Friday, 18 October 2013
Thursday, 17 October 2013
I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue
As I mentioned previously, I've wanted to see a recording of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue since I first started listening to Radio 4. I can remember realising that people actually got to be in the audience for the show and desperately wanting to be part of that. Tonight I was lucky enough to do exactly that.
What could be better than just getting to see I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue? Well, being there for the first recording of the 60th series was pretty great. But discovering that John Finnemore was
the guest panelist was unexpectedly amazing.
It's not stalking if it's accidental. Definitely.
The recording was at the Playhouse Theatre, Weston-super-Mare. It started at 7:30 and we weren't finished until 10:30 (with a short interval, ideal for sorting out car park faffage). I don't envy the person who has to decide what to cut to get that down to two half-hour shows. Though quite a bit of the time was spent re-recording Jack Dee's lines. Tonight Weston leaned a valuable lesson about the pronunciation of "Danube".
The first show will be broadcast 11th November, listen out for anyone laughing a little more than everyone else and that'll probably be me. It was hilarious. The letter from Queen Victoria to Isambard Kingdom Brunel was my highlight, without a doubt. Though Barry Cryer twerking is something I won't forget in a hurry!
In finishing all I can say is: "Tunnels" Oh. And.... Da-noob
What could be better than just getting to see I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue? Well, being there for the first recording of the 60th series was pretty great. But discovering that John Finnemore was
the guest panelist was unexpectedly amazing.
It's not stalking if it's accidental. Definitely.
The recording was at the Playhouse Theatre, Weston-super-Mare. It started at 7:30 and we weren't finished until 10:30 (with a short interval, ideal for sorting out car park faffage). I don't envy the person who has to decide what to cut to get that down to two half-hour shows. Though quite a bit of the time was spent re-recording Jack Dee's lines. Tonight Weston leaned a valuable lesson about the pronunciation of "Danube".
The first show will be broadcast 11th November, listen out for anyone laughing a little more than everyone else and that'll probably be me. It was hilarious. The letter from Queen Victoria to Isambard Kingdom Brunel was my highlight, without a doubt. Though Barry Cryer twerking is something I won't forget in a hurry!
In finishing all I can say is: "Tunnels" Oh. And.... Da-noob
 | |
| John Finnemore, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Jack Dee, Jon Naismith, Graeme Garden, Barry Cryer. You'll have to trust me on that. |
Tuesday, 15 October 2013
Pandemic
It's a little late in the day for this recommendation but I've only recently caught Pandemic (Part 1/Part 2/Part 3) in the Afternoon Drama.
Each play tells a story in its own right: Part 1 (Present) about the outbreak of a deadly virus; Part 2 (Future) about an investigation into a government cover-up in the wake of the outbreak; and Part 3 (Past) the truth behind the outbreak.
I love intertwined stories but the fact that these really did stand on their own as individual stories was a testament to how good the overall arc was. I'd recommend catching one, or all, if they're still available.
Each play tells a story in its own right: Part 1 (Present) about the outbreak of a deadly virus; Part 2 (Future) about an investigation into a government cover-up in the wake of the outbreak; and Part 3 (Past) the truth behind the outbreak.
I love intertwined stories but the fact that these really did stand on their own as individual stories was a testament to how good the overall arc was. I'd recommend catching one, or all, if they're still available.
Sunday, 13 October 2013
Blue & White
Rarely have I swung from love, to hate, to love, to hate, to love with the frequency that I have with my most recent project. But neither have I been so surprised by how well something has blocked!
I'll confess I got a little bored with the edging, though that was mostly because I was anxious to crack on with the middle bit. The next version is likely to be a little more fun because, thanks to the amount of practice runs I did, I was bored of this yarn before I'd even cast on.
And if anyone was wondering a) what the benefits of blocking are; or b) why we were discussing sea slugs in work, I'd ask you to imagine this all bunched up on a circular needle:
For the record, this is now the second time I've been pleasantly surprised by Sirdar Country Style (4 ply this time). Though I tend to refer to almost all acrylic under the catch-all category "Nasty Acrylic", I think this one (with its 30% wool content) might be reclassified as an exception.
I'll confess I got a little bored with the edging, though that was mostly because I was anxious to crack on with the middle bit. The next version is likely to be a little more fun because, thanks to the amount of practice runs I did, I was bored of this yarn before I'd even cast on.
And if anyone was wondering a) what the benefits of blocking are; or b) why we were discussing sea slugs in work, I'd ask you to imagine this all bunched up on a circular needle:
For the record, this is now the second time I've been pleasantly surprised by Sirdar Country Style (4 ply this time). Though I tend to refer to almost all acrylic under the catch-all category "Nasty Acrylic", I think this one (with its 30% wool content) might be reclassified as an exception.
Thursday, 10 October 2013
Glaucus atlanticus
For reasons that will become apparent when I (eventually) post photos of my current knitting project, we were discussing sea slugs in work today.
I still can't quite believe this one is real.
I still can't quite believe this one is real.
Monday, 7 October 2013
Chain Gang
I didn't follow the 2009 Chain Gang story closely but, by the end, I think it showed everything that is interesting and crazy about the experiment.
If you've not come across it before, the idea is that 4 Extra broadcasts two minutes of a story, then listeners write the storyline (not script) for the next two minutes. This goes on for a dozen episodes, by which point the final story only just about bears any resemblance to the initial starting chapter. The 2009 story jumped around wildly in time and theme but was tied up quite neatly in a live recording at St Pancras station by Robert Shearman.
This year's story seems to be starting out firmly in thriller territory. As much as I appreciated the creative ideas that led to the wilder chapters of the 2009 story, I hope the judges might try to keep things a little tighter this year. A listener-guided story that hangs together as a cohesive whole would be a remarkable thing.
I've not decided yet whether to enter a storyline but I'm a little tempted to use it as a little writing exercise and see if I can write something interesting for the next section in the form of two minutes of script.
Great theory, of course, but in practise I expect I'll just sit back and enjoy the story in all its glorious, unfolding chaos!
If you've not come across it before, the idea is that 4 Extra broadcasts two minutes of a story, then listeners write the storyline (not script) for the next two minutes. This goes on for a dozen episodes, by which point the final story only just about bears any resemblance to the initial starting chapter. The 2009 story jumped around wildly in time and theme but was tied up quite neatly in a live recording at St Pancras station by Robert Shearman.
This year's story seems to be starting out firmly in thriller territory. As much as I appreciated the creative ideas that led to the wilder chapters of the 2009 story, I hope the judges might try to keep things a little tighter this year. A listener-guided story that hangs together as a cohesive whole would be a remarkable thing.
I've not decided yet whether to enter a storyline but I'm a little tempted to use it as a little writing exercise and see if I can write something interesting for the next section in the form of two minutes of script.
Great theory, of course, but in practise I expect I'll just sit back and enjoy the story in all its glorious, unfolding chaos!
Sunday, 6 October 2013
I Love it When a Plan B Comes Together
The main reason I posted the rather boring story about my first jumper of the year was so that I could tell the ever-so slightly more interesting story of the second jumper of the year. This story.
Jumper one went down so well that I started plotting jumper two. After all, why spend time thinking of a birthday present when you could spend time knitting it! During my initial searches for jumper one, I'd been really impressed with the look of this pattern (Florestan). Okay, large parts of it are a little over-fussy but the main cables look great. Plus, it was in double knit, which means lots of yarn options. I'm ashamed to say that I've become a little averse to buying pattern since discovering the wealth of free ones on Ravelry but I coughed up and downloaded the pattern.
What a disappointment. It takes a lot for me to write about a pattern in these sorts of negative terms but I couldn't believe I'd paid money for such a sparsely written, badly described pattern. The PDF is 11 pages long, great! Only three of those pages have jumper instructions on. Not so great. Two of those pages only have a single column of instructions. Not great at all. The rest is ten photos and three pages of abbreviations and tips and tricks. I'm a reasonably experienced knitter and I found those two columns hard going. And that was only the sleeves...
In parallel to my pattern searching, cable deliberating and general faffing, I had a decision to make about the yarn. Jumper one had gone down well in Rowan Pure Wool so that was the logical choice. I still had four balls left so that was a chunk of the cost sorted already, all I needed was another 16 or so from Get Knitted. Yes, there'd be a risk about the dye lots but I could do the arms in the old balls and the body in the new ones and it'd look fine. It even gave me a chance to start the arms before my order arrived.
As I'd expected for that sort of quantity, Get Knitted was out of stock but promised to order it in. I wasn't worried, why would I be? And then they said that Rowan was out of stock. That's when I was worried.
To cut an extremely long story short, everywhere that had stock was too expensive (John Lewis). Everywhere that was affordable had to order from Rowan and, when the manufacturer is out of stock, you can be pretty certain that birthday present isn't going to be ready. All this waiting and investigation had eaten up precious weeks and, although I had two Florestan sleeves finished, I was now less than a month from the deadline with no real hope of completeion.
Time for Plan B!
Fortunately, thanks to jumper one, I knew of a quick and great pattern. Thanks to my swatching, I knew of a reasonable-but-ever-so-slightly-felt-prone yarn that was definitely not out of stock. But no one wants the same jumper in two different yarns so it was time to work out a different cable!
With stitch dictionaries strewn everywhere and half-worked charts, I tried several variations. I have never been so conscious of the fact that every day I spent testing was a day I wouldn't have for knitting. In the end I settled on this (heavily modified from a couple of different sources)
I need to work it through again to decipher my own symbology but, in case anyone is curious, it shows right-side rows only, wrong side is worked as you'd expect maintaining the knit/purls of the previous row. Where there's a dot on a cable, purl that stitch rather than knit it. I will try to work out the detail though as I was really pleased with the result.
Obviously the resultant jumper wasn't as nice as the first version simply because the yarn wasn't as good. However, my tension was better and it's hard not to have pride in seeing my own cables come out so well. Thank goodness for out of stock yarn, otherwise I would have been stuck with the disappointing Florestan.
Jumper one went down so well that I started plotting jumper two. After all, why spend time thinking of a birthday present when you could spend time knitting it! During my initial searches for jumper one, I'd been really impressed with the look of this pattern (Florestan). Okay, large parts of it are a little over-fussy but the main cables look great. Plus, it was in double knit, which means lots of yarn options. I'm ashamed to say that I've become a little averse to buying pattern since discovering the wealth of free ones on Ravelry but I coughed up and downloaded the pattern.
What a disappointment. It takes a lot for me to write about a pattern in these sorts of negative terms but I couldn't believe I'd paid money for such a sparsely written, badly described pattern. The PDF is 11 pages long, great! Only three of those pages have jumper instructions on. Not so great. Two of those pages only have a single column of instructions. Not great at all. The rest is ten photos and three pages of abbreviations and tips and tricks. I'm a reasonably experienced knitter and I found those two columns hard going. And that was only the sleeves...
In parallel to my pattern searching, cable deliberating and general faffing, I had a decision to make about the yarn. Jumper one had gone down well in Rowan Pure Wool so that was the logical choice. I still had four balls left so that was a chunk of the cost sorted already, all I needed was another 16 or so from Get Knitted. Yes, there'd be a risk about the dye lots but I could do the arms in the old balls and the body in the new ones and it'd look fine. It even gave me a chance to start the arms before my order arrived.
As I'd expected for that sort of quantity, Get Knitted was out of stock but promised to order it in. I wasn't worried, why would I be? And then they said that Rowan was out of stock. That's when I was worried.
To cut an extremely long story short, everywhere that had stock was too expensive (John Lewis). Everywhere that was affordable had to order from Rowan and, when the manufacturer is out of stock, you can be pretty certain that birthday present isn't going to be ready. All this waiting and investigation had eaten up precious weeks and, although I had two Florestan sleeves finished, I was now less than a month from the deadline with no real hope of completeion.
Time for Plan B!
Fortunately, thanks to jumper one, I knew of a quick and great pattern. Thanks to my swatching, I knew of a reasonable-but-ever-so-slightly-felt-prone yarn that was definitely not out of stock. But no one wants the same jumper in two different yarns so it was time to work out a different cable!
With stitch dictionaries strewn everywhere and half-worked charts, I tried several variations. I have never been so conscious of the fact that every day I spent testing was a day I wouldn't have for knitting. In the end I settled on this (heavily modified from a couple of different sources)
I need to work it through again to decipher my own symbology but, in case anyone is curious, it shows right-side rows only, wrong side is worked as you'd expect maintaining the knit/purls of the previous row. Where there's a dot on a cable, purl that stitch rather than knit it. I will try to work out the detail though as I was really pleased with the result.
Obviously the resultant jumper wasn't as nice as the first version simply because the yarn wasn't as good. However, my tension was better and it's hard not to have pride in seeing my own cables come out so well. Thank goodness for out of stock yarn, otherwise I would have been stuck with the disappointing Florestan.
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