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
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
Blue And Yellow
Hello, my Fine, Fibrous Friends. Please note that this post is illustrated with photos of all sorts of things that just happened to float to the forefront of my mind as I wrote. Many of them are a bit out-of-season right now, but you'll forgive that I hope? We are not living in funny times, but it's OK to seek solace in humour (and art, and nature, and literature, and sport) on even the darkest of days. Laughter was my coping strategy when I had cancer, for example... that and growing Continue Reading
Doodling
Just occasionally, life runs smoothly. Traffic lights turn respectfully green as I approach (am I the only person who has good-traffic-light days and bad-traffic-light days?) and the twinnage clean their teeth on something less than the seventeenth time of asking. Other days, the roof springs a new leak, next door's cat poos on my veg beds, and I go to work in the day-job unaware that there are dinosaur stickers attached to the back of my jumper until a patient or a colleague points it Continue Reading
On The Weighty Matter Of Orange
The reworking of the Falling Leaves cowl is going medium-well, but it's been temporarily stalled because the orange I was using was just a bit too exuberantly orange (think irradiated mega-pumpkins on steroids), so I've ordered an alternative yarn, and am drumming my fingers on the kitchen table, impatient for its arrival. Chris-the-postman will doubtless deliver it soon, with his usual unnerving ability to know exactly what's in any given parcel/letter he pushes through the letterbox. "Looks Continue Reading
Pausing
We've reached that post-summer pre-autumn jitter that can't decide whether to roast us, freeze us, soak us, drop spheres of ice on our heads, or blow us over - so it swings wildly between all of these things. Permacultural food-grower Liz Zorab refers to this sub-season as The Pause, which describes it admirably, in my arrogant opinion. (Actually we've moved past that stage into proper-autumn if I'm honest, but it takes me so long to finish drafting a blog post that I'll probably be scraping ice 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
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
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