Bold ambitions

I don't really call them resolutions, but as the year starts, I do think about what I want to achieve this year.  It beats thinking back on what I did not achieve last year.

I wrote a bit of a list if things I want to do that are out of my normal range.  Yes, I will do the usual knitting.  Making shawls and socks and a sweater or two and I will try to improve my skills and try out new patterns.  I will also have some boring knitting in the bag.  This is for long trips, sitting in queues and watching TV.  It is amazing how much plain knitting can get done in these times and how satisfying it can be too.  Right now I am busy with a shawl, based on The Age of Brass and Steam.  This is an extremely useful recipe for a simple elongated triangle shawl and I have used it a number of times now.  I am using some cashmere in a dark charcoal, dyed by the amazing Carle Dehning.  It is not much to look at, but wonderfully soft and will be a perfect neck covering for the winter months.

The list

• Felting:  I keep drooling over wonderful felting projects, especially on Pinterest, and have a feeling ( pun intended) that I will enjoy the freedom to go wild that this pastime offers.
• Crocheting:  I am relatively new to this branch of fibrecraft, and wish to get better at it.  Some mad impulse just a week ago sent me buying yet more cotton yarn to make a bedcovering/afghan/blankie.  More about this in a later post.
• Weaving:  In some ways this is the absolute opposite of felting.  It requires discipline and adherence to rules.  Well, at least to get started, one needs to know what one is doing.  I must set up the loom, warp it and get weaving.  But first I need to plan a project, reread my books and see if I can remember anything.  I know there is a lot of help out there, so if I become stuck, I will have to ask for help.  
• Spinning:  Yes, I have been spinning for years, but maybe it is time to go to the next level.  Spin to a plan.  Have a project in mind and spin for that.  Maybe....or maybe is is just going to remain my Sunday afternoon form of relaxation.
• Sewing:  Since I was 12 and made my first dress, the knowledge that I am able to produce a one off outfit for me, has kept me inspired and motivated to carry on.  I don't sew nearly as much as I would like to and there is so much scope as far as patterns and fabrics are go.  The choices are something I am reminded of every time I see boring, poor quality, mass produced and badly fitting garments in the shops.  I walk away in disgust and decide I really need to get back to sewing.
• Decoupage:  Just because...when fabric and fibre begin to pall (not that I believe they ever would), there is paper and scissors and glue.

Now, I just need to use every hour in the day that I can, and some of my bold ambitions may become real.

Stash, Destash and New Years Resolutions

I am back to blogging after a rather long break. I know what you are thinking. I could have just started an all new blog and pretended I was a fresh blogger. But I am too lazy for that and I am also rather fond of the content on this blog. I might even get my scanner connected and revive the seventies pattern series. I still have a few of those that beg for comments.

But right now, I am in a thoughtful place. Wooldiaries, of our South African Ravelry group has prompted us to haul out our stash, to flash it and to say what we intend doing about it. As a person who has "too much stash" ( in quotes because there is no such thing) I am a bit embarrassed about it all. The more I entered the stash into my stashery, and the more photos I took and posted, the more I started wondering if I do have a serious problem. The whole flash your stash thing feels a bit like sitting at a dinner party and every one is asked to tell about her most embarrassing moment. FFS! Why, if it was your most embarrassing moment, would you want to be embarrassed all over again by recounting the moment? I never understood it.

The last few days, I have been pondering about the whole stash thing and have come to terms with it. Here are the main points that come to mind.


I love knitting and to knit you need yarn. Like a painter needs a canvas and paint, a knitter needs needles and yarn. No one has ever said to a painter, you can't buy more red paint until you have used up all the blue that you have stashed. The artist would never be able to be creative if he was not allowed free range to pick and choose colours or to store up pieces of inspiration in what ever form he does, so that when he wants to create, he can get creative. It is the same for knitters. We may not be elevated to the status of artists, but this is a creative outlet to me. So I have stash, and knitting books, and my late M-I-Ls collection which spans her 50 plus years of knitting. I also have tools. Needles, two sets of interchangeables. Only a knitter knows how expensive our tools are. Ordinary people would be shocked at what some plastic cables and metal, bamboo or wooden tips cost. Ordinary people don't even know what a modern day knitting needle looks like!

Ok, creativity aside, do I deserve to have all this stash? Am I worthy? Am I aiming to be to yarn, what Imelda Marcos was to shoes? I don't know. She probably had warm feelingsabout her shoes like I do about my yarn. But that aside, we live in a material world where people collect all manner of expensive things, and then they flash them before the eyes of the poor and hungry. When you drive your luxury car past a beggar on the street, do you wish you had taken a taxi and not been so conspicuously consumptive? No, you probably say, this car created jobs and some people are lucky that I bought it because it meant that some families had food on the table because I love being a collector of things. Maybe yarn is the same. What I do know is that what I spend on yarn in comparison to what other women in similar circumstances to me spend on facials, manicures, and massages, not to mention hairdos, special treatments and pedicures, I can honestly say, what I spent on yarn this year would not keep my nails in good nick for the whole year. I am not condemning your beauty routine, just saying that we all waste our money in different ways.

I knit and give most of what I knit away. I don't mean charity knitting, but friends and family who love my shawls and socks and mitts are the recipients of my knitting and welcome to it. Sometimes when I spend a rand or two on yarn, I realise that I could never have found as lovely a gift for a friend as the what the yarn becomes. My humble opinion, so there!

So, what am I thinking as far as stash goes in 2015? I want to thank Wooldiaries for the challenge. It forced me to take out all my yarn and enter it into my stash on Ravelry. That is a gift in itself. Because I can glimpse at it and remind myself of what I have when I am planning a new project. I also know what the heck the yarn is called, the weight of it and how much I have. I am notorious for losing ball bands.


My 2015 resolutions about yarn:

Keep knitting, whether from stash or cash.
Try to have less yarn at the end of the year. I might need to downsize one day and it would be sad to say goodbye to some of the yarn I have yet to knit.
But never deny myself a flutter if the yarn tugs at my heartstrings.

Big resolution - whatever new yarn comes in to the house, enter the stash into my Ravelry page.

Celebrity knitter

Elizabeth: Oh, Mummy, do look at this. I have just turned the heel all by myself.

Mummy: You are a clever girl! I think you could take over running the country. Don't you think so Daddy?

Daddy: Yes, I am sure she can, but she will need to finish that second sock, before I let her give it a try.

Margaret: That is so unfair. Elizabeth gets to do everything first - running the country, learning to knit and you will probably find a prince for her to marry one day, too.

Mummy: Don't worry about it. Running a country is really not all it is cracked up to be.

Elizabeth: What a silly girl you are. I will have to marry a fusty old prince, but you will be able to choose whomever you like. Won't she Mummy?

Sulky Margaret: Oh, whatever! Mummy, when are we going to stop these silly poses for the photographer? I want to kick off my shoes again and put my feet up on the couch.

What is their occupation?

Tina and Tim are very seventies, new-agey and trying their luck at a new occupation. Can you guess what it is?

A clue: It is farming of a sort.

Watch this space and in a week or so all will be revealed, the occupation as well as the specially designed outfits.

The Afghans are rioting!!

Really? It all looks jolly peaceful to me.

Mandy contemplates giving up modelling

Mandy has had second thoughts about being a knitwear model. Her agent, Scintilla van der HoHum, called to ask her to take on a new assignment. "Its a knitwear shoot, Dahling! Perfect for you, rather revealing and sexy knitwear. It will be great for your portfolio and future work."

After a bit of internal dialogue, involving what Cedric, her boyfriend might say, Mandy is now on the shoot. But its not going at all well. This is just not how I thought I was going to look in skimpy knitwear. I may look like I am laughing, but inside I just want to curl up and die.

Just wait till I see you again, Scintilla - you are fired!

Bob and Clarissa

Bob: Hey, Clarissa. You look so cool today.

Clarissa: I know, Bob.This dress is just the thing, so swingingly modern. I just feel like dancing.

Bob: Me too, well singing actually. I am going to join a band and play my guitar.

Clarissa: Join a band? You are such a nerd in your grandpa button up cardigan! No band would have you.

Bob: Why not? This is a bright red cardigan, which is trendy and look at my knitted tie. That is special.

Clarissa: Next thing, you will tell me that your barometer is a guitar. What are you doing with that anyway?

Bob: (mumbling) Well, I just thought I would see how I looked with a geet and well, you know, ...I think I look pretty cool myself. (Thinks to himself: that girl has such a way of making a man feel like a like a complete idiot)

Clarissa: (Thinks to herself: that man is a complete idiot)

Poolside glamour

Here is the next in the series of poolside wear. My only thoughts on this are "did anyone really knit that?" Of all the 60,000 magazines sold, did even one buyer knit the complete outfit?

Back to blogging

So I did not blog in 2010. Not that I care. It was a year best forgotten for various personal reasons - enough to slow down the rate of knitting to a virtual crawl.

But I am back and having fun with fibre - knitting, spinning, dyeing and soon weaving too, I hope.

The past weekend was spent with my sister-in-law, sorting through my mother-in law's old knitting stuff - mainly patterns. Sadly she is no longer able to knit.

What a treasure trove! I could not bring all the stuff back on the plane, but I have enough patterns from the 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond to keep me amused for years to come. We had a good laugh too, as the accompanying picture taken from one of the old Stitchcraft magazines will attest to. More to follow in that vein.

Soup - Face your food.

A scary look at the soup I made

Marmite

My food is looking at me, funny looking marmite man

Two more projects - one complete and a WIP

I just realised that although I did publish my completed ski sweater photo in my Ravelry projects, I forgot to post it here. I got a skinny model to pose in it - not wanting to publish a pic of my overlarge body here.

The shawl is only half done and I need to get more mohair to complete it. Once again artfully posed against the mountain backdrop - haha!

A Mountain Break

We have managed a getaway to the Drakensberg for a week. Its our favourite place. Nothing like the clean mountain air, the solitude, the majestic views to nourish ones soul. I really feel we needed it. The last few weeks have been rather trying, but I can't remember why now - it all seems so distant. I think the troubles were related to a house breaking, car hassles requiring enormous amounts of money to get sorted out, power outages and an inexplicable electrical problem which causes the lights to trip in our nearly new house. All this together with the news that my dear husband needs a new hip, the constant noise and bad driving in the small town we live in which is rapidly becoming a city, has stressed us out.

But enough of that - we are here for a few days, away from the hustle and bustle and more determined than ever that we will change our lifestyle in the next couple of years. We want to live in the country again. We don't need shops and malls and movies and the small amount of culture that we do get we can easily cram into a short visit to the city once a year or so.

I have also managed to do a bit of knitting - I have finished two hats which are part of the knitted gifts for family in the UK collection which will accompany me there later this year. Now, in the peace, and looking at the view you see above I am fiddling about with the small amount of stash which I brought along on the trip, wondering what to do next. I must say, I did not plan this well enough - the yarn does not match the odd assortment of needles which I threw into the knitting basket, but never mind, I will get creative. Here are the hats which have been artfully posed against the mountain backdrop.

Grass ( I should be smoking it!)

I meant to post these pics yesterday. I will go out now and look at the soothing garden and forget I have to spend time on the phone ranting at the bank about their hopeless ineptitude.

What Bailey did?

Bailey is our adopted granddog who lives with us because her mother lives in a flat. She is one of those Jack Russels with a lust for life that keeps us amused and her busy all day long. We have losts of rock and stone in the garden, and she thinks her job is to keep the garden free of lizards and all manner of creeping things. On Sunday she got into big trouble with the her grandfather - she decided to excavate this hole along the path in search of garden enemy no 1.

I was in trouble too - for not stopping her!

Some knitting too.

A second blog post in one day? Yes, this is a knitting blog after all. Once would think that the absence of blogposts had something to do with me not knitting. Well, that is not the case at all. I have been knitting furiously every evening and sometimes a bit in the early morning, when I sit on the veranda and drink my tea.

Most of this time has been consumed by my EZ EPS sweater. I signed up for two Ravelry groups - "Sweater a month" and "EZ EPS" and this sweater is the result.It should have been finished by the end of January, but I did finish it on Sunday (only 3 days late).

This was a good learning experience. Not so much for the techniques such as fair isle and knitting in the round, but in planning ahead. I bought some wool on impulse in Brits at the beginning of the month with no idea of how much I would need, nor how many contrast colours to use. By the time I had worked a few rounds of the body, I realised that I was hopelessly short of the main colour. No problem, I went back to the shop hoping to get some more. No one in SA buys wool in January, so they could not possibly be sold out. But they were. Or the knitting mice had hidden the colour I wanted. What now? Frog the whole project and start again. Make a sweater for a 10 yr old? I don't know a ten yr old!.

After a good hunt amongst the shelves, I found a lovely lighter shade of the same colour and decided that it would have to do. This meant re-knitting the sleeve and body hems. Originally they were meant to be hemmed, which means turning back part of the knitting and using double the wool. I decided to compromise and do moss stitch edges instead of ribbing. Anyway, the sweater is done, finished and klaar! Its a compromise and I'll have to do a really nice one sometime. I consider this a practice round.

At first I didn't like the damn thing at all, but a gentle wash and stretch has turned it into a soft, cuddly sweater which is starting to grow on me.

February Resolutions

I will blog more often.

I will blog at least once a week

I will learn to take proper knitting photos

I will remember where I have stored my photos so that I can put them on the blog!

I will take photos of WIP's

I will not give away knitted items until they have been photographed.

I will post photos of this beautiful neck of the woods that I live in.

Here is one taken on Sunday. Its our side garden. We will soon be losing that view to the south of the mountains when yet more building takes place in this area. Fortunately we won't lose the views of the mountains to the north, nor of the dam.

January - a new beginning or more of the same?

We are a week into January and I have not posted to the blog yet, nor started any major knitting project, nor caught up with myself at work, and the house is a mess. All in all, not a very encouraging start to the year.

But today all that will change. My post Christmas blues have lifted, I have a new project to put on the needles and I am raring to go.

This morning I opted to go with my husband to Brits, the nearest local town and a very dreary place indeed. But it has one great plus. There is an Elna shop in the Pick'n' Pay shopping centre which sells wool - yes real wool and lots of it in greater variety than is normally seen in South Africa. So I started a stash! Up till now I have not actually had a stash - just a few odd balls of yarn that don't really count. Now I have some merino for the apple mac cover which will be felted. I have a lovely teal for my own EPS ski sweater and some mohair for a shawl. Fortunately my husband was driving, so I even did a swatch for the ski sweater on the way home. I'll haul out "Knitting without tears" tonight and work out what I need to cast on to get started. I must get to that shop more often - its less than a half hour away.

The pic is of the water lilies in one of the ponds which are in the estate we live in. They are indigenous to SA, like all the plants in this estate.

Back to work now - lets get the working day over so that the fun can begin.

Mistaken lace

"Mistaken lace" is the name of the black cardigan, finished at last. Well, its probably only taken a month, but it seems like forever. The name is self explanatory - if you have a good look at the lace panels in the front, you will see how full of mistakes it is. My advice, don't knit black lace in the dark. And again, no photo. That will come later. The camera is in Durban with the old man on a business trip. That camera gets around way more than I do.

This evening I started Mom's Christmas present - a cream coloured sleeveless cardigan in Elle Wheat - a cotton mix. I am trying to keep it simple and knitting the fronts and back in one on a circular needle. This is new to me and the rows seem so endlessley long, but it is starting to take shape and should be done in good time. Well, it had better be, as I still have to make a few more pressies as we made a family decision to give only home made things, but yesterday we decided to extend that to second hand goods too. I am more excited than usual about the gifts to be exchanged at Christmas - I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with. As my daughters may read this, I will not be able to discuss what I am making them until after the day. But I have their presents planned and the materials are ready, waiting for some action.

While sitting alone on the stoep this evening, one of the dogs, Gemma, got up and moved away from where she was sitting. I looked down to see she had made way for a snake. But only a little brown house snake, so I left it to move off, which it did very slowly. How do the dogs know that the snake was harmless? Normally they would have barked wildly.

I don't have a knitting pic to post tonight, so I will go through the garden pics on file and see what looks pretty enough to post. I don't want this blog to be too boring. Ok, the photos above are of my front garden - one is the view from the veranda off my bedroom and its taken early in the morning. Nice view to wake up to, hey? The other from the downstairs veranda, where I sit and knit.

Groan.. no knitting today

I am a real grump today and I didn't even knit..I spent too much time on the phone trying to deal with useless insurance agents about my claims because of the lightning strike to my house. Anyhow I am gettiing over it slowly. I have the geyser fixed and so can have a lovely hot soak in the bath. I have a new screen for my pc - tho old one couldn't take the heat. Still need to get the DSTV sorted and the microwave oven replaced, but I'll survive. I wanted to take some pics of my FO's, a whole 6 months worth, but I didn't. However, I'll share the pics of the brilliant sunset we experienced tonight and definitely, there will be some knitting pics soon. For myself - a list of what I have completed this year:

Cotton knit top with random stripes (started 1989 - no jokes!!)

Fluffy scarf (started 2004)

Green and pink fairisle pullover (started about 1990)

Blue rib sweater ( only started about 5 years ago)

Beige cabled cardigan ( started about 4 years ago)

Tea cosy ( started and finished in Aug this year!! - wow Jen, you rock!)

Bunny, bunny sweater, bunny sleeping bag ( all in Sep/Oct)

L's short sleeved cardigan (started and finished Sep/oct)

K's mauve cardi with crochet trim - all done in Sep 2007)
This list makes me feel better about all the years I didn't finish things!