Inky Goings On.

A combination of an injured foot from Berlin, a cold kindly bestowed upon me by the boyfriend and the torrents of rain beating our roof meant I succeeded in completing two projects this weekend.

That’s a Tree Jacket and Cloud Bolero (now tempted by the updated Liesl). But mostly, I swore to myself I would finish two projects before I cast on for the February Lady Sweater. Yeah, everyone else has already finished. Sod it. It looks so flattering, I might knit eight.

I also received something lovely in the post today. A fabulous ring:

Its from Pookeh and I adore it. The boyfriend absolutely hates it. I fear he may flush it down the loo when I hop in the shower. But for £5.50 you can’t really go wrong, can you?

Right, best dash to watch my friend on University Challenge, else they’ll kill me.

I came across this in Wilkinson the other day:

Yes, it’s a cat harness and lead. I snapped it on my camera phone, but everyone I showed it to refused to believe I didn’t find it in a joke shop. Any thoughts on why this would ever be a)neccessary or b) practical?

Yes, I know. I once brought knitting, and now bring cat harnesses. Be patient.

Am I the only person to go on holiday and despise every minute? I wish I’d stayed at home.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who remains cold in the summer:despite the moderate heat, I’m still wrapping up, and dreaming of knit socks to warm my icy feet. I’m never sure why, when I pass several men who’ve given up clothing their torso altogether on the five minute walk to the bus stop. With this in mind, I started looking at hot water bottle covers for a good friend of mine, who rents a room in a gorgeous Victorian house which, whilst beautiful, has high ceilings and single glazing which leads to chilly winters, and indeed, summers. So I whipped up a hot water bottle cover for her:

Pattern: Trebuchet Hot Water Bottle Cozy by Trampled by Geese

Yarn: Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran, 2 Balls.

Needles: 4.5mm

Mods: I made the neck shorter, and changed the increases to YOs in order to make eyelets to thread the ribbon through. Got bored of following a pattern about one quarter of the way throught the cable pattern, so just made it up as I went along after a cursory glance at Eunny’s Bayerische sock pattern. Made a flap at the bottom, with a seed stitch border, and sewed on some twill tape and poppers like so:

This was speedy and satisfying to knit: the cables broke up the stockinette, and vice versa. If I knit it again, I’d throw in a few decreases on the flap at the bottom: the seed stitch made it a little wider than the main body, and I think a decrease or two would have tidied it up a little.

See what I mean? The Cashmerino has hardly pilled at all: there was a tiny bit of fluff around the top of the neck, but considering this was mainly a bus knit, so was constantly being dragged out of and shoved into my bag, that’s unsurprising. I’d heard all the horror stories about the yarn, and was surprised at how well it stood up. I have enough to make a jumper, so might swatch and see how that holds up for a few weeks first. I finished this before my exams properly began, and it’s just been sitting around waiting for sewing and finishing. Shameful.

Thanks for the comments on the wrist – it’s much betterm, though I occasionally feel a twinge when I’ve been knitting or typing for too long: a handy reminder not to overdo it!

At long last, end of year exams are over. I ended with a relatively nice exam on Literary/Cultural Theory and wrote on Irigaray and Raymond Williams, but it’s still very nice to know that I have no pressing deadlines until November. In the early stages of revision I did succeed in frenetically finishing some knitting, the first to be blocked was this:

A scarf in seafoam stitch started in January, and tossed aside for months. It’s knitted in Lady Godiva (I admit, I was enticed by the name, studying in Coventry) on 5.5mm needles, and took roughly 1.5 skeins. These pictures were taken in my hideously neglected garden, left un-weeded since revision fear took hold a month ago. It’s now literally carpeted with bastard strawberry plants.

If you look closely, you’ll see i was off by a stitch or so every few rows. Of course, nobody ever looks closely when I show them my knits, except me. I obsess over every minor mistake, and this is why I’m never really satisfied with anything I finish. This scarf is going to a dear friend for their birthday, since they’ve been begging me for it since they saw me drag it out of my handbag at a student conference. I don’t think she actually believed I’d give it to her (it looks more complex than it is), so hopefully it’ll be a surprise.

I knit it to my height, 68 inches, then realised afterwards, oops, it’s not for me: it should be 72 inches. Ah well, I’m sure she won’t miss the four inches too much.

I spent the entire revision period dreaming of all that I would knit on finishing these exams, and naturally, as soon as I do finish them, my wrist literally locks and causes me unbelievable agony every time I try to move it. Off to the doctor’s I went. Who knew you could get RSI from writing? It may be a while before my next finished object…

Taking advantage of the fact that nobody seemed to need a receptionist at work last night, I decided to whip my knitting out until students poured in at 9pm. Unfortunately, I’d forgotten to pack my cable needle in the rush for the morning bus. Not knowing how to cable without a needle, and being too stubborn to put the project away until later, I started rifling through the drawers and cupboards for something that could substitute. Pens, pencils? Too big. A straw? Too bendy. Then I happened upon the perfect implement:

The ink refill of a ballpoint pen. Perfect. The project is secret, for now. A present for a friend’s birthday.

On Friday, I visited the National Portrait Gallery, primarily to see the Brilliant Women exhibition. The exhibition was predictably fantastic, but one portrait I happened upon in the portrait stayed with me over the weekend. As part of  “The Artist’s Process”, Andrew Tift’s portrait “Neil and Glenys Kinnock” was displayed, along with notes and primary sketches that informed the final piece. I’m a tremendous fan of both Neil and Glenys, no doubt in part to them feeling “local” to me whilst growing up in South Wales, but it was the background of the painting that really drew me in.

The essence of the portrait, and of the sitters seemed encapsulated in the ornaments and books behind them, from the “Votes for Women” statuette, to the numerous Mandela representations, even including a model of the Aneurin Bevan statue on Cardiff High Street (though without the mandatory traffic cone hat bestowed upon him weekly by students).

Many paintings that incorporated books or writing seemed to treat them as an afterthought or secondary prop, with the titles scrawled on in hurried and uneven script barely, if at all, legible. A portrait of Pinter I noted used a shelf of books directly behind the playwright’s head to reflect his profession, but not one had a title. The Tift portrait, conversely, included every title meticulously. I read the bookshelf from left to right, noting a bank of classic European novels, followed by the more telling handful of political books, predominantly on equality and the labour movement. The detail in the background struck me as being highly personal: a nosey peek into the possessions that defined these admirable public figures, much like poking through a friend’s bookcase.

I decided to look around my own house, to see what our own trinkets said about the two of us. A quick scurry around the house showed up nothing – I realised we didn’t have any of the personality-laden ornaments of the portrait, just books, files, notebooks and craft implements. It seemed to come down to a feeling of impermanence in our surrounding – the house is rented, and as with many rented houses, we’re forbidden from altering the decor or furniture, which in turn prevents us from feeling “at home”. We’re both aware that we’ll be moving within a year or two, dependent on jobs and education and therefore only seem to collect things that are functional immediately. The predominant question we’ll ask ourselves on buying anything, even food, is “have we got space?”. The utterance most likely to follow either one of us putting anything decorative back on the shelf is “if we had our own place…”

In the meantime, I’ll look forward to having shelves that I can place objects like those depicted on, rather than piling them high with lecture notes and novels. Have you got any interesting ornaments?