Oh dear. Oh deary deary dear. In a wildly unforeseen development, living with kittens has wrecked my ability to get anything done ever. Both of our youthful murder-muffins would fain spend their whole lives curled up on someone's lap - usually mine. Pinned to the sofa by twin puddles of snoring fluff, my productivity has punched a hole in the floor. The Stoic Spouse and I are both as a rule the kind of people quite welded to our respective to-do lists (and not averse to competing as to Who Is Continue Reading
Redesigning
Hello, my Fine Fibrous Friends. Perhaps that should include my Fine Furry Friends, too:- Lately I've been working on a design for a Stylecraft Blogstars promotion that'll hit a yarn shop or a screen and perhaps even some knitting needles near you this summer. The knitted version is nearly done, and if possible, I'll create a crocheted version too. I'm not allowed to say much about the work in progress, so in the meantime please can we all just indulge my delusions of genius and assume that Continue Reading
Kittens
November doesn’t have much to commend it, here in the UK. It’s cold, it’s grey, it’s aggressively dark far too soon after lunch, and it’s very, very, soggy. Our wonky old brewery home is reliably cold and damp. Sometimes the Stoic Spouse suggests we put the heating on or light a log fire as he stands there wearing his woolly hat and his two pairs of socks and his hypothermic skin tone (though to be fair, blue as a colour does rather suit him). But if we put the heating on now, who knows what Continue Reading
Bisocial
Thank you, my Fine Fibrous Friends, for your kind words after my last post. I'm doing OK, but part of the boob surgery wound just won't heal, which is irritating ten weeks down the line because it's preventing me from running. Given that my physical and mental health and menopause-resilience are closely correlated with running mileage, this is a problem. I was due to run the Oxford Half Marathon on 16th October, but common sense and a medical note said DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT, LOSER. Colour me Continue Reading
Chopped
Hello, my Fine Fibrous Friends. As so often happens on this page, the story told by the words will likely weave in and out of the story told by the pictures, because different bits of life are best told via different media. At long last, it's done. After several postponements I've had the surgery to even things up bosom-wise post-cancer. (I've always been left-leaning politically, but wasn't keen to match that anatomically.) The surgeon who rocked up super-enthusiastically with his marker Continue Reading
Craft With Style(craft)
Hello again, my Fine Fibrous Friends. Speaking of fibrous, it's been a blissfully yarny time of late. For the first time since covid trampled on everyone's plans with all the malevolent energy of an overtired toddler, we've had a proper face-to-face meet-up of the Stylecraft Blogstars. Stylecraft did their utmost to keep things Zooming along during the pandemic, but... it wasn't the same. Absolutely not Stylecraft's fault at all. They did their very best. Stoopid covid. Anyway, the weekend Continue Reading
Pride Comes Before A Fall: Here’s The Pride.
Hello, my Fine Fibrous Friends. First, may I apologize for accidentally giving the false impression last post that I was injured or ill. The knitting-in-bed-with-a-view photo was purely to show off the self-indulgent bliss of our brief jaunt to the Brecon Beacons. And the throwaway comment about the universe's capacity for dumping excrement on one's world was because I'm a cynical old aardvark. At the time of typing, all was well on the distant and weird Planet Twisted, even though we've got Continue Reading
The Wrong Ystradowen
We all make mistakes, right? Errors such as thinking, "I can finish knitting this jumper before my friend's birthday." Or deciding that of course you'll remember what size hook you were using to crochet that half-done afghan. The Stoic Spouse has a foolproof method for avoiding knitting and crochet mistakes... which is to never once in his life attempt either knitting or crochet. He has thus maintained a laudable 0% failure rate in all things yarny, unlike the rest of us fallible mortals. Continue Reading
Snail Porridge
A hundred hearty hellos to you, my Fine Fibrous Friends. I've chattered here lately about the cardigan design commissioned by Novita yarns. At the risk of triggering yarny catastrophe via sheer hubris, I'm pleased with the result. It's a combination of stranded colourwork, gentle-shaping-without-messing-up-the-motifs, and four (four! FOUR!) steeks. For those of you who were asking about an English-language version of the pattern, I've been told that three months after it's published in Finnish Continue Reading
In Which The Universe Laughs Heartily At My Expense
Hello my Fine Fibrous Friends, and thank you for your kindness in response to my last post. Your words have been a comfort. Seriously. Meanwhile, this week's life lesson has been, BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR. Also, WHEN YOU'RE IN A HOLE, YOU SHOULD PROBABLY RECONSIDER YOUR URGE TO DIG. With a side order of, TRUST THE DILIGENT WORK YOU'VE PUT INTO DESIGNING AND DON'T MAKE STUPID IMPULSIVE DECISIONS LATE AT NIGHT. Would you like to see details of my humiliation? Of course you would. This blog Continue Reading