A change of season is in the air. It's wet here, and not especially warm. I keep looking at the fire and at the basket of logs beside it, and thinking 'Soon, my friend. Soon.' Meanwhile southern hemisphere bloggers are starting to note signs of imminent spring, so I guess it's nearly our turn to shiver here in the north, not that we've had much of a summer this year. I've rambled at length about our village's cherry-growing heritage before, but today the cherry trees in the orchards are just Continue Reading
Archives for August 2015
Story Of My Life
So shall we get back to discussing knitting and crochet? That said, I do have lots more 'musical' (I use that word very loosely) tales to tell you about The Purlz, if you'd like to hear them? Anyway, in other yarn-related news... A while ago, the Knitting And Crochet Guild (KCG) ran a competition with lovely Yarn Stories yarn to design knitted/crocheted squares inspired by the KCG historical collection. These squares were for a blanket. This was my entry: a crazy messy knitted hybrid of Continue Reading
Rebels Without A Clue
Ahem: this post will make absolutely no sense whatsoever unless you've read the previous post, Making Some Very Shouty Music. I'm not fishing for clicks; just trying to save you from complete and utter bewilderment, my fine fibrous friends. ...Because now, we are rockstars as well as knitters and crocheters. Thank you to all of you who signed up in the comments section of the previous post to come and join us for thrash metal band practise with The Purlz. At mere hours' notice, a fair few of Continue Reading
Making Some Very Shouty Music
Driving home from work the other night, I passed a kid who was wearing a Slipknot t-shirt. Now, I’m not totally clueless: I realize that Slipknot is a thrash metal band whose members shout and wear masks and jump around near big fires whilst playing bass. (That’s the bass guitar, not something from the strings section of the orchestra.) And I appreciate that I’m some way off their target demographic for fandom. Not a teenage boy. Not angry*. But that evening, what I was wondering was, Why the Continue Reading
We Have A Winner!
And........................ STOP! Please put down your pens. (Just re-traumatising anyone who's ever taken an exam, there.) The Burrow And Soar giveaway is now closed. Thank you muchly to absolutely everyone who entered, you indie-yarn-lovers, you. So, shall we have a look at the results? There were 233 entries - wa-hey! (173 people made the 185 comments on the blog post, and 60 people commented on Facebook. 173+60=233, number-fans.) I reduced each and every one of you fine fibrous folks to Continue Reading
In The Yarn Garden
Evenin'. I've been busy in the garden. Not the real garden, you understand, where overgrown shrubs fight vicious battles for legroom, and where convolvulus sneaks across the lawn when it thinks nobody's looking, although if we're talking about the real garden, I'm quite partial to this quiet corner:- No, I'm talking about the garden of the crochet house-related project. It's going to be detailed, with paths and a pond, and lots of flowers and general garden stuff, but you have to begin Continue Reading
Looking For Mud
It's good to be out of quarantine at last. The Tyrannical Twinnage and I have been bimbling around south Oxfordshire's various towns running errands today. One of those errands involved yarn, so I can't complain. More on that, later. We took the winding back roads through thatched, rose*-covered villages, and over ancient stone hump-backed bridges that bounced the twinnage in their carseats and made them giggle. Those bridges criss-crossed the Thames, the river narrow and enthusiastic in its Continue Reading
254 Roses.
Well if I can ever persuade our wibbly-wobbly internet connection to upload the photo, I'll show you the 254 red roses (yes, I counted them, which was an awful lot quicker than embroidering them was) that I made on the front of the big-house-crochet-secret-project. I'm sorry, I assume you're sick of me being coy about what this project is, but I really do want the finished, installed thing to be a surprise, even if you've seen elements of it along the way. Ah, here we are. The little hamsters Continue Reading
In Which I Fail To Murder The Roses
I was hoping to have some more dramatic progress on the big-crochet-house-thingy-secret project to show you by today but, well, chicken pox round two. So we're back to quarantine and crazy sleep-deprivation. Poor Twin 2 has got it bad, but he's a stoical little chap, having endured far worse in his short life. Much time has been spent cuddled up on the sofa reading him stories whilst I knit a Cladonia shawl. Because after two nights of a couple of hours of sleep, I'm a bit zombie-like and not up Continue Reading
Yarn Giveaway!
THIS COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ENTRIES. RESULTS WILL BE ANNOUNCED IN A BLOG POST SHORTLY. Who'd like to win some beautiful hand-dyed yarn, regardless of where in the world you're knitting/hooking? And for those not quite lucky enough to win, who'd like a stonking great discount off said yarn? Do I perchance hear a 'yes' at the back, there? OK, well first let me tell you a little about the yarn in question, because I realize that you're too discerning to grab at any Continue Reading