Being on a yarn diet, I am realising, is much like being on a food diet. I have not been on a food diet for a long time and never wish to be again, but when I was a teenager I remember trying one or two obscure diets involving grapes and pinapple and the like. How little fun that was beyond reading the recipes and buying the food... What I recall most vividly from those times is the phantasizing about food. I used to lie in bed at night, not thinking about my latest celebrity crush but about cake. And chocolate. And pork crackling. And crisps. And cheese.

It didn't seem right to me to think about food that obsessively. That is not to say that I don't care about food. I LOVE food, and I spend quite a bit of time thinking about it too. But for food to replace your latest teenage crush in your thoughts? That's just wrong.

Also, the excuses you come up with to justify why it is OK to break your own dieting rules, why you are allowed this particular piece of chocolate cake or why food eaten on the go does not count or has any calories.

See, with yarn, it's kind of similar. I have found myself looking longingly at other people's purchases and leafing though pattern books, looking for the next project that might justify buying more yarn. I am toying with the idea of more knitted xmas gifts, despite the fact that I will be hard pressed to finish the ones I have already planned, simply to have an excuse to browse online yarn shops. And in the process, I have come up with a set of lame excuses and exceptions to the yarn diet, which, judging from the responses to my post about being on the diet, are not only my particular feeble excuses but universal truths! ;-)

1) It is always OK to add to your stash if the yarn is a gift.

2) Buying yarn for presents is always allowed, no matter if the yarn itself is meant to be a present or if you are planning on knitting a gift with it.

3) Buying yarn on holiday is allowed - after all, you might never get a chance to buy that particular yarn ever again!

4) Rescuing yarn from a bad home (even if that is a shop) is a good deed. You are taking pity on the poor fibre after all. ;-)

5) Buying yarn from money you have accrued in your Paypal account is OK. You have sold something so you are allowed to buy something... Never mind that the money you'd earned was meant to pay for groceries and the like.

6) Buying yarn because you are exposed to it for an unreasonable amount of time - say because you are waiting and are thus subjected to the temptation and can't get away - is acceptable. After all, being surrounded by pretty yarn for hours and not being able to buy at least some is unnecessary cruelty, isn't it?

Edited to add some more reasons, suggested in the comments:

7) Good deeds - brought to my attention by donyale: one should not forget to think of the poor LYS owners who need to live too! Isn't xmas supposed to be the season of good will and deeds, after all? That should justify all yarn purchases made at local yarn shops.

8) As tabbytuxedo points out, yarn that is aquired through yarn swaps could not possibly count! After all, it's not strictly speaking 'bought' yarn, is it?

9) And a final one from Mary Lou: it is always OK to add to the stash if by doing so, you are going to be able to use it in combination with some stash that you already possess to create a new FO.


On that note, I have been thinking about the baby cardigan I want to knit for my friend K's xmas child. She knows that she is going to have a little boy, so I have been searching around for cute baby patterns for boys - not as easy as I thought! Finally I happened across this:

Cute, isn't it? It's from the Jaeger Baby Pattern book (JB29). I love the pattern, and if I use the same colour it's neutral enough to be worn by a little baby boy, don't you think? But is the pattern too frilly?

The yarn that is used is Jaeger Baby Merino 4ply, which is machine washable, so it's ideal. And it means I will be able to buy some yarn!! Yay! ;-)

Other than that, I have been busy spinning and knitting. The day before yesterday I finally finished spinning and plying the Alpaca that I bought at the Knitting and Stitching Show at the Ally Pally. Here it is, 250g of Alpaca goodness, three large skeins. I think it will kit up as 'chunky':

Spinning this fibre has been an odd experience. The fibre length seemed longer than anything else I'd ever spun, but that might just be my impression because it had no crimp in it at all and had a texture that was uncannily like human hair. Unlike wool, it has no tendency to stick together, so it felt like I was trying to spin a bunch of my own hair... Very strange. It must be the total lack of crimp. This also means that the fibre ended up all over my clothes - no problem of it sticking to my pullover at all! ;-)

The resulting yarn is a little uneven, but it is beautiful and soft, with a little halo. I am quite happy with the result, and what looked like a rather small clump of Alpaca yielded quite a bit of yarn. Now what should I make with it? A scarf and hat set? I would love to do a pullover, but I fear that 250g may not be enough for it, even if I use quite large needles...

I have now started spinning the orange Corriedale that my Secret Pal sent me. Let me tell you, this is the most wonderful stuff. It feels and spins like butter, with minimal effort and amazing evenness.

So far I have spun half of it and have started spinning the rest of it on a new bobbin, because I am not sure yet if I want to ply the yarn together or instead ply it with something else to make it go a bit further. Maybe orange plied with yellow? On the other hand, I love the vibrancy of the burnt orange colour, so I am reluctant to 'dilute' it by plying it with a different colour. So many decisions.

Yesterday, I also finally dragged out all the different pieces of fabric that I have collected over the months, so I can make a final decision what I will use to make the bags that I want to give to some of my friends for xmas. Doesn't it look pretty?



What else... Oh yes, the socks. The socks I was knitting for the Socktoberfest. Never mind that October is over, I SHALL FINISH THESE SOCKS!

Anyway, remember me saying that I was concerned that the socks were turning out a bit wide for me? Well, I have since decided that they were definitely too wide. See, I had started them on 2.5 mm needles, although the pattern called for 2.25 mm. What difference can 0.25 mm make, I thought... well, it turns out that they can make quite a difference. I have since frogged everything, ordered the correct size circs, and have started again. I am about as far as I was before I decided to frog, but the difference is noticeable, not only in the width of the sock but also in how long it takes me to knit. Although it doesn't look any different I have actually completed one repeat more than I had before, yet when i pull the sock on it looks just the same as attempt no. 1 did. 0.25 mm - who would have thought!

As for the Greek Pullover - the knitting part of it is finished (except the i-cord), but I am having a bit of trouble with the chiffon ruffles that go on the end of the sleeves and the bottom edge of the pullover. Tried to find some chiffon yesterday in our local hobbycraft market, but no such luck. I could order over the internet, but then I couldn't see the colours properly and as I am still unsure if the yarn I used is black or actually a very dark blue I really need to see what the fabric and the yarn look like together... Maybe I will make it to some different yarn shops at some point this week.


And finally, I want to thank you all for the beautiful and thoughtful comments you left regarding my last Lost and Found installment. I was truly touched by the response to this very personal and important photograph and I continue to be amazed and gratful for the wonderful people I have met since starting this blog. Thank you.


PS: Self Portrait Tuesday entry to follow later.

New layout

I thought I should have some kind of Halloween-ish layout and as I was getting a bit tired of my old banner anyway I decided to create one out of a cobweb photograph that I took in the garden around this time of year a few years ago. What do you think?

It will probably not stay like that for long. I'm planning on replacing it with something more autumnal soon.

Lost and Found #3

It is time for another Lost and Found.

I found this photograph of my mother a few years ago, while looking through her old clothes and making space in the wardrobe, and it now lives on my office desk. It was in an old shoebox with a stack of other pictures of her, my father, and me as a baby, as well as other pictures of friends, some of whom I have never met, and a few pictures of my fathers' old girlfriends, from long before he had even met my mother.

I am pretty sure that the picture was taken in the seventies, before I was born, or if not, then when I was very little. I cannot remember the wallpaper, although I remember the bright orange coffee set well. My father still has the china cabinet in the corner of the room and the candleholders, but the monstrosity of an armchair, foisted upon my parents by my grandmother, is long gone.

I love this photograph, so obviously a snapshot. It captures a moment in time that is irretrievable because of its very ordinariness. Where was the picture taken, what was the occasion? Was it a Sunday morning breakfast or late at night?

My mother died of cancer more than seven years ago, but there is not a day when I don't think of her. One of my most vivid memories of her is seeing her walk through the garden in spring, one day when she was already ill, taking in the changes in nature, and sometimes stopping to gently touch and prise open fresh leaves and flowers, admiring their texture and shape, tightly curled in on themselves, waiting to unfurl. As she got weaker and was not able to venture far, she took pleasure from the smallest things around her, reigning in her attention to focus on the detail of the things we so often take for granted, on the minuscule and the texture and beauty of everyday life.

My mother taught me to see the world around me in a different way, to pay attention and to treasure the small and seemingly insignificant, the magical in the ordinary and mundane.

It is official.

I am on a yarn diet.

Had a quick look through my stash this morning, and I am hoarding yarn EVERYWHERE! This has got to stop! No more buying of yarn before I have used at least half of the stash.

One exception will be buying a few balls of yarn that are suitable for a little baby cardigan for my friend K, who is expecting her first baby around xmas, but apart from that, I have all the yarn I need for xmas presents and for quite few projects for myself as well.

There, I've said it. Are you witnessing this? No more yarn for Iris until after xmas.

Recruit them while they are young...

Sometimes, surprising things happen. Like for example when the ten-year old son of our friends takes to spinning yarn like a fish to water.

Yesterday, after we were all fed, D decided to show our friends how to spin on a drop spindle - with varying success. It didn't help that I had pre-drafted the roving very thinly and D wasn't used to that. Still, everyone had a go and much fun was had. The little seven-year old soon gave up and returned to playing on the playstation, but the ten-year old continued to struggle with the drop spindle long after we had all moved on to talk about other things and eventually he managed to produce some surprisingly even yarn! He then sidled up to me and started asking about the spinning wheel. I showed him and, when he appeared fascinated by the process, asked him if he wanted to try. And try he did.

I'm telling you, the child is a natural! I had to give the wheel a push in the right direction every now and then, but apart from that he was doing beautifully, treading and spinning, and feeding the yarn onto the bobbin. The resulting yarn was a little bit overspun but really not bad at all.

When it was time to leave he was asking me where he would be able to buy a spindle so he could continue practicing, so I let him pick one of ours and gave him a batch of roving to practice on. :)


Apart from this there are no news - no knitting, due to all the cooking, and cleaning, and socialising yesterday.

It also occurs to me that I did not get round to posting a Self Portrait Tuesday series yesterday. I don't think I will have time today either, so instead I think I might post another artifact on the Lost and Found series later.

I'm doing a roast chicken and veg for our friends tonight. I hardly ever do roasts, because of the chopping of vegetables involved, so I'm looking forward to this one. I have parsnips, carrots, and purple sprouting broccoli, as well as challottes and lots of garlic to stuff the chicken with. Hopefully D will do his mashed potatoes, and that should be enough I think.

I've been most housewify theses last two days. Shopping and tidying yesterday. A lot of hoovering, cleaning and cooking today. I have prepared a Raspberry and White Chocolate Trifle for dessert:


It's delicious, and very easy to make:

Ingredients:
Sponge fingers
Brandy or other dessert liquor (I used Madeira because that's what we had in the house)
one 500g carton of custard
1 pack of cream cheese
aprox. 300g whipping cream, whipped
150g bar of white chocolate, melted
50g sugar
as many raspberries as you want (I used two packets)

Divide the custard into two bowls. In one bowl, mix custard, 1/2 of the sugar and the cream cheese. In the other bowl, mix custard with the rest of the sugar and all of the melted white chocolate. Then carefully mix about half of the cream under.

Pile the sponge fingers into a bowl and soak them with as much of the alcohol as you see fit. Arrange most of the raspberries on top, just keeping a few back to decorate the top of the trifle later on, then pour the cream cheese mix on top. Level out and add the chocolate mix on top of that. Level out and finish off with a layer of the left-over cream. Decorate with raspberries and chill for a few hours.

Finis!

I also managed to make some cupcakes, using Nikki Shell's recipe, which was incredibly quick and easy. Here they are, modelled together with my Greek pullover sleeve - not that you can see any more than a black blob of that, but at least the cupcakes are photogenic!


And last but not least, here is the first picture of the Falling Leaves sock for the Socktoberfest. Finally!!

Still a long way to go, but as I can see the pattern emerging it's fun. :)

Slow Mondays....

I'm having a slow, leisurely Monday today. The weather is miserable, but I don't care, today is good. :) I managed to finally finish up a chapter draft yesterday afternoon and have submitted it, so I'm taking today to get up to speed with all sorts of other things that need doing. I've been doing some general research that I have been postponing for over a week now, I'm tidying the house, and I went grocery shopping earlier. Tomorrow we are having friends over for dinner, so I will have to do some cleaning as well, and then there is the food planning - anything that can be passed off as chicken will be OK, though, just so their two boys won't reject it. ;-) After all the PhD angst of the last few days I'm enjoying all the householdy stuff. :)

We went up to Yorkshire to see D's parents on Saturday, and although I shlepped the laptop along to work we had a lovely time. Went to Harrogate for tea and cake, strolled around and chatted. I managed to finish up the front of the Greek pullover and have started on my first sleeve. Almost there!!

Also, I have finally started my Socktoberfest socks! I'm using the Falling Leaves pattern from the latest Knitty and you know, I'm finally getting why people do lace socks - it's so much more interesting! I'm about halfway through the instep - a long way to go still, but I'm enjoying the emerging pattern and the colour of the yarn. I think the socks are getting a little bit too big, but if I make them shorter it might still work out...

I will try to get some pictures of it all tomorrow, but for now I'm off to knit some more on the Greek Pullover sleeve while I watch the reruns of the new Dr Who.

What a dreary day it is today.

It was raining all morning, which meant that the cats were sopping wet and kept trying to gain access to my lap so they could dry themselves off on my clothes. They can learn really fast if they put their mind to it.

But on to knitting-related things. You know that skein winder that I talked about yesterday? Well, it arrived! It's a bit difficult to photograph, so this was the best of the lot:

First I thought that I was right in my assessment that this is quite a crappy piece of equipment. The circumfence wasn't wide enough so the skeins kept slipping off, and I had to be extra careful not to end up with a tangled mess. Still, I managed to wind one of the little skeins of sock yarn. When D came home, however, he informed me that the three 'arms' of the skein winer, which I had thought were just fixed bits of metal, acutally extend. My skein winder is not so crappy after all!

I proceeded to go into a ball-winding frenzy and ended up with this:

Doesn't it look delicious? That's Manos del Uruguay, which you might recognise from my blog banner, and which is one of the yarns that I bought while on honeymoon in New England (which reminds me that I never did complete the report on where we went and what yarn shops we visited...). The yarn is destined to become 'My So Called Scarf' (see link on the left). The other yarn is my natural dye studio sock yarn. Socks, here I come!!

Also, during lunch yesterday I finished dyeing the sock yarn that Michelle from the Knitty Board sent me as part of a swap. It is amazing how differently different kinds of yarn behave to dye - this yarn kept on soaking up the KoolAid with very little result. What you see below is the end product of a mix of Pink Lemonade, Cherry Flavoraid, Jamaica an Ice Blue Raspberry, overdyed iwth Cherry Flavoraid and then again partially overdyed with Grape and splashes of Green Berry Rush for the pink skein, and Tamarindo and Orange, overdyed with Orange and again partially overdyed with Tamarindo for the orange skein:

I am quite pleased with the result now. Due to the dreariness of the morning the colours didn't come out quite true, so the orange and brown skein is actually a lot more vibrant and a lot less 'spotty' than it looks here, and the pink is a lovely mix of different shades. I think they are 'Pumpkin' and 'Crushed Strawberry'...

So you see, fun was had, despite the fact that I had quite a late night last night to make a dent in all the work I have to do before the weekend - before tomorrow, that is. Oops!

What isn't so much fun is that the Cashmere sock yarn that I bought from Hip Knits at the Alexandra Palace looks like this:

One. Big. Tangled. Mess. I am assuming that the skein was dropped at some point, because despite how tidy it looks when it is all twisted up it is actually all over the place. Might take me weeks to untangle, but although D suggested I should just bin the yarn I can't do that. It's cashmere!! It can't be thrown out!

I shall untangle this! I shall win!

Watch this space...

Skip North...

Oooh, have you seen THIS? Skip North is an organised knitting holiday from the 24th to the 26th February, in Haworth. Littlelixie posted about it in her blog, and now I really really want to go.

I love Haworth, and I've been wanting to go to Texere and Coldharbour Mill for ages now!! The question is just - do I have £100 spare plus all the money that I am bound to spend on yarn?

Maybe as an xmas present...

I have to admit something...

I can procrastinate endlessly. I know what I need to do, but I get sidetracked by interesting projects, get distracted by shiny things, need diversions...

What do you mean, you knew that?!

I am drowning in work this week. But what I really want to do today is finally start my first sock for the Socktoberfest. I am near desperate to start knitting with that soft, lovely yarn that I bought from ebay, and I am planning on using the magic loop technique, so I'm quite excited about that as well. All day yesterday I was thinking about how wonderful it will be to knit socks without DPNs, and getting cramps in my fingers, but the rickety little skein winder that I bought off ebay hasn't arrived yet. I've tried to get a skein winder for a while now, but they are selling faster than hot breadrolls (that's not really something that is a saying in English, is it?!) and the only thing I managed to get is a very old little winder that, as far as I can see, isn't adjustable... We'll see how useful it will end up being, but as long as it can help me wind those skeins of sock yarn into neat little balls I will be happy.

So, waiting for this event of a lifetime, the arrival of my skein winder, I tackled another project yesterday, which had been in the pipeline for quite some time: D's hat made from handspun. Made from THE handspun, in fact, the first yarn that we spun on drop spindles during our honeymoon in New England. We plied it when we got the spinning wheel, and D picked the KoolAid colours to dye it. It ended up green and orange, which, because of the muted colours that the grey roving produced, looks rather pretty.

D has been asking for that hat for ages, and a few days ago, he helped me wind the yarn - he's becoming quite good at playing skein holder, if I can get him to sit still for long enough. ;-) The resulting ball looked like this:


Cute, isn't it? It's very noticeable that this was our first attempt at spinning - the beginning is very thick and thin, with huge slubs, but the yarn evens out quite a bit towards the end (which is the bit on the outside of the ball). I grabbed a free beanie pattern I found through Google, and my trusty circs, and started knitting. Two hours later, I had completed the hat. It's VERY rustic looking, due to the unevenness of the yarn, but I kind of like it that way. I also think it could have been a bit bigger / longer, but D thinks it's perfect, which is most important. He was wearing it all evening:


And lying flat, so you can see it better:


Can you see how uneven the knitting is at the hem? That's where the really fat bits of yarn were.

Yesterday evening, while watching the new series of River Cottage and Jamie's Great Escape on tv I started spinning up the Alpaca. It's strange to work with - the fibres are really long and smooth, and spinning it brings out the 'human hair' feel even more. I decided not to pre-draft and spun mainly from the fold, which worked OK. The resulting yarn isn't 100% even, but not actually too bad at all:


I have also decided what to do with the orange roving my secret pal sent me - I will try to spin it very thinly so it goes a long way. Maybe there will be enough for a hat and mittens, or maybe a lace shrug?

Carolyn's alpaca, when I finally get the carding equipment sorted, is also going to be spun very thinly, so the practice will be good for me. :)

Talking about carding - do any of you avid spinners know where I can get carding cloth for a drum carder? I wanted to order it from Wingham Wool Works, but apparently they don't have it anymore... Or else, do you think that it is possible to cover a drum carder with pieces of carding cloth for hand carders? How would you fix the cloth? Is it just glued on!?