Author: frizzyLogic

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Sock-knitting OMG

Remember Kaffe Fassett’s fabulous Design Line colourways for Regia sock yarn? Six different colour combinations which knit up either in stripes (“landscape”) or marl (“mirage”)?

I’m making a pair of socks for my father in mirage earth:

p's sock 1

Beth‘s been using landscape twilight for her jaywalkers.

Well, seems Regia have just released a new set of yarns by Kaffe Fassett – Design Line Exotic Colors.

exotic socks

Six new palettes, and just look at how they knit up.

exotic!

“Self-striping” seems an inadequate term for that patterning.

I wonder whether the box shown on this site is for shop display purposes or a kit for purchase containing two balls of each colourway. Unfortunately I don’t speak a word of German so can’t understand the text on the page, but the latter wouldn’t surprise me at all given the popularity of the first edition and the fact that it is being sold in complete sets (although not in wooden boxes – and no cheaper per ball than buying them individually).

Also I’ve just discovered that it’s possible to buy transparent wellington boots in order to ensure that the beauty of your hand-knitted socks is not obscured even in wet weather. OMG.

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Peplum and gores

Knitting has been happening, pretty steadily, in the background. The latest onto the needles is the excellently-named Darcy from Heartfelt – The Dark House Collection by Kim Hargreaves.

Not only is it a wonderful pattern – peplum! gores! moss-stitch! short-row shaping! – it’s also a conscience-clearing stash-buster since I’m using some yarn which I bought in a sale probably more than ten years ago and have had hanging around ever since. The shade has the rather puzzling name of “foggy” because to me it looks more like sage green than foggy grey. But maybe it’s a reference to pea-soupers or something. This picture, of course, is not an accurate guide to the shade in question being not green enough.

pleats

Speaking of Darcy, as of course we were, I must report that I met a delightful man recently who might well fall into the Darcy category. Smart as a whip, funny, charming and kind – altogether a sparkly refreshing delight to be around. My word, I thought, they do actually exist!

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Contact!

I’ve added the fab cforms II plugin so now we have contact! without the requirement of a crowded disco room or a man with an oily rag swinging a propellor. In fact all that’s necessary is to click on the tab labelled, helpfully, “Contact” to the left at the top of the page just below the banner picture. I’ve done this because I may occasionally protect posts with a password and if you want the password in order to read the post the contact form is at your service to ask for it.

UPDATE: cforms II didn’t work, but Secure & Accessible PHP Contact Form v2.0 is doing the trick.

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Dried and folded

Not my laundry, obviously, which apart from one emergency trip to F’s machine remains unwashed and scrumpled, but the local lilies.

dried

folded

I had one of those conversations this morning which I dread. The ones with someone you don’t know particularly well and haven’t seen in a really long time. Fortunately this was a woman I liked and had much in common with who I met through shared school stuff and hadn’t seen much since our respective children moved on to different places. The conversation went something like this:

Pleasant Acquaintance (out jogging, jauntily): Hi! how are you?

Me (attached to lead pulled by grumpy dog): Fine!

PA (removing headphones from which issue tinny jogging music): I haven’t seen you in ages! How’s FirstSpawn?

Me (heart sinking slightly, realising that we weren’t going to pass like ships in the night): He’s fine thanks, but he’s off school at the moment…

[we have a wide-ranging and in-depth conversation about boys, illness, and school examinations and find we have much in common]

PA: And how’s [the ex]?

Me: Oh he seems fine. He’s just got engaged.

PA (unable to disguise the fact that she’s goggling with astonishment): Engaged????!!

Me: (realising it’s been a *very* long time since we last met): Ah, er, yes. We split up some time ago…

[we have a wide-ranging and in-depth conversation about men, maintenance and much younger women and find we have much in common]

PA: And the BBC, how’s that going?

Me: Ah. Well, actually I’m unemployed now. A single mother on benefits, you know, that great scourge of modern society.

At this point PA realises that the water under the bridge is of sufficient volume to irrigate several rice paddies. We check that we have up-to-date mobile numbers and arrange to meet for a cup of tea.

I’m rather looking forward to it.

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Borrowed threads

This is not my knitting. I merely recorded him.

piglet

Isn’t he spectacular? Silk sewing thread and dressmaker’s pins. No pattern. Made by F. She calls it “knitting off piste”. There’s another picture here.

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Conclusive evidence of the benefits of five-a-day

Further to yesterday’s post, here is a picture of the garment I was working on at the I Knit London meet-up. The sleeve on the right of the picture was sewn on before I had my five-a-day; the sleeve on the left of the picture was sewn on after consumption of the appropriate number of fruit-and-veg.

glint

QED, I think you’ll agree. It really is necessary to have five cocktails a day. Here are some suggestions to get you started. If you click through to the picture on flickr there are helpful notes on ingredients.

fruit, veg and knitting

Now please excuse me, I have to remove and reinsert a wonky sleeve.

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A delightful new way to have your five a day

Everyone must eat five portions of fruit and veg a day we are told. Endlessly. Not just by the nanny state that knows what’s best for us but also by supermarkets and food companies eager to peddle us their products at a premium because, gosh jolly whee, they contain food and must therefore be good for us – and should therefore cost more.

As a side note I was interested to see on the site I linked to above the information that potatoes do not count as one of the “five a day”. Somebody ought to tell the potato product companies currently marketing their chips and crisps as though they do count as such. (Ah. Googling reveals someone else has already noticed this.)

Rambling? Icoherent? Moi? surely not. On with the plan.

So the plan is this. You need to go down to Concrete, the bar/café at the Hayward Gallery, between the hours of 5pm and 7pm any day Monday to Thursday. There, at those times, you will find the special “two-for-one” offer on all cocktails containing vodka. You will also discover that many cocktails containing vodka also contain fruit and, yes indeed, vegetables.

Take this evening, for instance. The avowed purpose of the visit to the aforementioned café/bar was knitting and to view the hyperbolic coral reef. What actually happened was balanced nutrition and yacking. The balanced nutrition consisted of six cocktails containing (individually, not collectively):

– raspberries;
– lychees;
– limes;
– red peppers;
– watermelon;
– ginger.

Ok, that last one (ginger beer a Moscow Mule) may be stretching it a bit. But the others all had bona-fida fruit and vegetable matter. We passed on the one containing avocado on the grounds that it also had coconut and that was icky.

“We” were Pixeldiva and I at the Wednesday meeting of the I Knit London knitting club. I knitted nothing but attempted to sew on a sleeve of a garment nearing completion. Three hours later and I’d just about managed it but I suspect I’ll have to unpick and redo it tomorrow for reasons not entirely disassociated with the amount of nutrition imbibed.

That matters not one jot. For I am now so balancedly nourished that nothing is too much trouble. And I had a fab evening to boot.

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CS Lewis

I read and loved the Narnia books despite being irritated by the theology but have never read anything else. I think I should. (If I ever recover the ability to read books, of course.)

Yesterday there was this:

Five senses; an incurably abstract intellect; a haphazardly selective memory; a set of preconceptions and assumptions so numerous that I can never examine more than a minority of them—never become conscious of them all. How much of total reality can such an apparatus let through?

quoted here, in a thought-provoking article recommended by a friend, which reminded me of this post by another.

Today there is this:

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

from the ever-flowing river of whiskey.

Both of those speak volumes to me at the moment.