Inspiration, Friend and Foe

Who knows where ideas come from? For me, the answer is occasionally yarn.

Quite some time ago (because this is a very belated post) someone brought some spare yarn into work. I know, spare yarn. The concept is strange to me too. I took away a couple of balls of Freedom Spirit in earthy browns. I'd seen it in my local yarn store a few times and the colours interested me. What interested me more was the 100% wool content. Mmmm blocktastic.

I think it was that which made my brain cry out: "LACE!". To which my more rational mind replied: "Worsted?" But my impulsive, ambitious mind continued to cry "LACE" despite my reason's best attempt to point out that I hate lace in variegated colours.

I think it's the fact that the balls were free that gave me the freedom to try things I wouldn't have attempted with yarn I'd purchased. It's not that I always buy expensive yarn, just that it's nice to have something out of the blue that I've not already planned something for. That and the 100% wool.

I've been fascinated by the idea of lace in worsted for some time so I enthusiastically dug out my stitch dictionaries. I was particularly drawn to a German one I bought in Loop last year and quickly found something I liked. The fight to get it into a pattern I loved was long and arduous and, as it turned out, fraught with failure.

I haven't posted pictures of the resultant scarf on Ravelry because, quite frankly, it would be a cruel and humiliating offence to a perfectly good yarn. Needless to say, I learned a lot from that experiment.

The bit I was least happy with was a weird knot/cable combination that could not have worked less if I had tried. The next version of the scarf was held up primarily by my attempts to refine a 8×6 section of the pattern just before the lace joined the short row section of the scarf. I must have tried two dozen variations before I returned to my stitch dictionaries and found something that worked. More than that, it perfectly blended the two sections together.

On a spontaneous trip to Cardiff I bought some luscious Rowan Creative Focus Worsted. Soft and lovely as the yarn is, the truly remarkable thing is the gorgeous range of colours it comes in. Being single ply it was a little splitty but nowhere near what I'd expected, it comes highly recommended.

The result was this:

(thanks to my sister for modelling it)

It was very close to right. But the short row section was still on too large a needle and the points curled irritatingly as soon as I wrapped it round anything. I returned briefly to my practicing but, fortunately, both these problems were easily solved. By casting on plenty of extra stitches then decreasing every row rather than the original every-other, the cast on edge gains the extra stretch it need to wrap more flexibly (with some very pointy points).

Now with added pointy

By this point, I didn't really feel like knitting it again but, fortunately, it's extremely quick to knit so I trawled Get Knitted for exactly the right shade of Cascade 220, cursed loudly when it was out of stock, then waited patiently to start draft number three. Which I will save for another post...

The News Quiz

Last year I was lucky enough to see recordings for a sketch show and two sit coms, previously I'd seen the Now Show but last night was my first panel game.

Back in November, despairing at my chances of getting Cabin Pressure tickets, I also applied for a News Quiz recording. Months passed, it was clear I'd got nowhere with Cabin Pressure and I forgot exactly what date I'd requested for the News Quiz. It fell completely out of my mind.

So when an email arrived from the BBC a couple of weeks ago, I assumed it must be one of the newsletters I'm subscribed to. One comedy double-take later I realised my mistake. So I found a hotel bargain and booked my train tickets.

I did a little research on the internet beforehand about how early the queue starts and my paranoia soon grew. I was lucky enough to have some company last night and my "get there before 6:30" advice soon changed to "the earlier the better".

At 5pm I joined the queue and, for about 15 minutes, the queue consisted of two of us. The BBC have made some changes and they now let people in a lot earlier than the time on the ticket, something I was exceedingly grateful for considering the temperature yesterday evening.

We were let in at 5:15 but I lost out on a number 2 sticker because they'll only sticker a ticket for people who have arrived. I lingered outside with a growing band of others waiting for sisters, husbands and friends.

There was some disagreement over how best to describe Portland Place (apparently "head towards Regents Park, look for the glass building framing a church spire" is no good, the better description is "the massive building lit with blue light") but, after convincing the security guard that I definitely didn't have anything sharp - no, not even keys - we were in.

Number 20 & 21!

The biggest difference between the News Quiz and everything else I've seen is that there were no retakes. None. Not the linking bits, not cuttings, nothing. The whole recording was long, we didn't finish until 9:15 and I'm very curious to see what's made it onto tonight's show.

The panelists were Jeremy Hardy, Mark Steel (who looked like he might be coming down with something), Katy Brand and Daniel Finkelstein. It was fantastic fun and everyone in the audience enjoyed themselves no end.

I know that News Quiz tickets aren't easy to get but it comes highly recommended. I fully support Mark Steel's proposal that there must be room in the digital spectrum for a sweary version of Radio 4. Now that I've seen the sweary version of the News Quiz I just don't want to go back.

Fasten Your Seatbelts

With the exception of the entry linked to from the BBC and another post that (for no good reason) became popular with comment spammers, my most successful blog post has been about John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme try-out show. While I'd love to imagine this was due to the fact that I'd composed a particularly interesting blog entry, or perhaps the entertaining quantities of gin I'd consumed when I wrote it, it's pretty clear that the key is in the words "John Finnemore". Cheesecake among strudels.

So it'd be remiss of me if I failed to point out something significant in the schedules this week: Series Four of Cabin Pressure begins tomorrow.

I won't go into details about the lengths I went to in an attempt to get tickets for a recording but, suffice it to say, the ticket unit might have frowned a little. Like the (very) vast number of applicants, I was unsuccessful so I'll have to content myself with enjoying it tomorrow at 6:30.

I'm not going to sing the praise of Cabin Pressure today. After all, many of you know me and have therefore received this lecture many, many times. All I will say is: if my highest recommendation and the prospect of an episode called "Timbuktu" doesn't incite you to listen then you are a lost cause.

Rubies, Roses and Procrastination

 

Last year I took three very different evening courses: VBA, scriptwriting and sugarcraft. Of the three, sugarcraft was the least rewarding but the one that has been of most practical use to me so far.

This year is my parents' 40th wedding anniversary. With only the small sample bouquet from my sugarcraft course to go by, they asked me to make some flowers for their anniversary party cake. Even though my skills are restricted to roses, carnations and some generic foliage.

They asked in October so, naturally, I only started in earnest on Christmas Eve, four days before the party. My Christmas was a quiet one and I spent a few hours each day on the arrangement. I finished it up in plenty of time: the night before the party.

Buttontastic

There are two patterns that I would (and frequently do) recommend frequently to new knitters: Christine Vogel's Drop Stitch Scarf and Amy Duvendack's Big Button Hat.

I love being able to tell people that, so long as they can knit and wrap the wool around a needle, they can make the drop stitch scarf. No purls, no decreases, nothing complex. Considering how effective it is (especially in a variegated yarn) it's so easy for beginners to make something that looks fantastic and surprisingly impressive. It also teaches the most important lesson of all: the only hard part of knitting is the counting.

The genius of the Big Button Hat is, primarily, how quick it is to make. I can complete one in two hours but even a beginner can see results as soon as they start. I do tend to talk people through a flat version rather than working in the round but that's the other beauty of the pattern: it's worked in the same way as I teach knitting. Knit to start off with, then rows of stocking stitch as they learn purling and, finally, some basic decreasing. Hat!

In October, with our annual Christmas sale for WaterAid growing ever closer, I returned to the Big Button Hat with a vengeance. And buttons. Beautiful, beautiful buttons.

For the interested, the yarn is Wendy's Serenity chunky (lovely colours, amazingly soft and stunningly good value). But, I think you'll agree, the buttons are the real attraction of the hats.

Size Matters

This year I received my most challenging commission yet: A request for slipper socks for my niece (not on behalf of my niece, actually from my niece, a girl with absolute faith in my omnipotent powers of knitting).

Socks should be fairly straightforward, after all there are hundreds of sock patterns on Ravelry so you would have thought that I could have come up with something pretty quickly. But, with my usual picky standards in full force, I rejected dozens of candidate patterns. Then my niece found some socks I'd made for her last Christmas and suddenly I knew what to aim for.

The problem with these socks (taken from Cute Knits for Baby Feet) was that they were too small for my niece even before I gave them to her. Cute as they were, the largest size on the pattern was 18-24 months. I thought about trying to adapt the general patterning for a generic sock but I never quite got round to it.

Then, after a couple of months of subtle nagging from my sister (caused by less subtle nagging from my niece) I was struck by a revelation. I didn't need a different pattern, I needed bigger yarn. After all, these were slipper socks, not regular socks.

So I needed something chunky-ish, I needed pink and I needed white. But there's a lot more variety in double knit than chunky and, thanks to another project I was working on (more of that later) I had figured out that double knit doubled is pretty close to chunky.

In the end, I knitted the smallest size in the pattern with some fairly generic Patons double knit, doubled. I had to lengthen the foot but that was all. To say that I was happy with the result is an understatement.

The only problem I had was that distinction between the two colours wasn't great because the pink was so pale. That's when a local craft shop came to the rescue with some irrationally girly ribbon/edging that was both the perfect colour and stretchy.

I'm extremely pleased with the finished socks. And, more importantly, so is my niece!

2012

So this blog is over a year old. Who would have thought? When I started it just before Christmas 2011 I was wondering whether I'd actually keep it up. Well, evidence would suggest no. That's not to suggest that it hasn't been fun to write, quite the contrary, nor that I don't intend to pick it up again, only that 2012 was the oddest of odd years.

One of the reasons I started the blog was the fact that I had time to think and I figured I might as well put that thinking into writing stuff down. As the year progressed, I had less time to think and less time to write stuff down. For a while I wasn't even listening to much radio and even my knitting dropped off for a bit.

While I've been going through my quiet phase I missed the opportunity to write about some top quality radio and the months before Christmas are probably my most high-volume time for knitting in the build up to our Wateraid charity sale. I've got a lot to catch up on.

I know it's a little late but I'd like to wish a happy new year to everyone that took a look at my blog in 2012. May 2013 be wonderful.