Wibbo's Words

Spring's here?

I don't think so! Black as your hat at about 4.30 this afternoon and lots of heavy rain. Here, have a look at Streatham in Springtime...

   

I bought these

I was fairly restrained yesterday, apart from ordering some 4ply merino from Silkwood in the Plum Wine colourway - that doesn't really count as Tess hasn't dyed it yet..... I bought a skein of Fyberspates sock yarn (below, left) and a ball of Opal (below, right) from the Get Knitted stand. Oh, and some embroidery threads from West End Embroidery, a present for a friend.

   

Relax & Knit, Olympia

Spent the day at Relax & Knit, Olympia, doing some mindless crocheting and chatting about knitting and crochet and other stuff. It was a really fun day - well, until we started to shiver when the temperature suddenly dropped and it got really cold. Thank goodness for scarves!

Here's a little taste of Olympia - Yvonne playing with demonstrating a Loopa....

   

Ruth with her hats (which are gorgeous in real life)....

Anna wearing Jess, one of her own designs (also gorgeous in real life - my photo doesn't do it justice)....

and some of Silkwood's wonderful yarns.

I've been translated!

Well, not me exactly, but one of my cross stitch titles is now available in Dutch.

 

Purple flowers for purple prose

I'm hard at work writing instructions, captions and (the bane of my life) introductory paragraphs for a new book. To cheer myself up, I bought purple and white flowers and put them in a purple vase on a purple tablecloth.

This Candy Ware vase is one of my favourites.

The speckled purple glaze is streaked with blue round the neck, and the vase is a lovely chunky shape which makes it perfect for someone like me who subscribes to the daffs-shoved-in-a-jam-jar school of flower arranging.

Hard work

Crocheting with recycled carrier bags is really hard on my hands, not helped by me being a tight crocheter. I used an 12mm Inox plastic hook which kept sticking to the plastic strips; next time, I think it would be worth investing in a wooden hook as it probably wouldn't stick as much. Here's a close-up of the result.

I'm off to massage some of this into my aching hands and wrists. It's a brilliant anti-inflammatory and suits me much better than taking painkillers. The cream smells of cloves and cinnamon; almost good enough to eat...

Saturday afternoon in town

I met up with Liz yesterday afternoon, intending to have lunch and go look at an exhibition. We had lunch and happily evaporated the rest of the afternoon sitting in a pub nattering. Liz knitted; I didn't; we both talked a lot. Liz brought me some lovely goodies from her SkipNorth trip as well as a skein of her own hand dyed cotton.

At the top, two balls of gorgeous mohair yarn and a pair of Surina wooden crochet hooks; at the bottom, Liz's yarn. I haven't tried out the hooks yet; the wood feels smooth and the hooks look a good shape so I think they'll work well.

Quiche, anyone?

Yes, I know I'm tidying up. Got slightly sidetracked by this food blog.

It's getting worse.....

This was my studio on February 25; not much space left on the work table and lots of clutter, but not quite serious enough to stop me working. Heck, I can still see the tabletop!

The situation has deteriorated over the last couple of days. No space left on the main table; I'm off to do a clutter clear.....

Hercules and his labours

I seem to have shifted a huge backlog of work over the last couple of weeks. Think Labours of Hercules and you'll get the right idea. Although I haven't been blogging recently, I've taken photos of some rather nice stuff.

Two colours of Jaeger Luxury Tweed to add to the stash. I'm one of those odd people who drools over dark colours; grey, purple and black really set me off! This yarn's been discontinued, but I found some over at Cucumberpatch for £1.50 a ball and I just couldn't resist. Great yardage, merino lambswool and alpaca, dark colours - what more could I ask for?

Then there's this amazing Montezuma's chocolate Gav sent me. Handmade milk chocolate flavoured with strawberry and paprika, it tasted wonderful and incredibly rich. The postcard's interesting - a 1950's factory photograph. How times have changed!

A selection of knitting needles photographed on a really sunny day; the reason for the weird shadows. From left to right, we have vintage plastic from Oxfam, Susan Bates from a friend in the US, Swallow Timbergrains bought online from Australia, Bryspuns made in New Zealand and bought online from the US, bamboo and wooden needles that used to belong to my Mum.

I think the Bryspuns are my favourites; I love working with the long, tapering points which are brilliant for making tricky manoeuvres like P3tog. Swallow Timbergrains work well with those hard-on-your-hands yarns like Summer Tweed and Trinity and they come a very close second to the Bryspuns.

Antique Pattern Library

This is a brilliant crochet resource consisting of antique patterns from books in the public domain. Well worth a visit, even though it's still a work in progress, and you can download the patterns in .pdf format without payment.