Crime and Punishment

Today I bought something that I swore that I would never, ever buy.  Something that I have ranted about on a blog that I had on Myspace a few years ago as it infuriated me as to why the makers would even think that this would be a credible innovation, instead of a completely superfluous addition.  It seems that many other potential consumers had the same 'WHY, WHY THE HELL WHY?!' mentality as I because they were reduced to clear in a well known supermarket rhyming with Masda, meaning they were cheaper than my usual (both monetarily and per unit).  Which was why I put them in my basket instead of scowling as I walked past them on the shelf-I will happily sacrifice my principles for a bargain.  This product is Always Ultra with Silk.  If it revolutionises my menstruation experience I will take back my previously unkind words, write a letter to Proctor & Gamble asking them to forgive my rash judgements and wear a t-shirt with the slogan 'I bleeding love it!' and a picture of a silky sanitary towel emblazoned on the front.  No-scrap the picture, I'll just stick a towel on and embroider it.
Later, after I'd gotten off the bus from my trip to the well known supermarket a guy in front of me (who had been sneezing without covering his face whilst on the bus) decided to gob on the floor.  The wind blew a couple of small droplets onto my face.  I guess that what happens when you go against your principles.

Here's some things I have made over the past few months:

Two baby blankets

My first lace shawl (Rock Island)

 My first mochimochi (it's a monkey and that's a banana in his hand, not a spliff in the wrong colours as my brother thought)

Back to my roots/UK and US crochet

Haven't done a craft based blog for ages.  Seeing as this was the main reason why I set up this thing, apart from the chance to rant a bit on annoying things that currently annoy me, it is only right that I indulge my craft side and start typing about it.

For me, my craft is very much a solitary pursuit-most of my friends cannot knit, crochet or sew (to be honest my sewing skills are rudimentary to say the least).  But I have decided to contribute to the K2TOG project knit2together.tumblr.com which is aiming to cover six pillars of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in honour of the Olympics.  The colours are representative of the Olympic flag and also represent the flags of the US and Jamaican teams, who will be based in Birmingham.  All that is needed is to knit garter stitch rectangles 21 by 50 cm, which will be sewn together.  This hasn't been completely straight forward as there are 3 different yarns of different weights which (unsurprisingly) have been working up differently.  The first yarn I chose was chunky weight wool, in yellow.I had to redo my first rectangle as I started it in the shop with the 6 mm bamboos that were provided, and my gauge was too loose.  At home I switched to my metal needles and it was the correct gauge, but I'd ran out of yarn before it was 50 cm in length.  The solution to the problem was 5 mm bamboo needles.  The 3rd rectangle I also redid as it was messy and it annoyed me.  I've now switched colours as more blue and black rectangles are needed.  These are worked in dk merino, held double.  Several knitters have blindly followed the instructions given without considering the finished size of the rectangle so they are too small to use, so we've been asked to cast on more stitches than recommended-I needed one more.  I think the elasticity of the merino is the problem, the rows are much closer together than with the yellow yarn, even though I'm working with larger needles. I ran out of yarn at 46 cm. I'm attempting it again, with 6.5 mm needles.  Whether I will just run out of yarn sooner I will find out.


On Ravelry one of the groups that I have joined is Crochet in the UK, for UK crocheters (or those more familiar with UK crochet terms.  One of the things I have noted is the ire that some of the members show at American patterns.  I have written the following in order to hopefully address this:

How to spot a US crochet pattern

For UK crocheters it can seem difficult to find online crochet patterns with UK terminology as the overwhelming majority of patterns available are American. The yarn craft industry across the pond is considerably greater than on our little island so this is perfectly logical. Also logical is being able to recognise whether a pattern is in UK or US terminology and work it with no hassle.

There are 3 main things to consider:

1. The picture of the finished article

2. The written/charted pattern.

3. The yarn brand used to create the original piece.

1. LOOK AT THE IMAGE! A picture paints a thousand words. Know what a fabric created in the most common stitches (UK double and treble crochet) looks like, that way you can compare this to the written pattern.

2. The main point of consideration with regards to the difference between UK and US terminology is that the US are one stitch 'behind' in the naming of the stitches, therefore the UK double is US single, UK treble is US double, UK double treble is US treble and so forth. Looking at the written pattern will give significant clues as to its origin:

a. Is the pattern based on mostly single crochet (sc) ? UK single crochet (US slip-stitch) creates a very dense, sturdy fabric so unless the finished article is a belt then you can be 99% sure that the pattern is American.

b. Does the pattern mention half-double crochet (hdc)? There's no such thing as half-double in UK terms, it is a half-treble (htr) so you can be 100% sure the pattern is American.

Charted patterns are your friend as they visually represent what you're supposed to be aiming for and summarise what can be reams of text in one picture. Universally, crochet symbols are essentially the same so you can lose the attachment to the written names of the stitches and work away til your heart's content. The only difference is for double crochet (UK). In both UK and US charts this stitch is represented by a cross, but with differing orientation-UK patterns represent it as a + symbol, US as either a + or an x.

From left to right-chain, single/slip-stitch, double/single (both orientations), half-treble/double, treble/double, double-treble/treble, triple treble/double treble.

All other special crochet symbols-clusters, V-stitches, decreases etc. are variations, you can see the individual stitches shown above in each symbol.

3. Yarn brands are an excellent indicator as to whether the pattern is UK or US. This isn't an exhaustive list but popular US brands include Aunt Lydia's (specialising in crochet cottons), Bernat, Berroco, Cascade, Caron, Lion Brand (including Red Heart, TLC and Vanna's Choice yarns) and Takhi. Well known in the UK is Patons, but they produce several yarns that are unavailable in the UK, e.g. Grace is a sport-weight cotton in the US, the UK equivalent is 4-Ply Cotton.

Hopefully this information shall help you along the way in your crochet.

My ambitions (aka the impossible dreams)

Things that I wanted to be when I grew up:

1.  Tall.  Something that I have no control over, bar wearing skyscraper heels-which I don't as anything over a couple of inches requires me consciously altering my walk to ensure I don't fall over (or look like a woman who isn't used to wearing high heels).  My mother's 5'3" and my father's 5'9" has averaged me out to 5'6", which isn't particularly tall but it's good enough.

2.  A gymnast.  Being able to back flip and somersault at whim.  Hella amazing-I still wish I could have done it.  What I really wanted was the ribbons on a stick that they used to use in the floor exercise, how they would flutter and swirl with the smallest flicks of the wrist entertained me no end.

3.  A dancer in one of the Gap khaki adverts of the late nineties, specifically the Khaki Swing and Khaki A-Go-Go.

   

I wanted to be the woman being carried upside down at the end of the advert, I thought that those few seconds perfectly embodied the fun of swing dancing.

Khaki A-Go-Go was all about the music and the kooky dancing.  I remember doing the moves in PE lessons during the hanging around, waiting for your turn moments.

I can still dream... 

Evil heart

Instead of my usual wanting to start something new every week my crafting over the past month or so has been attempting to finished long abandoned projects.  The Cornrows bag, which was started in June last year (June the 24th to be precise), had been languishing in one of my many assorted ‘craft’ bags (read pink House of Fraser carriers) roughly around the time when the Noro skirt came into my life.  I had gotten about halfway through making the main body and the yarn was annoying me as it is rather splitty.  About three weeks ago I picked it up out of its hiding place and now I have an almost finished bag.  Its progress did not run smoothly.  Several times I had to unravel and redo and there is a mistake that I never noticed until I had almost completed it, so couldn’t be bothered to undo all that work.

Cornrows bag-sans handle

The handle was another situation in itself.  It is attached to the bag by D-rings. I had to cut several 4 metre lengths of yarn, which needed to be folded, cut in half, folded again, threaded through one of the rings and plaited, then threaded through the other rings.  First I cut the yarn too short, second time around they all ended up different lengths, none of which were the required length as the handle was too short once I’d plaited it-one ball of yarn wasted.  Third time was lucky as I made each strand longer than 4 metres, but once I’d plaited and started threading, I realised the plait was too bulky to fit through the rings easily so I had to undo it and get rid of a few strands.  Then I threaded it through wrong, so yet another stage had to be back tracked.  Now I have a whole load of messy ends to try and tidy up.  The lining isn’t going so well either, I’ve decided to crochet one as I do not have the sewing skills to make it out of fabric. I’ve chosen a cerise pink DK that pops very well next to the slightly washed out red.  I started it using double crochet and a 3 mm hook.  This wasn’t progressing fast enough for my liking so I’ve now switched to half trebles and a 4 mm hook.  And it’s still not growing much.

Next out of the craft bag (Thornton’s this time) was a lacy scarf I started sometime in summer last year in one of my ‘It’s sunny, I must go outside and knit’ moments.  Bar those few hours I hadn’t worked on it since.  Taking it along to my mother’s last week I remembered that I had grown impatient with the lace weight mohair and 4 mm needles whilst I was outside as it was a drop stitch pattern and I had to concentrate and make sure that I wasn’t accidentally dropping stitches or knitting into the loops of dropped yarn and creating extra stitches, which I did several times.  I have doubled the length of the scarf so far, now it’s about 6 inches in length…I think this one will take a while.

Lacy 'scarf'-all six inches

I’m also starting a long abandoned project that was only ever in the planning stage.  I had succumbed to the fuss and bought some pompom yarn early last year, which I’m pretty sure had intended to be my nemesis before I even bought it.  The hank came wrapped in a band recommending that the yarn been wound into a ball with assistance, basically daring me to prove that it could be done without help.  Sometimes it IS better to follow instructions….
And sometimes instructions prove no help-pompom yarn is one of the most hideous yarns I’ve had the displeasure to work with, for some apparent reason I just couldn’t get it to work.  The ball had lain underneath my bed since then, occasionally growling at me when I picked up some yarn that understood how to behave.  However, I found salvation in crochet magazine projects that use pompom yarn, but only on the surface of back loop double crochet.  Now I am making a heart shaped cushion which I will cover with the ball of evil.  This heart is my new nemesis.  I made a considerably smaller amigurumi heart brooch about two years ago and I thought I could do exactly the same thing, but bigger.  What I hadn’t considered was the additional shaping that creating the heart on a larger scale would entail.  Four hours of working and reworking on a supposedly lazy Sunday, writing and rewriting the pattern on an old water bill and all I have is something that resembles a homemade E cup bra.

All my careful workings...

...lead up to this, isn't it beautiful?!

On my needles/Love, hate, guilty pleasure

Just a quickie this time.  On my needles is a scarf in Araucania Aysen and I'm crocheting a bag with Drops Eskimo, due to be surrendered to the washing machine and hopefully felted to perfection (pictures due soon).

Musically, here are three tracks that are currently on my radar:

1. Love: Kanye West- All of The Lights.  Killer drum machine beat and a list of guests as long as your arm.  Rihanna is the obvious one, doing the bridge and chorus.  Elly Jackson (of La Roux) is also there but is almost drowned out by Alicia Keys.  On the male side Elton John tinkles the ivories and sings (can't hear him) and there's lots of others, mostly American guys, notably Charlie Wilson formally of The Gap Band.

2. Hate: The Wanted.  I couldn't remember what the song was called as I have just heard it on the radio but I knew that Gold/Golden features in the title.  However, after a quick peruse on their website I have found that it is called 'Gold Forever' and it is the official Red Nose Day single.  Bad choice. Whoever wrote this song should have given it to female vocalists because I find that hearing men describing themselves and their beloved as butterflies flying in the sky or some other such insipid, cliched phrase just wrong.

3. Guilty pleasure: JLS feat. Tinie Tempah- Eyes Wide Shut.  This song represents everything I hate about the current dancepoprandb that seems to be the norm right now but try as as I might I cannot hate it.

Another one bites the dust...

Yet again, another year is on the horizon, another year comes to a close.  I use this time to reflect on what I have achieved-this shall be short.  Craft-wise I have expanded my yarn collection somewhat, but some of it has gone towards making stuff.  Here are a few of my most important achievements:

1. Skirt.  The Noro skirt is actually finished!  The one and only garment (as in covering a significant amount of the body garment, I do not include hats) that I have actually completed!  It was a trial, I wanted to throw in the towel on numerous occasions but I persevered and I did it!  It has been worn twice-the first time no one noticed it as it was mostly covered by my coat.  This outing was merely a road test to ensure that I could wear this handmade thing and it wouldn't fail me by suddenly unseaming itself and falling in a multicoloured puddle on the floor.  The second wear was a blatant show off opportunity to one of my good friends who knits herself so I knew she would truly appreciate it's beauty.
2. Scarf.  The third scarf that I have made for someone who has actually asked for it and was willing to pay me.  What I regret about this scarf was that I never got the chance to photograph it properly as I gave it to the recipient the morning after I finished it and the weather decided to be rubbish and rainy so the natural light was atrocious.  I haven't seen it since I gave it away, admittedly I haven't seen the owner all that much but he told me that he has worn it but not often as he was worried he would snag it on something.  Mostly I was touched that he wanted to preserve it yet a significant part of me wanted to slap him in his face and say 'I did not spend all that time, knitting literally hundreds of stitches for you to come over all precious because you're scared the thing might show a bit of wear.  You don't see me behaving with such regard with the scarves that I wear, I am perfectly aware of the futility of trying to keep them as pristine as possible. The next time I see you it better be around your neck or else...'
3. Shawl.  Merely because it took over two months, instead of a week for the yarn to reach me.  The shop that I had ordered it from had a problem with their suppliers in Germany and the woman who I spoke to over the phone was very pleasant and honest and said she had no idea when it was due to arrive.  When it was finally posted through my door there were some money off vouchers inside the package so I was happy.  I started the shawl in October and have only finished it this week as I was distracted by other things.  And couldn't be bothered to wind the second skein needed.
4. Cushions.  My first attempt to make something more significant than a bow using Tunisian crochet.  The recipients were friends who had recently moved to London and uncannily they matched the colour scheme of their other furnishings without me ever seeing the place before I visited.
5. Mario mushroom.  Simply because it's one of the darned cutest things I have made.

In my online life I have joined Blogger, Twitter and Ravelry and have learned a lot, useful or otherwise.

What do I have to look forward to next year?  Off the top of my head, yet another four pound price increase by Network Express West Midlands on their Direct Debit bus fares, after the four pound increase in July, making an overall 21% rise in five months.  A trip to Paris, postponed from October.  Eating all the Christmas chocolates I received.  Drinking the delicious box of spiced redbush tea that my mother very kindly gave to me today-I have started early and just had a cup whilst typing this.  More yarn buying.  More making things-I have decided that I will try and make myself one garment a year, as a challenge to overcome the 'It's no longer sunshine and rainbows, I'm bored' barrier, a little tedium will do me no harm.  And hopefully selling what I make.

Tidying my room: Part 1-The top drawer

I have been off work this week.  One of the tasks that I had set myself was to tidy my room, as it hasn't had a decent clean for about a year.  I have had rudimentary 'can't find something so I'll have a little sort out so I can find it' moments but not a bin busting, broom sweeping episode that takes the whole afternoon because I get bored/tired so have a break every hour or so.

I haven't tidied my room.  I have been slightly lazy but my attention has also been taken by friends and crafting.  I am currently knitting a simple scarf in brioche stitch-yarn used is Lang Jawoll Magic, a lovely slightly fluffy sockweight yarn in purple, fuschia, green and peach. My 6 mm crochet hook is being used to create Kristin Omdahl's Alpaca Angel Shawl, but in a merino/silk blend DK yarn.  The Noro skirt is getting along well-the main body of the skirt is finished, the waistband knitted and I have been inventive and decided to add a few rows of garter stitch along the bottom to eliminate the natural curl of the stocking stitch panels, which involves me picking up around 700 stitches (300 so far).  I have also attempted to bake some ginger flapjacks but me being me I used a mix of coarse and medium oatmeal (instead of just medium) as I wanted some extra texture.  This resulted in the mix being too wet so I had to bake it for longer but I left it in for to long, ending up with flapbricks.  They are still edible, but jaw ache ensues after the first bite.

Back to the bedroom...it is still a mess.  Yesterday evening I decided to make a dent (more like a slight dimple) and attacked the top drawer of my chest of drawers.  This is the one that should contain socks and underwear and I had been having trouble trying to shut it, so the full box that has been in my room since I moved in had become an extension of the drawer and I used it to lay my tights on top.  My aim was to be able to fit everything into the drawer AND shut it so the salient part of the task was to remove everything that was neither socks or underwear.  I never realised that I had so much stuff that was neither socks or underwear in that drawer.  I can't remember everything but most of it went as thus:

1. A small box of matches-England's Glory.
2. 16 used batteries from my mp3 player and handheld sewing machine-5 AA, the rest AAA.  Varying brands, mostly cheapo.
3. The plastic case of a crochet hook.
4. A receipt for some earrings I bought almost three years ago from Claire's.
5. 2 clips used for sealing vacuum storage bags.
6. A tube of seed beads.
7. 2 bottles of home fragrance oil-one strawberry, one passionfruit.
8. A bottle of essential oil-peppermint
9. 2 bottles of nail varnish-one turquoise, one pale and neutral.
10. A mini bar of strawberry chocolate.
11. A spare button for a dress.
12. A packet of Simple face wipes (mostly used).
13. A packet of baby wipes (barely used).
14. A bottle of basecoat/nail hardener.
15. Old earrings that had discoloured.

Pretty impressive eh?!  I wonder what else I shall unearth on this journey...

More musical musings-here are a few songs that I am currently listening to, whether I like it or not:

1. Absolutely love: Miguel featuring J Cole,  'All I Want Is You'
2. Guilty pleasure: The Wanted, 'Heart Vacancy'
3. Hideous: Katy Perry, 'Firework'