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!

conefall, churchyard wall

Just a few pictures from a walk Mr CK and I took on Sunday. We'd planned to walk round the wood behind the church but it had turned into a quagmire, so we went round the churchyard instead, which was good as I'd been meaning to take pics of the rather unusual cones for ages.

When Mr CK was on the PCC (Parochial Church Council) many hours were spent discussing the wall, it is a veritable patchwork in stone, brick, mortar and even has different shapes along the top. The colours (red brick, grey brick, neutral stone, greyish flints and stunningly acid green lichen are wonderful. Just think of the many different pairs of hands that must have worked on the wall over the years...

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February Fill-Fen

Warning: this is a very wordy post, shot through with some decidedly purple passges, but peservere, my knitterly friends, as there are pictures of luscious yarns and links to fabulous shops. Now read on...
"February fill-dyke, be it black or be it white" (traditional proverb)

Yesterday I simply had to go to Ely as Mr Caught Knitting had run out of his favourite bathroom cleaner. Tragically I can't find the brand required anywhere in Cambridge. (And note how I'm not telling you what the brand is, nor I am letting Mr CK know that soda crystals work just as well, as I need to make him think that trips to Ely are necessary. Nothing to do with the two new yarn shops there! That means, what, only 4 places where you can buy yarn, and that's not counting the £shops, etc. Nothing to do with Peacocks tearooms and their grapefruit moon tea. The Babylon Gallery doesn't come into it. Topping Books? Of course not. Cathedral, nah. Burrows newsagent with tempting array of American magazines no longer to be found in Cambridge now that Borders has gone? As if!)

New timetables mean that there is now only one bus an hour (I don't count the 12 via Newmarket; takes forever) but at least it was a double decker and I managed to get a seat upstairs at the very front. The revised X9 route is rather twisty, and it crosses the A10 at least 3 times, as it wends it way through Milton, Landbeach, Waterbeach, the IQ Business Park, Streatham and then touches on Little Downham (at least, I think that's where it is) before snaking into Ely via a long, long circuit of the outskirts. It now takes an hour, but what an hour it was. The views were stunning. The soil along this route is more orangey-brown than the peaty darkness of the soil you'd see from the train journey (which clings quite closely to the banks of the Ouse). But I love the patchwork-field effect that you see from aloft and the varied textures and colours. Some of the fields had been ploughed recently, and the claggy ruts were often glistening from recent rainfall. Many fields were flooded. On the way out these giant puddles were sparkling in the sun and many gulls were floating lazily on them. I travelled home through a storm (thunder, lightning, hail: very exciting) which obscured the view for a while but, when the sun finally peeped through again (a soft, weak, lemony-peach light against the inky-blue sky), the watery expanses glinted and shimmered, looking almost like enormous beads of mercury but darker. The fields are divided up by hedges, trees and many a ditch. I swear that as the bus approached Milton on the way home I got a glimpse of a bittern's bottom, as the bittern fished its way through a dyke. One of the great excitements of the journey out, though, was seeing the shapes the trees made against the skyline. They are, in the main, still bereft of leaves, so the colours and textures of the bark show well (not just brown, but some ochre and rusty hues) but closer inspection ( particularly when branches whipped against the top deck) revealed burgeoning catkins (including soft grey-beige pussy willow buds) and incipient buds. I'm wondering whether the acid, yellow-green of the weeping willows was due to buds or bark: I don't know.

One of the great pleasures of this journey is catching sight of Ely Cathedral in the distance for the first time. It was so sunny on the way out that at first the cathderal looked like a shimmery shape in the distance. And in the last few minutes of the bus ride there is a fantastic cloe-up of the octagon tower. Frustratingly, though, the new "improved" route no longer passes so close to the Cathedral on the return route, tough I've realised that if I'd stayed on the bus as it headed on towards March it would probably have gone that way. Ah, well, maybe next time.

The next frustration was that as soon as I got off the bus it started to rain (boo, typical) so no location shots. Let me tempt you, instead, with yarn...

Look at this luscious stuff (and I never thought I would describe a yarn rich in acrylic as "gorgeous stuff") from the newly-opened Yarn on the Square, a spacious and stylish shop with welcoming and enthusiastic owners. (Not to mention armsful of Noro). The yarn I caved in to, though, captures the colours I saw on the journey in, and anticipates the plumage of the bittern that I may (or may not) have seen on the way home. It will--I hope-- be turned into a "fen fields" scarf, starting with the browner yarn and ending in the greener (with, I hope, some sort of stitchwork to represent leaves or buds). The yarn is also available in a blend with more greens, a vivid magenta, grey and blue. And each colourway is available with or without metallic highlights. (I went for the metallic, it makes me think of sun glinting on rain-washed fields, of the sparkle of snowflakes and the glimmer of spring).

I'll spare you a purchase-by-purchase, store-by-store account of my time in Ely (I've outlined it above, anyway) but suffice to say that the route to the bathroom cleaner shop took me past the little yarn kiosk that Barbara runs. There's only room for one customer at a time, so I had to queue! It was worth it, though as the booth is bursting with budget yarns in interesting colours and textures. Here's the armful that came home with me...

After all the heady yarn-buying excitment I had to calm down a bit (after all, I still had Ely Wool Shop to go) so I headed to Peacocks for soup, a cheese scone (8/10, only surpassed by the cheese scones I had at Durham Cathedral some 12 years ago) and the afore-mentioned grapefruit moon tea. Mmm, inhale that cardamom and citrus. After that came the Babylon Gallery (which will get a post of its own when something very special has dried in a few days' time. That's got you guessing!) Fortified by art (and riverside views) I headed back uphill, past the Cathedral and out along St Mary's Street to Ely Wool Shop. Sandra's store is a delight. I was going to get just one skein of Malabrigo silk-blend DK (so soft) to make a small cowl, but hit on the idea of buying some merino wool in the colour of my gloves to mix in. And the colours of the Rico cotton DK proved irresistible. (But how did I stop at just 2, when I wanted all of them?) So here's the final haul of the day:

(note the Ivore needles that got pounced on at the cashdesk).

And so, a near-perfect day out, marred only by the fact that I bought two bottles of cleaning stuff, when just one would have meant a cast-iron excuse for going back again sooner. But who needs excuses? February has ended on a high for me.

Still Doing Different

Well, I survived the dinner party, but I really should have taken my crochet. At one stage another guest asked the hostess how her shoulder was getting on and it turns out that she'd injured it by doing too much crochet. At this point I confessed to being a fellow crocheter and she rushed off to fetch her absolutley stunning Babette. Needless to say she was given one of my crocheted pots as a thank you present.
(This is a before felting pic of the pot).

Reading books by men has been mixed. I enjoyed Of Bees and Mist by Erick Setiawan, which is full of magic and feuding women. But I've given up on The Girl with Glass Feet by Ali Shaw: too many adjectives, which seem to have been chosen more because they sound euphonious, rather than for their meaning... But best of all, by a long way, is Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada: not always an easy read (it is set in Berlin in 1940 ) but one I'll go back to over and again. I've not been neglecting books by women: I'd recommend The Children's Book by A.S.Byatt, not least for its stunning visual imagery which has got me itching to design and knit a soft sculpture inspired by Art Nouveau vases; Garden Spells by Sarah Addison was a quick, pleasureable read, though I think that Alice Hoffmann's Practical Magic covered the same terrain even better; The Truth About Melody Browne, by Lisa Jewell was another quick read: I like the way that "chick lit" is growing up, there was romance in this, but the plot is really aboutrememebring and coming to terms with childhood trauma. Now I've gone back to an old favourite: Susan Howatch. I'm deep into Glamorous Powers, which is about a psychic monk questioning his vocation. It ties in with a lot of the medieval mystics that I studied years ago. On the poetry front I've just treated myself to Redgrove's Wife by Penelope Shuttle: this is a profoundly moving meditation on terminal illness, grief and moving through mourning. I've gone back to this book following the rapturous reception that Christopher Reid has received for The Scattering (including the Costa Prize), which covers similar themes. Am I being cynical when I suggest that Reid's book is the one that's gathered all the plaudits because when men talk about losing their partner it is a brave and serious thing, whereas when a woman does the same thing, well, she's just talking about feelings and that's what women do. I hasten to add that I haven't (yet) read The Scattering so I can't make an informed comment! Next on my poetry list will be The Water Table by Philip Gross, which has won the T.S.Eliot Prize: much of it is about The Severn Estuary, so it will be interesting to compare his work to Gillian Clarke's take on the same subject in Words on Water(one of the best books published last year).
I've not had many days out yet this year: a trip to Ely (which reminds me, I've also got a copy of Don Patterson's Landing Light to read, I picked that up in Topping Books); a flying visit to Oxford as I wanted to see the Edward Bawden mural in Blackwells bookshop (see how my days off turn into busman's holidays!); and, staying in Cambridge, I've enjoyed the Sickert and Spencer exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum (must go back on a weekday, it was too crowded for comfort). Still on the theme of Doing Different I've been to the theatre for the first time in many years. Ibsen's Wild Duck is as jolly as you would expect from Ibsen, but one of my colleagues was in it and she was superb.
But have I been Caught Knitting? Er, not much, but I'm pulling my socks up now and am finally making progress on the City & Guilds course that I've started with Knit Design Online. I'm having fun playing with textures at the moment, creating a curious green swatch that has been inspired by an ammonite. And I'm off to Textiles in Focus tomorrow, so watch this space!

Do different!

I don't make New Year's Resolutions but I do often curl up on New Year's Eve and think about things I'd like to do during the next 12 months. Previous years' wish lists have included taking a boat trip to see seals (tick), visiting a wool festival (tick), visit countries I've not visited before (ongoing); you get the idea. Things that it would be fabulous to do and which I am more likely to do because expressing the desire makes me more likely to take some action, but also things which it won't matter if I can't do them.

This year's list includes the usual thoughts about places to visit, things to do, people to see... but also, in view of my Norfolk upbringing, it includes the determination to "do different". I wasn't sure what I'd "do different", more a case of "follow your nose wherever it goes; unless you don't like the look of the destination in which case turn round and try again".

And I most certainly have been "doing different". I've bought some books by male authors, as I've realised how rarely I choose anything other than women writers. I've been to a karoke evening with some colleagues (and, no I did not sing, but I surprised myself by actually really enjoying the evening). And on Friday I'm off to a dinner party. I've never been to one in my life (I could write the Bumper Book of Reasons and Excuses for Declining Dinner Invitations). I'm terrified (especially as I've never even met the hosts, let alone the other guests; these are all people from Mr CK's world, not mine). Will I be able to make spirited, yet polite, conversation? Dare I sneak some emergency crochet in in my bag? Is it impolite to crochet between courses? (Sadly, I suspect the answer is "yes" and maybe I'd be pushing my "do different" a bit far if I tried to hook a few stitches). I'm also trying to decide which would be better for soothing my nerves beforehand: camomile tea or G&T? Watch this space.

Oh, and watch this, too (see the entry for 21 Jan 2010), and let me know what you think of it (NB my speakers have blown, so I'm not sure what the sound is like: I'm guessing bagpipes and bleating). My "computer chair" where I'm sitting to type this, is almost identical to the one the sour-faced grannies were knitting in!

Oh, h*ll

I'm supposed to be spending the entire day today doing housework, tidying, etc and many other domestic tasks that I have been postponing for (blush) many weeks. But I only have about 4 more days off work between now and Christmas when, all being well, my parents will be coming to stay. Mr CK does more than his fair share around the house, so I really do have to get on but, really, housework is my idea of:

click the pic to enlarge, then look at the lower third, and you'll see what I mean.
This rather fabulous depiction of housework is from the ceiling of the Baptistry in Florence. which reminds me, I've still not posted any pics of that excursion, have I?

So here goes (and hang the housework for just a wee while longer...)

First, a view into the cloisters at Sante Croce. As you can see, there was a lot of restoration work going on. We loved it here and the museum, in particular, is worth a visit to see the 14th century painting of the madonna sewing (at least, I think it was 14th century. After a day or so we realised that to the Italians a date of, say, 1481 is 14th century, whereas to to Brits it would be 15th century

Look at the incredibly blue sky! we only got one fine day, but what a day. I think the towers here are (on the right) the Palazza Vecchia and (left) the Badia. (You'll have to excuse the spelling, stepdaughter is off to Florence next week, so she's got all our guidebooks etc). The Badia is a monastery, of which we saw very little as much is being restored. Nevertheless, it was one of my top 5 places as it felt so peaceful and unspoilt.

Look! A knitting group (in Melbookstore). I failed to pack any knitting (RSI was bothering me somewhat) but after seeing these knitters at work I soon put things to rights. We only found two things to be inexpensive compared to Britain. The first was academic textbooks (Graham now owns various TS Eliot texts with English on one page and Italian on the facing page)and the other was yarn. The first store I found was a factory shop, so I assumed that was why the prices were so low 2p/g in some cases). But a bit more exploring, and 3 more yarn shops later, I realised that Italian spinners do some really yummy wool blends at knockdown prices. One day I'll get organised (well, the last full moon was a blue one) and post details of the yarns and the shops...

The final picture is in our room. the hotel we stayed in was decidedly shabby genteel. I'm not sure that it is a good idea to have a live socket in the bathroom right next to the washbasin... But the room was clean and comfy and the staff were incredibly helpful. And finally, my personal top 5 places in Florence:

1. Museuo di San Marco. (Peaceful cloisters, amazing works of art and monks cells thqat each have their own fresco, some by Fra Angelica. The Annunciation has long been one of my favorutie paitings but seeing it in situ, at the top of a flight of stairs, took my breath away. Some parts were closed due to restoration).

2. The Baptistry. That ceiling (see above) is a glittering mosaic. Heaven, hell, angels, archangels, Christ in Majesty... Can you imagine working, at height, round a domed ceiling, with those tiny tesserae? the only place we visited that didn't have any restoration work going on. (But someone was testing microphones and there was some excruciating feedback!)

3. The Badia. So peaceful. Despite the noisy building and restoration work going on. I love the way that some places manage to feel tranquil even in the midst of turmoil. I wish I could master that feeling myself.

4. Museo di Firenze comm'era (Musuem of Florence as it used to be). Yet another museum set in cloisters. This one is for map and plan fanatics (eg me), though fortunately there are some rather wonderful demi lunette paintings of Medici palaces to keep husbands amused.

5. Santa Croce and its Museo. Much of the interior of the church was closed off (restorations) but the museum made a virtue out of the restoration work by showing conservators in action.

You'll notice that the Uffizi didn't make the cut! We'd both been so excited about finally getting to see some Ucello paintings, only to find that one had been loaned to another museum and the other was being restored.

And now, off to do the housework. (I can feel those imps prodding me....)

Chaos

We've been treated to our very own personal power cut. (Well, we also shared it with next door). We came home on Tuesday evening to discover that the power had been off for about 2 hours. A kindly neighbour took us in and gave us tea, then Mr CK and I enjoyed a suprisingly relaxing evening watching the fire and listening to the clock ticking. At about 11pm our peace was rudely shattered by workmen with pneumatic drills removing half of our neighbour's drive. We got our power back sometime in the small hours of the night, but the giant hole is still there, so we suspect more work (and further power cuts) to follow. The neighbour tells us that last time something similar happened there were problems for months afterwards. We're getting a supply of candles in!

swept away!

Sorry I've been so silent of late: I've been here, there and everywhere over the last few weeks. Exhibitions: Edward Bawden at the Cecil Higgins Gallery, Bedford (very highly recommended. I'm planning to go back again); two visits to Making and Mending at the Bury St Edmunds Gallery (the first to meet Celia Pym, the second to take part in Kai-Oi Jay Yung's Sock Exchange, which was huge fun); the Knitting & Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace; a week's self-catering in Thaxted, Essex (where we did lots of gentle walking and even more gallery visiting: Henry Moore's Sheep at Saffron Walden Musuem, and yet more Edward Bawden at both Saffron Walden Musuem and at the Fry Gallery); next, we had 36 hours at home (mainly spent catching up with laundry) followed by 4 nights in Florence (museums, churches and galleries galore, not to mention a knitting group in a bookshop). Since then I've done 4 days back at work, and now I've got more holiday: we've had the sweep in today and I'm busy preparing a handout for the class I'm teaching at a fibre Retreat in Devon this weekend!

Once I'm back from that, I'll try to blog some selected highlights from my travels.

Walls Have Knitting Patterns

Just over a week ago I got up early, threw a few sandwiches into a box and, three buses later (citi 6, citi 7 and Village Link 5), I was in paradise (well, apart from the aircraft noise, but I'm still thrilled to be able to hear again properly).

Where was I? Deep in the heart of the Essex countryside, in the Chelmer Valley (and on the Stansted flightpath) is Thaxted, a town that grew rich on three trades: thatching, cutlery and wool. And when I say rich, just look at the sumptuosuness of the buildings in this tiny market town:

the Guidhall, for instance

and Dick Turpin's house (yes, the Dick Turpin, as in "stand and deliver!"):


But best of all was the pargetting on many walls, instant knitting pattern inspiration...
giant cables:
entrelac:
basket weave:
and welted modular shells:
You'll probably have seen that shape in old knitted bedspreads and some of you will have seen a tiny cushion that I've made with this motif.

Where was I?

As you've probably realised, I've been making up for lost time over the last few weeks! The ear infection really did knock me for six (months) and as for the killer headaches I'd been getting: I want to forget those. They've almost gone now I've got my glasses, who'd have thought that eyestrain could be so evil?

Anyway, back to my whirlwind tour of East Anglia and, in particular, Cromer. I first went to Cromer when I was about 5 years old. We caught a coach from King's Lynn and it wound through rural lanes, taking us through such memorable places as Great Snoring (prompting much teasing of my poor Pa) whilst (even more memorably) my darling little sister suffered from travel sickness. Once we got to Cromer we went to a hotel that had a television. I'd never seen a television before. (It was 1966 and, as you'll have realised, we had neither a car nor a television in those days!) Another great surprise was that my Nanny (my Mum's mum) was staying in a guesthouse just round the corner. (This was a great surprise to me, but not to Nan or my parents; they'd planned it, of course). And I seem to remember that Nanny and Ma spent rather a lot of time in a marvellous shop called the Peddlar's Pack. I remember wall hangings and yarn: it is the first wool shop I can remember, though it made less of an impression on me at the time than the television did... The shop's long gone but look what I found in Cromer Museum:

The Peddlar's Pack sign and even a brochure for "the handicraft Gift Shop that is So Different."

Ma still has a Danish wallhanging of twelve different pictures (printed on canvas) of the same two little girls playing out in all weathers (one picture for each month of the year). At the time she bought it, sis and I were much the age of the little girls in the picture. Now even the nieces are bigger than those girls, but the hanging has only slightly faded and is still as delightful as it was then.

Cromer Museum is wonderful: converted from fisherman's cottages, complete with a wash house:

And there's a fabulous geology room with lots of fossils to play with (er, study) and cases full of North Sea amber. All through that first coach trip to Cromer Dad was telling me great tales of the place we were going to visit (to distract me, doubtless, from vomiting sister and peellywally Ma). If I looked really, really hard, I might find amber on the beach. It would feel warm to the touch, not cold like other stones. And it was made from resin from trees that were around at the time of the dinosaurs! Oh, and if I listened hard enough, I might hear church bells coming from under the sea: from the drowned church that was part of the drowned town just off the coast, just under the North Sea. I didn't hear the bells and I didn't find any amber, but still had a great time. But 40-odd years later, in Cromer museum, here was the amber and -more exciting still- lots of information about the town that drowned.

But the best was yet to come: ganseys! But they're going to be in another post as ganseys seemed to be the theme running though my visit to the I Knit weekender (on Friday) and before that, I've another outing to regale you with...

Coastal Knitting

First: an exceptionally delightful purchase that I made in Sheringham's yarn shop yesterday... I certainly don't need any more DK, but Mirasol's Hacho has a most seductively bouncy quality and the colours sang out to me. Note how the yarn is posing artfully on a table of a train en route from Sheringham to Cromer.



During this journey I was also working on a modular scarf that's combining Sirdar Escape DK with Katia Pailettes but it was, alas, one of those days when there was more unknitting than knitting. Even more gallingly, I'd made the mistake the previous evening but had knitted on the train for two hours thinking "this doesn't look quite right..." before I realised that I'd missed out 8 rows. Sigh. I would show you a picture, but Blogger is refusing to let me upload any at the moment so I'll terminate this post here and write about the Sheringham/Cromer gansey knitting tradition tomorrow. All I'll say now is size 18 needles and 15 stitches per inch.

Norfolk railway stations

Here's where last week's walk started:



And here's where it ended:



This was today's first stop:




And the next:

(I'm glad to say that Cromer is far more interesting than this shot of the station might suggest). But I wonder whether the same might be said of North Walsham?
I didn't get off there, I wonder why not?


I'm happy to report that I scored some excellent yarn in Sheringham and found plenty of ganseys in Cromer museum. But more of that in another post.

Vast skies and wild blusteriness

There are times when I get a desperate yearning for peace, quiet and the great outdoors. Last week was one of them. And, since Mr CK and I were celebrating our wedding anniversary, we remembered a remote little halt that we'd visited on our honeymoon. And off we went... Two buses and two trains later, here we were:



Berney Arms is a request stop, the penultimate station on the line to Great Yarmouth. But it feels a world away from its seaside neighbour. The first thing that strikes you (once the train has pulled away) is the absence of engine noise. Berney Arms can only be reached by train, by boat, or on foot. When we arrived last week we were the only people to alight from the train and we couldn't even hear any boats. But it was far from silent: the wind was whipping through the long marsh grass and sighing through metal posts. Berney Arms itself is so small that even the word "hamlet" is too large for it: a farmhouse, a windmill,




a pub, a noticeboard, a bench:


The bench is accurate. Just look at the vastness:




We fortified ourselves in the pub (I particularly enjoyed the half of local cider)then set off to walk along the banks of the Yare, heading for Reedham (the next stop on the line to Norwich). Last time we'd done this walk the sun was beating down, and atmosphere was incredibly still. We saw vast numbers of birds, including egrets. This time the wild headwind (with occasional gusts of crosswind)kept the bird numbers down. But we still saw a couple of egrets and the only humans nearby were on boats. The wind didn't do much for my hairstyle...



but the walking was invigorating.




After a couple of hours we were in Reedham and the sun was shining. We spent a very pleasant interlude sipping more local cider, this time from the Lord Nelson Inn.

The whole day was blissful.

Knitting content!

Yes, Caught Knitting has finally got round to doing some knitting again.... The impetus was that I was part of the teaching team for a workshop on Horst Schulz's knitting techniques (if you follow the link, you'll need to scroll down a couple of entries: it's worth it!) and I'd volunteered to cover Horst's rather wonderful way of combining short row wedges with slip stitch stripes.

I had huge fun raiding the stash (and also treating myself to a couple of wonderful indlugences from Rowan's autumn colours: kid classic in a burgundy melange and a tweedy DK in teal) and decided to make a cover to fit the smallest cushion pad that I could find: 35cmx35cm from John Lewis. Much happy knitting later:

There's no seaming at all on the front of the cushion. After working one patch, I picked up stitches from its side tow ork the next. For the final patch I also worked a purlwise join at the lefthand side (onto the base of the first patch)
By the time I came to work the back of the cover, I was running short of time, so decided that the simplest way forward would be a giant mitered square, picking up stitches from two sides of the cushion and keying into a third side with a purlwise join (thus leaving me with just one seam to sew: result). Horst works his mitered squares by alternating two rows (ie one ridge) of garter stitch, with 2 rows of stocking stitch and always decreases on wrong side rows. Since each of the four patches was 45 stitches wide, I picked up 180 stitches (on the assumpton that each sdie was 90 stitches wide). I worked a few inches without any qualm but then began to feel that it was all looking rather too saggy. And few things are more disappointing than a saggy cushion cover. It was too late for me to rip everything out and start again (my preferred option)but then I realised that I had a few tricks up my sleeve. I used slip stitch bands (another Horst favourite) and garter stitch to change the tension and I reduced the stitch count very slightly by working an occasional decrease on a right side row. And it worked:

I completed the knitting at 1am on Friday, sewed the seam between 6.40 and 6.50am, took the bus to work at 8am, worked to 4pm, then went to Marlow by train. In Marlow, I stayed with Jill, who organises the Patchwork Knitters workshops. The workshop ran from 9.30-4.30 yesterday and I was back in Cambridge by 8.30pm. I slept 10.5 hours last night!

The course was huge fun, not least due to Jill's marvellous and meticiulous planning and organising and fellow-tutor Heather's knowledge and enthusiasm.

another month whizzes past....

OOps, have just realised that I've not blogged for about a month.

I've been very happy and very busy. There have been outings (Norwich for medieval and tudor buildings, King's Lynn for a concert and to see my parents and two visits each to both the Botanic Gardens and Kettle's yard), there's been crochet and there's been a grand knitting project (involving many, many tension swatches and about 15 different yarns). Oh, and there's been an eye test and I am now horribly broke and awaiting some varifocals.

I'll supply pictures and more info on the crochet and the grand knitting project as soon as I've done some housekeeping on the computer (I daren't put any new pictures on the hard drive for the time being) and taught on a patchwork knitting workshop next Saturday (the grand knitting project is closely linked to the workshop). There will not be any pictures of me in my specs.

So: more from me in a couple of weeks' time.

ps: this is what I'd be up to if I were braver....

printmakers and popular art

Here's a link to a brief video of Angie Lewin, one of my favourite contemporary artists, making a print.

Not been doing much of late as the ear is still not right. But I did manage to pay a flying visit to the Fry Gallery in Saffron Walden last Friday: I'm utterly smitten with the work of Edward Bawden and the gallery changes their selection each year. I'm also eagerly anticipating the autumn, when Bedford Gallery (which is, unsurprisingly, in Bedford) will have a major exhibition of Bawden's work. Better still, they're doing some gallery talks and archive afternoons.

Whilst I was in the Fry Gallery this caught my eye:

There, under glass, was a copy of one of my favourite King Penguins. At first, I couldn't work out the connection between this book and the Fry Gallery's collection, which features works from the artists who used to live in Great Bardfield in the mid-twentieth century. Then I looked more closely. Next to "my" book, was another book by the same author and this one, on English Life, had illustrations by Bawden. Hmmm, can see I'm going to have to start haunting book fairs again...

Crafting at the Fitz

First, thanks for all the good wishes; I'm happy to report that my ear is on the mend! Not only that, but I'm feeling up to socialising again and I've just spent a wonderful day at the Fitzwilliam Museum, crocheting coral. The workshop was part of a Crafts Council Project and also ties in with the fascinating Darwin exhibition which is on at the Fitz at the moment. The project is supplying kits (materials, ideas and worksheets) to community groups, schools and galleries who would like to create their own reefs which should, eventually, be merged with the reef that started at the South Bank last summer before touring (and growing ever-bigger) at the Knitting & Stitching Shows. Its eventual destination looks set to be the Eden Project. The Fitz already had a couple of mini reefs on display. One that had been started at the Sedgwick and fabulous selection of work from a community group and a primary school in the Kings hedges area of Cambridge.

I'd forgotten just how much fun you can have armed with yarn and crochet hook, surrounded by fellow fibre fiends. But I'd also (yet again) forgotten my camera. So you'll just have to take my word for it that some fabulous forms were created and quite a few newcomers have become"hooked" on crochet.

a total pain in the ears...

Sorry, still no photos and no crafty items to report either. All due, alas, to a boring ear infection that has now been complicated by a boil in one of my ear canals. Ouch. Hoping the latest course of anitbiotics will do their trick...

outings 2, photos nil

Is anyone else old enough to remember when the football results used to come in via the noisy old teleprinter?

Anyway, here's my life summed up in a few results...

week commencing Sat 1 June 2009: outings 2, photos nil

week commencing Sat 8 June 2009: social events cancelled 4, germs too many to count

(I'm currently deaf in one ear, and can neither taste nor smell things but at least I've not had to take Tamiflu, unlike Daisy!)

Last weeks outings were huge fun and I'm so cross with myself for forgetting the camera not once, but twice. I went to Ely (again) and Mr CK and I were taken on a grand tour of Hackney Downs and Bethnal Green (his daughter lives there) which included Prick Your Finger, the Museum of Childhood and Victoria Park.

The display of crocheted lizards (and a frog) at PYF is amazing (sadly I missed the hunk erecting the sign... but the blog makes intersting viewing) and we all had huge fun at the museum. I particularly like the Quentin Blake and Roald Dahl exhibition they have on the moment. Birthday girl (aged 29) took full advantage of the boxes of dressing up clothes!

I shall draw a veil over this week...