Knits

That’s Randy the Ninja visiting Edinburgh. He’s pointing out the Scott Monument. I love that I can now visit Edinburgh as a day trip. It takes about as long to get from my flat to Edinburgh as it did to get from Oxford to London and it’s about 2.5 times as far. And the scenery is approximately a million times nicer. I’ve already planned some day trips to locations between here and Edinburgh for some walks.

I went up overnight actually to take in some of the annual Edinburgh Festivals which includes the most famous of them all, the Fringe Festival. I just wandered around taking in the sites and sounds, people watching. My weekend was somewhat ruined by some bureaucratic bullshit, but also, returning to Edinburgh on my own was probably not wise. It just reminded me of being there in May 2007 with my mom and Kristal knowing that at that time Kristal was holding onto a secret, but never let on. I hope I’ll return again soon and be able to have happier memories there.

The weather was stunning as you can see. I had no intentions of seeking out any yarn shops, but I did accidentally stumble across k1 Yarns where Ysolda works. The shop was already closed, but I spied Ysolda behind the counter tidying up some hanks of yarn. It was like celebrity sighting hehe.

I haven’t finished the socks, but I have cast-on for a scarf. A lightweight, lacy scarf that is going to be giant if I use the whole skein. I’m knitting the Strangling Vine scarf (Rav link), but have skipped the garter edge and will do something along the lines of the Flutter scarf (Rav link) for the ends. I’m using the yarn I got in my pirate/ninja swap — J. Knits Superwash Me Sock — it’s a light fingering weight. There’s no way I could’ve knit socks with this as I knit my socks REALLY tightly and I’d need really, really small needles for this (and considering I tend to knit socks on really small needles already — 2 - 2.5mm — I couldn’t do it). The skein was about 113g and so far I’ve used about 17g and it’s 14″ long unstretched. This thing might be a giant.

It’s just about to go noon and I’m still in my pyjamas. I might actually head back to bed for a wee snooze and then get up to do the domestic things that need doing. Oh it’s a bank holiday here today; I’m not skivving from work.

I am clearly on the mend. Appetite is mostly back, I am craving chocolate and sweets again (before the thought of such things made me feel sick to my stomach), and I am feeling less tired. Hurrah. I did lose a few pounds thanks to mostly not eating for five days. Also, plain, boiled potatoes? BLAND. SO BLAND. Maybe tonight I can eat something with a wee bit of flavour. I’m even trying a small cup of coffee…

I have another blanket question totally unrelated to the one about my mom’s potential blanket… In November 2006 Kristal wanted me to show her how to knit. I went and bought her some yarn and needles and showed her. She was working on it, but never got very far. When I was cleaning up her room I found the yarn and needles and two teeny rectangles she’d made. Combine this with all the remnants of yarn from hats I made her and I’ve got a decent amount - not enough for a whole blanket, but a good starting point. My question is, being inexperienced as I am, these yarns are a variety of weights and fibres — acrylic mixes, alpaca, silk wool blends, etc — would it just be silly to try to make a blanket or something out of such a motley mix of weights and fibres? I’m okay w/ the handwashing bit (she says now). I think a log cabin may be the best way to go on this.

I made it out to the knitting group last night. We tried out a new venue that was nicer in terms of lighting, but it felt a bit anti-social because of the set up and very loud music. We will give it another go, but choose a different seating area.

This weekend I will spend knitting and relaxing. I hope to finish up a sock so I can have yet another lone sock. I signed up for a Interweave Sock-a-long (Rav Group) which is what it says on the tin — knit one of 3 chosen patterns this month (two of them are freely available). I want to get started on this so I can maybe actually knit a pair of socks in a month. God I am so slow.

I leave you with something good and something weird:

All photos are from Ghent. There are a few more in my Flickr set.

And that is almost the entire extent of knitting content for this post; hanks of Richard Wernekinck Garens Franse Landwol hung outside Stoffenidee in Ghent. I bought some to make cushion covers out of. The shop has a good range of yarn and fabrics.

The rest of the knitting content involves the blanket I’ve been considering for my mom. I asked her to go have a look at the Noro and she came back with four colourways she likes none of which are the natural one. I kind of wanted to keep the thing a surprise by saying “I’m knitting you something” and not tell her what or how big, but maybe I need to let her in on it and ask if she’d want a technicolour blanket that would require handwashing. There just doesn’t seem to be a good machine-washable substitute out there…

Regarding Trigger, thanks for all the sentiments. As of right now I do not plan on getting another cat (cats is more like it) until October at the earliest when I’ve moved into a new place. Even then I may wait until after the new year as I expect I will go to the US for Christmas and it’s a bit of a hassle to find someone to look after the cats or put them into a kennel.

So Belgium… I’ve been once before (I’m not going to count the overnight stay once even if it did involve going to the bar with inflated animal bladders hanging from the ceiling). This time it was a girls weekend - just me and A. We went out and drank beers, ate some food, wandered around, laughed and laughed and laughed, until she tried to kill me with the poisoned food, but then we still laughed some.

We headed to Ghent on Saturday. We woke up late, managed to catch the slow train, and then I had to work out how to get us into the town centre since she speaks French, but couldn’t figure out the pictures haha. We made it and right away we stumbled into a craft fair. I’m not talking the hokey craft fair of old where people sell toilet paper cosies and things made out of popsicle sticks. This was like Etsy. IT WAS AWESOME.

Luckily most of the stuff on display was geared towards children (clothing) and the other stuff was way out of my budget even though I saw some very cool things and appreciate the craftsmanship. I did come away with a couple of funky brooches which I haven’t taken a picture of yet, but I will.

We wandered around the city and snapped pictures, sampled beers and food, and well that’s about it. It was meant to be a do-nothing-much weekend and that’s what we did. I’ll be uploading my pictures a bit slowly so I can post them here so get ready for some picture heavy posts.

I had a pretty nice birthday. The Boy turned up on Sunday to take me to Kew Gardens. It turned out to be a rather warm day and I wasn’t feeling great, especially when we went into the greenhouses. I kept getting dizzy and felt a bit faint and was even sweating more than I really should have been. Once outdoors I felt better, but I suspect that I’m trying to come down with something flu-like since I’ve felt a bit off for the last 5-6 days.

If you’re into seeing flowers, well it’s not exactly the right time of year to go, is it? Many things are already dead/hibernating or on their way out, but there was still plenty to see and satisfy my photographic-bug for taking pictures of flowers and plants. And of course there were a lot of large scale sculptures on display throughout the gardens.

Last night, my real birthday, The Boy came up and we went out for a nice dinner all fancied up. I was absolutely stuffed and didn’t even eat dessert which was okay since during the day at work I’d eaten several (small) slices of cake. I did some baking on Saturday and took the results in to work. I made one small Chocolate Zucchini (Courgette) cake and some Pumpkin bread. The chocolate cake was wonderful as always — it’s pretty tough to mess up really since the zucchini keeps things moist. The pumpkin bread, well, something funny happened there. It was definitely thoroughly cooked according to the toothpick test yet when it was unwrapped and sliced the middle sort of melted out! Slightly embarrassing, but people ate it up.

I got a rather nice gift as well as being taken to Kew Gardens and a nice dinner. I was given a digital picture frame pre-loaded with a number of pictures I’ve taken. It’s pretty clever as it allows you to set a timer to turn it on/off and how long each image is displayed. I was also given some chocolates, a british food cookbook (surprisingly little boiled meat ;)), and a Doctor Who book (for children) with the lovely David Tennant in a 3-D hologram on the front. Fellow ex-pat will be jealous.

This morning I had to take Trigger to the vet because she’d injured her mouth over a week ago. She knocked herself into a chair leg rather hard in an excited rush to the door. I knew she’d hit herself hard and after she’d calmed down (initially she ran outside and pawed at her face and then hid under the bed) I had a look and couldn’t see any blood or anything else wrong. It wasn’t until several days later that I noticed her cheek had swollen up. I kept my eye on it and it wasn’t going down so in she went. The vet had to put her under in order to examine her and she’s come away with a number of dissolvable stitches in her mouth (she separated her gums from her lip! OUCH!) and well as a couple of shaved spots where the IV went in and where they made a small incision on her cheek to drain the infected area. Now she’s on anti-biotics for a week and has to return to the vet Friday for a check up. She’s been eating and drinking well and hasn’t really changed her behaviours so it was lucky I noticed her usually pretty profile was looking a bit swollen.

Oh yeah, this is a knitting blog! I’m into the third ball of Noro for the cardigan and I think I’ll definitely be getting another ball when I’m in London on Thursday although I suspect it may be a different dye lot… I may have to go on the hunt for the same dyelot. Nothing else on the knitting front happening, but I may pluck up the courage to frog a number of abandoned projects and free my mind from those weighing on them.

The full set of photos from Kew Gardens is on Flickr.

Sorry for such a long post yesterday — I just couldn’t seem to edit it very well.

Today’s post is going to be pretty much all pictures. I decided that part of why I didn’t enjoy Paris as much as maybe I would’ve is because it wasn’t the sort of holiday I really wanted. (Did I already say this?) I wanted one filled with sleeping in, knitting, reading, and leisurely strolls along the beach or in the countryside. Instead I got a sightseeing holiday because you can’t go to a city you’ve never been to, especially one like Paris, and not see the sights. So, a lot of walking was done and despite being relatively fit, my legs and feet ached at the end of each and every day. Outside of hiking boots, which are obviously designed for heavy walking, are there other shoes that make pounding the pavement less harmful to one’s legs, feet, back, and hips (if you’ve got a funny one like me)?

Here’s a brief run down of what we did:

Day 1: Eurostar to Paris. After dropping our stuff off, walked to Jardin des Plantes - lots of dead flowers. After a late lunch, walked to Notre Dame. Back to the hotel for a nap before dinner. Had a mediocre dinner and then went to see the Eiffel Tower lit up.

Day 2: Slept in way late. Eiffel Tower by day — way too crowded for my tastes. Very long walk along the river, including eating ice cream, to Musée d’Orsay to buy tickets for the next day (I recommend others do this as then there’s no queue to get in). Very nice dinner.

Day 3: Musée d’Orsay which I liked. Not a real fan of museums, but this on was a good size and not overwhelming. Lunch and then the Louvre. Way too overwhelming and crowded — didn’t enjoy it. I went to La Drougiere and bought nothing. Nap and then another back to Notre Dame as the sun set. Another nice dinner.

Day 4: Parc des Buttes-Chaumont which was disappointing — it was like Disneyland — man-made everything. Back to London on the Eurostar.

[Clicking any of the photos will bring up a bigger version.]

 
Romains de la décadence (Musée d’Orsay) — Jardin des Tuileries — the Louvre entrance
 

 
Walking up to the Winged Victory of Samothrace (I found walking up to this and viewing this to be really powerful) — Closer up to the sculpture — Cupid & Aphrodite/Psyche (?) from behind
 

 
Teenagers who were doing street dancing — Gargoyles on Notre Dame — Me knitting on Charade in front of Notre Dame
 

 
L’Institut du Monde Arabe (one of the coolest buildings I have ever seen) — Parc des Buttes-Chaumont
 

You can see the full set on my Flickr account.

 

Hooray! I’ve managed to finish something thanks to lots of time sitting on trains this past week. Okay so they don’t match, but it’s still a pair, no? That’s Anastasia on the left in Knit Picks Memories in Pansy and Charade on the right in Piece of Beauty in Dark Matter. I gave up with trying to use up all the Knit Picks on that sock because I was getting tremendously bored and I still have another sock to do. They’re still rather tall (9″ from the floor) and I have 11 grams of yarn left. Charade are also tall, 7.5″ from the floor, and I wasn’t sure how much yarn I’d need for the ribbing so I stopped the pattern and did the ribbing to find that I could’ve probably added another half-inch. Oh well.

When I finished casting off the Charade, I was so eager to cast off Anastasia that I got right to it. When I had 10 stitches left I realised I’d actually forgotten to do the ribbing hahaha. Ooops. So I ripped out the cast off and finished it off correctly. I can’t find a name for the bind off I used, but it is definitely very good and stretchy for toe-up socks. You k2 as usual, slip those two stitches back to the other needle, k2tog, k1, slip the two stitches back to the other needles, k2tog… rinse and repeat. When the sock isn’t on your foot it flares a bit, but it looks neat and tidy and fits great. Enough details since they’re not really done, heh.

Both of these socks fit really well - they’re snug, but not tight. I now realise that I knit my Saucy socks too loose and I’m somewhat tempted to rip them out and reknit them on a slightly larger needle so I can follow the pattern and have 3 repeats of the pattern horizontally instead of four and not have mismatched toes. Maybe some day.

Other projects? I’m doing a test knit for a cabled hat. I hope to get it done this weekend. I only started this morning and I forgot that cable patterns mean lots of purling - bah. I hate purling so much I might try to figure out backwards knitting.

 
Jaeger extra fine merino aran in peacock — Rowan all seasons cotton in native (it looks tea-dyed and I love that) — RYC bamboo soft in pompadour — Rowan calmer in kiwi (I’m not a yarn sniffer, but Trigger is)
 

I still haven’t finished uploading my pictures from Paris. There aren’t even that many. Hmm. I’ll do that today and post about Paris tomorrow.

I do have a funny story to share. Last weekend my ex-pat friend K came up to Oxford. The plan was to eat, drink, knit, and whinge as needed. We set out to a pub near the river. After walking about 2 miles, we get to the pub to find out it’s burnt down. I don’t know where I’ve been because it’s one of the more famous/popular pubs and it burnt down in May hahaha. Oops. So off we went for another mile or so to this other famous/popular pub that K went to often when she was a student in Oxford about 10 years ago. They’ve done it all up and it’s kind of sad that it’s lost it’s old pub feel — dark, low ceilings, exposed beams, small rooms — it’s now very open and bright.

We had a drink and two women stopped to comment on how unusual it was to see two young people knitting. K said “It’s the new smoking”. I was knitting Charade and they said they couldn’t believe what tiny needles I was using. It was nice to have people stop and compliment us. We then ate and set off back to the city centre. We decided to cut across Port Meadow in an attempt to cut the time it took to get back to town since the next stop was to be the QI Vodka bar for a delicious girly drink.

As we’re about 2/3 across the meadow, the ground started getting a bit squishy. You may have heard about parts of Oxford getting flooded about a month ago. Well this was part of it since it is sort of like an island between the River Thames/Isis and the canal. Now, K and I weren’t really prepared for this type of walk. She was more prepared than me since she had on sneakers and jeans while I was in a just-below-the-knee skirt and mary janes. Water started pouring into my shoes. A bit ick at first since it was smelly and dirty water (there are cows, horses, sheep, all matter of bird life that reside in this meadow). Then the land started looking deceptively solid. We’d take a step and sink to our ankles in mucky water and mud. And then midway up our shins.

This is long, but funny.

I got back from Paris Thursday evening. This will probably send gasps through the internet, but I found Paris only okay. It may have been because I really wasn’t in the best of moods despite trying to be chipper and excited to see the sites of Paris. The Boy was being really moody and that just rubbed off on me since I was already tettering on the edge of moody. It may have also been because, as I believe I said already, Paris has just never been one of those cities that I’ve been dying to visit.

It was good to get away from work (when isn’t it?) and be kept relatively busy so I couldn’t dwell on all the thoughts in my head right now. My feet and legs ached at the end of each day and outside of the first night, I didn’t sleep terribly well as it was rather warm and stuffy in our room, even with a fan on us all night (we couldn’t keep the window open for the sound of traffic and trains was too much for both of us).

I took a sock to knit — Charade — and was very determined to do it two at once, but bad me, only packed one size circular needle and it was too big. I mean, the needle is marked with the same size as the DPNs I used for the same yarn, but of course these things aren’t actually exactly the same and the fabric was way too loose for a sock. So I cast on a toe up sock on DPNs. That is not easy at all, let me tell you. I think I cast on for this sock a good seven times (on both circular, DPN, and combo) before I got it going. The pattern doesn’t quite work with the yarn, but it looks okay. It really needs more of a slip-stitch pattern to show it off, but I didn’t have any patterns with me that had those qualities (I did bring about six to choose from hahaha). I should’ve marked the blog page I found with a list of patterns for pooling yarn (mine isn’t pooling, but highly variegated and I think that page had lots of slip-stitch sock patterns — ring any bells?)

I visited La Droguerie. They have a lot of buttons and beads, and of course, some yarn. There isn’t actually a massive selection of yarn, but I did want to buy some pure linen which is actually impossible to come by here. However, the way the shop works was not conducive to the way I like to shop nor to my inability to speak/understand French. You are not allowed to help yourself to the yarn or beads. It’s easy not to help yourself to buttons since they are behind the counter in lots of little drawers. You can touch, you can pick up the jars of beads and look, but you cannot help yourself. Instead you must queue up to be helped. And as far as I could tell, for each different item, you had to queue in a different place.

It was much like a deli counter minus taking a number. Someone would come help you and pull the beads out for you or take the hank of yarn off the wall. After about 15 minutes browsing and touching yarns, and getting politely told off for picking up the jars of beads as I thought I had to pick them up and take them to the lady to be removed, I decided to leave. I sat outside for a few minutes plucking up the courage to go back in and try to buy the linen. I stood around for 20 minutes and never got helped because there were two people in front of me — one who seemed to be telling her life story to the shop attendant. So I left empty handed. It was too frustrating an experience for me. I do not have patience for that sort of thing. It’s like “I just want one hank of linen. It’s right there. Look I can take it down, you can put it on the scale (they sell it by the exact weight), write up the slip and I’ll be on my way. How hard is that?!”

Anyway, I ordered some yarn before I left to try out different yarns so I’ll actually be swatching. I did also finally buy a ball of Calmer in a colour more appropriate for my sister so I will finally, once again, try my hand at Shedir. I’ll detail the yarn buys later as well as share some pictures of Paris with you as the week goes on. Tomorrow my fellow ex-pat is coming up to Oxford so we can knit, drink, eat, and complain about England. Right now, however, I need to get myself something to eat, fix a flat tire, and go buy some damn groceries. The Boy said using Bailey’s Irish Cream as a substitute for milk in my morning coffee was not an acceptable substitute — me and my ex-pat friend disagree. Alas.

Minus Johnny Depp looking really creepy. I mean, really, was it necessary to have him play an uber-creepy Willy Wonka?

I digress.

I swear this skein of Knit Picks Memories is a neverending skein. I have knit the foot and SEVEN INCHES of leg (I’m counting from the floor up) and I still have nearly half the skein left. I may have to rethink this knit-until-I-run-out-of-yarn thing with these socks since I was planning on using one skein for each sock. It’s not exactly the yarn I’d like to have a neverending supply of to be honest.

Oh, and is it just me or do wooden needles wear out quickly? I know I’ve raised this before with bamboo needles, but these Brittany Birch needles are beginning to feel a bit too bendy and dull. I may have to invest in a set of Knit Picks DPNs since they are shorter than most DPNs (I like 5″ lengths, but could probably cope w/ the 6″ Knit Picks length) and should hold up better what w/ being metal. I hope my Lantern Moon Sox Stix hold up better ’cause those are not cheap!

Anyway, I’m feeling peppier because there’s just two days of work left this week and I’m going away for a few days next week. I was sort of on the fence about going to Paris because it’s never been on my list of destinations. I don’t really know why, but I’ve just never felt the urge to go. So that said, outside of the Eiffel Tower, where should I go (and I don’t mean yarn shops ;))? I will say I’m not big on museums as I get kind of bored quickly, but I will go to a couple to see highlights.

I’m off on business for a few days. I hope that all the travelling and meetings don’t make me so tired and cross-eyed that I can’t knit otherwise I will be very bored.

We’ve been having absolutely crazy weather. We had thunderstorms off and on today, but they literally lasted under five minutes and then the sun would shine and dry things out. Luckily I made it to and from work without getting wet today; yesterday I wasn’t as lucky as I had to change into my spare jeans while the trousers I wore to work dried out.

I’ve begun my second Saucy sock and have done one pattern repeat. I need to look at the one I’ve already knit to see how many repeats I did, etc. so I can continue to work on it while I’m away. I’m going to take some other knitting — more socks. I haven’t decided which yarn or pattern yet. I thought about giving the Knit Picks¹ Memories a go, but I don’t have time to play with it and I don’t really have room to take a variety of needles, etc. I might take another colourway of Piece of Beauty — Dark Matter — but again, what pattern?! I better get browsing my collection.

Other knitting related things:

• Girl from Auntie is clearing out a bunch of her stash. Lots of nice things going.
• Having recently added a bunch of new-to-me blogs to my blog reader, I am happy to see a new e-publication being put together to highlight blogs in the knitting / fiber world that may not be widely known. For information about this e-pub — Yarnival — see the entry at Needle Exchange.
• Vaguely knitting related since it has to do with this blog — I’ve changed the theme and have been fixing my categories. There might be a few hiccups if you’re actually visiting my blog vs reading through a reader as I play with the code running some of the navigation.

And some miscellaneous things:

• I’ve begun renting the Arrested Development DVDs. I knew the show was funny since I’d seen a bit of it back in the US, but man, I’m glad I decided to rent these. So funny. Too bad so many people would rather watch the same boring reality shows over and over rather than something clever and witty.
• As I’m leaving for a few days, I had to eat some things that would’ve surely gone off before I got around to using them on Saturday (won’t be home until lateish on Friday). That meant a giant pile of asparagus and raspberries (not all at once). Below is a raspberry meringue. It was so good I might have another one…

Happy 4th of July to those readers in the US and any ex-pats that might read this. Eat a hot dog for me!

1 Knit Picks has a clearance on some of the colours of Memories. They also have a new self-striping sock yarn called Felici.

What a good weekend to top off the week of feeling pretty crappy from a cold and exhaustion. My friend came to visit and we went and saw Travis. That makes it three times in as many months that I’ve seen them. I can’t help it! They’re just so freakin’ cute.

I gave her a tour of Oxford. The weather all weekend was hit and miss — rain one minute, bright sunny skies the next.

The Radcliffe Camera and various colleges

We visited a little village to the north of Oxford called Woodstock — it rained pretty much the whole time, but it’s small. I wanted to go to the yarn shop that is listed in the yellow pages… only I couldn’t find it. Turns out it’s been closed for two- to three years! Argh. Oh well. I don’t need more yarn, but I wanted to go in since yarn shops are a novelty for me since they are lacking in Oxford.

The Boy made us dinner Saturday night and today we headed back into London so she could get back on the train to Brussels. We only had a few hours so we just went to Westminster Abbey / Big Ben / Houses of Parliament / London Eye since they are all right there next to Waterloo station. We also met up with a girl we know from the blogging world so that was nice.

I’m off to bed now, but stay tuned for some shots of my new (maybe clever) knitting accessory for socks! Plus a totally cute, girly handmade handbag I bought from a craft fair we stumbled upon!

PS Thank you all for all the nice comments and download of the pattern! If you downloaded it the first day or two it was up, you may want to re-download it as I discovered an error in the chart that must have occurred when I converted it to a PDF (I had to use a different converter to normal) plus a minor error I missed in all the reviewing. It’s all fixed now and as far as I can tell, error free. If you do find an error, please let me know! [And I'll remember to add a last updated date to the PDFs in the future.] Links to the pattern below for your convenience while I continue to revamp this blog (soon they’ll be in the sidebar).

Download the full pattern or the chart-only if you’re more experienced.