People Tree dress

Ooh... I have a new dress...




















Hand woven cloth delicately embroidered, it's really beautiful.

A year and a day..

Since my last post. Oh. Dear. That’s rather a long time! However I’ve been busy, promise. Just not on anything terribly crafty, or at least not very much. The little boy is now a big boy and has just celebrated his very first birthday. He is a wonder and a delight.

Here he is enjoying his first train ride on the Bluebell Railway in East Sussex last weekend. So he’s pretty much been keeping me on my toes and the only bit of weaving I have to show for my year is a little bit of inkle weaving. Yes, dear husband gave me an inkle loom for my birthday (I rather like the pattern of birthday looms, feel free to keep it up darling..) and here is the result of my tinkering:

Rather nice and so easy to start with. If I was learning to weave again I would start with one of these – it really is stripped back weaving and you get results in no time at all. Albeit narrow results.

BTW the spots on that surface have now gone – hurrah! Replaced with slick mosaics in a lovely grey. I managed to reign in my plans for a wild worktop based on it not being everyone’s cup of tea, including mine.

Same time next year?…

Vigo

Vigo was born on April 20th weighing 8lb 8oz. He's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen and we are over the moon! Here he is at 2 days old with his cat.

Cafeteria la Biennale

Wow. This amazing place is the interior of Cafeteria la Biennale in Venice designed by Tobias Rehbeger. I think I may have hit on inspiration for our kitchen island mosaic design.

New yarns, please

So I never realised how tricky cotton is to knit with… it ain’t got no stretch!

This is not a welcome characteristic for my level of knitting ability, plus the colour is looking more and more pink everyday.

So, a necessary step has been taken. The cotton will be used to weave with instead, and new yarn – wool – has been ordered. In green.

Fun on a Wednesday

This morning has not gone entirely to plan. Firstly my computer decided to disable the USB ports so neither the mouse or keyboard would work, meaning that interacting with it was largely impossible. Then the electricity company rocked up to change the meter which meant no power for a time, while I was trying to fix the computer. Plus the joiners are making a racket and lots of dust and generally driving me up the wall.

Urgh. I felt like going back to bed frankly!

So with all my plans (temporarily) sabotaged I got out the yarn for the blanket. The coral (which has morphed into pink in between the shop and home!) is the main colour and then ecru stripes, if I can work out how to change colour every few rows. I’m not trying to feminise my baby boy, it was coral, honest!

Anyway, the power is back on and I’ve fixed the computer so I’ve got no excuse not to work again now. Boring!

Pregnancy stops play

I’ve recently discovered that I can’t weave any more – boo! My baby is due in 6 weeks and I’ve become too large to grapple with the loom, especially the treadles which is a real shame because I am full of plans for weaving nice baby things which I never managed to do earlier.

So with weaving forfeited, I have dusted off the old knitting needles and am embarking on a baby blanket. I don’t really like a lot of the blankets in the shops – the fabrics are either nasty static man-made ‘fleece’ fabrics which I wouldn’t want to sleep under so why would I inflict that on my little baby? Or they come in the standard blue, pink, yellow or white. A bit bland to say the least.

It would be a gross understatement to say I’m a novice knitter but as I find myself loafing about with my feet up on the sofa more and more these days, it seems the appropriate thing to do.

Half the fun so far has been browsing the internet and Chichester’s (I believe one and only) knitting shop for patterns, yarn and general inspiration. I must actually do some work now!

Loving these Art Viva needles!

Mosaics

We’re planning some changes to our kitchen, well, actually we’re just planning to finish it. Currently the island worktop is a whopper MDF structure covered with PVC fabric. It’s not ideal. Problem is we couldn’t decide on what surface to go for – granite and the various Corian materials are smart but so expensive and would involve rebuilding the island structure to accommodate the weight and depth. Wood could be good but the floor is wide oak boards and it would look too, well, woody.

So we’ve decided to go for mosaic tiles – they’re thin so don’t require an island rebuild, hardwearing, affordable and with a bit of effort on the design can be fabulous. Bisazza is the kind of thing we have in mind but in DIY mode so they aren’t crazy money!

Here’s some inspiration taken from www.bisazza.co.uk:

I love, love, love the flowers in the second photo! I’m also thinking that transforming a weave pattern into mosaics could work really well because it’s all so geometric – like in the first photo.

To achieve this I have downloaded some mosaic tile software to help plan the pattern and found suppliers of 2cm x 2cm glass mosaics at great prices – the mosaics come ready laid on paper sheets but as I want to relay them into a pattern you simply soak the sheets in water and then lay the individual tiles onto a tile tray which sets the spacing correctly, and then use PVA glue and brown post paper to create new sheets. Then the tiler lays them as normal and the paper comes off after a wipe with some warm water. Simples!

The rug that turned into I don’t know what

In my last post, many moons ago, I mentioned that I was weaving a rug. Well that’s all finished now except that it morphed from the rug that I had in my mind to something else – as it often the case. I put this down to being very much an amateur weaver and I haven’t yet reached the stage where I can produce what I have in mind. That, and I just have a change of heart and the project ends up being quite different. I don’t see this as a problem but it can be a little frustrating when the change is caused by a technical issue that highlights my incompetence rather than being design-led.

Anyway I thought I would document the weaving process a little as I’d like to remind myself of these things, basically so I can beat myself up about it in the future. The rug warp was ecru Axminster carpet wool (which has some nylon in it too). It’s very sticky and is intent on making huge knots whenever possible.

The weft was the same but, and this is where the changes start, it was originally going to be a variety of colours – sand, burgundy, turquoise, sky blue and some pale forest green. All lined up together the colours looked very nice indeed. The idea was to used a clasped weft (as in my previous project) but making triangles rather than individual lines.

 

I came up against a few issues:

1. The ecru colour batches were way out, despite coming from the same order, meaning that I couldn’t really do a 600 end warp as I had wanted. This of course meant that the rug would be no way near wide enough – it was touch and go anyway – for the floor I had in mind. So I had to use what matching ecru I had to make a narrower warp.

2. A little way into weaving I realised I had made 3 heddle errors – 3! So I fixed those and at the same time realised that the warp could really have done with being thinner yarn as the weft colour was being lost. Either that or I should have changed from tabby to a weft-faced weave, but by this time I was pretty livid with the whole thing so I corrected the errors and carried on with the sky blue and a royal blue clasped weft instead. It really wasn’t what I intended but I really wanted to get some colour in there!

3. The warp ends broke on a couple of occasions as they are actually very easy to snap individually.

Now it’s finished, I don’t really know what to do with it. It could be a tiny little rug or it could be a little wall hanging – maybe for the nursery, more on that later – or I could just stash it away. Of course I still need a rug for the floor but I might not tackle that again just yet. On the upside, I was pleased with my hemstitch!

Exciting news…

I’ve not been at all present on the blog front for ages, neither new posts or, ashamedly, even reading very many of my regulars. The reason is that I have been plagued by utter exhaustion and I have had absolutely no energy and have been very zombie-like of late.

The reason? I am pregnant!

Woohoo! I’m nearly 13 weeks and just had our first scan this week which was fantastic beyond words.

So hopefully as I enter the second trimester I should get some much-needed energy back and be a little more engaged with my life in general, and weaving and blogging also.

I know it’s still early but I’d like to weave something for the new baby, perhaps a cot blanket and of course Christmas is just around the corner. But first I must finish, nay, start the rug that I have half on, half off the loom. Well, soon anyway….

Beamish Reliability Run 2010

I completely forgot to post this! It was only when looking through the photos on my phone that I remembered.

Back in June Ivan and I went up north to visit his family and also to take part in the Beamish Reliability Run which is a vintage car rally. Now, Ivan’s parents happen to have a 1931(?) Rolls Royce which usually gets to go out for a tootle at family weddings. They even brought it all the way down to Cornwall for our wedding back in 2003 – about 500 miles, albeit it was on a trailer. It’s a very special car indeed and is absolutely THE way to travel!

The rally took us around the north east countryside over a distance of 150 miles or more and considering the age of the car, performed impeccably without a hitch. They obviously built cars without ‘built-in obsolescence’ and all the rest of it in those days but then it is a Rolls.

Ivan and his Dad with the Rolls at one of the stop off points. Don’t they look alike?!

Ivan’s Mum looking terribly glamorous and photogenic as always.

Me travelling in style in the back seat.

I should probably mention that we all decided to get into the spirit and, as you can see, dress for the era. We thought everyone would but it turned out that only two car loads of people actually did so we felt slightly overdressed at lunch! It worked out well though as Ivan and I won a prize for the best dressed couple!

I do have more pics of the fantastic scenery on the other camera so I may well do another post on that soon.

Parham House

Mum and I took a trip to see Parham House which is just outside Storrington in West Sussex. It’s only up the road from where I live so it’s very handy for a bit of pleasant escapism. Except that we got there quite late and by the time we had wandered round the garden and had platefuls of cake etc in the tearoom we didn’t have time to go round the actual house (which is amazing) – in fact they were just bolting the door as we walked up to it but never mind! We promptly fell about laughing in the courtyard.

 

Although it doesn’t look it, it was actually raining but well worth a wander.

The little house built into the brick wall is in fact a child-size Wendy house. It’s all scaled-down and when you go inside, the doors are tiny and the ceilings are really low and there was a little inglenook fireplace inside. It was lovely, it even had bedrooms upstairs but I got a bit stuck on the staircase as it was so narrow! It was all very Alice in Wonderland.

Adventures in bread-making

A few years ago I presented my parents with a bread maker, thinking this was the perfect gift as they always like fresh baked bread – who doesn’t!

To my surprise they didn’t take to it… so I took it back, back to my kitchen that is :)

Having recently reorganised everything in said kitchen I was able to make some space to set up the bread maker under the stairs where it wafts its smells up the stairs when it’s nearly done.

I’ve never had much success with it before now but I am now determined to get it right. So I wanted to chart my adventures here along the way. Here’s the recipe which seems to be the most successful:

225ml warm water

2 tbsp caster sugar

1 tsp yeast

4 tbsp vegetable oil

400g wholemeal flour

1 tsp salt

Small handful each of seeds/chopped nuts

1. Add the water, sugar and yeast to the pan and allow to stand for 10 mins – it should bubble slightly.

2. Add the oil, flour, salt and seeds (poppy seeds, whole sesame seeds, chopped hazelnuts)

3. Set the bread maker to the wholemeal brown loaf setting and in 4 hrs 15 this little loaf comes out:

It’s a pretty dense loaf, nothing like what you might buy in a supermarket (which I consider to be a good thing). It doesn’t rise massively so I’ve been adding a bit more yeast although this doesn’t seem to have much effect. It does have a nice crust which I’ve struggled to achieve before.

Has anyone tried using bread makers before? Got any tips?!!!

Jars

 

So pleased with the new shelves in our kitchen. We are a bit storage-challenged in our kitchen, by design rather oddly, and I really wanted somewhere stylish to store all the food that gets lost in packets at the bottom of the drawer and goes generally nasty and sticky and spills everywhere. And these jars came to the rescue! The shelves were a bargain from Ikea and I bought the jars on the internet – I actually ordered too many by mistake (I thought I was buying 3 individual jars of different sizes but 3 packs of 3 turned up!) but hey-ho, they mostly all got used.

Blue suede handbag

I am in love with my new blue suede handbag which my mum gave me for my birthday. Isn’t it pretty? It even has a pocket in contrasting brown suede. I think she probably bought it from OneForty in Cranleigh.

Computers

During the past week I’ve had real trouble with my laptop. It has managed to corrupt all sorts of Windows files and I now can’t use the computer except in safe mode which is a pain because the computer basically doesn’t do very much at all while in safe mode. There’s now nothing I can do except format the drive and reinstall Windows.

I, like many, rely on my computer for work – I work in software so it’s especially critical that I have a PC that works! Luckily in a moment of perhaps sixth sense I migrated to a new PC a few weeks ago so I’ve not lost anything but it has caused real frustration because the issue with the computer has basically got the better of me.

Anyway, my point is for anyone out there reading this, whatever you do, back up your data!

That’s all I have to say. Except that I might now go and open a window and expel the laptop out of it.

A lovely day…and it ain’t over yet!

Today is my birthday and I’m feeling very fortunate because lots of people have been wishing me happy birthday, even some of my customers in far flung places who I’ve never even met. I met my lovely friend Francesca for lunch and she gave me a bunch of whopper sunflowers and later I’m cooking dinner for my parents and Ivan.

In fact Ivan set the smoke alarm off this morning at 5.45am by lighting candles on a cake right underneath the smoke detector and when one goes off, the other two chirp in as well! Talk about a dawn chorus!

Family

Yesterday we surprised my auntie with a family lunch for her 60th birthday. I only have a little family. Here’s a pic of me with my Granddad who is 86 this year and not doing too badly – he plays bowls these days and still does his own garden. A few years ago he taught himself to play the guitar and started touring pubs with a folk band. He also plays chess competitively and used to be a keen golfer. He’s pretty eccentric and as sharp as a button.

Little forgotten blog

Hello readers, it’s been some time! Yes I’ve been busy over the last month and rather neglected my little loom and blog, but the loom is used to that now. Hopefully I can put it all right…

I finished my wall hanging – I actually finished it the day after I wrote about it which was the end of May, I think. It has turned out quite nicely but I can’t help thinking that it works better as a rug which is probably why it’s called rug wool!

(Oops just spotted some wrong threads in that photo!)  

It’s predominantly dark navy so when I held it up to the white wall (they’re all white) it appears even darker. It needs a very strong directional light on it to highlight the colours because it contains really bright colours in the weft but the dark warp makes them hard to see under daylight. What it really needs is a nice strong halogen bulb on it but our house, conforming to Building Regs, only has feeble low energy ones. Anyway I rather like the injections of colour, you suddenly see a flash of shrimp or red or olive but then you move your head and it’s gone again. As cool as this is, it also has the effect of making it pretty difficult to photograph!

So I finished it but haven’t yet got it hung up. Basically I don’t know now where to hang it so I’m going to leave it a while and mull it over. It seems to have settled on the floor in front of a sliding door, so maybe that’s where it will stay!

I have to say, I do like the Axminster wool which I used on both the warp and weft. You may remember that I had a panic that it wouldn’t be strong enough on the warp because you can break it…and it turned out fine, no broken threads. So thank you to Charlotte, Benita and Dorothy for your reassurance.

In fact, I liked using it so much that I ordered a great big cone of it in ecru – you can probably see my thinking there! I have decided to see if I can use the full width of the loom which I have never done before and see if I can’t make a rug using clasped weft again but this time in more distinct diagonals. So don’t be surprised if you soon see a photo of the dog sitting on the navy one and the ecru one hanging on the wall!

Purl, SoHo

All the time we were in New York excitement was bubbling in my veins about going to the knitting shop, Purl, in SoHo. I’d seen it advertised in Selvedge magazine and I was so excited about going there while visiting the city. I remember first seeing the advert in the magazine and thinking that I would call in next time I was in town, but then realised it was SoHo (NY) not Soho (London). Gutted!

So on our last day – yes, I waited five days! – we took a walk off to SoHo to find it. In fact it was basically the only shop in New York that I was excited to go to which just goes to show how bizarrely my mind works these days.

When we found it, I was not disappointed. It’s quite unlike any wool shop I’ve seen in England – over here they’ve either all closed down and turned into charity shops or bars, or they stock a few Rowan colours, masses of gaudy acrylic baby wool and lots of naff tapestry kits with pictures of churches.

I didn’t take any pictures of the shop but here is their website – www.purlsoho.com

They stock so many yarns and so many fabulous colours plus fabrics and books and so on. It was all so pretty and the people so friendly!

After deliberating for ages I came out with a bagful of wool and a fist, very much not, full of dollars!

I don’t know what to do with them yet….hmm.