I love our village. It’s the type of place where you can sit in the pub with knitting and crocheting friends talking about anything, whilst people play cards at the next table and a dog snoozes near the door. There's a fair-to-middling chance of bumping into someone you know when you haul your rear out of the sofa and get up to fetch more drinks. Occasionally there’s even a rival knitting group around. People here talk to you because they’ve seen you around. They usually want to know Continue Reading
Shark Attack
And then suddenly, the great white shark plunged from the sky, head-first into the roof of the house. Nobody was hurt (apart from the poor shark), but several local residents wondered privately whether it was time they cut back on their drug use. Look! OK, if you've lived in or near Oxford in the UK, you probably already know about the Headington Shark, but I hadn't seen it for maybe a decade until I happened to be in east Oxford the other day. It's been there for years (30 years, actually: Continue Reading
The Yarn-Bombing Continues
The yarn-bombing of our brewery home is spreading slowly, very slowly, like one of those garden weeds that - once you initially notice it's there - you keep spotting more and more outbreaks, until you realize that it's actually everywhere. Stand still for too long (say, approximately a week) in our house and you risk being measured up for adornment with crochet, or perhaps having your extremities entrelacced (ouch). Consider y'self warned, my friend. Unfortunately the Toddler Twinnage move Continue Reading
Deramores Blog Awards
Gosh. :-) I'm writing this with an enormous smile because the big news, as promised last night, is that I've won the Deramores Blog Awards! Wheeeee! Frankly I'm honoured, surprised, and excited in pretty much equal measure, and I haven't stopped grinning since I learned the news. Hop over here to see the details if you're interested. I won the knitting prize, and a beautiful vibrant blog called Betsy Makes won the crochet prize (though I also can't help wishing there'd been a prize for the Continue Reading
(Yarn-) Bomb Da House
Do you think there's a yarn-bombers' secret charter? Because if there is, I must have broken all of its covenants. I mean surely, surely, rule number one would state, 'Don't be seen whilst you're yarn-bombing'? I have huge respect for whoever has been tiptoeing around our village at 3am attaching vibrant knitted pieces to our various bus stops, sign posts, and suchlike. I have never seen them in the act, although a lovely woman I met in the village shop dropped strong hints that it was Continue Reading
Almost yarn-bombing…
Happy and ever-so-slightly bonkers days are near. Here's a sneak preview of materials for the housey yarn-bombing. (There are knitted pigeons, too.) The stripes are to be sewn around the railings of the tower balcony. The big sew-up/reveal will be in a few days' time, but I'm away from home at the moment, visiting the put-upon parents in their home on the English-Welsh border. They're moving soon, and I'll miss the walk up the track by their house to see this:- …As admired by my Continue Reading
Knitted planets. Crocheted birds. That sort of thing…
Well, the globe is finished. I'm not sure what to do with it now, though: the toddler twinnage don't seem ready to consider our speck-like position on a beautiful green-blue planet, so its educational potential remains unfulfilled. Instead, one half of the twinnage tentatively asked whether the globe might be employed in a game of football. I frowned, and directed them towards the perfectly serviceable leather ball in the garden. They slouched off to kick some gravel at the fence as an Continue Reading
Rainbow railings in progress
Eight out of ten colours done on the monster rainbow stained glass window afghan. Watch this space. Meanwhile, a spot more yarn-bombing, because sometimes a lass needs a break from crocheting round and round (and round) and round a stained glass window. So, I have a plan, now. This:- will be applied right about here, on the tower of our brewery:- So far, we have a few of the railing-cosies:- And we have knitted pigeons:- Watch this space... Continue Reading
Yarn-bombing the house at last…
OK, before we get on to tonight's post proper, here's a peek at a bit of the afghan WIP:- When it's done, I'll buy y'all a drink to say thank you for your encouragement. And I probably won't crochet any more afghans for a wee while... although some even crazier projects are in the mental pipeline. Anyway, this is mostly a piece about yarn-bombing. Because as I've posted before, plans have been afoot to yarn-bomb the house. And I had a little reminder to get on with it the other day, Continue Reading
Yarn-bombing the house. Just maybe.
The crochet stained glass window is going well, but I don't want to saturate this blog with minute-by-minute pictures of every stitch. (Well actually I do, but I won't. Maybe I should introduce a knitting/crochet webcam. Though that might result in a few too many views of me crocheting in my pyjamas at 3am.) But other plans and ideas keep forming... The other day, I found this rather lovely image on Wildcat Designs' blog:- Photo from http://catameringue.blogspot.co.uk/. Reproduced Continue Reading