Throughout history, powerful figures have established dynasties, enabling their influence in a pre-Instagram world to continue beyond their own mortal years. The Nehru-Gandhis in India, the Ming dynasty in China, plus my personal faves, the Plantagenets.* But more ambitious and proud than any of these is the dynasty in our own back garden, right here at Twisted Towers. Many of you will remember Robyn-the-robin, the four-inch-high adorable tyrant who stole hearts and mealworms around here Continue Reading
Knitting Covid
Fancy a discount on my new pattern? Read on... But first, to those of you who celebrate the occasion, a (belated) merry Christmas! Doubtless it was a different sort of day from the one you might have planned, but I hope that there were some smiles. This post is coming to you from the sofa, because I've just finished radiotherapy, and I'm tired. Strictly between you and me (if you're willing to keep a secret) I, um, may have spent large chunks of the big day asleep. I'm not sure the twinnage Continue Reading
A New And Colourful Knit
Hello, my Fine Fibrous Friends. I hope you're reading this somewhere warm and cosy, because outside has been relentlessly soggy and grey and cold around here lately. Also, it's the time of year when we Brits traditionally exchange comments about how we canNOT belIEVE it's DARK so EARLY. For reference if you're reading this in North America, even here in the south of England we're on a latitude with southern Canada, so winter vs. summer daylight differs a lot. But actually, there are Continue Reading
If Knitting Patterns Were More Realistic…
...then a pattern for a basic jumper might read rather like this... (NB: Photos are indeed of a jumper-in-progress, but not one based on the instructions in this post. In case you're curious, it's Jared Flood's 'Cobblestone', in Malabrigo Rios, colourway 'Tormenta'. It's taken years to persuade the Stoic Spouse that he might like to try wearing a jumper when he's shivering in our freezing cold house. Hope he likes it.) Instructions:- Cast on. Place pretty, Instagrammable stitch-marker Continue Reading
Ramblings
Oh yikes, has it been that long since I posted? Apologies. Let's pretend that my absence was due to Very Worthy And Important Stuff, rather than the truth, which is that I was struggling with post-cancer-treatment side-effects that made my right arm medium-useless for a while. Fortunately, I was still able to walk and run in pretty places around here. This is Thrupp Lake on a crisp November morning:- Since I wasn't able to knit very much, I didn't feel as though I had a great deal to share Continue Reading
The Half-Filled Kettle Dilemma
One of the odder consequences of having breast cancer is finding yourself standing in the middle the street wondering how much horse poo would half-fill a kettle. When you're diagnosed, they send you a chunky booklet about what to expect, and absolutely nowhere does it mention either kettles or horse poo - a disappointing oversight. But I'll come back to all this silly cancer stuff later in this post. For now, let's discuss the vastly more serious matter of yarnery, specifically knitting. Continue Reading
Would You Like A Hefty Discount On Some Hand-Dyed Yarn?
Sitting down to write this post with knitting and wine beside me is the most normal thing that I've done for a while. I hate the word 'normal', along with the word 'should' - as my patients rapidly discover when I ban both abominations from their vocabularies. But whatever on earth normal is, these past few weeks have not been it. (This whole year hasn't been normal, of course, but you've doubtless noticed that. And if you haven't, then I really don't want to be the one to burst your Continue Reading
2020 Vision
Well, that was a very 2020-ish sort of week. Oh, for those heady days of innocence, way back when nobody would have understood what the above sentence meant. Right now, you probably wouldn't even be surprised if I told you that the neighbourhood had been invaded by hordes of opera-singing purple mega-ants, or that a sinkhole had opened up under Twisted Towers and had swallowed all of my yarn. Fortunately neither of these things has happened... although given that it's 2020 I should probably Continue Reading
Another Week, Another Skirt
It's difficult to blog when the knitting is trundling along without any major catastrophes. There's only so much anecdotal mileage to be had from, "I'm knitting another colour combination of a skirt for the book and yeah, it seems to be going OK so far." Here it is, in case you're curious. It looks a lot less terrifyingly yellow in reality:- Please don't get me wrong. I don't sit here hoping that my knitting will spontaneously combust just so that I can write about the experience. But if my Continue Reading
An Unexpected Yarn-Bombing
We've all had to work out new strategies for coping this year whilst the world has been spinning off its rocker. But don't worry my friend, no matter how outlandish your survival techniques have been, you'll find no judgement here... and I'm sure that both of your pet cats genuinely enjoy wearing the replicas of 12th century French armor that you painstakingly crafted for them out of old baked-bean tins during the early weeks of lockdown. Look, they're hardly hissing at you at all these Continue Reading