Distrac…ooh a butterfly!

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Busy doing nothing

I thought it must be about time to write a post, we seem to have been very busy the last few weeks but when I tried to remember what we have done I’m struggling to have come up with anything to write about, it has all been very ordinary things but there have been a lot of them. I’ve got an earworm of the song now, I only know the chorus really, I just looked up the rest of it and I like the line, ‘I must rehearse the songbirds, To see that they sing in key.’ I’ll have to learn the rest of it next time I have nothing to do.

Tiny was sick a couple of weeks ago. A week after that the Man in the Shed took Small and Tiny off on family camp with the Scouts, I still haven’t managed to remove all the mud from the strange places it has found its way into. I got out of camp by going on a training weekend for Joey Scout leaders (Joeys are the equivalent of Beavers in the UK) and it felt very odd to have a night to myself with nobody else in the house but I did enjoy the quiet. This week, when home was being hit by a bout of freezing weather just when it should be warming up, we got hit by a 39°C day just when I was getting used to it being in the 20s again and my body said, ‘No, too hot!’ and promptly sent me to sleep on the sofa all afternoon.

I got all my squares joined together, it didn’t take as long as I thought it might. I had to hold the yarn in my left hand to make the join work because you had to keep the working yarn under the bits you were joining and I usually hold it in my right hand, (I was going to say I hold it the wrong way but then I decided it isn’t wrong, just different and it works perfectly well most of the time) so I had the option of putting the yarn round to the underneath after every stitch or holding it in my other hand. The first couple of squares were slow going but once I had done a few it was quicker. The border wasn’t very interesting to do, most of the rounds have a spike stitch every fourth stitch which messed up my rhythm and slowed me down a little and the last round has 1408 stitches so it was a bit of a slog but I really like the way it looks. It fits nicely on the bed too but if I took a photo if it there then I would have to tidy up the rest of the room for you so here it is on the floor. You can click on the photo if you want to make it bigger.

The pretty cardigan with the pockets is coming along nicely. I got to the end of the body and because it is stocking stitch all the way down with an i-cord cast off it is a bit curly at the moment, I am really hoping that once it is blocked it won’t curl up so much but I am not sure. Maybe I’ll have to weigh down the pockets with all my pocket detritus, that ought to do the job.

The pockets made a lot of ends to sew in because you have to cut and rejoin the yarn in various places and I thought I would sew those ends in before I start the sleeves so instead of doing that I got distracted making a secret thing for Tiny’s birthday. The pattern matches her blanket but it is in different colours, here is how far I have got with it so far. I had to redo the back because I did the number of rows in the pattern and it was humongous (is that how you spell that? It doesn’t look right whatever letters I put) and when I checked the size of the squares for the front from the blanket I realised there was no way they would ever fit together and I unravelled a load of it and redid it smaller. The Man in the Shed earned himself a look by suggesting I could have measured it before I had done the whole square and made it the right size in the first place. He’s right really but don’t tell him or he will be smug about it.

The only other exciting news I can think of is that my mending and sewing pile has reached the critical mass where I decided I really should do something about it. At the moment it consists of a sleeping bag with a ripped seam, a pair of Small’s shorts with a hole in the bum, one of Tiny’s skirts which looks like it has been through a shredder (I’m not really sure it is mendable, maybe a patch will have to do), a hermit crab which I can see nothing wrong with but apparently is coming apart at the seams and has holes in, and a pile of Scout badges. A couple of them are Small’s and the rest are mine – having sent me on my training weekend to make my Gilwell woggle our group remembered that they ought to invest me and give me a scarf to put in the woggle and some badges to sew on. So now I’ve told you I am going to do the mending pile, I’ll have to get on and do it, won’t I?

We’re busy doing nothing,
Working the whole day through.
Trying to find lots of things not to do.
We’re busy going nowhere,
Isn’t it just a crime?
We’d like to be unhappy, but
We never do have the time.

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So much for not starting anything else

Do you remember I said I had a load of stuff to finish before I started anything? Well I did finish a couple of them and then realised I should get on with two different new baby presents so rather than the big pile of too much yarn diminishing it now has grown by several colours. They are lovely colours and I did think about putting on photo of a heap of wool but I thought that would spoil the surprise so you’ll just have to wait until I’ve finished those to see them.

I had a plan in the back of my head for a stripy jumper for Tiny a while ago but I was being good and not buying any more wool for a while and then a friend who was having a tidy up of her stash gave me some bright blue aran that she said wasn’t enough for a whole jumper for her grandchildren but it might do one for one of mine (children not grandchildren). When I suggested to Tiny that perhaps she might like a blue jumper she had clearly remembered the conversation from a month or two ago about stripes and was quite insistent about it and Small seems quite keen on the bright blue. I had a think about it and realised that I have several ends of balls of aran left from various jumpers so I could do her the striped jumper out of those and probably have enough left for a blue one for Small if it had a different coloured pattern on the yoke or maybe blue and green stripes because I have most of a 400g ball of green left as well.

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So here is the beginning of a stripy jumper which I started at the weekend. I had forgotten how fast children’s clothes are, especially in big yarn, I haven’t made any for at least six months! I’m not sure why I am knitting it now because I am having to guess how much she will grow before it gets cold again but we are going camping in the holidays so perhaps she will need it then – August, cold and dank and wet, brings more rain than any yet. The pattern is called Fiver and is a free one on the Love Knitting blog. There isn’t a really clear picture of a child standing up wearing it so I’m not sure if it is meant to be short but the length they gave for the 4 year old size wouldn’t reach down to Tiny’s belly button even the size she is now so I have added about five inches to the given length in an attempt to cover up the almost permanent builder’s bum. I’m not too sure whether the colours really go together but she seems to like it and we’ll be able to see her coming a mile off – on a scale of one to Smarties-before-they-changed-to-natural-colours it is really a notch or two brighter than it looks in the photo!

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In which I am easily distracted

I was trying to decide what to write about next –  I haven’t told you about the interestingly shaped bed jacket I am making for my mum or about Kit the mystery chrysalis that we are over-wintering in a box:IMG_0832

I have no idea what he is, we found an elephant hawk moth caterpillar (called Kenneth) one year which was fun and he hatched out ok the next summer but Kit is a surprise. He decided the wall on our front steps would be a good place to hibernate but I thought given the quantity and type of traffic that likes to balance on the wall on its way to school the shed might be safer…

I planned out a whole post in my head about how we spent the bank holiday, about the spiders in the greenhouse waging war by hatching out another brood right above the doorway so I got a face full of baby spiders and about  how nice it was to sit in the garden, listening to the church bells ringing and making fruit out of bubble wrap for the Magic Tree to wear when it is being the other tree and about how certain sounds (church bells, the shipping forecast and the bit when Radio 4 goes over to the world service in the middle of the night and plays Sailing By and the national anthem) are nice and make me feel like everything is as it should be. The neighbours now think I am mad (see photo of plum tree with unusual fruit) and I have more or less knackered my long sewing needle by sticking it through too much bubble wrap (the Man in the Shed had to straighten it out for me at least three times before I finished).
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I planned out another whole post about how I was going to be very good and finish lots of things I had started before I began anything new – the golden fruit I am supposed to be finishing before June, the bed jacket, the Tiny Clanger that I began about two years ago, the enormous blackwork map of old British counties that I finished ages ago and haven’t worked out how to hang up yet, the tapestry for the top of the piano stool which has been nearly finished for ages and ages and ages and just has a lot of very boring plain border left to do, the blanket with the hexagons that I am supposed to be doing in between things to use up lots of multi coloured double knit, the hats I am supposed to be knitting for the shop, the pattern I am supposed to be writing down, the… you get the idea.

And then somebody asked me whether I could make something or other for the summer fair at church so that they could have a ‘name the something or other’ competition. I made a frog prince and a pony for Small and Tiny last Christmas and I thought maybe that was what the person had in mind but I am not very good at making the same thing twice (low boredom threshold – the second one of anything usually never gets started or if it does then it sits in the bottom of a bag for years).

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So I dug out the book of instructions that they came from (by Heidi Bears – ooh look she’s done a stegosaurus pattern too!) and started making a different something or other (sorry mum, I will finish your jacket before it gets cold again…). It is made from forty four crochet polygons and the church fair is in the middle of June so I reckon if I do one a day then I should have it finished in time. So far it just has two back legs, can you tell what it is yet?

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