hop on

I told you I had knitting content coming up didn’t I?  Well may I present to you the Easter jumper,

 

The cavorting bunnies on the bottom of this were adapted from a vintage pattern for a baby cardigan.  The sweater itself is just your basic bottom-up, knit in the round pullover with a yoke.  There would have been short row shaping but I forgot and couldn’t be bothered to frog and re-do.  I am not a poster child for ‘proper’ knitting. 

 

This jumper has it’s problems.  The yoke part of it is bigger than I’d like it to be, I think my gauge went a little off.  When in knit the bunnies on the bottom I should really have staggered the yarn as I carried it over as it peeps through in places.  But despite these flaws I love it.  And that’s what matters in the end isn’t it? x

just like old times

It was half term again this week so I took the customary trip back to my mum and step dad’s in North Yorkshire for a few days of being spoilt and pampered.  Mum and I went to York for a day’s shopping and a very brief walk on the walls.

It’s funny.  When I was a teenager I knew York like the back of my hand.  My friends and I would get the train over on a Saturday morning and spend the whole day there, finding all the vintage shops, eating tuna melts when they were still a novelty and not something you could get in Sayers, hanging round by the river and later, as we got older, going to the cinema for afternoon double bills, finding a seat in the Cross Keys so we could play pool on the purple table and going to this funny club, the entrance of which used to flood in bad weather to the point where you had to cross a gang plank to get in.

Now when I go back I hardly recognise anything.  There used to be a ton of little second hand shops and those incense-smelling hippy shops that 13 year olds love.  Now they seem to have vanished.  The last one I knew about had closed down when we went this time and those that are still there are more expensive and less, well, grotty.  Is this a sign of getting older, that I’m lamenting the ‘good old days’?  Surely in a student town there should be enough interest to keep a vintage clothes shop going?  Have I suddenly and become out of the loop?  Or does everyone just get their clothes from H&M and Topshop now?  Crikey…

Some of the good old things are still there though.  Like silly street names, the Minister, the Army and Navy store and dogs that want to get in every one of your shots x

bright red cheeks

I’m blushing at the moment.  Fran over at Certain Creatures has nominated me for two blog awards, my first ever.

Nice Blog Award Rules:
1.) Recipients of the award are asked to link to the nice person that gave them the award.
2.) Link to as many other blogs as they want to give the award to and write a motivation for the person.
3.) Must also make sure that they let the bloggers who won know about the award.
*
Fabulous Blog Award Rules:

1.) Put logo on your blog or post.
2.) Nominate 10 blogs which you think are fabulous.
3.) Be sure to link to your nominees within your post.
4.) Let them know that they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
5.) Share the love and link to this post and to the person from whom you received your award.

Fran has the most beautiful little blog.  She sews, she paints, she makes me feel inadequate on a daily basis and so I’m doubly flattered that she’s nominated me.

And to pass the blog lvoe on, I nominate…

Laura at Dropstitch, who’s always ready to pass on the crafty love

Mick at Much-Adored, who puts up with me even when I don’t knit anything for ages

Mooncalf at Make Do and Mend - who’s knitting output is just incredible

And to finish, a promise of two finished knitting projects - one big and one small – some embroidery, a half-finished crochet project and a partridge in a pear tree very, very soon x

the reason i have a ukelele

read: a month in the country, j.l. carr

‘There was a throaty smell billowing off the bilberry shrub and withering heather when we disembarked on a sheep-cropped plain high in the hills.  There was no shelter from the sun, but it was dinner time and the women and girls unpacked hard-boiled eggs and soggy tomato sandwiches wrapped in greased paper and swaddled in napkins.

So, eating, drinking, dozing, the day passed until the evening came.  Then, as the first star rose and swallows turned and twisted above the bracken our wagons rumbled down from above the White Horse and across the Vale towards home.

Ah, those days … for many years afterwards their happiness haunted me.  Sometimes, listening to music, I drift back and nothing has changed.  The long end of summer.  Day after day of warm weather, voices calling as night came on and lighted windows pricked the darkness and, at day-break, the murmur of corn and the warm smell of fields ripe for harvest.  And being young.

It is now or never, we must snatch at happiness as it flies.’

If that doesn’t accurately describe the memories of my childhood, right down to the bilberries on the side of Sutton Bank and the White Horse, then I’m the ringmaster’s assistant.  I can’t wait to go home x

twit twoo

Knitting seems to be coming to me in fits and starts at the moment.  It’s great when the nights are darker because you don’t need as much light for close work as you do for embroidery.  But I’m impatient by nature, and I want to see results fast.  So o w l s was just the perfect pattern for me.

Look at those guys, all lined up and waiting for a field mouse to pop his innocent little head out.  This jumper inspired me to wear trousers to work for the first time in years, so that nothing detracted from the gorgeousness of the pattern.

This was knit in chunky and took me the weekend, then a couple of evenings finishing off and sewing on buttons.  A lot of buttons.  But worth it.  So worth it.

Now I’m scouring Ravelry for a new knitting project.  The bug just may be biting again x

read: blood red, snow white, marcus sedgwick

My sister and I were brought up on Swallows and Amazons.  The idea of going out one morning with a bottle of lemonade, finding an island, fighting some local pirates and being home in time for tea was just to much to resist.  So when I found Blood Red Snow White in the school library and realised in encapsulated two of my guilty pleasures – Arthur Ransome and Russia – I knew I was going to enjoy it.

In 1917 Ransome, a young journalist, arrives in St Petersburg, leaving his wife and daughter behind in England. But Russia is changing, and with it Ransome does too, caught between his past and a present he will never leave behind.

Sedgwick begins his story as a Russian fairy tale, describing the Romanovs living their day to day lives under the shadow of their son’s hemophilia, all the time unaware that the great bear of Russia has awoken and, prompted by two men named Lev and Vladimir, is heading towards the city in which they live. 

Ransome’s story in intertwined with that of the revolution, the third person narrative making him sound as distant and magical as the fairy tales he has translated.  He falls in love, with both Russia itself and a Russian woman, Evgenia.  It is this relationship that, for Ransome, blurs the lines between Red and White, British and Russian, Tsar and Comrade, and leads to him finding himself in a no-man’s-land he comes close to being unable to escape.

The second part of the novel tells Ransome’s tale from his point of view, describing the much whispered rumours of his spying past, whether for Britain or Russia.  He talks of meetings with Lenin and Trotsky, of fights to get out of Russia and then return again, all the time preoccupied with trying to find a way that he and Evgenia can be together. 

I’m a little skeptical about these ‘faction’ novels, where history is filled in with the writer’s imagination.  Sometimes I think they make us lazy – why find out about what really happened if I can read a book and someone else can let me know what they think, probably, mighthave happened?  But Ransome’s story is one that needs little embellishment.  The Secret Service files on his supposed Bolshevik leanings have been accessible for a few years now and practically tell the story themselves.  It is Sedgwick’s devotion to Ransome as a writer that means he uses the lines of history carefully to colour this complicated, thrilling and heartfelt novel in.

Having read Russian fairy tales, there is a nagging fear throughout reading the story that something will go wrong, that the ending will not be a happy one.  I’ll leave it for you to find out whether or not this is the case for the story of Arthur and Evgenie.

work avoidance post

January’s a funny old time of the year isn’t it?  We waved goodbye to our Christmas tree today – although I’m sure we’ll be finding pine needles in uncomfortable places for a while yet – and now there’s a gaping hole in the living room where it used to be.  That hole wasn’t there before so how is it there now?  The presents have assimilated themselves with the rest of our stuff, the rabbits are detoxing from the stolen chocolates they’ve been gorging themselves on and a calm has settled over the flat.

The weekend before I went back to school I went a little etsy crazy and made a heap of stuff for my shop.  I really want to get going with the little place this year.  It’s all up there – onesies, easter hankies and the like – but I need some sunlight so I can take some decent photos.  It appears that like me, my camera hates the winter and steadfastly refuses to work properly, no matter what setting I put it on.  I’m a little scared it might be time for a new one…

In the meantime, some things I worked on before and over Christmas.  A hankie for my Aunty Eileen,

My Aunty Eileen isn’t my real aunt, she’s my old babysitter who we used to live across the road from.  We used to go round to her house after school where my mum would be having a cup of tea.  We’d wait around there until her three children got back from Secondary school.  I remember they had to go right upstairs and do their homework before they even thought about doing anything else.  She could be a pretty scary lady when she wanted to be but when she was making us go up the wooden stairs to Bedwego after letting us stay up to watch Emmerdale Farm and, later, Eastenders, she was the best babysitter in the world.  Her and my Uncle Jack just had their Ruby Wedding anniversary – how’s that for perseverance?

And then this,

a giraffe using a pattern from Burdastylefor a friend’s godson.  In exchange for this she took me to see Pete Doherty, who was reasonably sober, then drinks and dancing.  Not a bad swap really.

Today, other than waving goodbye to Christmas for good this year, I’m working hard on school stuff.  In a week’s time I’m taking over from a colleague’s Media AS Level teaching.  She’s leaving in February and I was volunteered to take over the course from her.  Only thing is, they take their modular exam this week and it’s logical that I start with them on their new unit.  And this means planning a scheme of work from scratch in seven days as it’s the first year we’ve used this exam board and the second that the course has run so material is a little thin on the ground.  Thank god for the internet is all I can say.

So to leave you on this grey and miserable weekend, some pictures from the Liverpool Museum that I went ot with my mum before school started again. 

They’ve just re-opened the Eygypt section, complete with unwrapped mummies and lots more artefacts,

John and I went othe old museum on one of our first dates.  He bought me a replica scarab beetle from the gift shop.  Scarabs were meant to symbolise re-birth and were put over the hearts of the mummies when they were buried to give them safe passage in the afterlife.  John’s never bought me normal presents, one day I’ll tell you about the pan pipes x

 

new beginnings

Some resolutions,

1. To not get bored of my hair while its in its growing out stages and get it all lopped off on impulse.

2. To read the whole of Catch-22.  Witout skipping bits or leaving it to one side so I can read something simpler instead.  Why does this novel fox me so?

3. To finish the patchwork throw.  In time for next Autumn.

4. To think less and do more.

What about you?  Any resolutions that you’ve made to yourself?  Good, bad and ugly please x

and to all, a good night

I’m going home for Christmas tomorrow and not a moment too soon.  I think I’ve spoken in the past about what Christmas is to me and this year really won’t be any different.  I’m particularly looking forward to being picked up by my best friend tomorrow evening and going into our old haunts for some drinks and catching up.  And then, as usual, he will swear that he’s not drinking and he’s definitely not going to our only local club and he will, this year, for the first time, give me a lift home.  And I’ll nod and smile and say okay, all the while knowing that I’ve arranged a lift home anyway because, well Glenn, you’ve said that for the last ten years…

But before I go, a secret Santa present I made this week for a my friend who is a just the ‘biggest fan’ of Kings of Leon.  As in the Kathy Bates, type-writer on the legs, kind of fan.

Suzie is taking me to a fancy dress party on New Year’s Eve and I’m pathetically excited about it.  The theme is famous characters and anyone who wants to make a suggestion is welcome to.  Because I just can’t get past Margot Tenenbaum.  And I’m not into fur coats.

Anyhoo, until this is over, may your home fires be warm, your fairy lights twinkling and your stockings be free of coal x