Knitonlybutalso

escape....

...to London this weekend that is. I went with my top work-buddy, M. M and I are also going to Singapore together in October for work and this was kind of to see if she could really cope with that without wanting to kill me, if anyone can put up with me I suspect she can - she is truly the best. I have lived in the UK for over 18 years and I guess I am hestitant about making really, really close friends - I have a few really special people, but how do you make really close friends when you are all grown up and have no shared childhood experiences? Well, M is one of those people where our lives seem to have trundled along almost in tandem, she in Canada, and me in New Zealand, but our likes/dislikes, habits, interests, silly stories, odd relatives - all strangely mesh. Even better, our taste in musicals mesh - we went to see Priscilla (ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh genius, it was beyone brilliant). Even our differences seem to just add to the mix, she is more than happy to accept I am a church junkie, and I am thrilled and fascinated by her need to source decent literature in french - it's all good. She totally gets I don't have any interest in kings and queens and royalty stuff but love people-history as she feels the same way, and she likes the quirky and less frequented stuff too, she is also incredibly happy for me to shutter-bug away while she potters along doing her thing, this was right next to our hotel (that's the gateway to St Olavs) which was a Pepys stamping ground (very much M's kind of thing) where-as I am shallow enough to get all over-excited by such a fabulous entrance.

I can also say M is a genius for finding hotels that are central and reasonably priced (Apex near the Tower), she on the other hand seemed to think I am a good navigator (Gravel-Guy would say I am rubbish), M has an ability to suggest absolutely the right thing to do next, such as cocktails before beddy-byes (Gravel-Guy would have a fit particularly if one combines cocktails with hot chips - heaven!), where-as M seemed think I have a talent for finding random acts of great entertainment (we chanced upon a recital of West Gallery music at All Hallows near the Tower, and somehow even ended up joining in and singing along with great gusto and made some buddies). M has exquisite taste in museums (such as the V & A) and we even had the same interest in making a bee-line for the islamic and the asian halls (Gravel Guy would have sulked), and I was able to indulge in serious church/cathedral tripping (and even experience a service on Friday afternoon)...

(isn't that just the most brilliant glass sculpture, I totally love it), and isn't the facade of Westminster Cathedral just fab in late afternoon sunshine...

M also doesn't mind one bit that I have a sheaf of print-outs of possible places to wander past on the off-chance if-we-are-down-that-way (where-as Gravel-Guy would have had a major flakey if I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do and and in what order and for how long), and this is what we saw near the hotel on the Sunday before we headed back up to Glasgow, the Skyride, M and I both thought it was wonderful - can you see how just about everone is smiling from ear to ear, we were both beaming with delight ...

Finally and most importantly, M also has the inate understanding of pace - pace is very important, in fact M understands the need to take tea in Liberty (Gravel-Guy would insist on a bottle of water on the hoof) and most amazingly for a non-knitter - M oohed and aaahed and made all the right noises at the yarn and trimmings up in the handcrafts department. I tell you, M is a true genius.

Singapore is going to brilliant.

100% grouch (officially)

There is something wrong with the sky outside, I had to go into the back garden and look at it properly but yes, it's - - - blue. We have had weeks of rain, weeks, I tell you. Sometimes drizzly rain, sometimes driech, sometimes conveyer belt sweeps of rain in curtains and often great big flattening rain storms that sit directly overhead and pummel the bedraggled plants into the ground. So today is ... wierd. I know I should be skipping gaily admiring the wonder of it, but as I am in a grouchy mood, all I can really see is dust bunnies, paw prints on window panes, crumbs and grot and smears. So I am trying not to look, now here's a little household tip for you that you don't see on Kim and Aggie - subdued lighting, or in Scotland - normal daylight. Does the trick for sure.

The reason for the general malaise? Well nothing out of the ornery really, just teenagers and their lifestyle. Much as I love the three of them, I don't appreciate their level of mankiness or their immunity to piles of dishes/clutter/dirty laundry made by them. When gravel-guy was away recently I got them into a routine - one chore each when they came in, so by the time I got home the dishes (most of them, but not those in the living room or made messy by a sibling) were done, the downstairs vacuumed (two of the three employ a slalom technique going around the worst of the piles of stuff, but hey - the floor is no longer crunchy), and the rubbish put out in the bin (with a trail of whatever, so I knew this had been addressed too). All worked fine until gravel-guy returned from Greenland with his 320 photos of musk-ox (he'd gone there to look at coraline polyps or something but I guess musk-ox were more photogenic) and made it clear this was an unacceptable return to child labour and the poor-house ways of life of the 19th century (Note: I do want to make clear that these poor little critters created the mess and they are 16, 15, and 14 years respectively).

Still, I like to think some of their time doing chores rubbed off, I was minded of this the other day after struggling home on the bus with a particularly big shop. As I lurched through the front door the straps on two of my shopping bags gave way and I collapsed in an inelegant heap of coat and grocery, and there I would have stayed, pinned by the weight of purchasing food, had it not been for Nr.2 kid. He put down the games console thingy, and quietly got up and pattered over to me, gently, he lifted the bags away with his huge dinner plate hands and took them into the kitchen (Oh joy! I thought - at least one chick cares) and then I heard him opening the food packets ....and sounds of chewing, eventually he said "You might want to get up from there - Hugh (nr.1) is back in a minute with food and you're blocking the door". Sigh.  

I have finished two little projects, but I am slowed by my sulking.

 

so if this is august, what happened to july?

Officially it is summer, summer should look like this...

 

I can tell you that in Scotland at the mo it definitely doesn't. I won't show you - it is grey and bleurgh. So have some more photos from Chelsea Physic Garden in June.

 

A trip to London for 2 days was my birthday present, and the one thing I have wanted to do in London since I was little was visit Chelsea Physic Garden (heaven!). Being with Trevor, I thought I better be a good girl or I'll never be allowed back, so shopping was pretty much avoided (apart from a brief visit to Liberty for mum), the first day he made me walk 8 hours solid, the next day he went a little easier on me (7). Those London pavements are hard.

I loved these fabulous flowers by the way...

Yes, I am alive, just currently over-worked and decidely grumpy and sleep deprived. School holidays suck - that's official, her Majesty is away on a week long orienteering thingy (coming back today - Gravel Guy has gone to pick her up, though why beats me - surely if she is away for a week of running and reading maps she could find her own way home from Perthshire? yes I am being facetious - I'm tired, very tired, tired makes me sarky, and sarky is not nice). However this leaves two boys here - at least in theory, but Nr.1 is nocturnal (drat - he has inherited that from me - and night time is MY time when everyone else slopes off to bed and I can happily potter, only pottering is a solitary occupation which is ruined by other peoples pottering - it is a solitary sport and so I am miserable, people don't potter in herds), as for Nr.2 - well Nr.2 is very social (where did he get that from???) and our house is infested with damp smelling teenage boys wearing tea-cosy style beanies hauled down as far as they will go over their heads.  They come for sleep overs and are draped over furniture while they sleep (until 3.00pm-ish) and only awake for cheese toasties or if you play The Priests very loudly, but they can sleep through heavy metal.

The house stinks of soggy males, cheese toasties, baked beans and trainers.

Still, they go back to school in two weeks.

So is it any wonder I have done very little, I go to work, I come home, I sleep, I make dinner (lettuce is such a fab invention, the offspring all hate it - even better), I go back to sleep, I go to work, I come home.... Very rarely I haul  my knitting pile up on the sofa and look at it. I made a Drops cardigan for my sister (they are having a cold winter) but it was on huge needles and had 3/4 sleeves - even I can manage that.

I finished Muse - plain basic knitting, I can manage that too, looks pretty on - it is one of those knits that doesn't look good on a hanger and only really attractive when you wear it - which is better than the kind that look great on the hanger and not a person I guess.

And I finished Chinoiserie - even though I thought the pattern was adorable, I then changed most of it as I knitted - I gave it a bit of shaping (boxy makes me look like a plinth awaiting something to be plonked on top), I gave it saddle shoulders, I gave it some petersham ribbon (the knitted along fronts curl badly, but nice idea) and I just embroidered roughly what was on the picture. Not a difficult knit - the hardest thing was to find green sequins for a few leaves - it is only when you come to look for green sequins you realise the difficulty in knitting Chinoiserie isn't in the knitting - it is in the finding of appropriate green sequins. Not sure I've cracked the right shade, but they will do until the right green sequins come along.

Now I just need to finish some other bits and bobs (and sleep)....

it's war out there... (so maybe it's safer indoors with some nice knitting)

Spring is a dangerous time, I think. The first signs of it and I get all excited and what-not, I start wanting to explore natures doings and see whats happening out and about. Therefore, I have been getting off the bus in Killearn of an evening and walking the two miles home - until Wednesday that is. Wednesday, I met a pot hole just outside of Killearn, which meant I kissed tarmac and broke my glasses, I also have four stitches much to the hilarity of everyone at work. There has been a distinct lack of sympathy at home too, however despite the stitches and the red and yellow and blue brusies to my eye and schnoz it actually doesn't hurt (and I am one class A wimp).

When I finally staggered indoors about 8.00pm after I did it, the offspring were watching TV, Nr.2 swivelled his head and said along the lines of "hmmph, that looks bad" and swivelled back to watching TV. Nr.3 said something along the lines of "hmmmmmm, you've ripped you tee shirt - people will see you" and also swivelled back to the TV and Nr.1 never even twitched. Now as it is on my forehead, foreheads bleed a lot and I was covered in blood so I did look quite a sight. When Gravel-guy got home at 9.00pm he barely registered it, but reluctantly agreed to take me to Stirling A&E for stitches as it was still bleeding and I couldn't quite smoosh it together. I'm glad he didn't know that we would eventually get home at 2.30am as it was pretty busy there that night and he is not a night-owl.

I have to admit I did feel a bit of a pillock wandering in with something that only needed a few stitches (but there is no on-call doctor out our way and we would have been told by NHS24 to go there anyway), but as the A&E was full of students "feeling funny" (but not funny enough to stop them making out with each other) I guess I wasn't draining the time and resources too much - well I hope not anyway. And we were there well before the usual drunks.

But the real nuisance has been my hands are bruised and a bit grazed - which makes knitting uncomfortable, so I have hardly touched the cardigan I was motoring along on (plain, boring old stocking stitch but will be embellished later with a bit of bling). Nor have I been as busy in the garden as I would be - but that hasn't stopped the tulips and things that can carry on regardless - fab eh, isn't nature just genius? This has meant more time dolefully watching more and less time doing, which means I have noticed the neighbourhood cats all like my back garden. And my little garden is full of precious little seeds, and there is a cat next door that likes to leap at our washing when it is hung out to dry and try and pull it off (not the washing in his garden you understand). Now I like cats, so I have fleeced and netted and laid sticks as much as possible but still they are there - it is like a cat queue (especially in front of the guinea pigs), it is like the drunken teenagers in Glasgows city centre of a Saturday night - there are hordes of them.

So I have bought this......

un-flipping-believable, the kids can't believe it - we've never had toy weapons on our property of any kind. Anyone bringing their favourite plastic pistol/toy sword to play was always made to leave it at the garden gate, even if they came with their mummies and their mummies made a fuss - we have always been a no-weapons household and no negotiations. But the neighbourhood cats, now thats a whole 'nother story.   

Let battle commence.

sprung?

 

Spring is here - finally! It officially started middle of March but it actually now feels spring-like and what a long time coming. Therefore, we can safely say that until the next snow flurries - Spring has officially sprung. I have been willing it to get a hurry-on and just come. The daughter has been willing it to come too as she thinks that will lessen the embarrassment of me hunkered down in the garden spotting sprouting plants and whatever - she finds it all quite mortifying in the way that 13year old girls find everything about mid-forties women. She worries, y'know - she thinks I should be inside where I can't be seen I suspect, and certainly not crouched in the bushes with my bum in the air watching primula or peering inside daffodils. She even thinks it would be better, if I spent that time knitting (indoors) - which is a complete about face... It's nice to now I still have some power over her - never underestimate the power of embarrassment I say, especially as I am officially sulking (she has finally over topped me - my little inchworm has finally inched her way past me and is taller than I am, so I am relegated to official status of family troll). I am also on official narcissi rescue - the ones that get knocked over/flattened by wind/just give up and lie down on the path need to get brought inside and put in water - this is Thalia by the way, she is very beautiful but not particularly happy in our garden, so yes, she is inside after rescuing, and she was in danger of being stepped on.

Speaking of offspring, they are on holiday again (yes, a bigger fence is needed around that damn school) 2 weeks - 2 WEEKS!!! of Easter holiday, and gravel-guy has tootled off for a sunny jaunt (sorry fieldtrip with a bunch of students) to Majorca, I think he is back tuesday-ish with a load of washing to be done and complaints that he is tired (No he bloody isn't - he doesn't understand tired until he looks after his own children and their friends, and their comings and goings, and their arrangements, and their kitchen raids, and their...). I shouldn't really complain - they are good kids, sweet kids, but sheesh, they get in the way of serious knitting time, and Nr.2 kid - well Nr.2 kid takes after me I know that but....  actually he is great. Lovely in fact, but when gravel-guy goes away Nr.2 worries about me constantly - endless cups of tea are made (which is fab but even I - serious tea drinker that I am, cannot keep up), he likes to keep me company late night at weekends in case I am lonely (but that involves a hulking 14 year old boy trailing the vapours of heavy metal music which drown out my Bob Harris or whoever is on BBC Radio2) and he gives great big bear-crusher scrunching hugs - which is fine and fabulous but I am now all bent out of alignment and I am sure one shoulder is higher than the other (permanently). I am like a little plasticine troll all mooshed out of shape. This all means I never seem to get peace and time alone, and given that time alone is what I crave above all else I am a little out of sorts. Still, they are lovely kids.

And I have finished the top down garter yoke cardigan- we are liking very much.

my week off was bliss - thank you

This having-a-week-off-while-the-kids-are-at-school malarkey is a whizz, I might be enjoying it a bit too much but who cares. Thursday/Friday last week I was at the stitching show, the weekend I was finishing Cosima (looks good I think), Monday I made a quilt top for madam, Tuesday I caught the bus from Balfron to Stirling for some fabric and wadding to finish it, and have a coffee and a bit of a mooch around (oh yeah I can really pack things into one day).... I tell you this week off is fab, I could get seriously into pottering and loafing and farting about (actually I can tell you, it is actually one of the few things I am very, very good at, in fact I think I have quite a prodigious talent for erm, not doing very much as the husband would say - that and getting in the way, and making yorkshire pudding too - although how many yorkshire puddings do a family of five really need? I can also drink vast quantities of tea but I suspect that is not a talent but more bladder training).

Still back to the grind on the 8th floor tomorrow.

So this is the finished Cosima in Rowan Summer Tweed (and the quilt top for Madam - which I can't claim credit for really as it is a kit from Purely Patchwork in Linlithgow, who don't have a web address which is good as otherwise I would be even more skint than I am at the moment after last weekend). Cosima is not actually so purple - the summer tweed is a bit more gentle than that, but it looks as if the colour just wasn't going to photograph.

And, here is sunny Stirling (with a shot of McAree brothers, I love McAree Brothers they do lots of scrummy yarn but are also an old fashioned kind of haberdashery/school uniformy kind of shop, where they sell sensible socks in lovat green and ladies girdle contraptions that you probably get welded into and are eventually buried in) they even have that wonderful time-stands-still smell of old cardboard boxes and traditional polishing stuff. Stirling, in case you have never been is a weird collision between lovely old town and castle on the hill and some of the downright ugliest modern architecture you will ever see - the Thistle Centre/Bus Station always sets me off humming the icky theme tune to Prisoner Cell Block H - it is truly hideous, still I can't help feeling a sneaking fondness for Stirling as in some parts it is really very pretty with the concrete monsters preventing the town from lapsing into a twee preserve of monied folk. Stirling is a somewhat chaotic mix of chavs, neds, arty types, sports students and anyone who just seems to wash up there at the bend in the river, it's great.

.

So, Cosima is over - now I have a new crush - it is the garter stitch yoke cardigan thingy in some very tasty Debbie Bliss (yes, I know that is just another name for the divine Kilcarra) that I got very cheaply at the knitting / stitching show from Black Sheep yarns. Heaven or what? I even have the perfect buttons - there are 11 of these little vintage babies from Gallowglass and how many does this cardigan take? 9 (and isn't the way they are sewn up make for just the cutest little catepillar?)

 

and some more vintage buttons from the show (and no that isn't a ornery old vintage-y darning toadstool - thats a vintage-y old darning toadstool for gloves - and now its mine squeeeeeee! this is despite the fact I normally only ever knit fingerless gloves)...

spring fling

Well, I've just been to the SECC for the knitting and stitching show, it will be going on over the weekend - but I have offspring to attend. Still I had two gorgeous days with Yvonne (and Pat, and Nancy and the fabulous Nessa from down London) so I am a seriously happy chick and I have ALL next week off, hmm so which do I start - the heavenly smelling natural undyed yarn from New Lanark? the patchwork quilt from the patchwork shop in Linlithgow, the possum hand-dyed yarn, the exquisite yarny gift from Yvonne? I'm not sure. I do know that Cosima is needing my attention (it only really needs one and a half fronts finished, oh dear - my house is full of good intentions - most of them half finished).

In the mean time, there are signs of spring (SQUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!) - these crocuses have popped up where I did not expect any crocuses to be (bonus - any extra crocuses are always welcome).

And to show I do actually do stuff now and then, here is a Soda bag (I am loving the Colour of Summer book from Martin Storey / Rowan Classic - it is FULL of gorgeousness) mine has different coloured flowers to the one in the book - but then I chose colours to go with stuff I actually wear, although their combination of yellow, pale blue, pink, cream and light green and zingy red is lovely. It took a weekend of knitting and a week later I finally got off my behind and finished the lining and sewing.  

 

half term looming

This week is going to be a bad week, I can just feel it. All right, there are little hints - it is half term (the offspring - all three) will be off, and the bad stuff at work is about to reach its' peak with me (as a resident "nice person" - where-ever did they get that idea? being sucked right into the middle of something quite nasty). So, while normally, half term means I am in early to work (yes, I have told you before - I AM a BAD mother), work is not going to offer much comfort. The terrible thing about work is, it is a dreadful situation that involves nice people that are for the most part behaving badly. While bullying in the workplace often involves others tutting, I have to say that it is easy to become one of the bullies - otherwise where do they get their oxygen from? And the people behaving the worst are some of the nicest (otherwise) people I have worked with. It has been a lesson, I tell you.

I have been knitting to help focus my mind on positive stuff, although I am a green eyed knitting monster at the moment - there are so many desirable things to knit and just me and a yarn stash here. The Cosima is going well, I wanted grey Rowan Summer Tweed but then I was sucked into loganberry heaven which is going fine, I want to knit some of the new Rowan stuff (the muse cardigan is divine but lovely and simple) and some other new Rowan stuff, I also am knitting a Jane Sowerby scarf in regia sock yarn (shade 1933) which is suprisingly successful when you think it will mean I will be wearing old sock around my neck, but the yarn is actually a revelation - just the right variation in tones, very soft and pretty much the right weight to show stitch definition. I am quite happy with it. 

I am not sure the Rowan Summer tweed colour for the Cosima has photographed that well, but I love the texture (it is kind of crunchy) in a wierdly pleasant kind of way, but it will need two buttons as a closure and that is a looming worry (I want purple, I want kind of wooden - does purple and kind of wooden exist??? and will it turn out naf?).

The scarf has actually photographed a bit better and is more accurate (oooh I anm loving the Regia)...

 

In the meantime I have a household hint for any other mothers of teenagers facing half term, (especially if they are the kind of teenagers that grunt and play heavy metal and have no idea why they were given arms) - The Priests. The Priests full blast are like a musical bleach that can shift even the most stubborn of stains er, sorry, teenagers that won't normally shift from your living room sofa, oh they are fabulous and I don't care about the withering looks from the offspring. I am so happy to have discovered this, the week feels better already. If only I could buy the priests in person and keep them under the stairs for moments of high stress.

Things your children do, that you never thought of doing at their age...

Nr.2 child appeared at the bottom of our stairs this morning just as I was about to head off and catch the bus for work, "I've split my last pair of school trousers" he says showing me a pair of VERY split (at the crotch) trousers that he had wrecked yesterday while playing in the snow, and had only just thought to mention. So, anyway as I am not a morning person I may have managed a grunt but it wouldn't have been a particularly interested grunt as bus-catching in our village is a test of skill that takes all my abilities first light.  Last thing I saw before I left, was Simon hunting a stapler while pondering whether to staple the split while wearing the trousers or not.  All those years of Home Ec when I was a lass - and they never taught us how to staple a crotch...

Adele-d

Adele is done and dusted - she is safely in the completed for 2009 photo album, she is quite a success and done just in time for our impending cold snap. The buttons, well, the buttons I currently think are OK (which means I am pleased with them) as I am still worrying about the impact of such big buttons - but then little buttons would look dumb on such a texture, and well, I guess button-worry is just part of my nature. I have things knitted eons ago that I still have button-worries about, some I no longer actually even have - but y'know I still worry....

So, for now I have cast on for Cosima (a very tasty Berroco item) - with 2 buttons. You might think the fewer buttons the better for a button-worrier - well wouldn't you? Actually no. Fewer buttons means more button responsibility for the two little buttons I eventually choose. It is all very worrying. No photos as yet as I have only knitted a few rows (Rowan - summer tweed in loganberry shade 546 that sends me all wibbly with delight every time I look at it) however it is early days, I need to knit a bit more before I share, in case it all goes horribly wrong.

In the mean time I have suddenly caught startitis after reading Yvonnes blog and want to knit lots of scarves from Jane Sowerbys Victorian Lace Today book. This has meant an afternoon of digging skeins of yarn from window seats and wardrobes and wherever the stash resides in a pleasurable fuzz of yarn/pattern matching - totally unproductive, number 2 child says I looked a bit like a squirrel sorting nuts. I also found some jaeger extra fine merino dk (10 balls yippee!) that might just do another thing from Berroco - but do I start that now before the yarn descends back into the piles of stash or hang out for some Rowan pure wool aran in shade 680 (raspberry) that I can't think of an appropriate project to do anything with?