Knit Wit

For my birthday – that is my birthday a whole year ago – my mother gave me a lovely cardigan.

And you thought flat packs were complicated

Unfortunately, it came in kit form.

It joined the queue of ‘oh help that looks a bit daunting, maybe I’ll make another hat’ knitting projects until the beginning of this year, when I decided I’d better tackle it. Because it was a lot of wool to waste on something that didn’t work (generally, by turning knitting wool into a knitted thing, even successfully, you destroy about 30% of its value) I decided to abandon my usual tactic of making it up as I went along loosely based on a pattern I’d found on the internet and subsequently failed to bookmark, and decided to follow a real proper paid-for pattern. What – apart from being unable to follow the instructions* – could possibly go wrong?

Three months later, I realised that – even if I knitted as fast as I could – I was going to run out of wool before I’d finished the second arm of my cardigan, despite the pattern only supposedly needing eight balls of wool. Closer examination of the pattern revealed that I was supposed to be knitting it in 4-ply wool ‘Is that very different from Double Knitting, then?’ I asked my mother. Ah. Yes, it is, apparently. Who knew? I mean, apart from everyone who knits, of course.

Fortunately, fresh supplies of wool have just been scored. At current rate, I should have it in time for, I don’t know, next Christmas? And then, I’m going to have to tackle the big one: my aunt has given me the wool and the needles needed to knit socks.

Wish me luck.

*Women computer operators were selected in the war on the basis that anyone who could follow a knitting pattern would find operating a computer child’s play. Nothing I’ve learned in the past year has contradicted this assumption…

Get Knitted

So, as I mentioned earlier, knitting’s a bit addictive…

I started off simply enough with a hat, using a free pattern I found on the interwebs:

Officially 'Not Bad' according to the other half

This would have gone better had I realised that UK and US knitting needle sizes aren’t just different but completely backwards, but I was pretty pleased with how it turned out. ‘Wow,’ said the other half, showing great faith in my talents, ‘that’s not actually that bad, will you knit me one?’

So I did (although he seems to have hidden it – or maybe he’s actually wearing it – so you’ll just have to believe me).

Then I knitted a scarf to go with my hat:

it was supposed to be longer but I ran out of wool

And then I went a bit mad and actually ordered some wool (cocaine might well have been cheaper) and knitted this:

Still waiting for me to work out how to knit handles

Which was supposed to shrink down to lap-top bag size when I felted it but didn’t. It seems that all those airy felting instructions you read on the internet about just putting stuff in the washing machine presupposes a rufty-tufty top-loading American washing machine that washes things so that they stay washed, not one of our wimpy European front-loading eco-friendly washers that just sort of dabs them clean.

So anyway, nothing daunted, I then started to branch out and knitted a hot-water bottle cover which was based on this but with several off-piste additions of my own:

Like a tiny jumper, for someone with no arms.

Then I went even madder and knitted this:

Knitted felted mug cosy, patent pending

Which is a mug cosy of completely my own design, albeit following the rather more detailed instructions for felting on the excellent ‘Knit like a Pirate’ site. The other half reports he can now eke out his coffee for fifty percent longer than before without it getting stone cold. This has made him correspondingly fifty percent harder to get out of bed in the mornings, especially with the nice snuggly hot-water bottle in there.

So … now what? A brief glance through the world of knitting websites suggests there’s nothingon earth you can’t knit, if you try hard enough. I’ve got three or four smallish balls of wool sitting tempting me on the kitchen counter… what would you knit?

Priorities, Please

So we had three priorities this morning, having finally arrived at zonked o’clock last night. One was getting to the coffee machine first and making sure we brewed something strong enough to keep two jetlagged people functioning through the day. Two was getting our various gadgets online and connected to the internet. And three was sorting out the two bikes in the garage that hadn’t been ridden since the last time we were here.

Sadly, although one bike was reasonably ridable after a bit of fettling, the other one was suffering from a partially seized freewheel and needed more than percussive maintenance and a little lubrication could supply. Fortunately since we were here last a bike recycler has opened up and we headed down, initially to see if we could donate the old one and rent a replacement so we could both get out on two wheels. They quickly persuaded us that it would be more cost effective just to get the old one sorted out so that’s what we’ve done. I think their business model is more about getting people onto bikes than it is about making money. Then again, while the bike was being checked over by the mechanics that left me plenty of time to mosey around the recycled bikes they had for sale …

I was particularly taken with this splendid machine

Although there’s something about a bike with an integrated tennis racquet …

… not to mention its own sound system

And then there’s what happens when your knitting and your cycling hobbies coincide.

If it wasn’t for the practicalities of getting them all home (or cluttering up the in-laws’ garage) they might have made a sale or two. Perhaps their business model is cannier than I thought

Make Do and Mend

The problem with knitting your own socks, is you feel compelled to darn them too:

Clearly alpaca, while lovely and soft and warm, is not particularly hard wearing. My darning skills are about as effective as the council’s pothole mending ones but I’m hoping this way I can make them last long enough for me to knit the next pair.

And talking of potholes, look:

After two years when we’ve had nothing but road patching, last year’s mild winter has clearly left enough in the budget to put in some shiny new road! This stretch used to include a shocking section which was actually dangerous because it left you with a choice between swerving right across the road or risking coming off on what was basically loose scree. The other stretch they did wasn’t quite as bad – in fact I can’t really remember it being that bad at all, although I suspect my tolerance for potholes is quite high as I’m mostly able to go around them.

In the four years we’ve been up here, they’ve managed to do three sets of resurfacing on the Papershop village road, each amounting to about half a mile. So at the present rate of progress, they should have completely resurfaced it in, oh about another eight years.

By which time, if the last lot of shiny new road is anything to go by it should be time to start again:

It’s just like knitting socks, when you think about it.

See you, Jimmy

It was an exciting weekend for my bike as it returned to its ancestral home, Glasgow, albeit just for one day. The occasion was the Cycling Embassy’s infrastructure tour, which I won’t bore you with here (I’ll bore you with it elsewhere, don’t worry). Getting there on the train means a 40 minute ride to the station for the once-every-three hours, two-hour long chuffer service (it’s all of 75-odd miles, but never mind that – look at the lovely scenery!). Thus my Saturday started with me waking in the dark and listening to the rain splattering energetically against the window and wondering why I hadn’t taken up knitting advocacy or something equally indoorsy.

Fortunately, a glitch in the Weather Gods’ system meant I managed to ride to the station during the 40 minute break in the rain and was safely under the canopy discovering I’d forgotten my bike lock when the heavens opened again. And amazingly, despite a forecast bordering on the apocalyptic, another 15 or so hardy souls turned up for the event and even though we did get snowed on a little and were visited by the puncture fairy and I discovered that my back brake wasn’t working (I don’t really need to stop the bike much around here, so it doesn’t really arise. Oops), it was an interesting (adjusted for being mainly about cycle infrastructure) day out all round.

Heading back, after an after tour tour of the pubs of Glasgow looking for one that wasn’t absolutely rammed on a Saturday night – a mission akin to trying to find a decent piece of cycling provision in the average UK city – I got on a train that turned out to be full of Rangers fans (do they know that peace has more or less broken out in Northern Ireland, btw? Do you think maybe someone should tell them?) and reached Bigtown at 9pm ready for the 8 miles back – the first time I got to try out my dynamo lighting for real.

So what’s the verdict? Well the first thing is that, if anyone tells you they ‘hardly feel’ the effect of a dynamo on a bike, then they’re either lying or have legs of steel. The second is that it lights up the road like nobody’s business, possibly even better than the light I borrowed last year. The third is that a pint of Newcastle Brown Ale and a bag of chips are not, perhaps, the ideal pre-ride meal for someone who wants to test out their dynamo for the first time, although I’m not sure exactly would have been – maybe spinach?

I woke up on Sunday morning with leaden legs, feeling absolutely shattered. And then the sun came out and as we were out of milk, we did the run again in the afternoon down to the local garage and I remembered that the road back from Bigtown always feels like extra hard work, seeing as it’s uphill and into a headwind.

I reckon on balance, the dynamo adds about an extra 10 mph to the wind in your face, although it does seem to feel like harder work the slower you go; struggling up the final bit of hill at the end of a long ride was just cruel. On the plus side, the way it lights up the road means you can get up to speed on the downhill bits and take a run at the next climb. For people whose brakes have gone a bit kaput, it’s reassuring to know you’ll be able to see what’s up ahead in good time. If I were commuting home in the dark five days a week I’d probably lay out the cash to get a rechargeable system, just because I think it would be pretty wearing every day and I don’t really want to end up with the legs of Chris Hoy. But for the use I want to put it to – the occasional trip into town of an evening, and back and forth to the village, it will be fine. More than fine, in fact, if the night is as black and as starry and sparkly as Saturday was.

And now, I think it might be time to get that bike down to the bike shop for a bit of love and attention to those brakes…

Pas Devant les Enfants

Another exciting package arrived today from Amazon* – yes, I’ve finally got myself a new l*****. Well, when I say ‘I’, what I mean is that the other half lost patience with my procrastination and just went ahead and ordered it for me (I am after all the person who waited six weeks to buy a dynamo because – actually, no, I’m not really sure why it took me so long myself and I was the one doing the putting off. It made sense at the time). Now that the l***** has arrived, it has been whisked off to be set up and have its rescue disks created which now apparently takes 4 DVDs** and the better part of an afternoon. So I’m still using the old one. Which is why I’m being a little coy about what it is that’s in that package.

You see, it’s a well known fact that computers know when they’re about to be replaced and get a little antsy about it. The other half’s Netbook started playing as soon as we ordered the new l***** until we reassured it that it was not the one for the chop. Since then we’ve been being a little discreet around the computers – just to be on the safe side, you know. Perhaps going down for a walk to the ford (three inches, bridge still damaged, ‘ford closed to pedestrians’ sign still in place) to discuss the matter was a tad cautious – but you never know. I’m in the middle of a big editing job and I can’t affort a cantankerous computer. Although, I think it’s guessed. The other day it suddenly decided to repaginate my 100-page Word document to 18,000 pages and nearly ate a day’s work. I’m not sure, but I think the Netbook might have been telling tales out of school.

I’m a little sad about it because the new l***** – while being new and shiny and everything – isn’t quite as sleek and strokable as the old one was when it was the  new and shiny one. These days, to quote a participant at the Cycling Embassy policy bash, it looks as if I’ve been playing hockey with it, but it still retains a faded remnant of its former glamour. The new one just looks sort of brutally efficient. And I’m going to have to knit it a new cover and everything.

* before you point out my obvious schoolgirl mistake – I am aware that this is not an Apple product. Looks like I’m a loyal Sony girl after all.

** ahem. Looking back at this post, I notice that I rather blithely implied that I’d made rescue disks for the last one and lost them as opposed to meaning to do it and then putting it off until, well, frankly I dropped the damn thing. Fortunately the other half sees through my schtick

Hentente Cordiale

Alert readers may have noticed that I have not been keeping you up to date with the chicken situation. Previously on Town Mouse, the landlords bought six shiny new chickens to complement their four old chickens. Sadly two of those quickly became ex chickens, but after a bit of aggro the eight remaining hens looked as if they were beginning to get on with each other. Things were looking good, not least for when we were on chicken-sitting duties (traditionally paid in eggs), but just before Christmas it all went a bit grim when Mr Fox came in and did for a couple more of the shiny white chickens. By the time we got back from Christmas there were just five birds left, and one of the brown ones wasn’t looking too clever: it had been put into the greenhouse on its own because it was walking around in circles and its chicken pals were having a go at it (think twitter when it’s got its knickers in a twist over something someone said, only with actual pecking). And then today there were four. They do at least seem to have formed a tightly knit little group: a mixture I suppose of huddling together to keep warm and uniting against a common enemy…

The curious thing is that the landlord reckoned the sick hen had something called ‘chicken palsy’. I checked on google and, astoundingly, it only came up with a few references to people on forums saying their hens had something called chicken palsy, without any other information. Could it be that there’s an entire chicken disease out there of which the internet knows nothing? I don’t think I’ve googled anything and come up blank since approximately 2004…

Sock it to ‘em

Thanks to the power of the blog I now know it has taken me only two months to go from this:

to this:

There’s really no other point to this post than to show off my fab new socks, although any real knitters out there will be laughing into their stash bags that there’s someone out there who takes a whole month to knit a single sock, however stripy. And the best part is that there’s at least enough wool for another pair. You never know, I might even get those ones finished by March.

How anyone ever actually clothed themselves by knitting everything, I will never know. I expect that was in the days before twitter…

Unravelling…

It’s definitely the time of year when a blogger’s mind turns to the problem of cold feet and, specifically, knitting socks. I’ve long had it in mind to try and recycle some of my old moth-eaten jumpers (and with the coming of the colder weather I’ve found they’ve had a nibble at my merino base layers as well, the bastards) into knitting projects, if not actually something useful.* I have one particular alpaca jumper which, while lovely and soft and stripey, also turned out to be particularly yummy to the moth palate. As I also wasn’t entirely enamoured with its style, although I love the colours, I’ve decided that it shall be transformed into alpaca socks instead, which should, frankly, keep me busy for the rest of the decade.

So far so good …

… though hopefully at least one pair will be finished before spring

(and yeah, I know you’re supposed to wash and straighten out the unravelled wool before knitting with it but it seems to knit fine as it is so I filed that one under ‘life’s too short’, along with stuffing mushrooms and ironing).
* There was one comedian – was it Jack Dee? – who had a routine about wicker making classes as occupational therapy, with wicker-unravelling classes going on in the room next door…

String Em Up

I remember well the first time I ever tried to string up onions to store them. This was quite some time ago, before the internet had become the thing of usefulness it is now, and so I had to guess how to do it (or take a book out of the library to find out how, but I decided life was too short for that). I carefully plaited the dried leaves together to form a neat braid, tied a knot in the end, hung them up from a hook and later went to bed, satisfied at a job well done,  where I was woken some time later by the sound of onions cascading one by one onto the floor.

As a little light googling makes clear – and it seems obvious now – the first ingredient for stringing up onions is some string (the second one is onions). So, my onions having dried out as much as they were going to, I had a quick look online and decided to have another go. The instructions for these things always make it seem like a wonderfully logical and orderly process (see also: diagrams of knot tying, furniture assembly instructions) and the first two onions more or less worked as described, although once I’d added a few more it was looking less like something a Frenchman would wear around his neck while cycling and more like something you’d tie around a Frenchman’s neck to drown him.

Still I persevered and ended up with not just one but three* strings of onions that, while still not recommended for cycling with, do look quite fantastically rustic, instantly transforming the back of the shed door into something out of Country Living. Well, if you ignore the rest of the shed that is. So far there’s been no patter of falling onions so I’m chalking that one up as a result.

Coming up next on Town Mouse: weaving corn doilies, making marmalade and how to knit your own royal family.

*Strictly speaking, two and a half, if you’re the sort of tedious person who likes to keep track of things. With a spreadsheet. Cuh.