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 stranded work and intarsia that placed severe pressure on my sanity. T’was knitted with lovely Yarn Stories DK. (Speedy disclaimer: no, I didn’t pay for the yarn. But nobody told me to say it was lovely. Or if they did, I wasn’t listening.)
Here’s a hint for sane and healthy living: NEVER try to combine stranded/fairisle and intarsia. (You’re welcome.)
Anyway, they published the shortlist of finalists, and my entry wasn’t on it. OK, fair enough. But then I happened to see THIS on the Yarn Stories Facebook page:-
Ha ha ha ha ha! Story of my life. Great idea, too flippin’ complicated/difficult. (In my meagre defence, I’ll say that I thought that the squares themselves were for a one-off blanket, rather than the patterns being made available. So old, so slow to understand…) But honestly, if I ever have a crown (unlikely), it’ll be as the queen of over-ambitious-and-slightly-impractical plans.
And this is the reason why I still don’t yet have a finished object to show you in relation to the big-secret-crochet-furniture-related-house-project. I’ve been beavering away, and the garden is progressing, but my goodness this beast eats time. How do you crochet a lawnmower, anyway? And do you have any idea how many hours I’ve put in to just crocheting a crazy-paving path to cross the lawn and circle the pond? It’s coming, though, and I promise you it’s going to be… unusual. And striking. And over-ambitious. I’m about 80% of the way there, and I’m seriously excited. More photos very soon. Thank you for being kind and patient souls. But I’m not the sort of blogger who turns out super-quick, knit-this-in-half-an-hour projects. Sorry.
Speaking of time, life round here is about to change dramatically. The Tyrannical Twinnage begin school next Thursday (may I just pause there to weep a little?) and this means that I will actually have some time when I’m neither (i) twin-wrangling, nor (ii) at work. I’m over-reacting to this prospect by moping as though we’re sending our children off to school on the moon. (We’re so not.) I even took them out to lunch at a local restaurant yesterday as a soon-you’ll-not-be-with-me-every-second-that-I’m-not-at-work treat. It was an interesting novelty, having only a couple of four-year-olds as my lunch dates, but they behaved near-perfectly. Here, distorted by a water bottle, is one of them, wondering when on earth his meal is going to arrive.
I hadn’t intended to take them somewhere formal, but the venue I chose used to be a relaxed café, and by the time I realized that its tone had changed, a waitress had pretty much already ushered us to our table. Some of our companions were on the elderly side:-
Where do they even find these things? I need one for my sitting room. Seriously.
Maybe I’ll be able to research the answer to this with all my new-found time.
Oh and by the way, do you like rock cakes? Our neighbours have just had a baby, so I couldn’t go round there empty-handed. I took home-made hummus last time, and this time I took rock cakes. Recipe here. T’was easy to mix up:-
…And bake.
Enjoy, if you decide to give ’em a go.
🙂
tilleyb says
August 26, 2015 at 9:49 pm‘Twas nice to get a special mention, even if your design wasn’t picked.
The Twisted Yarn says
August 29, 2015 at 7:51 pmAgreed. And the shortlisted entries all look fab. 🙂
meggiewes says
August 26, 2015 at 10:05 pmI think your square was lovely for a blanket. It reminds me of the one from the Great American Afghan where that sweater was in a single color, but yours looked nicer.
The Twisted Yarn says
August 29, 2015 at 7:57 pmThank you. I had to Google ‘great American afghan’ and… wow. 🙂
meggiewes says
August 29, 2015 at 11:21 pmIt is one of my favorite blankets out there and it is on my knitting bucket list. But your sweater square would be much prettier in that type of sampler afghan.
wightstitches says
August 26, 2015 at 10:13 pmLove your blanket square, nice to get an acknowledgement.
Children always grow up far too quickly, seems like only yesterday I was teaching my two sons their ABC’s, now the eldest is 36 and bombs about on a motorbike and the youngest is about to have a daughter of his own (well his lovely wife is!)…Enjoy your little ones, not silly at all to feel emotional at this milestone, especially considering your recent disappointment to add to the clan, you are blessed to have two boys, enjoy every second, each one is precious.. <3 x
The Twisted Yarn says
August 29, 2015 at 8:00 pmThank you for such kind words. We’re just concentrating on enjoying every moment with the children we do have. So does it feel like 5 seconds since your thirty-somethings were in nappies? It does all fly by too fast, doesn’t it?
Jeanius says
August 26, 2015 at 10:41 pmJust think how much yarnage you could stash in that sarcophagus-thingy!
Thursday will be emotional (I still get a lump in my throat thinking of my two starting school – 32 and 29 now) but do step away from your MIP*, as shrinkage could wreak havoc at this stage…
*mistresspiece in progress
The Twisted Yarn says
August 29, 2015 at 8:02 pmYour comment made me smile on so many levels! They grow up far too fast, don’t they? Sigh. At least we’ve been lucky enough to have this experience. And I DO love your sarcophagus yarn storage idea a lot….
theleaninglarch says
August 26, 2015 at 11:41 pmYour blanket square is absolutely lovely! I can just imagine how much work it would have been to make though, I once tried the instarsia-stranded combination and found it to be brutal to work, your square came out far better than my attempt did!
The Twisted Yarn says
August 29, 2015 at 8:06 pmOh I seriously doubt that mine was better than yours: please don’t look too closely at it. And brutal is indeed the word. Never again!
nicolaknits says
August 27, 2015 at 1:15 amI love rock cakes! Look forward to hearing even more from you when you have all that free time LOL!
slippedstitches says
August 27, 2015 at 2:43 amThis is the complaint I have about the state of knitting. Any time anyone pushes the craft of knitting closer to the edge in a new an exciting way, the editors for these magazines and the like revert to the play it safe patterns. Lately I’ve been so disappointed by the uninspired, safe, been-there-made-it-before patterns. They should grow a spine and help knitting expand in interesting ways. Their loss.
Sharon says
August 27, 2015 at 9:24 amEnjoy your last hours of absolutely full-time motherhood. Don’t worry, when the TT start school they’ll also meet the usual infections, you won’t be on your own all the time.
Son brought home chicken pox in year R. He recovered. We visited the In-Laws. Daughter promptly came down with chicken pox, she was infectious while we visited. Ooops! Consequently Brother-in-law came down with it, hard. And Mother-in-law thought she’d done so well keeping him infection free when Husband caught the dreaded spots when he was young!
The moral of this story, if such a thing exists, is to get such ‘childhood illnesses’ done with while you are still a child, preferably of infant school age. Not that the fact that various things are called ‘childhood’ illnesses makes them any less dangerous.
And why not make Rock cakes – you’re a Rock Star after all.
nanacathy2 says
August 27, 2015 at 1:19 pmWell I think its a shame it wasn’t included. Seriously too difficult for a guild project? Sounds like dumbing down to me! School, first days, I cried for all three of my boys going. It was horrible.Good luck to you all.
The Snail of Happiness says
August 27, 2015 at 4:38 pmOnce the current ‘big project’ is finished, perhaps you can embark on a knitted sarcophagus… it will be a doddle as there only appear to be three colours to wrangle… I’m sure you can get some gold yarn from somewhere… possibly.
narf77 says
August 28, 2015 at 9:51 amI just went snooping around the interweb (as no doubt you have done) to see if I could find a pattern for a lawnmower motif but no banana. Best of luck with that. Might be a freeform lawnmower. Could be interesting. You could always say that you were in your “Picasso phase” if anyone (rudely) asks…
Jenny - thegeekyknit (@riley_jl) says
August 28, 2015 at 11:12 amI want rock cakes now – darn 🙂 wow I love the square you designed, and I love how ‘over ambitious’ your projects are because you can always tell such thought, time and care have gone into them 😀 – plus they always look amazing, and Im really excited to see your big reveal! jenny xx