Stuff I made

My excuse for not blogging is this: We signed up to Bulldog Broadband at our new house as it we supposedly had a line installed by them and BT couldn’t get access to it so we thought it would be most convenient to stick to what was already there. However we did this in late August/early September, and we’re still not connected. We have even exceeded our connection date 4 weeks ago. Anyway, the only internet access I have had is at college and it’s always full of weird geeks looking up concrete codes who give you funny looks if you look up anything barely artsy, let alone blogging about something that isn’t Linux, C++ or other compu-tech psychobabble. We got connected today atlast. It took the BT engineer less than 10 minutes. Atleast they were early (they came at 7.45 and we were given a schedule of 8am until 1pm so it was great news as it meant we didn't have to sit in the house until he came). How Bulldog managed to screw it up so much is beyond comprehension but they really should get shut down for deception.

Stuff I made

Empire. It needs to be blocked and get a crochet picot edging which shouldn’t take long but are annoying to do so I’ll wait until I take it home the weekend after next and get the right sized crochet hooks out. I think I screwed up the neck band (too wide) but if you fiddle with the garment it looks ok. Perhaps if I get around to wearing this thing I'll take more pics.

Tea cosy with lining –not for me I’m afraid but for my DB’s birthday. Shots to come. I bought an adorable tea set from Whittards of Chelsea which I modelled the cosy for.

Purchases
Recently, I bought lots of craft books (in English rather than Japanese for once!). I bought Erika Knight’s ‘Classic’ book from her new ‘collectables’ series (was debating over whether to get the ‘Glamour’ book as well, but I thought that by the time I got around to knitting them the designs might not be to my taste/have fashioned out/I got too fat for them to be flattering)

It’s a great book, and I’m in love with the simple v-neck sweater on the front cover as well as the socks and the cable scarf. I love the shaping of the Bardot sweater but I can’t really imagine wearing a super chunky knit (Rowan’s little big wool) garment as it would probably weigh a kilogramme or more, and I already have an old Gap-bought cashmere one in white which I am fond of. I have seen Jaeger do a similar pattern for a 4ply which I think was published last year, but the collar shaping just looks a bit horrid. Ho hum. Maybe I’ll find some acrylic-mixed-with-wool super chunky to substitute that won’t weigh as much.

I also purchased the Impatient Patchworker book which is awesome. The fabrics all look covetable and fit well with each other. And then I realised they were the Kaffe Fasset fabrics which I had once sneered at. I suppose the author only picked out the nice florals and stripes and they’re put together in a way I wouldn’t have ever thought up myself. I very much want to make the checkerboard cushion in the alternative colour-ways that make it look more like a collage of pictures than a racing flag. I am also totally loving the tote bag with striped handles which is totally fun, albeit not the style I would usually go for. I feel that I might spend a stupid amount online at some rowan fabric retailer or another sometime soon… or maybe I’ll wait until after Christmas?

My last craft book binge purchase was the ‘Basic Stitches’ book by Kate Ebben. I absolutely love her satin stitch flower motif designs and she makes chain stitch look so sexy with these flower outlines repeated and stuck on the end of a scarf (it’s on the book cover). I am absolutely loving it. Might even have persuaded me to go down to buy a whole bunch of threads this week (the only time I buy threads is if I have a particular cross stitch chart so I don’t really have any primary coloured/bold threads for general purpose stitching) and jazz up ugly bed linen, napkins, and notebooks.

Antique Angel (can’t remember if I mentioned them after the Ally Pally Knitting and stitching show) are a beautiful online quilting fabric stockists. Lovely florals and stripes. I nearly got to the point of giving up with even starting quilting with UK bought fabrics after seeing a whole host of ugly fabrics which most quilting shops seem to try to flog to naff grannies, complete with 1980’s inspired prints of puppies, kittens, marbled effects, novelty Christmas fabric, novelty Halloween fabric, oh the whole hog of awfulness. Nothing that said to me “you could possibly buy me at Cath Kidston for 3 times as much money” or “You would see me in a finished project in a Country Living magazine double-page spread, only stocked by some excessively expensive Chelsea Harbour design house”. Their fabric is pretty, feminine, vintage-looking, and classic. I love it. They also do some regular naff-granny-chic stuff too, but none of it is too hideous.

The only thing that annoys me is that they only do mail order, and because of that, I can’t get a pile of fabrics and see how they look next to each other, so unless I stalk them down at every given craft show, it seems like I’ll have to blind-guess how they’ll match up. Well it still looks like Japan is the only awesome place to buy quilting fabric still…

I was absolutely flabbergasted to go into Muji last week to only find they were selling a white wool scarf which was almost identical to my cabled white scarf. It had regular twist cables instead of my horse-shoe cables on the outside and it had a bobble in the middle instead of the cables I have in the middle. I can’t claim I actually designed my scarf as it came from a Japanese pattern book so perhaps the same knitwear designer is working for Muji? Who knows? And I can't even find a picture on their website.

I also skidaddled into Fabrics Galore in Battersea again and spent a small fortune in fabrics, mainly cotton prints, including a red with white spots polka dot fabric and another floral fabric which wouldn’t look out of place in Cath Kidston’s King’s Road shop, and this gorgeously soft plaid brushed cotton which will probably turn themselves into pyjama bottoms and maybe if I have enough left over a pillow case or two due to their sheer softness.

I also got this fantastic brown fabric with awesome woven flowers which really reminded me of this fantastic weaving exhibit the Victoria and Albert museum has of the Spitalfields/East end weavers, and although mine wasn’t a snip at £14/m, I bet the Spitalfields weavers would probably have charged you a week’s wages per metre back in their day (remember this was an era where you were lucky to get a new dress a decade, not just pop along to Primark for new clothes because you’re too lazy to wash).

I think they will be fabulous as cushions. The only thing is I was looking for some brown moleskin to back the cushions, which the shop had last weekend, but it looked like they sold out so I am going to have to source some in a few weeks. Either that or make do with some fairly bright pink moleskin (which would go with the flowers but probably very little else). I thought brown velvet would be fabulous but I couldn’t find any that wasn’t velour-jersey type stuff, which is really nasty and I know John Lewis stock some nice velvet but it is rather pricey. And to boot the nasty woman from last time wasn’t on the till.

So I guess you could say I’ve been idea sourcing. I haven’t really finished anything properly yet!

Oohh… on a totally unrelated note, but if you’re in the Clapham/Battersea area, make a dash to the Honey and Hive Shop who sell awesome honey year-around but also have a stock of apples from their orchard (which the bees feed on) in Surrey, which include 76 rare types of apples, mostly lost in Britain. Apparently the whole lot sold out in 2 weeks last year so be quick. My favourite is the Oaken Pin named after the oak pins used to plug 16^th century caskets that they resemble. It’s juicy and yummy. Love it. And it’s not shipped from New Zealand and injected with preserving chemicals or whatever.