Coppery highlights and a dog blanket

I went to see George (short for Georgina) yesterday and she sorted out the mess left by the other hairdresser and I also had some coppery highlights put in. These have inspired me to create the above new beads (but more of that later). First I have to tell you how absolutely wonderful George is, she has got my world back on an even keel. Before yesterday, EVERY day since my last hairdresser appointment was a bad hair day. George used to cut my hair when we lived close to Lincoln, I followed her around to 3 salons because she was so good. It was a sad day seven years ago when I went to see her for the last time before we moved to Cambridge.

These days she is her own boss running "Aspire" on 46 Clasketgate in Lincoln. She's now about an hour's drive away by the time you get through very heavy rain near Newark and get parked but well worth it.  I've put photographs of her work taken when I got home in an album entitled "New Hairdo" on Facebook, click the link to see if you're interested! (I've made it public so you should be able to see it even if you're not a Facebooker yourself).

The beads in the photograph are made using a custom frit blend which I mixed myself (secret recipe so don't ask for it!) This is the first frit blend I have created and I'm really pleased with it. I made lots of different beads with various base colours and techniques and the ones in the photograph are the best of the bunch. They came out brown and coppery to match my hair, there is a new brown spankle bead in there and an orangey twiddly twirly bead. I'll be going into production to make more of these so keep an eye out for jewellery made with them very soon!

Update on the wrist, it's still a little sore from time to time. I have to go back to see my GP next week to check he's OK with me continuing to take anti-inflammatories and wear the brace. But I know it's getting better, it's nowhere near as bad in the mornings; most of the time apart from the inconvenience of the brace getting in the way, I don't feel it at all. From time to time though doing something (like chopping carrots or operating scissors) will give cause for malediction and for some things I have to take the brace off for (like signing my name), I barely recognise my handwriting at all actually!

I even started tentatively knitting again yesterday. I am breaking myself in very slowly and knitting a square every night for a Battersea Dogs and Cats Home blanket. Battersea is asking crafters across the country to help its most sensitive dogs by knitting them a special security blanket. If you're a dog lover and a knitter and would like to take part, there's a free pattern download on the link. Share the love!

Why do we have dogs?

I have just spent 20 minutes sorting this tangled mess out.

It's was a tension square I was knitting to check my gauge prior to knitting up a new project. I quite often eat my lunch with the news on the TV in order to get the weather forecast. After my sandwich but before the forecast, I thought I could get a couple of rows done. I left it there this afternoon and I've just come back to carry on and found it on the floor ... Missy had a rather guiltily sheepish look when I picked it up in puzzlement ...

Why do we have dogs? Because it's a laugh! :-) Bless her.

Technology versus knitting

As part of our broadband upgrade after the lightning strike a couple of weeks ago, we decided to upgrade to BT Vision, the box was only £28 and it came with a new free hub. I had it in my mind that our old hub (which got fried) cost something like £80. I thought a replacement would be at least £100. Bargain!

The new box arrived on Friday but  I reserved Sunday morning to setting it up. It says on the box that it takes 30 mins, well, they are talking out of their arses um ... they are lying toads hmmm.... they were telling a teeny fib there cos I started at around 10.30 am and finally finished at 5pm!

When I'd finished and it was all set up and working, I did get a happy feeling of accomplishment ... but BT Vision squashed my picture and fuzzed it up; everyone looked like they were hugely overweight and blurry.  Changing the aspect ratio on the TV solved the overweight bit but I had black lines down the side and I was a bit cross about not getting the full quota of inches of widescreen TV that I paid for about eighteen months ago.

It could just be the old equipment that we have to receive TV pictures, we are trying to cram 21st century technology into a 19th century house. I doubt the aerial and cabling have been changed since television were invented! These problems may be easily resolvable but not by me, I feel I've wasted enough time on it. The advantages of BT Vision such as pausing, rewinding and recording live TV are far outweighed by the disadvantages; it's all been unplugged and we have gone back to normal fuzz-free Freeview.

I had all day on Monday to forget about my stressful Sunday. We attended a 40th birthday party for sister Sharon's fiance, Martin.  We had a lovely time, lots of great food, most of his family and ours were there. Martin seemed quite overcome (bless him) with his present. We all clubbed together to send him to Rome for 5 days and 4 nights, Sharon is going with him (but she paid for herself!) He said he has always wanted to go.

Today I've been back at work making beads (yes, she came back!) and this evening I will be taking solace in doing a nice bit of knitting and having happy thoughts about how nice it is that the knitting needles I have had for forty twenty-odd years don't need upgrading, repairing or a software download. They are fully compatible with every kind of yarn that has ever been invented in the intervening time and have never needed a reboot - I just love knitting!

I've just finished this pair of Bouquet socks from Wendy Johnson's Toe-Up Socks for Everybody.

This is a lightweight scarf for Autumn which is being knitted in a lovely 2ply lace yarn with a lovely sheen that glams it up a bit. I've only got a few more inches to knit on this so it's nearly finished.

Final picture - this is a mutli-coloured blanket I'm knitting for Missy's basket using up various left over balls of sock yarn. Can you believe that I actually removed some balls from the selection I made because I thought they clashed a bit ... :-)

The only other UFO I have on the go is a black cobweb weight lace shawl I started about a year ago; I am about a quarter of the way through the border on that one.

Knitting

I've been rediscovering knitting recently. Laura inspired me over on her Beads by Laura blog to get my needles out of the loft with her lovely hand knitted socks. Over the past few months, I have knitted several pairs myself- here are a colourful selection drying in the breezy weather we're having at the moment, along with some jeans! (It's not you, the dryer is leaning a bit ..!) I've been a knitter ever since I was tiny - my mum taught me to knit not long after I started school. My auntie Vi taught me to crochet and I continued both for years and years but once I married and had been working for a few years, I gradually stopped. Before the latest sock bonanza, my last big project way back in the 1980s was an heirloom "wedding ring" shetland shawl. They're called wedding ring shawls because the lace knitting is so fine, the shawl - even though it was several feet across - will pass through a wedding ring. It was knitted in really fine shetland wool called "cobweb" which gives you an idea of how delicate the yarn was - way finer than the 4-ply I most often use for socks.

Anyway, the shawl was finished shortly after I got married, I entered it into a craft competition. I have been desperately trying to find the photograph I took of it with my 2nd prize card but I can't find it - I'm sure it will turn up at some point. Unfortunately, I cannot take another photograph because the shawl itself got lost when we moved out of our flat in London. I can still see the box in my mind's eye, it was a box which a radio had come in and the shawl was so lightweight, the box felt empty. I have an awful feeling one of us threw it away ... (not saying which one but it wasn't me!)

Every time we move house, I am hopeful that it will turn up but as we've moved 5 times since then, I'm pretty certain it is gone forever as well as the original pattern which I can't find either. Ever since then, I have been promising myself to knit another wedding ring shawl but never got round to it ... until now.

I have tracked down a supplier for the yarn, Jamieson & Smith, and bought a book on heirloom shetland patterns. I've designed a stole myself from the motifs and patterns in it. Here is a photograph of the pattern that dominates it, there is a big central diamond with various motifs in it - I have only just started that bit. All around the edge, there will be a border, knitted separately added a row at a time so there's quite a bit of work involved. As you can see, it's black this time instead of white - I think I'm more likely to wear it as an evening stole if it's black.

I'm hugely enjoying knitting it - I need a very good light because the yarn is so dark but unpicking errors is a nightmare. The first time I tried just unravelling 3 rows and picking up the stitches again - that was a mistake - it took so long and didn't go right at all - I ended up having to start all over again! The last couple of times I found errors, informed with my previous experience, I now undo it stitch-by-painstaking-stitch and it takes 20 minutes to unpick a single row. There are over 100 stitches in the row, the bit that I've photographed has a pattern repeat every 16 stitches and 20 rows. I have put in a white stitch marker (which you might be able to just make out in the photograph) after each pattern repeat. Mostly that keeps my knitting accurate because if I have an incorrect number of stitches after each pattern repeat, then I know I've done something wrong virtually immediately rather than finding out at the end of the row.

It is now about 30 inches long but I spotted another mistake a couple of weeks ago - this time six or seven rows down ... part of me was saying "don't unpick it, just leave it - it's quirky, it's handmade, no-one will ever notice" but another bit of my brain was screaming - "NO NO NO, it's wrong and it'll annoy you forever". When I discovered the mistake, I put it aside whilst I knitted a pair of socks for my dad. I just picked it up again today and I have decided yes, I must rectify the error so after bead cleaning this evening, that's what I'll be doing!

Photography and knitting

I have been taking advantage of the warmer weather this week and done some photography outside.

I've got some reasonable ones finally of the silver jewellery but I haven't processed them yet.

I've also photographed all the new things I have been making this week. Until I get round to resizing and optimising the photographs, above is a taster, this is my new Mermaid bracelet.

I'll upload the new products and photographs to the website early next week.

Here is a photograph of some new yarn that arrived this week from Violet Green. It's mainly merino wool which means it's ultra soft. The colour on the right hand side is called "To the Lighthouse". The name intrigues me as it's the title of a Virginia Woolf book I've been meaning to read ever since I read a biography. Anyway, it is destined to become a pair of fingerless gloves and matching socks (I bought two skeins). It's now a bit warm for gloves but if winter tries to bite back, I'll be ready for it!

The multi-coloured one is called Enigma and will be a pair of socks very soon. Laura Sparling has a lot to answer for by getting me hooked on knitting again!