Fanfare!



It's been a long time, but here I am again.  Why the silence?  A combination of RSI, elderly computer and suicidal camera all  caused me to lose heart.  And a lack of finished FOs rather made a mockery of the title of my blog!  I still don't have any FOs but mainly because I'm concentrating on the City & Guilds handknitting course that I'm following.  But I do, at last, have a new computer set up.

And whilst I've been away from the land of blogging, I have still found the time to get out and about. Here's Mr CK exploring Venice last autumn and at the top of this entry a rather fabulous church organ from our Essex sojourn in late spring/early summer this year.   There've been knitting adventures, too, with a return to Unravel and the most wonderful trip to Fibre East; mud and yarn, a truly delightful combination.  I'll leave you with a favourite image from a City & Guilds outing to Oxford (this is the Natural History Museum) and I hope to be back rather sooner in the future...

Rosie in Wonderland!

Can it really be March already?  Did you remember to say "rabbits" this morning?  (I forgot, the shortness of February always throws me).  I love March, it is when I start to feel bouncy again, after the winter lull.  March supposedly bring Mad March Hares, but I've already had a good hare sighting this year, a couple of weeks ago: three hares playing tag in a field by the main road on the way to Ely.  Last March I spied a couple of hares boxing there, something I'd not seen for years.

Meanwhile, I'm feeling a bit as if I've fallen down a rabbit hole, though it was actually a case of travelling to Farnham Maltings, (with Sparkleduck and her husband).  The Maltings is more rabbit warren than rabbit hole, as you can see from the shot below.

into the warren

I realised that I was approaching Wonderland, though, as we walked from the carpark and Sparkleduck spotted knitted arrows pointing to Unravel.  A few paces further on and we saw knitted moles bursting out of knitted molehills, swiftly followed by genuine sheep, grazing under an awning...  Once inside, the wonders increased.  Pillars clad in knitting:

 Knitted toilet roll covers (but of course) in the ladies, a motorbike covered in knitting, a knitted wedding dress, knitted food in the cafe:

 knitted lampshades:

 and there were fabulous talks, woolly demonstrations, and the most tempting marketplace, thronged with eager knitters.

I'd love to pretend...

I'd love to pretend that the reason I've not blogged of late is due to my exciting lifestyle. Alas, it has far more to with an evil virus that laid me low. Oh, and I've had rather of loose ends to see to!

If you want to see where all the ends came from, hop over to my City & Guilds blog.

Finally, since today is not just the feast of Saints Cyril and Methodius, but also that of a certain Valentine, (and Mr Caught Knitting made a gorgeous apple crumble to celebrate!) I thought I'd leave you with a rather romantic view of Ely Cathedral.

Yarn O'Clock!

I obviously need to buy more red yarn...

note to self

Time to work out how to fit these objects into the house! I love the combination of updated 1950s feel with countryside images and Burleigh Pottery is a wonderful story in itself. The tote bag wouldn't need much room, would it?

More about the artist, Mark Hearld, here. At the moment, I've got one of his greeitngs cards (a picture of blackbirds, very like the ones on the plate) displayed on my dressing table,a souvenir of last year's visit to Hay on Wye.

Barcelona: Glasselona



Sagrada Familia





a celebratory (plastic) glass of cava



Sagrada Familia

 I 

One day I'll work out how to space the pictures properly and arrange them in an order and layout that I like, but for now I'll just have to content myself with this series of images!

Barcelona: underfoot



Tessalating sea creature paving tiles, designed by Gaudi




tessalting tiles, Pedalbres



two different patterns side by side in a cell off the cloister, Pedalbres Monastery




Herringbone brick cloister floor, Pedalbres Monastery




Mosaic floor,  San Pau del Camp



The hand of God, mosaic floor, San Pau del Camp



tessalating isoceles triangle parquet flooring, Casa Mila

Barcelona: Here Be Dragons...

scary Gaudi gateway dragon

friendly fountain dragon (plus gulls)



there are four of the friendly fountain dragons in total



window frame dragon (one of a pair)

Barcelona Five-O

Terrified by the prospect of turning 50 (how did that happen so quickly?), I decided to flee the country, taking only Mr CK, a few belongings and the camera.  We settled on Barcelona as Mr CK wanted somewhere warm, preferably with orange groves, parrots and churches, whilst I wanted art, archticture, history and shop windows.  (And yarn, which turned out to be Drops alpaca and sock yarn courtesy of the very wonderful All You Knit is Love.) 

What an amazing place it turned out to be. We had a comfy, quiet, yet very central hotel; we ate really well and drank loads of Cava (priced from £2.40-£2.93 per glass. It would have been rude not to!) I'll be doing a few posts about this trip, I suspect, but here's just a flavour of what we found:






Testing our head for heights on the roof of Gaudi's Casa Mila.

 


Mr CK discovering his dream shop.





Even the leaves on the pavement seemed very different from here.





The monastery at Pedralbes, so calm and peaceful (until the local parrots started screeching.)




Looking up to the ceiling of the Sagrada Familia.




A novel use of colanders in Origens, a place that served hearty, delicious, Catalan fare.

 Coming soon: an assortment of dragons...

the wool that wasn't

This window display caught my eye a couple of days ago.  Well it would, wouldn't it?  But closer inspection revealed that the shocking pink "wool," artfully wrapped around suction pads, was a rather plastic looking twine.  I didn't go inside to check the labels in the knits mind you.

poignant

Spotted this on the way to work this morning, artwork by Lisa Wilkens (who works for Plurabelle Books when not doing her art) in the former Galloway & Porter premises.  It looks so beautiful, yet is made entirely from old, unwanted books.  If you want to read more about it, I've snapped the written text and included the pictures over on Swatch this Space, my City & Guilds blog.

Off to Mr CK's ancestral haunts...(via Wibbling Wools)

It is one of Mr CK's proudest boasts that an ancestor of his came to England from Normandy (1066 and all that) and was granted a manor in the hamlet of Gestingthorpe.  Back in the days of said ancestor (whose name translates as "William the Sinner") Gestingthorpe was in Suffolk, but somewhere in the intervening centuries, it has ended up in Essex. (I hasten to point out that this is due to administrative boundary reorganisation rather than geological activity.)

Now, Gestingthorpe isn't really all that far from Cambridge, but it takes quite a bit of ingenuity to get there by public transport. We first made it there in April this year, when we had a brief holiday in Lavenham. To celebrate Mr CK's birthday I spent hours plotting bus routes and timings and we made it (see picture above for proof).  Gestingthorpe remains a small hamlet, but it has a beautiful late medieval/early Tudor church and a wonderful gastropub: The Pheasant, where we had the yummiest of lunches.

That was 6 months ago, and we hadn't expected to get back there so soon.  But a friend of ours, who lives on the Suffolk coast, suggested that we meet in Bury St Edmunds and that she would then drive us to Gestingthorpe.  We'd planned to eat at the Pheasant again, but soon realised that it would make more sense to eat in Bury St Edmunds.  Se we lunched at the Fox, which just happens to be very close to Wibbling Wools.  And I just happened to drop into Wibbling Wools, where I accidentally purchased some Rico Tasai and 5mm Lantern Moon rosewood circulars.  So I spent a happy afternoon clicking my way through the Suffolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire countryside, whilst Mr CK dreamed of his knightly forebear.

If only I had a piggy bank to raid :)

Cecil Higgins Art Gallery & Bedford Museum: Unseen Works by Major British Artists to be Sold at Fund Raising Auction

Knitted cupcakes are SOOO over...

If you want to be truly on-trend, you should start knitting dogs, NOW! (Or, for £200 you can commission a knitted portrait of your very own faithful friend).

Meantime, here's a picture of one of my FOs from earlier this year:



Log cabin cushion worked entirely from stash yarns.

An afternoon in Essex

Today was going to be deicated entirely to mounting swatches for my Gity & Guilds studies, whilst waiting for a kitchen door to be delivered (long story).  But the door arrived at 9.30am, the sun was shining (well, it wasn't wet, anyway) and after a couple of hours of cutting and gluing and weaving ends in wanderlust set in.
A trip to Saffron Walden beckoned, so that I could get to the Fry Gallery;before its winter closure.

I'm so glad that I went!  The Gallery, which houses art from C20th artists who live(d) in that part of Essex has had a revamp since last year.  Large plan chests in the centre of the main room, and touch screen catalogues in a newly-opened sideroom mean that far more of the collection is now accessible.  Much of the collection is work by Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden, but there is also currently an exhibition of work by Richard Bawden, Edward's son.  He shares his father's somewhat quirky humour but sometimes favours bolder colours.  I wish I could have bought the dodo bench (a glorious metal bench with a design of a pair of dodos for its back) and the linocut print of a dodo in rainbow colours.  One of the drawers in the aforementioned plan chest opens to reveal a matching rainbow dodo napkin.

Look what I've found

Whilst bloghopping this morning I came across a link for a new online magazine for knitters and crocheters:
http://www.tangledness.com/html/pattern_features_index.html

Looks interesting, but I won't be making the skirt.

new look

I've decided it was high time to improve the look of things round here so, after much experimenting with colours and layouts, I hope that you'll like the new look.  Maybe not as drastic as the transformation of my desk over the last few weeks...
Before:

After:

still alive!

Yes, this blog has been sorely neglected of late, but with good reason; I'm working fulltime giving me rather less time to roam around rural East Anglia. Even the crochet and knitting have been cut back, I'm trying to focus on a City & Guilds qualification in handknitting. (If you'd like to follow my progress with that, I've set up another blog: swatchthisspace.blogspot.com). Work has got very exciting; we've opened up another floor full of books and whilst I'm still on the second floor, I've now got a floorful of art, travel and (yes!) craft books, rather than academic books. Yippee.


In other news, the dreaded 50th birthday looms and I still haven't decided how to celebrate. any suggestions?

Emergency fungii pots

Friday dawns, and with it the realisation that I need more pieces for a textiles exhibition on Sunday afternoon. This would be fine if I didn't need to go to work on Friday, London on Saturday and a party on Sunday morning (life is good!)... When time is short, my thoughts turn to crochet. And then they turned to fungus (if you've seen my avatars on Ravelry you'll know that I am mad about fungii, lichens and mosses).
Mushroom the first (the rust/purple/grey one) was cranked out during my breaks at work. Mushroom the second (the green/turquiose one) kept me sane during a rather frustrating journey to London. I then nearly lost it whilt at the V&A but happily it was spotted and rescued by some of my fellow City&Guilds students. And the fluffy brown mushroom (I love the way that Noro Silk Garden felts: a silky sheen with a mohair haze) was started at the V&A and completed on the journey home. (This was also a frustrating journey, but whereas the journey out was complicated by a fire at Cambridge station, the journeyy back was jinxed by my hopping onto the wrong tube train, having to backtrack and then finding myself in a carriage full of West Ham supporters. But at least they didn't seem fazed by the crochet...)

And here's my mushroom trio on Sunday afternoon:

I'm absolutely delighted with them.

This made me smile

Shortly after watching David Dimbleby talking about how women were not allowed to take part in life classes at the Royal Academy when it was founded (except, of course, as models) I found this on Adrienne Sloane's wonderful blog: The Knitter's Eye: Comic Knitting!! Life Knitting: now there's a thought!