who knew that socks have gussets!

See you soon.

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x

So That Was February

Hello, thank you for dropping in here, you are very welcome, as ever.  I haven't been here for more than a month, for which I am sorry, but really, I didn't think I had anything interesting to share with you; I certainly haven't been anywhere interesting.  However, this week I suddenly have lots of things I want to write about so I thought I should start with February and when I looked back over the month it seems that some things did happen.

Birthday

I celebrated my birthday at home with the Best Beloved and a bit of a tear in my eye because the day marked a whole year since the last time I saw my younger daughter. The Best Beloved did his best to make sure that I had the best possible lockdown birthday: he gave me smoked salmon with a poached egg on toasted homemade bread for breakfast, we had croissants for elevenses and he went to Marks & Spencer's food hall to buy a treat for dinner. I made myself a birthday cake because he's really not up to that. During the afternoon we lit the fire and watched a film together, a rare occurrence because we don't like the same kind of films, but I was allowed to choose (gasp!) so we watched The Dig, a film about the discovery of the Anglo-Saxon treasure at Sutton Hoo. (Some of you may have read Simon Stone's novel on which the film is based, but I haven't.) We both enjoyed it, him more than he expected to. In the evening I really enjoyed a video meeting with my sisters and parents, during which I wore a tiara and drank champagne - after all, it was my birthday!  The following day was a babysitting day and I was able to celebrate all over again with The Teacher, Tom Kitten and Cottontail and even though I had to cook the dinner myself this time, it was super duper to be with them.  They had even made me a cake, which was a big deal because The Teacher doesn't enjoy baking and she had borrowed the equipment from a friend, which of course made it all the more special.  She's a good girl.

Valentine's Day

The Best Beloved really isn't interested in Valentine's Day so I gave up hoping and bothering several years ago.  However, I did receive a card - from somebody else.  The Mental Health Collective organises a card exchange several times a year and this is the third time I have participated - I was given a name and address and somebody different was given mine.  We are asked to send a card or letter with encouraging words to our recipient, that's all, and the theme this time was Love, goodwill rather than romance.  It's not terribly onerous but I really believe that it can make a big difference to the recipient.  I received my card a couple of days early, before the posting date, and I was bowled over because the sender had obviously spent some time and effort making it, even though I am a complete stranger to her.  I wanted to pass on that kindness in a similar way so I set aside the card I had bought and instead spent an afternoon making a card to send.  Here is the card I received.  It's still on my mantelpiece.

Shrove Tuesday

Well, I didn't go to be shriven of my sins but I did eat pancakes.  I had decided that this year's pancakes would be Scotch rather than traditional or American so I made up the batter before we ate dinner, ready to cook afterwards.  The Best Beloved then decided that he wanted to do the cooking - I don't know why, this task always falls to me and I'm not sure that he has ever cooked a pancake of any variety before, but he was quite sure.  He went into the kitchen, instructed me that I was to stay outside and closed the door firmly.  Well, obviously I couldn't help myself and I quietly crept in and snaffled this photo without him realising.  I couldn't stop laughing - it's the smallest pancake in the world!  He told me that it wasn't his fault, that my batter was too thick (how very dare he!) and would not accept any advice or information about the niceties of pancake batter.

I was shoved sent out of the kitchen, the door was firmly closed again and a little while later he presented me with these.  I was very polite and appreciative (and stifling laughter).

Vaccinations

My 'phone rang one afternoon and even though the call was from an unknown number, I answered it, which is unusual.  I am very glad I did because the call was from my GP surgery, offering me a covid vaccination two days later.  I was very surprised, accepted the invitation and asked if the Best Beloved could also be vaccinated at the same time as we fall into the same category.  We were given consecutive appointments and two days later, the deed was done.  I was very impressed with the whole set-up, we were given appointments in May for the second dose and neither of us suffered any side effects.  The Best Beloved was relieved because it meant that by the time he would return to the classroom, he would be almost three weeks post-vaccination, long enough for it to provide him with some protection.

Reading

I finished reading A Suitable Boy on 26th February, so it took just over seven weeks.  I smile when I think about this book and I miss it already because I enjoyed it very much, all 1,474 pages of it.  James Wood reviewed it in The Guardian as "vast and amiably peopled" and that's one of the things I liked about it, almost all the characters are likeable.  I also found it very visual - the clothes, jewellery and gardens are vividly described and painted beautiful pictures in my head.   This book isn't difficult to read, it's all storytelling and there's no need to read between the lines, it's just long, but hey, we're in lockdown, I had little else to do but read, and I am glad to have read this.

Knitting 

I am still slowly working on Tom Kitten's jumper but at the beginning of February I discovered that my cousin, a teacher, has to spend all day at work with the windows and doors open (to reduce the risk of covid infection) and that by the time she gets home she is frozen so I knitted her a pair of woollen socks to keep her feet warm.  She has very dainty feet so they didn't take as long as usual and I used some lovely Drops Fabel in Salt and Pepper (shade 905).  I was very pleased with them and so was she, it is lovely to be able to make people happy.

Now here we are, halfway through March and less than a week away from astronomical Spring. The Best Beloved returned to work when the schools reopened to all pupils a week ago and on the Sunday evening he had a shave, ironed a shirt, polished his shoes and put his face shield, mask and hand sanitiser into his briefcase. The following morning I wondered aloud if I should take a photograph of him on the doorstep, the way we used to do when our children returned to school on the first day of the new school year, because that's how I felt. I am now allowed to meet one friend in a public place for a chat so that's what I am planning to do on Thursday and I can't bloomin' wait. The world is still turning. 

Take care, stay safe and see you soon.

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x

Creativity

Hello, and thank you for calling in.  We are safe and well, although with two teachers and two tiny people in our family the dreaded virus seems to be coming closer and closer.  Little Cottontail, now almost fifteen months old, had a runny, snuffly nose last week  and a little tired cough (for a day) and her nursery would not let her attend until she had taken a Covid-19 test and received a negative result, even though she had none of the official symptoms of the virus.  The poor darling had to have those very invasive swab tests, and of course she screamed her head off, and then her parents were not allowed to go to work until the negative result came in, forty-eight hours later.  We are now waiting for her to get the next inevitable nursery cold and repeat the whole process.  

Autumn arrived here with a deluge.  After an initial week of relentless rain we had some glorious blue skies but the sunshine is replaced by rain every time I'm ready to grab my camera and go out to enjoy my favourite season so I've been cracking on with some creative projects instead.  Creative projects have saved my mental wellbeing during this year.

I always knew that I was not "artistic" because when I was a child I wasn't good at drawing or painting and that was what I knew to be the definition of "artistic".  Those were the school lessons I enjoyed least of all and I was immensely relieved when, after two years at secondary school, I was able to leave the art room behind for good.  There is a caveat to that: in my first year, we had to draw an animal skull in pen and ink, I think it was a sheep, and I remember a gentle and empathetic teacher explaining how we should look at the object in front of us and how we should replicate what we saw.  I enjoyed that lesson, sitting quietly by myself and becoming absorbed in the task, oblivious to what was going on around me, and the following week I walked into the art room and was absolutely amazed to see that my drawing had been mounted and displayed on the wall.  My heart swelled with pride.  It was a unique occurrence and memorable for that.  Last year my mother gave me my school reports and I was amazed again: in that year I attained 87% and a Grade A for Art!  I think that must show the power and effectiveness of a good teacher.  The following year, with a different teacher, I attained 68% and a Grade B but he commented that I was a "very capable girl".  I had completely forgotten that I was ever any better than hopeless at art. 

When I was in my twenties I realised that I did have some artistic sensibilities.  I bought a house and read lots of interior design books and magazines and discovered that I had strong views about how colours are affected by light and which colours I wanted to live with.  Actually, now that I think about that, I probably developed ideas about that when I was a teenager and started using make-up.  I have always known that blue eyeshadow does nothing for my hazel eyes!  Still, I associated being artistic with the ability to paint and draw and so it was not a label I could attach to myself, even hesitantly.

A couple of years ago I had an interesting conversation with my eleven year old nephew.  He has the talent and skill which I lack and loves to paint and draw and had painted small canvases for his aunts and grandparents for Christmas.  He told me how important it is to him to be able to exercise his talent and express himself with paint, particularly watercolour.  I told him how important it has become to me to do something creative every day.  I remembered a keen gardening friend who once told me that because he worked in an office all day, gardening provided him with the outlet to create something with his hands and my businesswoman sister who makes the most beautiful greetings cards.  I thought of other people I know who dance, play musical instruments, cook wonderful meals, bake and decorate extraordinary cakes and take stunning photographs.  It has taken years for me to realise that I am creative - I still wouldn't use the word "artistic", even though I now know that the word encompasses far more than the ability to paint and draw.  I looked up definitions of "creativity" and I liked this one:

Creativity, the ability to make or otherwise bring into existence something new, whether a new solution to a problem, a new method or device, or a new artistic object or form. (www.britannica.com, the website of the Encylcopedia Britannica)

Over these last months when I have had to spend so much time at home, creativity has given me something to do to fill the time, something to focus on entirely so that there has been no room for my mind to wander to grim, hopeless places and something very satisfying indeed.  I'd like to share the results of some that creativity.

The Teacher asked me to make her a blanket big enough for her little family to snuggle under together.  She asked for pastel colours and together we settled on the Dune blanket by Lucy at Attic 24.  I had fallen in love with this blanket as soon as I saw it and I was delighted to have a reason to make it.  I made the double bed size, with a starting chain of 266, but it sits on my daughter's king-sized bed and drapes over the sides, as you can see.  It's enormous and she loves it (phew!).  There wasn't a great deal of mental creativity involved in this project as both the stitch and the colours were all dictated by the pattern and a good deal of discipline was involved in its creation: I made myself work at least two rows every single day for seventy-nine days.  I reckon there's about two hundred hours of work in it altogether.  However, I conjured it into existence and my spirits sang as I worked on it, filling me with joy.  I have never considered myself to be "a pastels person" but I absolutely love the way these colours work together.  I almost couldn't bear to hand it over!  

Then there were the crocheted rainbows which I showed you in August, bedecked with beads and pompoms, twenty-one of them all told.  That did become a bit of a chore, only because there were so many of them, but playing around with the beads as I carefully selected them was great fun, and watching the summerhouse fill up with them was very satisfying - there were ten of them in there at one point.

As usual, there were rainbow blankets for babies.  My standard colours are Lipstick, Spice, Saffron, Lime, Turquoise, Violet and Magenta and I didn't choose them myself, I copied them from another crocheter, but each border is different.  I have made two of these since March.

Then there was a new rainbow blanket, a commission, with instructions that I could choose the pattern and rainbow colours myself.  I chose Stylecraft Special DK as usual because it washes and wears so well, which I think is important in blankets for small children, but this time I chose a much brighter palette of Matador, Jaffa, Sunshine, Grass Green, Turquoise, Empire and Proper Purple.  I was worried about the Jaffa and the Matador as they are almost bright enough to require the wearing of sunglasses(!) but the other colours pulled them in and they all worked well together.  I couldn't fail to smile every time I looked at it.

We celebrated Cottontail's first birthday in July and I crocheted her a jacket using some scrumptious, squishy Stylecraft Special Aran yarn.  As he unwrapped it for her, Tom Kitten looked at me and said, "You made it!" and my heart filled up.  It is SO special to be able to make things for the people you love.

My creativity didn't all involve yarn and hooks.  One of my sisters reached a milestone birthday at the end of July and another of our sisters created a photograph album for her.  There was much remembering and reminiscing as images flew through cyberspace and I decided to use some of mine to make her an explosion scrapbook.  I bought the basic box in Hobbycraft along with several punches, card, ribbon and glue and I spent about twenty hours decorating the box, inside and outside.  Inside there were three layers of photographs, images, messages and quotes from her favourite films and books as well as her signature recipe.  Tucked away in pockets between those layers were little cards from myself and my daughters and inside the inner box there was a packet of my sister's favourite childhood sweets and a tiny string of Happy Birthday bunting.  Honestly, I enjoyed making this SO much, and it felt good to be using different skills.  Sorting through old photographs and collating them is another creative pleasure and I made an album for my cousin, celebrating the same milestone birthday eleven days after my sister.  I am definitely going to make more albums, and more explosion boxes.

Well, I think that everything I have shown you so far has looked pretty good but now I am going to something I created with love and care and not a great deal of skill!  When my sister asked me to spend her special birthday with her I decided to make her a celebratory cake.  This was brave because my cakes look very homely - I've never used a piping bag and I've only used fondant once.  I'm a bit old-fashioned.  However, I couldn't bear the thought of her going without a birthday cake on her actual birthday so I consulted my friend's thirteen year-old daughter, a keen baker.  She suggested a pinata cake - in case you haven't come across one of these before, it's a three-layer sponge, filled and covered with icing, with a secret hole in the middle which is filled with sweets so that when you cut a slice, the sweets spill out of the centre.  Got it?  Another super-duper baking friend suggested that I use a madeira cake recipe as it's more robust than my standard Victoria sponge and that if I had a deep cake tin, I could bake it in that and slice it into three layers rather than bake each layer separately.  So that's what I did.  I baked the cake the day before the birthday and the next morning, when it was cool and settled (which is more than I was!), I held my breath and sliced it horizontally, twice, something else I've never done before.  I made a ridiculous amount of chocolate butter icing, which I have rarely done as one of my children never liked it, sandwiched the layers together with the sweetie treasure in the middle and covered the cake.  I smoothed the icing as best I could and as you can see, it's not smooth!  This is probably the ugliest cake my sister has ever received but it was made with love and I think she appreciated that.  Best of all was that she had never come across a pinata cake before so the sweets were a big surprise.  Making this cake caused me a great deal of worry and tension but it was as important to me as that mounted drawing of a sheep's skull hanging on the wall.

                                                 

This is how it looked before I put the top layer on. 

Now that schools have reopened and we are easing back into the old routine, to some extent, I have reverted to yarn, needles and hooks but I have not forgotten that I stretched some different creative muscles and that I enjoyed it.  I saw a side of myself which I haven't seen for a long time and which I'd like to see more often.  I think that creativity isn't merely an end in itself but it facilitates other activities, too: a long time ago I read that learning to play a musical instrument improved children's academic performance in other subjects, too.  That's why I think it's important to make time and space to be creative.  I'll leave you now with a definition of creativity from the author C.J. Lyons.

"Living in possibility and abundance rather than limitation and scarcity."

See you soon.

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x

Rainbows In The Clouds

Hello, thank you for popping in, you are very welcome here and I hope you enjoy today's witterings.  The sun is shining here today and my washing is flapping on the line while I hide away in the cool to write this post, with all the windows open upstairs.   

I'm going to backtrack for a bit, back to March.  The prime minister gave his first televised press briefing about coronavirus on Monday 16th March, by which time the school in which The Teacher works had already closed - it's a special school and many of the pupils are extremely vulnerable, clinically, so the headteacher had made the decision early in order to protect them.  There was plenty of work for supply teachers in mainstream schools as so many of the staff were staying at home, either because they had symptoms of the virus themselves or because somebody else in their household did, so the Best Beloved was busy but he wasn't at all surprised when the announcement came that all schools should close on 20th March.  When he came home that evening we didn't know when he would next have any work (and we still don't) or when he would next have any income.  Mothering Sunday was to follow two days after this and the prime minister had asked us not to visit our mothers, households were to stay separate in an attempt to prevent the spread of the virus.  I felt anxious about the future and quite bleak and I decided that I needed to do something positive to raise my mood.

During this last week of term there was a call to put images of rainbows in our windows so that children who were going out for a daily walk with their parents could count them, giving them something cheerful to do on those walks.  A woman in Telford had seen that this was happening in Australia and started spreading the word over social media and soon those rainbows were everywhere around here.  The Teacher and Tom Kitten drew one in their front window and I decided that I wanted to decorate my window with rainbows, too.  This was all before the rainbow began to be used as a symbol of support for the NHS, it was simply something colourful and cheery to lift our spirits, although I couldn't help remembering the story of Noah's Ark in which the rainbow is a symbol of God's promise that life on earth would never again be wiped out by a flood.  So on Mothering Sunday, rather than seeing my little family I went to a craft shop and bought seven sheets of card, one each of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo(ish) and violet.  I had noticed that lots of people didn't know the colours of the rainbow but I know that Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain and I'm a rainbow pedant.  That evening I cut out eighty-four hearts and stacked them into seven neat little piles.

The following day I strung the hearts together with cotton thread and sent the Best Beloved up the ladder to hang them in front of the window.  Then I took a large wooden heart, a couple of tester pots of paint and some children's paint sticks and chalk out of the craft drawer and painted a centrepiece.  I thought that if I used chalk, I could change the word in the centre sometimes but in fact, it still says "Hope" because that is still my watchword.  The great thing about this little project was that not only did its creation cheer me up but its existence continues to bring me happiness.  Every morning when I open the curtains I smile as those colourful hearts twirl and dance in the air.  I can't possibly feel gloomy when there are forty-two brightly coloured hearts in my window.  

Soon, crocheted rainbows began appearing in windows too and in the middle of April I received a request from a good friend: could I make a crochet rainbow for another friend of hers, a hospital staff member who really wanted one and was sleeping away from her family while she was awaiting Covid-19 test results?  I couldn't refuse, could I?  So I cast around the internet to get some ideas and found the the Rainbow of Unity at Kerry Jane Designs.  I liked the pattern but I didn't like the pompoms so I kept looking and came across Vicki's Rainbow of Hope.  I did like all those beads dangling beneath her rainbow, and I had plenty of beads left over from last year's Christmas projects, so I brought the two patterns together and made this. - 

I love, love, LOVE it.  I sent this photo to a group of three friends and my daughters and within five minutes I had been asked to make six more!  I had plenty of yarn and beads so I carried on and I saw a pompom-bedecked rainbow online that I really did like so I embellished one of mine in a similar way.  I used this photo on my Facebook account and people asked if they could buy a rainbow.  I was a bit stunned.

At this point I took stock.  I was running low on yarn and beads and I would need to buy more if I agreed to these requests.  I worked out that each rainbow cost £1.25 in materials and five hours of my time and while I was happy to give the time - we were in lockdown and I like doing things which make other people happy - I didn't want to be out of pocket.  One friend, a good needlewoman, offered to make me some fabric face masks in return for a rainbow and I was very pleased by this creative swap.  So, I explained to my potential "customers" (get me!) that while I wasn't selling rainbows, I would need to cover my costs at £1.25 per rainbow or payment in kind.  The response has been amazing: one person has paid £1.25, one paid £5 for two and I have also received, as well as the face masks, chocolates, jam, a plant for the garden, seeds, a bag of yarn oddments, tea, pamper products, biscuits, shortbread and cakes.  My friends have been SO generous. The bartering economy is fab!  I am currently making Rainbow No.21 and the Best Beloved, who is usually indifferent to such things, has asked me if I am going to make one to stay in our summerhouse!

I shall leave you with this quote from Maya Angelou, "God put rainbows in the clouds so that each of us - in the dreariest and most dreaded moments- can see a possibility of hope."

See you soon.

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x

Crochet Baubles

Hello, thank you for calling in.  It's a miserable old day here but I had a very quiet and lovely weekend full of reading, crochet and a rare visit to the cinema, to see Little Women.  I think this was the first time the Best Beloved and I have been to the cinema together for five years and I think we might do it again soon because I enjoyed it.  I approved of the film except for the miscasting of handsome, youthful-looking, French-accented actor Louis Garrel as Professor Bhaer and I think that Greta Gerwig has done a fine job of both writing the screenplay and directing the film.  I hope she will be nominated for an Oscar in about an hour's time.

However, what I really want to share with you today is a bit of crochet.  Now that Christmas gifts have been delivered and opened it's safe for me to show you some of the things I made so here are some baubles

I made these with Drops Paris, a cotton yarn in an aran weight, but I used a smaller hook than usual, 4mm, to keep the stitches close and prevent the stuffing falling out.  I loved every bit of the process of making these, from choosing the colours, crocheting the yarn, choosing the buttons and beads and bells, the sewing up and stuffing to the little photo shoot.  The pattern is the Attic 24 Bauble Decoration and you can find it here if you'd like to.  I made these in the summer and crocheted the shapes first.  Then, one day in August among the unpredictability and chaos caused by a new baby, when I needed silence and solitude to regain some equilibrium, I carried a tray out to the summerhouse and while the Painted Ladies and Peacocks danced outside, I carefully and thoughtfully put the baubles together.  They filled me with happiness. 

I loved them so much that I made some more, I couldn't help myself.  When The Teacher saw them, she asked me to make one for her and she hung it on her Christmas tree.  They were well-received and some of my friends told me that they intend to keep them out all year round, not just at Christmas, which made me very happy because that was my hope when I chose the not-specifically-Christmas colours. 

I think I should make some for myself because looking at these jolly, bright photos is making me happy on this miserable old day.

See you soon.

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x

Pumpkins

Hello, thank you for dropping in.  Proper blogging is resuming.  The last leaves are still clinging onto the tree branches in beautiful colours of yellow, amber and red and while almost everyone on my Facebook feed seems to be putting up their Christmas decorations I am firmly stuck in the autumn and today I want to talk about... pumpkins.  If you've been here for a while you'll already know that I'm not keen on Halloween or its pumpkins but it seems that the squashes are here to stay and I can't fight progress.  I have come to the conclusion that the pumpkin is a perfectly acceptable autumnal symbol (although a Halloween lantern will always be a swede for me).

 

 

Last year, The Teacher took Tom Kitten to a pumpkin farm and they had a lovely time in the field, where she took some sweet photographs before buying a pumpkin.  She enjoyed it so much that I knew she would want to go again this year so I hatched a plan to knit some little pumpkin hats for Tom Kitten, Cottontail and their Big Cousin, who is five years old.  The weather can be bitterly cold here in October and I wanted to keep their little heads warm and cosy.  I used Stylecraft Special DK in Spice and Green, lovely soft yarn which can be washed in the washing machine when a hat is dropped in the mud by an excited child.

 

The hats were very well received and I was thrilled to bits.  The Teacher told me that they engendered lots of positive comments and laughter from other people at the farm and as it was indeed a bitterly cold day, they kept the children warm and cosy.  I was very pleased with myself.

 

 

The hats also kept the children's heads warm and cosy when we went to Guernsey, where the weather was not as kind as it has been during our previous visits.  Storms delayed our departure by twenty-four hours so Tom Kitten wasn't there in time to help his aunt carve her pumpkin.  I think she managed very well without him.

 

When we returned home I realised that my heart had softened towards the pumpkin.  The Teacher had piled the pumpkins she had bought at the pumpkin farm onto her mantelpiece and, inspired by that, I felt the urge to crochet some little pumpkins for my own autumnal decoration.  I hunted around the internet for a suitable pattern and found one in Attic 24 here which in turn led me to June's pattern here.  I used yarn and stuffing from my stash and in a couple of days I had these four beauties.  They are cute and squishy and one of them is even sparkly and I love them.  It's that simple.  The Teacher has already asked me to make some for her for next year and I think I might have to make some more for myself, too. 

The pumpkins won't be on the mantelpiece for much longer as I shall be putting my Advent calendar there on Sunday but in the meantime, I am enjoying them very much.

See you soon.

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x

My Button Box Blanket

Hello, thank you for calling in, I'm always pleased to see you here, you are all welcome.  We are all well but quite soggy as it has rained and rained and rained this week, although it did stop long enough for the Best Beloved to mow the lawn on Thursday and for the Painted Ladies to come out and enjoy the buddleia.  I haven't seen them in the garden since August 2009 and for the last fortnight they have been fluttering about whenever the sun has popped out from behind a cloud.  Many cups of tea have been drunk outside while I have watched them dance from flower to flower.

  

However, I have come here today to write about crochet, not about butterflies.  I was inspired to learn to crochet by bloggers, chiefly Lucy at Attic 24, Heather at Little Tin Bird and Fi at Marmalade Rose, and the thing I really wanted to learn how to make was a blanket.  These three women put colours together and made them sing, conjuring harmony from their hooks, and I really fell in love with the idea of making such a blanket for myself.  So I learned how to crochet, with the help of a patient friend and some online tutorials, and over the last couple of years I have made a dozen blankets for babies and children - Facebook showed me a photo of one of my Shropshire rainbow blankets in London the other day and I was thrilled to bits.  I felt that I was ready to tackle a full-sized blanket but I just couldn't find the right pattern.  I'm not confident about putting colours together so I wanted that to be done for me, but nothing I saw seemed quite right.  My house is tiny so everything which (and who!) lives in it has to earn its place; my blanket had to be useful and handsome, in colours which I could live with every day and which fit in. I looked at lots of blankets online but some were the wrong colours, some the wrong pattern, some the wrong stitch and some the wrong size.  I dithered, afraid to commit to the expense of such a big project and lacking the confidence to do my own thing.  I knew that I needed to take a deep breath and dive in somewhere but I couldn't find the courage.  Something was holding me back.

When we were camping in Cornwall at the end of May I realised what it was: I wasn't sure that I needed a blanket.  I certainly don't need one on my bed and I already have a couple of lap blankets which I use on the sofa on chilly evenings.  However, I realised that I really would like a camping blanket, something to wrap around me on a chilly evening or to lie on to read on a warm day.  Yes, a camping blanket would be really useful, and when I returned home I began looking again. 

As soon as I saw the Button Box Blanket at Black Sheep Wools I knew that I had found The One: I loved the colours, the wide border, the pattern and the size (it's a small single size and I didn't want anything too big).  This kit appeared to tick every box so I lost no time in placing an online order.

An hour and a half later, Black Sheep Wools sent me an e-mail to let me know that my order had been despatched and the parcel arrived the following day...but I was out so the postman left it with a neighbour and as it was pouring with rain, I didn't retrieve it until the following day.  That was a very long night!  I tore open the packaging and found eleven balls of wonderfully soft, squishy yarn, a project bag and the pattern.  For two days I just looked at the lovely colours spread out on the sofa, periodically picking one or another up to squish it. 

The third day was a Saturday so I picked up my crochet hook in the afternoon and began.  It took me hours to find the rhythm of the pattern and I had to frog my work five times but by the time I went to bed that night I had mastered it.  I really enjoyed making this blanket.  I crocheted on my sofa, on The Teacher's sofa, in bed, in the car, at a friend's house, at our local National Trust property, in the park, on Titterstone Clee and in two different cafes; I couldn't put it down.  

When I finished the body of it after 140 rows I realised that I had made a mistake somewhere and I eventually found it back on row 115, so I had to frog again.  That mistake cost me three days.  I struggled a bit with the border so I asked for help in a Facebook group and the generosity of the crochet community came to my rescue.  I can't honestly say that I enjoyed sewing in the 222 ends but I can say that I found satisfaction in it.  About five weeks later, my blanket was finished.  Would you like to see it? -

  

It's not perfect, I know that the border is a little bit wonky at the corners but I reckon that if I don't say anything, nobody else will notice.  Making this blanket taught me new things, and I like that.  It drapes beautifully, it's soft and squishy (have I mentioned that already?) and I absolutely love it.  My blanket hasn't been camping yet but while it's been in the sitting room it has kept me cosy and I have realised that I can live with its colours very easily.  Now all I have to do is work out what to make with the leftovers...

See you soon.

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x 

Still Scattering Rainbows

Hello, thank you for popping in.  It has rained and rained and rained and rained and rained on Shropshire.  Between 7th and 17th June we had two and a half months' worth of rain - that's ten weeks' worth in ten days.  Everything is soggy.  My feet are back in my winter boots, with woollen socks because it's been cold here, too, and so dark that I have put the lights on in the afternoon, and I can't recall ever doing that in June before.  Honestly, you'd think it's November rather than June - cold, wet and miserable.  However, I am counting my blessings because I don't live in Lincolnshire where there have been awful floods, I really feel for the people who have had to leave their homes.

The last three days have been sunny and dry - hooray! - but this afternoon the rain poured down again.  However, despite that rain I am still scattering rainbows - crocheted ones.  I made my first rainbow baby blanket for a little boy born in May 2017 and recently, the little chap had to have a spell in hospital.  I was sent a picture of him in the cot, wrapped up in his rainbow and my heart lurched a little, sad that he was poorly but happy that my colourful stitches were bringing him comfort.  The Teacher's friends are still having babies so here are blankets number 10 and 11, draped over Tom Kitten's tiny chair last month.

As usual, I have used Stylecraft Special DK in Lipstick, Spice, Saffron, Lime, Turquoise, Violet, and Magenta, colours used by Heather when she was blogging at Little Tin Bird.  The straight striped blanket is bordered with Hot Fuschia and Turquoise using the Spot On Edging pattern designed by Lucy at Attic24. 

The ripple, also Lucy's pattern, is bordered in Petrol and Lime. I am especially pleased with the way these colours work together with Magenta, I think they just zing.

I love, love, LOVE them.  The straight striped one is for a little girl born last week and the ripple is staying at The Teacher's house to wait for Tom Kitten's sibling, who is due next month.  We are all quite excited!

See you soon.

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x 

King Cole Zig Zag Socks

Hello, thank you for popping in, you are very welcome here.  This post is going to be all about socks.  I know that some people will consider that to be a very dull subject for a blog post but I beg to differ because handknitted socks make me very excited indeed!  I was once told that after you have worn a pair of handknitted socks, made to fit your feet, you can never go back and I am inclined to agree; it's mostly in the fit, the way they actually hug your feet, but it's also the warmth, that 75% wool (in my case) keeps my feet toasty warm in the coldest weather.  The comfort in a good pair of socks is not to be dismissed.  I'm really not very rock 'n' roll, am I?

So, this year I have knitted three pairs of socks using King Cole Zig Zag yarn, which is 75% superwash wool and 25% nylon, and I thought you might like to see them.  I bought the first ball myself to knit a pair of socks for The Mathematician, something to remind her how much her mum loves her while she is away.  She asked for a pair with a ruffle at the top which she could pull out over the top of her ankle boots rather than a cuff and I was delighted to fulfil that wish because knitting the cuff is my least favourite bit of the venture!  So, I knitted eight rows of single rib before moving straight on to the heel flap, which I always knit in eye of the partridge stitch.  (Sorry, I've just realised that this may be a foreign language to some of you, please don't give up here!)  Once the sock was finished I went back and picked up stitches around the cast on edge to knit the ruffle.  Here are the finished socks.

The Mathematician was delighted with them (I think, she may have been pretending but if so, she's a bloomin' good actress), which made me very happy indeed.  However, I was a bit disappointed with the yarn.  You see, I got this far and then found that the yarn had run out and a new piece had been joined with a knot (harrumph!  Who wants an uncomfortable knot rubbing against their foot?) and the new piece did not continue the colour pattern, it had just been joined randomly! 

Horror of horrors!  I really can't cope if the socks don't match so I had to cut the yarn and wind off 11g before reaching the point where the colours would match and I could start knitting again.  11g  out of a 100g ball!  It was very annoying.  Also annoying is the name of this shade: Heathers.  I mean, have you ever seen heather in these colours? 

I chose it because I really liked the turquoise, the orange and the magenta together but as I knitted through it the royal blue and yellow appeared and I really didn't like that yellow with the other colours, in fact I couldn't see that it had any place at all in this sock.  However, as I said, The Mathematician was delighted with them and that's the important thing.  (I've just had a look and I think this shade has been discontinued now, although I only bought this yarn four months ago.)

The next pair I knitted was with a shade called Oak, although I must admit that I can't find the ball band so that might not be right, but if it's not Oak it's Birch, and either way, I couldn't see it at all.  Can you?  When I looked at this ball of yarn I saw a shingle beach on a grey day: grey, white and blue evoked the sea, the sky and the pebbles, the black was the seaweed left on the beach when the tide receded and the beige was the sand. 

I was really looking forward to seeing how these knitted up, especially because they were for me!  Some kind and thoughtful friends bought the yarn for me for my birthday with strict instructions to knit some socks for myself.  Would you like to see how they turned out?

Not like the beach at all.  I was expecting narrow stripes rather than great big blocks of colour.  No, not a beach but certainly not a tree.  Harrumph!

The second ball of yarn which my friends bought for me was riotously colourful and just looking at it made me smile.  I knit socks from the top down so these began with muted shades of green, brown and grey before a lovely dark pink appeared.  I was reminded of an autumnal hedgerow with leaves changing colour and shiny berries.  However, the next stripe was bright orange and white and the one after that was slap-you-in-the-face green.  Then I was back to the hedgerow before another bright orange and white and, just for good measure, purple.  Now, I love purple, and I could see it in the context of my autumnal hedgerow; I could even see it with the orange and white and slap-you-in-the-face green, so I suppose it is the linking colour, but this does feel like a confusion of two completely different palettes.  It's completely bonkers but very jolly.  However, yet again the name seems to have nothing to do with the colours: this is Emberglow (although some websites list it as Ember Glow, which annoys me).  Really??  I have looked quite hard and I just can't conjure either the glowing coals of a campfire or a gas fire which looks like a real fire. 
  

I really ought to say some positive things about this yarn: the socks it has become are warm and fit well and I have washed them in the washing machine on a delicates programme at 40 degrees Celsius.  I usually hand wash my woollen socks but these seem absolutely unaffected by their automatic ordeal - phew!  It's not their fault that the people at King Cole gave them silly names and seem to have an understanding of colour which I don't share, and I really do like handknitted socks which fit my feet and keep them comfy and cosy, especially ones whose jollity makes me smile.

Now, you may be thinking that this is not the right time of year for me to be thinking about woollen socks - the temperature has warmed up, vests and boots have been discarded with abandon and short sleeves have been donned.  However, I have a little camping trip coming up soon and not only are these socks super comfy inside my walking boots, they are also absolutely essential at night when the temperature drops.  I never go camping without them because being cold makes me miserable and nobody wants a miserable camping partner, do they?

 

See you soon.

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x