Another post whilst the monster rainbow stained glass window afghan continues to grow so big that it threatens to engulf the house and several neighbouring properties too, causing untold environmental alteration and aesthetic weirdness. I can't quite help being quite excited about the progress of this enormous project, but I don't want to reduce its impact by showing you photo updates every hour. Actually that's a lie: that's exactly what I want to do. So meanwhile, you've all persuaded me Continue Reading
Archives for January 2014
Yarn. Lots and lots of oddments of yarn.
Another post while the monster rainbow afghan grows and grows. And grows. :-) There's a bit of a problem in my study. A bit of mission creep. The study is supposed to be home for all my work stuff (psychology books, journals, etc), and all my writing stuff, plus a spot of tedious admin. And all the sombre, brooding pictures that the Stoic Spouse dislikes. And my geology books and some of my fossils and rock specimens, the ones that would be small enough for the twinnage to use as food or Continue Reading
Yarn-bombing the house. Just maybe.
The crochet stained glass window is going well, but I don't want to saturate this blog with minute-by-minute pictures of every stitch. (Well actually I do, but I won't. Maybe I should introduce a knitting/crochet webcam. Though that might result in a few too many views of me crocheting in my pyjamas at 3am.) But other plans and ideas keep forming... The other day, I found this rather lovely image on Wildcat Designs' blog:- Photo from http://catameringue.blogspot.co.uk/. Reproduced Continue Reading
Chocolate cake recipe… and colour inspiration
OK, I've had a couple of requests for the chocolate cake recipe from my last post. I'll type it up in a minute. First, a moment of inspiration..... I love colour. It's fascinating. I particularly love colour in the natural world, because as I've repeated ad nauseum, Mother Nature is surely the very best designer. But sometimes, the juxtaposition of ordinary objects can be inspiring. The other day, I was emptying the dishwasher. (I know, I know: could my life possibly be any more Continue Reading
Sorry, twinnage.
I have wine. I have crochet on my knee:- I have been for a walk in my rainbow wellies with the toddler twinnage:- We saw sheep whose wool was just begging to be shorn (in this unseasonably mild weather), spun, dyed, and knitted. The twinnage sweetly observed that someone had been drawing on the sheep, so I had to explain about marking them so everyone knows who owns them. We came home and baked my deceptively-easy-chocolate-cake:- ...But I'm feeling bad. The twinnage, Continue Reading
Crochet therapy
The end of a stressful day of tantrumming toddler twinnage. The rainbow stained glass window is progressing well, assisted by a two-hour bout of insomnia last night. Can you see the little popcorn stitches? I've reached about 60cm diameter (24 inches), and the final thing will be about 2 metres (>2 yards) across. I love this pattern! It's by Julene Watson, and the increases and pattern are perfectly calculated so that it remains beautifully flat as it grows. And it's cheaper than Continue Reading
Crochet stained glass window
I'm so excited about this project. I'm talking wake-at-4am-and-can't-resist-doing-a-bit levels of excitement. Sitting in the corner of my study for several months has been a large project bag (did I mention that spare curtain fabric is perfect for making drawstring project bags?) containing 51 balls of Rico Design Creative Cotton Aran in a rainbow of colours, plus lots and lots of black. It was bought with a specific purpose in mind. (You know about my stash aversion already, yeah?) But I was Continue Reading
Water, water, everywhere.
It's wet in Oxfordshire right now. Really really wet. (North America, I can't help but envy your polar vortex. I've seen so many beautiful snowy/icy photographs on people's blogs.) Here, there's flooding. We're all about the Thames in this bit of the UK, as its early waters wind their way down through Oxfordshire and Berkshire. On Wednesday morning I had a medical appointment in Oxford, and on the way home, I drove the long-suffering twinnage a twisting route that roughly followed the Thames Continue Reading
Knitted blog header
It's done! The knitted blog header is finished. :-) Actually it was finished a while ago, but I've only recently decided that all the knitted/crocheted flowers round the edge were a bit OTT, so they've been abandoned. (I may have to use them to yarn-bomb some plant-pots.) I hope that what you see above is the finished header. It didn't photograph very well... and its proportions are all wrong for the Wordpress header shape... and I was unsuccessfully trying to fend off twinnage while I Continue Reading
Jumpers for toddler twins
This old brewery that we live in is cold, properly cold. One winter we had ice on the inside of the window panes, something I half-remembered happening in childhood but had thought I must have imagined until it happened again here, in our bedroom, two years ago. Times like this, I have to stop knitting/crocheting housey stuff and make warm clothes for the twinnage. Actually it's weirdly mild here in the UK here at the moment, but it still manages to be chilly in the house, and I do live in Continue Reading