Jude’s Weblog

On Sunday we went up to Grasmere to check out possible locations for Mum’s final resting place.

We had a lovely walk in the woods, along the river which runs between Grasmere the lake & Windermere.

It was a wonderfully sunny spring day, in a place where Mum loved to be.

It still feels very much like there is someone missing from these photos, other than the person behind the camera.

It’s fair to say that plenty of tears were shed.

Get me, I’m a wildlife photographer.

Note to Deb. This one was *a lot* harder to write than the one with all the cards. Just sayin’.

Also, I may add a lighter couple of notes in a future post, because we actually had quite a nice day out with some funny moments, but just now I’m too tired & have to pack for hols to expand on that. And there’s enough for another blog post, so why waste it on the one

March 9th, 2010 | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

I recently went through my old-ish knitting magazines & organised my patterns into some kind of semi-order, and came across a really simple pattern for a linen stitch belt. Basically, (and I don’t think I’m violating any copyrights here) you cast on 12 stitches, do linen stitch for ages, cast off, then sew a buckle on.

I’ve fancied knitting this ever since I pulled it out of the magazine & threw the rest of it away. 50-odd page magazine, and I choose the 2-line set of instructions. To be fair, they did also do a sideways version where you cast on eleventy bajillion stitches (Hi, @mulene!) and work 14 rows, which I’m sure I’ll try some day. Or not.

In other (and I promise, relevant) news, my LYS, Knit Wise (you too can be a facebook fan) has moved about 20 yards up the road to a larger store which has an upstairs room for workshops and for rude punters to allow their children to disappear up to without batting an eyelid (it seems) (mine didn’t even go near the stairs, and they didn’t touch any yarn either – see – they’re TRAINED). I popped in to visit Myra in her new premises, and it seemed rude to leave empty handed (even though, I might point out, I was carrying 2 scooters, and about a gazillion library books by then), so I got some lovely variegated yarn to make a belt with. I also popped into the haberdashery store in Church Walks to get a ridiculously large pearl button to act as a feature & form some kind of closing.

I didn’t get any of the belt buckles they had there, because they all looked like they belonged on old lady’s handbags, and that isn’t the look I was going for.

I chose the colours with my bezzy in mind, but when I spied the huge red button, my sister called to me from the far side of the world, so this project is destined to be for antikaggs.

So, I cast on and it turns out, linen stitch is HUGELY addictive. I made a bit of a mess by knitting the first row, and not launching straight into the pattern stitch, but if you don’t look right at it, you hardly notice it.

I didn’t think it would grow quickly or be fast to knit, because the actions are not dissimilar to 1×1 rib, which is possibly my least favourite thing to knit.

However, after only a couple of evenings, one of which was spent in front of the longest film in the history of the world, The Deer Hunter, it was getting quite long.

I like the way that although the colour changes are reasonably sudden (who knew yarn could shock) and gives fairly solid stripes under normal knitting circumstances, the linen stitch makes it grade over a couple of rows. I also like that fact that while the front is flat, the back is super-nobbly, and also looks pretty foxy. If it wasn’t for the fact that the HUGE button kinda dictates how it’s worn, you could wear this belt the wrong way round and it would still be pretty damn stylish.

At this point, it occurred to me that to accommodate the button I’d bought I was going to have to make button holes which were wider than the belt, or somehow work out how to make them lengthwise while keeping the colour stripes consistent.

So I dug out a smaller button, with the intention of sewing the button on the back and only having to make smaller button holes. This appears to have worked, although having measured what size holes were needed, I’ve had to go up a button size, because it wasn’t going to be staying done up.

So now it’s complete, and all I have to do is pack it up and send it.

Preferably before posting this, given that antikaggs is an avid reader of this ‘ere blog.

An aside: I’ve been saving this post up, and in the meantime, circumstances have brought antikaggs round the world for a visit. So that’s saved on the postage, anyway…

March 6th, 2010 | Category: Crafty So & So's | Leave a comment

Scene: Yesterday at my friend’s house, 6 children aged between 0 & 8 are seated around a kitchen table.

Joel (4): uh – everybody! Granny has died!
Alex (8): Whose Granny?
Joel: My Granny.
Nathan (4): What happened?
Joel: (struggling slightly) well… her heart broke… and then… it stopped.
Ben (6): That’s called a heart attack!
Lily (6): Yes, and she’s in Heaven now with Aunty Mabe.
Rachel (10 weeks): *nods sympathetically*

Christine & Jude (the adults in the room) look at each other 8-|

Curtain.

March 5th, 2010 | Category: I'm pleased about..., Kids Stuff | Leave a comment

For those who haven’t heard through other channels – my mother passed away from a fairly-sudden heart attack on 18th February. We, as a nuclear family, were at the gates of Disneyland Paris when we heard she was seriously ill, which made things a bit awkward. She was not old (66) or unhealthy (had to be dissuaded from an 8-mile hike just after the first “cardiac incident”) and has had a happy, fulfilled life. After the shock has worn off we’ll take comfort in the ubiquity of the artwork she left behind (I can see at least 2 pieces from here) and the time we got to spend with her.

Hence the brief period over the past couple of weeks where I haven’t blogged much.

It’s fair to say…

…that as a family…

…we’ve been quite buoyed up…

…by the many cards & messages…

…that have been sent…

Sometimes from folk who we’re struggling to identify!

Although, the get well cards from the incident the week before were a bit pitiful.

February 26th, 2010 | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

This weekend I appear to have been on fire. In a good way. Lily has been bugging me for a while now to cook stuff out of her Usborne Big Book Of Things To Do. So I planned ahead (& everything) and made sure we had ingredients in for making peppermint daisies (please see page 16).

I procrastinated by first insisting that she accompany me down the garden to watch me dig up the parsnip crop that’s been languishing under the ground since last summer. I’ve picked a few over the months, and have occasionally been beaten by larger specimens who weren’t coming out quite as easily as I thought. I picked one (before the snows came, I think) or tried to, and it gave up only its leaves. Thinking in my head that I was not to be foxed so easily by a root vegetable, I began digging with my hands. It was only when elbow deep in mud tugging on a stubbornly not-shifting root vegetable that echoes of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox came to mind, and I thought that possibly my competitive nature was getting the better of me. I did get that one out in the end – it was satisfyingly big – but I like to think that it shows personal growth that the next time that happened, I thought “buggrit, I’ll get a fork out & dig it up later”.

So, this Saturday it was Fork Time.

We dug up so many, Lily couldn’t manage to hold the container. We may be eating parsnips for some time…

So, having washed them off and packed some away (someone tell me the best way to keep them – if it’s not-quite-dried-off and in a cardboard box between layers of newspaper next to the recycling box, I’m on to a winner)  I proceeded to make parsnip & mustard soup.

This particular batch could do with more cream. It’s a bit thick, but tasty even if I say so myself…

So, after lunch we assembled the ingredients for peppermint daisies. All ingredients present & correct (although only just enough icing sugar – woops). Turns out, the smallest flower shaped cookie-cutter we have is 2 inches across. We *do*, however, have a suitably small heart-shaped cookie-cutter at about 1″ across. So we made hearts, which as everyone knows have to be pink.

We then had to decorate them with blood-red food-dye paint, because that’s just what you have to do.

worth noting: this is one of my fave pics of Lily ever. Not sure why, it just ’speaks to me’. Will stop now, honestly…

As with most of the stuff we bake, they were pretty popular.

So, being on a roll, I made bread, which appeared to work OK.

And then the next day, having plenty of eggs in the fridge, and Daddy still in bed with a cold, we made chocolate octopuses (see page 2)…

The observant among you will see that they have between 3 & 5 legs. The ones with 5 legs are octopuses, and the other ones are squid. They should have had smarties for eyes, only the bag of smarties I put in the trolley while out shopping in the morning with Joel mysteriously disappeared. And yes, they *genuinely* disappeared. I have a clear recollection of choosing them, lobbing them into the trolley over Joel’s shoulder (yes, he’s nearly too big to be sitting in the trolley, while I can get away with it I will), but then no sight nor record of them exists. They didn’t come back to the house, they don’t feature on our receipt. They may still be in the trolley. In which case they will be very cold.

So the eyes are made of raisins (Lily’s back-up plan) and don’t stay on because we just bodged them on and didn’t stick them on with anything. Because we didn’t have any icing sugar left.

The octopuses are featuring in this week’s lunchboxes. I asked Lily if she wanted an octopus in her lunch, to which she said yes. At the end of the day I was reprimanded for putting a squid in her lunchbox “by accident”. Do you ever get the feeling you can’t win?

An aside: I’ve just realised I’ve got my timing arse about face. We had a fry-up for lunch on Saturday, because I spotted a sign at the farm over the road which said they had black pudding, and the car turned in there all by itself. I used the last of the eggs for the fry-up. After lunch I realised that egg whites were required for the peppermint whatevers, so had to go back over the the farm (the farmer thought this was very funny. He needs to watch it – thin ice exists here quite a lot) to get some eggs. (note for beth at fakeplasticfish – I took my own bags both times, and took an egg carton from our making-stuff stash to refill with eggs, which the farmer did without blenching or calling me odd or anything)

So I got eggs and we made peppermint thingoes and I made the bread. On Sunday I dug up parsnips, we had soup for lunch & ate the homemade bread which always slices better on day 2, Joel & I went to the supermarket and when the sun was nearly over the yard-arm, we made chocolate octopuses.

This is how there are enough left to start putting them in lunchboxes.

As my Dad once said – never spoil a good story with the facts.

And, by some bizarre twist of magic finger-ness I have the current high score on facebook bejewelled blitz of 300K-something. Until Tuesday. On fire, I tell thee.

February 9th, 2010 | Category: felicity kendall eat your heart out | Comments Off

So, I knitted Lily a hat, and she doesn’t like it. So I’m knitting another one. After a tortuous school-morning 10-minutes claw-back-from-the-brink-of-meltdown discussion about what she was expecting in a hat, we have settled on:

1. Like Joel’s, with pictures on.
2. No skulls, instead butterflies and flowers.
3. The background should be green like the grass and blue like the sky. Like in Australia, where Fraser & Gemma live.
4. Daddy helpfully suggested the sky could include birds and the sun.
5. Daddy not really helping here.
6. Lily said I could include a rainbow in the sky if I liked.

So, apparently it’s that simple.

So, I got green and sky-blue yarn. Although the skies in Oz are often navy-ish in the mid-day heat, I can’t be bothered arguing the toss.

As I started knitting one evening, having done the 24 lining rows, it dawned on me that this yarn seemed thinner, more delicate, softer if you will, then the navy I knitted Joel’s hat with. I consulted the helpfully different-coloured ball-band and realised with a rising sense of dread that this yarn is indeed 4 ply, not DK.

As I tweeted, Oh Cock.

Helpfully, Lily got up a few moments later, so I checked the size of what I’d knitted so far on her head and it could be squeezed over her ears. So we plough on, regardless.

By this point I don’t think I’d charted the flowers & butterflies, so I did that. It didn’t take long, although it’s surprisingly hard to get just the right feel for one’s butterfly, with ethereal wings, etc, in one colour & reasonably low resolution.

I was determined to wedge some of the original hat in there, so used the spot-dyed yarn I had used for Marina. The solid fluffy nature of this yarn helpfully accentuates the 4-ply-ness of the main colour. There’s also a tie-in to Joel’s hat where you’ll see I’ve used the yellow for the flowers. I contemplated alternating colours of butterfly, but the thought of passing yarn over that distance made me feel light-headed. I also contemplated *not* passing yarn across the back, and putting together little balls of yarn, one for each butterfly. But there are 7 pattern repeats round the hat. I was already on my second hat. I was not prepared to do what amounts to a full re-design (other than the tricky structural stuff, clearly) just to have alternating butterflies.

The hat was making good progress when I took it with me on another relaxing weekend to the work farm.

This happened.

So this happened (more knitting in a recovery vehicle).

Fortunately, there was some time available once we’d finally made it to the cottage, and this was able to happen.

As you can see, it’s a bit big for Steve, but just the right size for Lily. It was met with a gasp and a grab, and has been worn more than I would have expected it to.

So, finally, success!

PS. we gave Marina to Antonia, who apparently likes it a lot…

February 8th, 2010 | Category: Crafty So & So's | Comments Off

Regular readers (you know who you are!) will remember that in November I went for a lovely weekend away with Debbie, to go and see The Alpaca who supply purl alpaca with the raw material for their yarn. Taking nothing away from the workshop we went to, which is the redeeming feature of that weekend, most of the weekend was a bit of a disaster. Travelling down on the Friday evening, I went round a large motorway diversion, at the end of which I thought, “well, that’s the end of the problems for this journey” at which point the oil light came on.

Shortly thereafter (I didn’t ignore said light, by the way – the action I took had no effect) the engine in Steve’s car ate itself, and remains in the garage to this day, fate as yet undetermined.

For this series of events, I am in no way blaming the knitting project I acquired that weekend.

I have yet to rack my brains “properly” but I’m pretty sure it hasn’t left the house since then. We’ve not been away for the weekend, and I don’t yet have yarnharlot’s courage for taking knitting to generic social events.

This last weekend, we went away to our fave away-weekend, the work farm (which normal people call “Little Edstone Farmhouse“)(they’re lovely: tell Peter I sent you) and I took Duchess with me.

I am in no way blaming the presence of this knitting project on what happened next.

My car broke down. It made very similar noises (although, to be fair, significantly fewer of them) to those made by the Audi, very briefly, and then the engine stopped.

Lily’s main concern, once we were at the top of the embankment, was that this pretty much ruled out the plan she had to go swimming on arrival at the work farm…

It’s fair to say, that the knitting project has now been in a series of other vehicles over the course of the weekend, none of which have yet broken down (that we know of) and some good progress has been made.

Given its history, though, I may still get it exorcised before going out to anything in a car while wearing it.

Including the exorcism.

January 27th, 2010 | Category: *sigh*, Crafty So & So's | Comments Off

To explain why no blog post this weekend(!) – or why I’ve broken my resolution to blog “regularly”. Regular readers will remember when I went away for a relaxing weekend in November, Steve’s car broke and a couple of other things happened shortly thereafter. We went away again this weekend.

This time, my car broke.

Steve’s is still in the garage, fate undecided. Hopefully the problem with my car is nowhere near as serious, and will be faster and more cheaply back on the road. Needless to say, having had a Friday night like we had, I was focussing this weekend on enjoying myself and sitting around going “oh, crap, not again”.

Keep your fingers crossed for us! Normal service will resume presently (I have hat pictures…)

January 25th, 2010 | Category: *sigh*, I'm not pleased about | Comments Off

Following the speedy success of Joel’s skull hat, it only seemed appropriate to follow up with a hat for Lily. Ever since doing Woolly Wormhead’s class at iKnit last September, I’ve been storing up patterns of her hats to knit, and have had my eye on Marina for a while, partly because it seems to be quite popular so I’d assumed it was engaging to knit.

I have some yarn which I bought from ebay from China. There’s pretty much enough to make a sweater for Lily, but I thought I’d spoil a good plan and make a hat with it.

Eschewing the nonsense of doing a tension square, I dove right in and wouldn’t you know it, it’s really engaging to knit. I “picked” this one as it’s garter stitch – so no tricky purling involved – and the yarn-overs are all dropped, so although I *did* wrap them the right way round, it didn’t really matter.

Day 1 went pretty quickly…

And by Day 3 it was finished. I did an extra pattern repeat than was called for in the small size as *when I tried it round Lily’s head* (remember this later) it seemed like it was going to be a bit snug. Finished, grafted, only a slight clue as to where the grafting is in the guise of an uneven end at the rim (what can I say – I’m not Woolly Wormhead!!), otherwise I’m pretty pleased with it.

So, I photograph it…

…and leave it on the kitchen table to present to Lily in the morning.

Morning comes, and Lily finds the hat, and tries it on. She doesn’t like it for 3 reasons:

1. It’s too scratchy. Wool content & not being washed yet means it’s a bit coarse. Maybe in future I need to wash woollens at least once before presenting them to the kids, or just use pure acrylic on their stuff.

2. Her head doesn’t go to the end of it. It’s a slouchy beannie rather than rasta-style, but you’d still need to be a bit alien-head to fill it out. Being a simple girl of simple tastes, Lily does not approve of this style.

3. She thought her hat would have pictures on it, like Joel’s does. The impatient part of me asks at which point when I was trying a pictureless hat round her head did she think the pictures were going to magically appear? The more patient & understanding of children’s minds part of me, in the guise of Steve (aka Daddy) pointed out that Lily doesn’t know how hats & knitting works. How is she supposed to know that the pictures *don’t* magically appear at the end?

We determined in 10 valuable school-day breakfast minutes that she would like a hat like Joel’s but green & blue like grass & sky with butterflies & flowers on. Is that all?

And why Mariiiinaaa? Because my boyfriend(’s mum) from age 17 to 22(ish) had a cleaner called Marina whose name he always sang. It was a Thunderbirds reference, or something. And yes, you’re right, I didn’t grow up in the ghetto. In the 4 or so years I went out with him I met her only once, but I’ve never been able to say “Marina” straight since then.

So now I have green & blue yarn & have cast on another skull hat, only this time I have to chart butterflies & flowers before I can do the colourwork.

At least she didn’t ask for bunnies as well.

January 18th, 2010 | Category: Crafty So & So's | Comments Off