Category Archives: Knitting

Confessing a Secret

It’s no good, I have to tell you. My name is Penny, and I’m a bookaholic.

It started at a very young age. I blame my mother.

She was a librarian and indulged her habit in Bristol Library before she was married. When we moved to Norfolk when I was very small our local village only had a voluntary library service in the St John’s Ambulance hut and it didn’t take long for Mum to volunteer. Once it was taken over by the County Library she worked there part time and by the time I was at High School there was a posh new Library and Mum had a full time job until she retired.

So right from an early age, there was a never ending flow of books through our house. I can’t remember not being able to read, but I can remember getting through seven Enid Blyton books a week in the summer holidays. I actually struggle even now to choose books in the library because for years I was spoilt by my mother handing me books and saying, ‘You’ll love these’, and I always did.

Now there are sooo many temptations to indulge my little habit. There’s Bibliophile, ‘Three for Two’ and ‘Buy One Get One Half Price’ offers in Waterstones and W H Smith, and the most tempting one of all, Amazon. I get into trouble about my Amazon habit, My son, as a writer, (That Elusive Line) tells me stories about how it’s affecting publishing, and independent bookshops and I agree with what he says, and understand how frustrating it is to those who are affected by the march of big business. But I’m doing my best to support EVERYBODY! We have a lovely new independent bookshop in Norwich, The Book Hive, and I make every effort to support it,(and it’s not hard!)

But Amazon. It’s like a wicked siren insinuating itself onto my emails. ” Hello-oh! Look…. You bought this, so we know you’d LOVE this…Go on, you know you want to…”

And I do…I do..and with one click it’s mine, and is delivered next day (Well I have to subscibe to Amazon Prime, don’t I?)

These days the temptations are always the books which feed my creative habit, and Oh, they are SO tempting. So colourful, such wonderful photography and then, when they arrive so many of them even feel gorgeous, even sensuous, with satiny, velvety papers and covers…

And I wasn’t well, and I needed cheering up, and there was this book…

It’s just gorgeous…

(Sorry about the shiny bits, it’s that sumptious paper you see.)

These are so CUTE, and 2010 is the year of the baby in our close and extended family…

An entrelac blanket, so no sewing up required…

…and a simple sweater pattern sized from toddler to extra large man.

Somewhere to store all those yarns…

And even suggestions for wrapping up all the gifts for giving…

So today I’m off to Norwich to buy that last ball of yarn to finish the crochet blanket, and I might just have to indulge in a ball of something gorgeous to knit a little something or other…

Do you have a secret book habit? Go on, you can tell me…

P.S. If you want a chance to win a childrens’ picture book, follow the link to the blog mentioned above!

Post One Hundred

Happy May Day! Did anyone rise at day to wash their face in the May Day dew? It was apparently once considered a foolproof beauty treatment. Personally I decided it was far too late!

And it’s a special day too because it’s my bloggy 100th birthday. It’s hard to remember the first tentative post I wrote. I do know that I was so convinced I had nothing to write about that that was what happened for the first few months, nothing! But it’s proved a life saver. I had to make things happen, I had to make things.

So now I’m inviting you to celebrate with a present from me to you as a thank you for allowing me to ramble on.

It’s a little knitted cotton bag lined with Cath Kidsonesque fabric and I’m popping inside a knitted and felted rose corsage and a notebook, all made here on Planet Penny. All you have to do is leave a comment on this post to be entered into the draw which I will do on the 22nd of this month using the Amazing Random Number Generator and I’m happy to post anywhere which has a reasonably reliable postal service.

So, don’t be shy…I know there are lots of you who pop in and pop out quietly. This time stop and say hello, I’d love to hear from you all.

Have a lovely weekend…

Higgins and the Robot

Ha! Now that’s got you wondering hasn’t it, and I’m not going to tell you about it till the end!

I’ve got quite a backlog of photos in the camera because all this tinkering with the blog and the studio has meant I’m really behind on posts. I was also full of good intentions to make pretty Easter things (I have to confess to 5 blown egg shells which didn’t get painted LAST Easter -I’ve forgotten the excuse I had then) . It’s been pretty inpossible to find any of my equipment however, seeing as it’s all packed in boxes in the spare room, and I’m trying to bring it all out slowly so I can sort it to avoid the minestrone type mixture of stuff I usually end up with when I’m working.

I did have wool and needles to hand though so I’ve been able to do a little knitting project AND write a knitting pattern so I have been putting in more than my twenty minutes of creativity a day.

Firstly, I managed to get a picture of the Twisted Hazel which I gave my Mother for Mother’s Day several years ago. It’s qite slow growing, and that first year had just the one catkin so it’s doing pretty well now.

The little daffodils sheltering underneath look so pretty. The miniature ones do so much better in this windy spot because they don’t get flattened as easily. It was even warm enough for not just one, but two ladybirds. I’ve only just spotted the second one.

With a birthday in the family this weekend and a celebratory lunch I’ve got the Easter Tree up and ready. This is where the painted eggs are supposed to hanging… Anyway, the little decorations look pretty, and the pink primroses set it off nicely.

Then there were the egg cosies, knitted in my favourite wool. (Hasn’t it gone a long way since I did all that dyeing last year? Time for a fresh batch with new colours very soon)

I’ve put the pattern in the tutorial section which you’ll find at the top under the banner.
And now for that robot… Several years ago a very clever person, someone who got their priorities in life just right, invented a robot vacuum cleaner. It was HUGELY expensive and I said at the time, if I ever win the lottery I’m having one of those. Well time went by …and I still haven’t won the lottery… but the price of the vacuum cleaner went down to a nearly sensible price, and Lakeland featured them in their catalogue and I thought ‘Why not?’ So Kryton came to live with us. He sits under the work top in the utility room until he’s needed, charges out with a triumphant little fanfare when he is switched on, trundles round the room humming and sucking away and spins frantically round on the spot with a blue light flashing when he finds a particularly filthy bit . Once he’s finished he wheels himself back to the docking station and parks himself with another fanfare before going back on charge, the light on top pulsing red like a heart beat. Occasionally we might have a little problem and Kryton stops, gives a mournful little toot and says, in a strongly American accented female voice, ‘Please clean Roomba’s brushes’ . I can’t tell you how disconcerting that was the first time that happened. Anyway, it’s great to be able to drink coffee and watch the vacuum doing its stuff without me and if that makes me sound totally lazy, well…

We also had an amusing moment when Higgins, as a very small puppy, went behind Kryton’s curtain and climbed on top, stood on the go button and rode out on top looking very surprised! Not a lot fazes Higgins, but you can imagine he’s not Kryton’s number one fan, especially when it chases him round the room with the filth detector light flashing. When I got to the end of the studio painting I took the vacuum out to clean the floor prior to painting it and, as Higgins does like to be in on everything, he joined in.

Sometime I must tell you about the day he met a seal…

Thinking Ahead

Now, I know you’ll going to look at this and think, NoooOOOh, don’t even mention the word, but I’m going to anyway…Christmas! Yes, Christmas 2010. Last December in the midst of the preChristmas panic, I got out the little note book in which I put my Christmas lists and found a little piece I had written in 2007 about my lack of organisation at Christmas, and how the next Christmas was going to be different. Actually, I’ve been saying the same thing for decades, and haven’t cracked it yet. I excelled myself in 2009 by not even getting my cards posted so I know I have to do something drastic. The plan is, a monthly ‘Christmas’ day. Every 25th of the month I have to spend some time thinking ahead, buy a present, make a present, design a card and put it away in a designated place that I will remember. (I lost Christmas cards bought in the January sales for two years once). I have a lovely place to keep it all, an empty hamper left over from Christmas 2009, which will go on a shelf in the new studio.

I let myself off January 25th, I’m sure I don’t have explain why, but on Thursday 25th February I applied my mind to the dreaded subject. One little idea which had popped into my head in the night was written down and tucked into the hamper awaiting the time when I have more room for creation. My second was my usual fall back position, when in doubt, apply wool. Last week I was travelling around blogland and found this on Knitting Iris…

Scarf from Knitting Iris

Who sent me from Montana to Norway for this pattern… from which I made this…

It’s really simple, can be knitted in a couple of evenings with just two of balls of wool. The pattern is called Baktus and is an elongated triangle which wraps and snuggles beautifully. I’ve added my own spin with the tasselly ends and made it in a thicker wool than the sample in the pattern using slightly bigger needles than recommended on the ballband to make it softer and more drapy. I’m pretty sure that popping a couple of these into the Christmas hamper will solve some present dilemmas in a few months time.

Our local store supplied these balls of yarn…

…and I soon had the first scarf underway. I’ve been amazed at the colour variation, I’ve knitted an entire ball and can’t find a colour repeat.

Now a studio update for those of you asking about developments. I managed to get past the stapled plastic over the doorway and into the studio this morning. Work went on late on Friday to get the rest of the plasterboard on the walls of the studio part of the building ready for the plasterer on Monday. The window frame is awaiting glass, but even with black plastic over the door and window, I was really pleased to see the amount of light coming in through the Velux roof lights.

xxx

The doorway behind Tim goes into the store on which I have designs at a later date, but I shall take one step at a time! I’m hoping this next week will see the bulk of the work completed and that next weekend will see me wielding a paintbrush!

Lurchers and Llamas

Ok, that’s it, we’re bored now…it’s all …too…WHITE….

We were off to the other side of the county today for lunch with my cousin and after a lovely day yesterday it was a pain to wake up to frost, ice and gloom and then sleet. We had a phone call from said cousin to warn us they had a couple of inches of snow, but as it seemed the main road was clear and they had a tractor to get us out of any trouble we might run into on the track to their farmhouse we decided to brave it.

Apart from the nice people, and the good food, we wanted to see their lurcher. They have two – lovely gentle dogs and I do love lurchers. ( We used to have one, an enormous blonde called Spike, who was a complete wus, having little Higgins was really going from the sublime to the ridiculous!) However the whole family was devastated about five months ago when the young one was stolen. Despite the theft being witnessed (and the dog being microchipped) a poster campaign, a reward being offered and information being past all round the county there were no clues or leads and every one was so upset.

Amazingly, and so happily, about three weeks ago she was found in a field somewhere near Skegness(quite a way from Norfolk) by a lady who runs a greyhound rescue centre who just happened to be driving along a road she had never travelled on before who recognised her from the poster that had been circulated. Because of her job she had a chip reader at home and was able to identify her and phone to give the good news. The whole thing hung on so many happy coincidences it was incredible, and although she was very thin when she first came home she is now looking good, and full of bounce (as the footprint in the middle of Higgins ‘ little jumper demonstrated)

So, a lovely Sunday roast, and syrup sponge and custard – heaven – and then a snowy, slippery walk to try and shift a couple of calories.

I did try to get a picture of both dogs together, but look at the difference in the leg length, Higgins never managed to catch up!

He did meet another creature for the first time….Fergus…

Which was quite interesting…

Mwah!

I don’t think I could cope with the real thing, but I did find another llama I would have loved to bring home…

Isn’t he gorgeous?

I found the monocrome theme continued…

…and although I love snowdrops…

I so long for some colour. So it was nice to get back for a cup of tea and look at my cousin’s latest knitting project. Craftiness runs in the family, and she is an expert on spinning,weaving, knitting, crochet and dyeing. This was a departure, freeform knitting and crochet. I’ve done a little and it’s fascinating, but this was spectacular. It’s a shame the light means the photos don’t really do it justice but WOW, after all that white, we need those colours!

It’s mainly hand dyed silk, with little bits of llama and hand spun fleece. I’ve just realised I was so excited I didn’t ask what the finished article would be, a knockout waistcoat?

It was a busy day, and very exciting for a small dog with very short legs. A lot of sleeping has been going on. Higgins has obviously been having colour withdrawal symptoms too. I bought a new fleece blanket yesterday, with the sofa bed that is going into the studio in mind. Higgins is testing it…

Unfinished symphonies, crochet & knit – finished!

A big gap since my last entry while I applied myself to all those projects I was writing about. The crochet blanket had been lurking in a basket for quite a while since I first started working my way through a book of crochet squares patterns.

I’d got to the point of joining the squares which is deadly dull, and I needed the impetus of hearing about my son Thomas’ move into an old cold house with two small boys to push me into action and get it done and dusted. Now it is finished and delivered, and I am nursing a rotten cold, I’m wishing I had one for me!

Once I had that under my belt I was on a roll… Next was the floor cushion. I bought this amazing yarn from Ebay, a big hank of random dyed marino wool with a strange thick/thin twist and started knitting it out from the centre, log cabin style. I backed it with a piece of scarlet furnishing fabric from my stash, and fastened it with big buttons… it looks great! That went off to the grandsons as well!

Now all I have to do was to polish off the little pullover – done! – and I’ve cleared the decks for the next project. Except for the socks…