Ho ho oh

As it’s nearly November, I can feel my Christmas self start twitching – as a crafty sort, you need to start planning early to make things (that's my excuse) and often this can cause a lot of tension with other not-so-excited-by-Christmas types who get twitchy when you start discussing the merits of reindeer over snowmen in October.  What odd people they are, but there’s no way of overcoming that type of prejudice so I rise above, button my lip and sit on my hands desperately waiting for the 1 November.  When they gawp, horrified at me, I feign embarrassment (most of it, some of it is genuine as I do know better really) and blame it on the fact I made my Christmas cakes in early September.  This means they’re nearly weapons grade when I take the lids off for feeding and am sure my eyebrows are looking thinner – they smell delicious but are not for tee-totallers as they will make granny drunk at 50 paces).  On that note, I’ve made six of varying sizes as I thought they might make nice gifts.  What I hadn’t realised is how much looking after and space six cakes need and really hadn’t considered in any detail how I might think about decorating them when I’ve never decorated a cake before (apart from a blob of icing on fairy cakes) in a kitchen the size of a postage stamp.  Anyway, those worries are for later in the year.

This year I rebelled against the pressure to ignore Christmas until December and came out in favour of the supermarkets.  Early in October I covertly found all the fabric I wanted for Christmas stockings for the nieces and nephews and on Wednesday evening, I started cutting out the shapes.  I wasn’t really anticipating how much moulting would go on with the plush for the top of the stocking so am not sure my brother or sister will thank me for this addition to their homes but at least their children will have personalised Christmas stockings that, no matter how much they loathe them, they must put out every year for the arrival of their “favourite” auntie.  Cough cough.  Ah, families are lovely. 

I got the shape just by accident really – it’s a Christmas stocking, there are definitely precedents out there so it’s not that I was pushing myself creatively here; in fact, if it had gone wrong I’d have hung up my scissors and shelved Bobby for good for shame.  The fabrics I’d chosen were deliberately evocative of German Christmases of my childhood as I was hoping that, although they’re for my siblings’ children, they might be a bit nostalgic for them too.  I love how the little skiers material has been modernised with a little girl snowboarder, also very appropriate for my niece as both of her parents snowboard (actually, my sister-in-law snowboards while my brother, from what I gather, typically nurses flu in the chalet).

For my brother’s children, it was easy to decide how to personalise the stockings.  My nephew has a reindeer stocking with ho ho hO (he’s called The O for short) appliquéd on in red and cream stripes which match the back of the stocking; and my niece has her name appliquéd under the snowboarding girl, surfing over her own name.  I plan to sew a little bell onto the top of her hat as well.

As ever, apologies for the poor quality of the photographs - I have now borrowed a proper camera but the lender can't find the charger.  This is also just the cut out shapes from the first night - last night I appliqued etc, but haven't taken photos of them yet.

My sister’s children are a bit trickier as their names don’t start with anything I can figure out how to make festive but I do want to make them personal.  Given I started pondering this a while ago I should have had some ideas by now but it’s typically only once the scissors are in my paws that I actually start thinking things through although often after I’ve made the disastrous cut that means I don’t have enough of the fabric I want in the shape I want left to do it and need to improvise wildly.

The nicest thing is that work has been a bit of a downer over the last couple of weeks and doing this over the last week has totally given me a new Zen perspective on it – not watching telly and instead doing something more stimulating has meant I’ve slept better and everything really does look better after a good night’s kip.  Even my zigzag stitch which I’m very happy to say is no longer my arch-nemesis.  Running out of one shade of red halfway round the “A” of my niece’s name was irritating but other than that I was quite delighted with my zigzagging.

Talking of windowless rooms, I actually have a very lovely light and sunny spare room and I'm finally going to take it to task to turn it into project knitting headquarters.  No more Miss Messing about getting into yarn tangled frustration as I try and unpick my way through the living room over mountains of crafty stuff.

There's one wall that needs to come down, and various bits of making good that will need a professional decorator in but once the revamp starts I'll take some pictures and post them here as I'm hoping the transformation will be really rather marvellous.

* The picture above is not what my room looks like at the moment, but I hope I get somewhere near this lovely looking room.

Tricky cornering

My fingers were twitching all weekend for making but the sun was glorious and not necessarily conducive to working with merino wool. 

Saturday was spent in a windowless room pursuing the gentle but complicated art of quilting.  I managed to spend so long pulling together a convoluted patchwork that I didn’t actually get to the quilting but I have lots of ideas – although once out in daylight I realised that the colours that worked under tube lighting looked pretty sickly in the real world so Saturday’s work is being relegated to the “tutorial” pile for future reference.  Sunday I realised that my garden has been completely overwhelmed by Triffids and I couldn’t sit out there to sew or knit without risking knitting some wee beasties into the baby blanket I’m making and am not sure that would do at all.  So I threw open all of my windows and sat basking in the sunshine, blinding myself with my needles; I have sun spots from the light bouncing off my Addi turbos so I’m only reading three letters in every five as I type this – apologies for any typos as a result. 

Over lunch last week, my father and I had what we thought was a lively and interesting chat about the drive to craft and make things – this can’t be simply a recession led love of all things retro.  Man wasn’t designed to sell only services.  Without wanting to sound too Pretty Woman about it, people love creating and building things from model railways to stamp collections, wonky shelves and bobble hats – that drive doesn’t disappear because we’re sitting in our offices making money or selling services (although in my job I definitely don’t make money and HR services are a tricky sell at the best of times).  Perhaps the reversal to wanting to make and grow things represents an appreciation of a more nurturing, recycling and appreciative approach to things, a recognition that new isn’t always better (although it’s not always bad either).

Given how much I love learning about the techniques and history of crafts I’ve also recognised a propensity for analysis paralysis.  A couple of years ago it wouldn’t have occurred to me to stop and think before launching into something – I’d have just had a go.  Now I’ve gone to so many workshops and read so many different books on techniques that I’ve almost worked myself into a corner and can’t get to the point. 

I’d have got the scissors out and taken them to the tunic that’s been in my peripheral vision (as a ruffled tee shirt) for ages and “had a tinker” to see what I could make of it.  Since I got Bobby (my trusty Janome) and actually learnt some of the skills that would help mitigate likely disasters I find it harder to get started.  Knowledge isn’t always power.  Sometimes knowing how things work make the risk of failure that much harder to swallow.

Beret warm for the time of year

I made this beret (a lovely pattern from Toft Alpaca) and decided that Noggin would be ideal for modelling this.  He's always been a show off and feels very disgruntled (which you can tell from that grim set expression around the mouth) that he's left to act as a doorstop in a flat in south east London, rather than being out in the world and expressing himself more freely.  So in many ways, the beret is also appropriate for the creative inner life that he feels unable to fulfil.

Lordy, now I've written that I wonder if it's a metaphor for my own frustrations.  Not deliberate I assure you.  I have been pondering recently about what's driving the modern making phenomenon.  It can't be natural that people thrive in a service culture when we are naturally creative animals who enjoy the tactile experience of building, constructing, inventing and putting to use things that have been crafted by our hands.  All of those skills that took evolution to put to great use shouldn't be allowed to die out because we've invented ourselves into automation.  Honestly, am not sure I can use that excuse but it seems to strike a nerve with a few people I've talked about it with.

So I'm still a bit unsure where all this craftiness is taking me but I am confident it's going somewhere.  I've just taught my first beginner knitter to cast on and knit and purl and am thinking about trying a half day workshop at a really lovely venue in south west London.  It's getting together a group of seven or eight novices that worries me - where to start, how to do it etc.  I'd really like to, just to see - I'd bake cake and make tea - but now I have to take the plunge. 

The certificate at the Royal School of Needlework is signed up for, and I can't wait to start. In preparation, I'm kitting out my spare room so that it is no longer spare - instead, come Christmas, it will be a lovely sparkly craft room with organised yarn, fabric and embroidery threads, and a general feeling of creative well being.  This is where insomnia comes in very handy - pinging awake at 4.30 on Sunday morning, unable to get back to sleep, I was able to make great progress in sketching out and designing the layout of the room so I can't wait for work to start on that.  Does pose a bit of an issue about clutter clearance in the meantime - the worst part of any revamp surely.

And in the meantime, I have a very nice, very warm beret to wear in the middle of a last minute heat wave.  Perhaps a sign that I'm on the way but not there yet...

Yoo-hoo, is anyone out there ...

(note of apology on the images - only have my Blackberry to take pictures, and am not great at getting the rights bits in, and the edges right)

So blogland has been a neglected part of my “favourite things to do” recently.  And although I’ve really missed it, I’ve also found it hard to get stuck in to writing.  Part of it is that the longer one is away, the harder it is to go back.  And part of it goes back to my utter technical ineptitude.  My computer at work doesn’t allow me so much as a sniff past a blog, and my computer at home is powered by a decrepit one legged hamster.  With the removal of the default retirement age frankly I’m stuck with him. 

Life back at work has been moving at quite a pace.  Two and a half months off is brilliant, but there came a point shortly before the end of my leave when the projects I started at the beginning were finished (hooray) and with only two weeks, nine days, seven days ... to go there seemed little point getting stuck into new ones.  I describe this as my getting “mentally flabby” and it was at this point I started going running each morning.  Where I live is basically a giant undulation in south east London so the toll of cresting those hills each morning meant that in the afternoons I took to my sofa in earnest.  Cue my addiction to Murder, She Wrote and the lovely Angela Lansbury.  Having retreated to my sofa one Sunday or so ago to nurture a particularly aggressive hangover, I can tell you this was definitely a gardening-leave-related obsession - it is an obviously dated but still marvellous programme – perhaps not one I should still be quite so upbeat and vocal about now.  Although I do still seem to be talking about it.  I must stop talking about it right now.  Although, one final point on MSW – there’s nothing like seeing something that makes you hark back to better days where one knew one’s neighbours, fed their cat and cycled around a very pretty small town.  Am not sure this type of life ever really existed, so it is potentially nostalgia for something unreal, but a nice kind of nostalgia.

So to work, and it’s been good being back in an office albeit with a bit of an insight into what it must be like going back after having a baby or any other long absence.  I was out for just over nine weeks and found myself feeling self-conscious wandering around the office and very aware that everything I thought I knew about HR and employment law had mysteriously drained out of me.  Clearly too much tea, cake and wine is bad for you – who knew. It took the first week or so to feel as if my brain was limbering up again; now I feel ready for another little break.

Over the course of the nine weeks I sustained my first knitting related injury – determined to make something that was wearable and for someone to see other than me, I set to making a Debbie Bliss dress for my four year old niece.  Evidence if it were needed that tension swatches are essential, I decided to make the six year old sizing, reasoning that if it was too big she’d grow into it and could simply pop a jumper underneath in the winter.  There was a great sale on so instead of making it pink and red, I picked up some olive and cream bargain Cashmerino and attempted my first piece of intarsia which turned out quite successfully. 

I discovered being a slightly obsessive type can lead to danger even with something as innocuous as knitting.  After spending a few days flirting with getting started I began in earnest at 10am on day five and before I knew it had been knitting solidly for six hours.  My fingers were bleeding and my thumb had a fairly sizeable gash in it from my curious knitting style.  Aside from the discomfort, I was also famished so it was time for a break.  Plasters were liberally applied to all relevant digits and knitting resumed in earnest.  11pm rolled around without my noticing time passing and the dress was well over half complete.  I was delighted, and actually surprisingly tired.  Waking up the next morning with my hands set into an interesting claw shape I decided to take a day off reasoning that I had learnt a lot about not just intarsia but also the physicality of the craft.

My niece looked quite pleased with the dress when she tried it on, but I didn’t get a chance to take any pictures as I was still without the technology to do so when I gave it to her and it was also about 90 degrees outside so it was swiftly taken off and put neatly in the back of the car.  I haven’t heard anything subsequently about whether or not she’s keen, but I hope so.  And if not, that at least it will be passed to my sister’s daughter who is too young to know any better about sartorial rights and wrongs.  I’m playing the long game here.

In the last few weeks I’ve been learning to do cables (well, being taught actually - I got a bit lost on all those twists and turns) and have made my first cushion cover with the loveliest alpaca (which I got from http://www.thetoftalpacashop.co.uk/catlist.aspx).  It’s a curious mix of rough and silky and is so incredibly tactile that it was a joy to knit with.  The scratchiness did niggle the bits of my fingers that seem to be wearing away with repeated knits but it’s definitely worth it.  Even the smell of soggy Labrador pervading my home as I’m blocking it is worth it.  It looks beautiful.  In fact, I’ve armed myself with graph paper so I can have a go at designing my own cables which is probably far too advanced for me at this stage but I’m officially hooked and frankly, how else will I learn.

Not sure if there is anyone out there reading, but I’ve been having a ponder on different textiles and whether it’s possible to mix them up to make a bedspread or something similar.  I wondered about mixing squares of alpaca with blocks of quilting.  Any views on this?  Would it be horrifying/old fashioned?  Could it work, might it be aesthetically interesting?  This is my first attempt at quilting - it's basically a teapot stand as I had a go in miniature but planning to make a full size version later this year - thinking I might go 70s brown/yellow/orange styling,

And this morning I’ve been starting to understand the process behind embroidery.  The Royal School of Needlework introductory course is still hovering at the edges of my brain – it really does feel as if I’ve found my medium and I’d love to do more, ideally the degree if I could.  Having spent a few weeks looking up images on the internet (I’ve also started a scrap book of images and ideas I find on my travels – despite the walk along the river every morning, am not sure the daily commute counts as travel really though) I found a beautiful picture of a bright orange Iris.  Working with an expert, she agreed that it would make a good starting point for me – clear shapes, good curves and shading, and the right size to learn a lot and be challenged without being overwhelmed.

I hadn’t realised how involved it would be, but not knowing had always put me off trying to design my own (that and not really being sure how to achieve the finish I would want).  There was something very therapeutic about reducing the size of the design from the picture, and then gradually refining the detail into a line drawing, a colour shaded version, a shaded version to understand where “light” will fall from the silks, and then a version to draw on the direction of the stitching to help establish the structure (I still have to complete these last two stages).  As someone who has always maintained that I can’t draw, it felt like an achievement to end up with something that looked the way I had imagined in my mind.  Seeing the DMC thread chart to start choosing colours was another moment where I felt a little frisson, imagining what the end result could look like.  Am literally embarrassingly over the moon about this project, despite the fact it’s probably around 60 hours of work.  I sense the claw hand may return at points!  Must buy a thimble too …