Heather Knits

We are having a nice quiet New Year, with some knitting and the latest experimental chili from the book Paul got for Christmas (today’s was good but we have even higher hopes for tomorrow’s!).

I don’t really go in for new year resolutions, my plan for 2009 is to become a bit more organised, and a bit tidier. I will be able to better enjoy all the lovely yarn that I have if I can actually get to it, and know what is where.

Happy New Year! I hope that you will all have a wonderful 2009, full of interesting things you want to do, and great friends to share it with.

I hope that you are all enjoying a very happy and knitting-filled day.

I plan to do quite a lot of eating, a fair bit of board game playing and possibly even fit in a little bit of knitting too.

Hello, I’m afraid Heather can’t come to the blog right now as she has developed an unfortunate addiction to educational physics games. In the interests of your health, do not click on this link, or this one, unless you have already finished all your Christmas knitting, or have managed to work out how to knit and play games at the same time. Heather should return soon, and is hoping to have some actual knitting progress (!). If you would like to leave a message please do so after the tone.

Beep.

Terri has tagged me (actually a little while ago, but I have been slow at thinking up things which are at least vaguely of interest but which I haven’t mentioned 40 times before).

To participate you
Link to the person who tagged you.
List seven facts about yourself.
Post the rules on your blog.
Tag seven more people to do the same and link to them.
Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
Let the tagger know when your entry has been posted.

So here we go:

1. I have sung in the Royal Albert Hall. It is a great building, which I managed to notice even while being terrified! Our 9 person school madrigal choir won our category of the National Festival of Music for Youth, and all the winners got to perform in a big concert at the Albert Hall. As part of the same festival I have also played and sung in the Royal Festival Hall.
2. I love carrots, they are definitely the best vegetable.
3. I like most kinds of knitting, but the yarn has to feel nice.
4. My longest project on the needles so far is 8 years for a beaded dress. Admitedly it has spent most of that time in a bag in the spare room. I really must dig it out and continue it at some point.
5. I have taken Grade 8 on the trombone three times, and passed all three times.
6. There is yarn in every room in our house except the bathroom and the kitchen
7. I don’t like camping in a tent, altogether too much grass and not enough hot running water. I do like static caravans though.

I am never very good at the tagging thing, so if you would like to do this then consider yourself tagged! Let me know and I will enjoy reading it.

It is all Fiona’s fault that I have developed an unfortunate obsession with knitting garter stitch slippers. It all started with her posts about her husband’s slippers, and a link to a pattern (in Finnish), where you knit a strip of 6 squares, then knit two squares onto the side of this strip, do a spot of origami, sew it together and voila! a slipper. It all looked intriguing so I made a little model in paper first to see how it worked (my Finnish is not too hot so I was relying on the pictures).

Looking at the picture I kept thinking that I am sure it could be worked so that you knitted the seams together as you were working, and so wouldn’t have to do any sewing up. So I gamely cast on, having no idea how many stitches I should use so I used 18, the same as Fiona, and used 3.5mm needles, again the same as Fiona, and some shetland 4ply weight yarn doubled. However I think I am a tighter knitter than Fiona, and although the principal worked, indeed there are no seams, it is a bit small for my foot, and also the heel is considerably pointier than my heel.

So I measured my foot, and thought I could amalgamate two of the squares to give a squarer heel, so one and a half squares measured diagonally would be the length of the foot. In all my little calculations (I used Pythagora’s theorem and everything) I failed to take into account that because knitting is stretchy and my feet aren’t actually square that I should have made the slippers shorter than my foot length. So here is the yeti slipper.

And just for scale, all three slippers together.

Intellectual curiosity satisfied. Luckily I think I have got this out of my system now since I need more slippers like I need a hole in the head.

I got this from Anne, and thought that it sounded fun.

Grab the nearest book.
Open the book to page 56.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

“There must always be at least one stitch between paired increases”.

From Knitting in the Old Way: Designs and Techniques from Ethnic Sweaters.

Several fun things have arrived through the post this week. First a little order from Ravelry.

The bag is a really useful size, big enough to get lots in without being cumbersome.

Also in the parcel was my T-shirt.

This was more turquoise than the picture on the ravelry site, which I think is a good thing since I love turquoise (at least on my monitor Ravelry’s picture looks more royal blue).

My second parcel was The Dyer’s Companion (Companion (Interweave)), full of interesting technical information. I am looking forward to reading this through properly and doing some experimenting with the pH of my dye baths.

Last but not least I have a new computer! My first laptop (only my 4th ever computer - the first one was being used as a doorstop in some University offices and they let me have it for free because they were concerned it was damaging their floor). So I am writing this from the comfort of the settee while watching Jeeves And Wooster : Complete ITV Series (8 Disc Box Set) [1990]. Ahh, the decadence, someone peel me a grape

I am in the process of attempting to change website hosting providers. Hopefully this should all go nice and smoothly, but just in case it doesn’t, if things are a bit wobbly for a while then I am on the case, and hopefully I will get it sorted out soon.

More knitting related stuff soon.

Yes, I’m afraid today is the day of bad puns. You will be pleased to know that at the moment I can’t think of any others.

I seem to have been having problems with comment spam at the moment so I have turned on moderation. If you have already left a comment before, any subsequent comments should go through fine, but any comments from new people will have to be approved before they appear. I hope this wont be too much of a pain for anyone.

Thank you for all the lovely comments on my dyeing, it was a lot of fun and I can’t wait to do some more experimenting. I think that will hopefully be very soon, particularly considering the miserable weather we have been having here. C&G homework continues apace, slowed slightly by my computer spending time doing the electronic equivalent of lying on the floor and kicking its heels. I have talked nicely to it, and hopefully we are friends again now.

More soon, with actual knitting content!

Rosie has tagged me so I am going to play.

The Rules Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

1. What I was doing 10 years ago:

In May 1998 I was sitting my first lot of finals for my first degree. I did a 4 year course, so we were examined on our work from second and third year at the end of third year, and then sat another set of finals at the end of our fourth year on the work learnt that year. I really enjoyed my course and made some great friends at college, and had a wonderful time!

2. What 5 things are on on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):

• Tidy up the post that arrived while my parents were visiting, and which I have just put in a pile and not read yet.
• Tackle the mammoth pile of washing.
• Chart my first attempt for my City and Guilds cardigan
• Sort out my iTunes library
• Collect together my bits and pieces to take the the conference I am going to tomorrow

3. Snacks I enjoy:

Where do I start? and possibly more importantly how do I stop? I love biscuits, dried apricots, milk chocolate, twiglets, hazelnuts, though not all together.

4. Things I would do if I was a billionaire:

All the usual: Buy a nice house, fill it with nice yarn Invite all my friends over and have a knitting commune

5. Places I have lived:

• Litlington, Hertfordshire (a very small village)
• Hutton Rudby, North Yorkshire (a slightly larger village)
• Oxford (I don’t think I need to tell you this is a city)
• Ashtead, Surrey (a medium sized village - do you see a pattern forming?)

I will tag Mary, Anne, Katy, Sarena, Fiona, and Jo, and of course any one else who feels like it.

And now I had better actually do some of the things on my to-do list!