Still here ...

and still knitting.  

 

Another very long glove, gradually and intentionally disintegrating. 

 

I know how it feels. It's been a long week.

You need hands...

Wensleydale and I keep saying to each other 'Next week, when things get back to normal...' I think we've been saying it all year, and so far, they haven't. Last week, you may remember, the Cheese Minors went on holiday. And so did we. The calm before the storm, as it turned out. This week they moved house. And so did we. Well, we helped with their house move. Granddad helped with plumbing, taking down cupboards, dismantling stuff etc. and I kept Babybel, the VHC and the dog out from under everyone else's feet. As it was a lovely day, this meant going out in the sunshine and watching them play. I think I drew the long straw.  Everything went as well as could be expected, given the trauma that moving house always is, and that Babybel was a bit off colour. Their new house is lovely, and a great improvement on their old one, in my opinion, although, of course, when we left yesterday, it was at that 'it gets worse before it gets better' stage that follows the removal men's departure, and precedes you having had the time to unpack. The new house being within walking distance of a chip shop was a definite plus. Next week will still not be 'normal' whatever that is, as we have changed our grandparenting days so we can be 'in', but at their house, for deliveries and BT engineers. Around all this chaos, I did manage to fit in some knitting. The wine-soaked glove dried out and has grown a bit - it is joining in the competition for the world's longest.  

  I also tried some sewing. I decided that I ought to have a go at making a sewn glove, so I Googled it. I read all the instructions for making your own pattern. Then I bought one. Then I procrastinated.  Next, as the pattern was very insistent on using stretchy fabric, I went through the stash for some stretchy fabric. This was not a bad thing, as I ended up throwing out a bin bag full of stuff I will never use. I also found:

1. some white stretch velvet, bought because there was a fashion for doing things with stretch velvet. I can't remember what the fashion was (it may have involved transfer dyes) but I still have the stretch velvet. 
2. some flesh tone cotton jersey, bought when I made dolls, and
3. 2 metres of white cotton jersey, bought for who knows what. 

I thought about using the flesh, but went with the white , because there was more of it if I made mistakes. Then I procrastinated. Finally, on Thursday, I ordered myself to get started.  I made mistakes. The major one was having the idea in the first place.  I am sure all my readers are skilful glove makers. Look on my works, ye mighty, and laugh.  

 

It is easier to list what went right than what went wrong.

 

What went right? Nothing. Knitting gloves may take longer than sewing them, (though the endless resewing of the finger seams, which had become shredded when they disappeared down the hole in the needle plate, took half a lifetime) but it is a damn sight easier.

 

But then - I decided, despite being tempted towards long term procrastination, to do what I had decided to do with this glove, after  seeing Shelly Goldsmith's 'Dark Time' at the Contemporary Craft Centre at Farnham last weekend.

 

 

I wanted to add an image. So I scanned my hand, again, flipped the image, printed it on to transfer paper, cut it round the rather blurry edges and ironed it onto the glove.

 

And I rather like it. The transfer wasn't perfect,, and the image tore when I straightened out the glove, but I like the effect of that. 

 

So? More experiments. These gloves are not going to be worn - that was the theme I started with about 2 months and 27 new ideas ago - so they don't have to be made properly. Which means I can play with different materials, different construction techniques, perhaps even transfer photos/scans onto knitted gloves. 

 

time to start procrastinating about all these new ideas...

 

             

 

 

Taking advantage...

of Cheese Minor and family jetting off to sunnier climes, Wensleydale and I decided to do something similar. Well, a bit similar. They went to Tuscany, we went to Dorset. They had rain, we didn't, but it wasn't  warm enough here to sit by the pool, assuming our hotel had had a pool, which it didn't, and assuming I looked as good in a bikini as Mrs Cheese Minor, which I don't. Which is one reason I don't own a bikini.

Both holidays involved some ancient buildings however. Theirs were in Pisa, Florence and Sienna: ours weren't. (I may sound a little jealous, and indeed I am, but we had a good time, I hate flying, and their flight took about as long as our drive, which was door to door.)

We revisited Sherborne Abbey, which is a stunning building, with fan vaulting to rival King's College Chapel. It also had hands, with and without gloves.

















We also revisited this gentleman, who was a bit more visible than last year - perhaps he'd had a wash and brush up. 

















Last time we went west, we went to Montacute, but, to be honest I wasn't overwhelmed by it, and it was very busy, and we thought it would be worse this year because of the Wolf Hall connection. So we went to Barrington Court instead.

Two pieces of advice if you wish to follow in our footsteps:
1. Do not make the mistake of following the National Trust signed route off the A303, unless you enjoy driving along single track roads with high hedges, and maniacs and tractors driving the other way; and

2. Do not make the mistake of thinking Barrington Court does not have a Wolf Hall connection. It does. It appeared in many guises, including Thomas Cromwell's Privy Chamber and his stables. 

Unfortunately Mark Rylance was not in his Privy Chamber so Wensleydale stood sat in for him.

I also photographed a lot of other windows. Perhaps because there is very little furniture in the house, perhaps because the sun was shining, but mostly because they are lovely windows with lovely wonky glass. 

I also took a lot of flower photos, as the gardens are beautiful, but I will spare you those, as this post will be photo heavy enough anyway.

A new day, a new National Trust property, Lytes Cary Manor - got to get our money's worth from our memberships. This was my favourite of all the places we went. It's small, and cosy, with even more beautiful gardens than Barrington Manor. There was, unfortunately, what Worzel Gummidge described as 'fresh country air with a touch of pig', but I'm sure it's not permanent, and you couldn't smell it in the house. More garden photos, and more windows.







Finally, on the way home, we called in at Kingston Lacy for a cup of tea and a leg stretch. No windows this time, because we stayed outside. 

It was only when we got back to the car that I realised that the reason the car park was full and the gardens empty, was because on wet days, normal human beings go to N.T. properties to go round the house in the dry, not round the gardens in the rain. Well, it wasn't raining much, that came later... Along with traffic jams on the M3, but we managed to bypass those.

So, a good time, but as always, I'm glad to be home. I did manage to start some knitting, but I've just soaked it in white wine, so it's not photographable at the moment. (Not deliberately, obviously, it was a waste of good wine...)

All over, bar the buttons.

All 79 of them. I am procrastinating about them, as sewing buttons on is not my favourite activity.

Nor is crochet. Every time I decide to do some I think I'm going to enjoy it - until I actually start. I can never get into a rhythm like I do with knitting, and I get confused by the instructions. In knitting there's only knit and purl, in crochet there's doubles and trebles and halves and doubles of the same, and I keep having to check which is which. Which is one reason my attempts at Advent snowflakes look like this.

Even Wenslydale could spot the problem. Well, one of them. But they are staying as they are.

Expert crocheters will tell me I'd get better if I practiced more (and learned to count) and they are right, but I don't see a conversion to crochet happening around Cheese Acres anytime soon.

I shall stick to my knitting.

Even if I made a mistake, you'd be unlikely to spot it! This is another cuff sample. I didn't like it when I was doing it, but it's grown on me. Not literally, of course. 

I have enough of the bobbly yarn for four bands like this - or perhaps a little wider - so it's not going to be as long as the first glove (2.7 metres from finger tips to end), but still quite long. I think it might be a snowman's glove. 

Quiet week next week as the little guys are in Tuscany, after a somewhat stressful journey along the M4 where they spent more time stationary than moving. 

I think some knitting may be done.

Life goes on

as does knitting.

 The end is in sight, as there isn't much yarn left on the cone. 

Work on the HandBook continues too - and here is proof that I don't always work in orange. (Curse you, autocorrect, when I type 'orange' I mean 'orange', not 'Orange' or 'oranges'! And I don't mean 'means' either....          

 

There is a little more work that needs to be done, but not by me. Tiredness, plus stress, plus an unfamiliar car park equals  a scrape.

Updating: knitting, Advent decorations, and hands

Still knitting...

I think it will be about 3 metres long before I run out of wool. Then I shall have to start thinking about buttons - those little bumps you can see at regular intervals on the right side of the cuff are buttonholes. Fifty four of them and counting. I have a lot of buttons - I inherited 3 women's button boxes - but probably not enough of the right size and colour (whatever that is) even if I don't worry about them being all the same. I suspect EBay will be my friend.

 I've also got round to making another Advent decoration. I was sure she was going to end up a complete disaster, and I did make two bodices, two skirts and two pairs of wings, but in the end I quite like her. (Her wings aren't really wonky, though, and it reall life they curl back elegantly, as the sequin waste was on a roll.)

.         

And I've been playing around with a pleasing discovery in a Staples sale bin. Half a dozen disembodied hands.

Photograph them and app them with Flip-o-matic and you get lovely patterns. (Flip-o-matic always sounds to me like some thing Gromit invented.)

The most entertaining part of the week, for my audience but not me, was me trying to scan my hands. (It might have been even more entertaining if I'd tried to scan other parts of my anatomy, but hands were a big enough challenge for one day.)  I wanted to scan to Big Mac (copying would have been too easy!) which is about two feet to the left of the scanner: getting them closer isn't feasible.

Scanning my right hand was relatively easy. Except that the overview scan kept cutting off my finger tips, so I had to adjust it, using the mouse with my left hand. Fine tuned click and drag it wasn't.

Scanning my left hand involved crossing my arms. It dawns on me now that as it's a wireless mouse I could have moved it - but I would still have had to turn to the left to see the screen, even after I'd remembered that I could rotate to see it better. 

I couldn't solve the other problems:

1. My hand getting flattened on the platen, so it looks quite squelchy on the scans. (Good job I didn't try other parts of my anatomy...)
2. Not being able to get the back of my hand flat to the glass, so my thumbs are just shadows on the scans.

However, a bit of playing around with my favourite app, iColorama, and I got some passable results. My hands aren't really this wrinkly, honest.

April may not be the cruellest month,

but it was pretty stressful. It started, sadly but not unexpectedly, with a funeral, of a family member, the first of our generation. Then, as I have mentioned before, there was the little matter of putting up and taking down an exhibition, which overlapped with the school holidays with all the extra grandparenting. And finally and joyfully, because we all really needed something good, there was a wedding! Cheese Major married his señorita, so she is now Señora Cheese - except that she has followed Spanis custom and kept her maiden name. 

 I rarely include photos of my family on this blog, but just for once...

And here is one of the beautiful bridesmaids, in her 'best dress ever!'

and her little brother, who enjoyed himself so much he didn't want to come home. All photos with a little help from Waterlogue.

Now we are coming down to earth, and hoping that May will be a little less eventful.

Knitting has continued. They may be unwearable gloves - or, on the other hand, they may be 

 a porcupine

 and a snake.