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.