Spitting Yarn

This blog seems to be punctuated with more intervals than posts, these days.  I do have a little more time on my hands now, or at least more flexible time, so hopefully things will improve.

I have finally finished my Graduate Diploma in Interior Design and I was delighted to discover that I got a distinction for achieving an overall grade of 90%!  I don’t believe I have got such a high mark before, so it was a lovely surprise.  The course was great and I am currently working on my CV and drafting letters in order to get some work experience (at my age!).  I am genuinely excited to learn more.

DF got me a fabulous well-done present.  Check it out:

Mmmmmm!  Hope & Greenwood sweeties!  My “shake” even contained my favourite Parma Violets (note the past tense).

As soon as I finished my course, I picked up my needles to finish off the baby blanket, which had been languishing on a chair in the living room.  This was a quick knit which produced pretty results, I think.  Blue Sky Alpacas Organic Cotton was dreamy to knit with.  I will definitely be using it again.

What else is there to report?  Oh yes, we are having quite a few friends round at the weekend and I wanted to bake a selection of cookies for them.  A friend recently gifted me a set of US measuring spoons and cups, so the time was ripe to try one of the US recipes on the internet which I couldn’t be bothered to convert to UK measurements.  First up was this Oreo cookie recipe, as seen on sixoneseven.  These turned out beautifully and they are gorgeous!  I can’t recommend the recipe highly enough.  Over the next few days, I’ll be trying out a few other recipes.

No time for a real post. Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines!

I saw this meme over at indieknits and thought it would fill a gap.

Five Things About Me

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?

I was in my first year at university, so hanging out in old men’s pubs in the north east, eating a lot of pasta and cramming medical facts into my head.

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list for today?

As I’m in the throes of project panic, it’s all work or work avoidance!

- Finalise my project design so I can start making my book

- Make cups of tea

- Wander aimlessly from room to room

- Go slightly mental from staring at SketchUp for hours on end

- Pounce on DF like an excitable puppy when he gets home through sheer relief of seeing a human being

3. Snacks I enjoy:

The premier snacks in all the world are Tortas de Aceite de Ines Rosales as posted about here.

4. Things I would do if I were a billionare:

I was going to say team up with Bill and Melinda Gates to do some good, but he has over $50 billion, so I think my billion (albeit in English pounds) would be small fry(!) Anyway, I’d help people out.

It would also enable DF to retire and focus on writing plays and his other creative projects. I think I would do what I am doing now, but without the worry that I am unlikely to be bringing any money to the pot for a while.

For fun, we would have a really extravagant holiday in Japan (I’d go crazy in Tokyu Hands).

5. Places I have lived:

Farnham, Surrey; Stockton-on-Tees; Wimbledon; Camden and Notting Hill.

I won’t tag, but do let me know if you decide to take part.

Amongst all the looming deadlines, papers scrawled with annotations, exponentially multiplying SketchUp files, domestic mess and property worries, a happy thing.

DB asked me to marry him yesterday. I said yes!

The proposal came at breakfast (I always knew it was the most important meal of the day) with a beautiful ring which he had secretly been working on for who-knows-how-long.

DB hand-crafted the ring from a cedar of Lebanon (it smells delicious!) grown in Salisbury and decorated it with a shell we found on a beach in Trincomalee, Sri Lanka. I love it to pieces. Unbelievably, it fits perfectly.

Egged on by DB, I had already planned to have a day off from my studies, so we spent the day pottering happily around Marylebone, buying our favourite foods for a celebratory feast.

Vegetarians may want to look away now…

Look at this steak!

It’s a Longhorn T-bone from the Ginger Pig (best butchers in London). We paired it with some eggs also from the Ginger Pig and some British asparagus and Italian vine tomatoes from La Fromagerie, next door.

We also popped into jewellers to look at other engagement rings, having planned to design a ring ourselves. However, I found the whole business a little daunting (the prices! the choice! the pressure!). I think I’ll be hanging onto my lovely cedar ring for quite a while. I hate making decisions!

Towards the end of the day, we trekked to 5 Maddox Street, where DB had booked a suite for us - with a kitchen. We proceeded to cook and eat, fittingly, one of the most delicious meals I have eaten. The steak was heavenly! DB also pulled out an heirloom bottle of wine - a 1982 Chateau Pichon Longueville Comtessede Lalande 2eme Cru Classe Pauillac for those who know about such things. All you really need to know is that it was extremely good!

Despite being completely stuffed, no celebration is complete without dessert, so we popped around the corner to Wild Honey. There we ate chocolate soup with milk ice cream and wild honey ice cream with crushed honeycomb. I don’t think I need to say how good they were - it’s all there in the description.

A perfect day.

It’s back to reality with a thump today with the first of two college deadlines tomorrow, but despite all that, nothing can dampen my mood at the moment. We’re full of happy thoughts, Chez Spitting Yarn.

[Edited to add: Here is DB’s take on the day]

Project panic has well and truly set in.  I have one deadline in about a week and another in a month.  I have done virtually nothing towards the former and the latter project needs a serious amount of work to knock it into shape.  Sigh.

I was diverted/bemused/irritated/bewildered (delete as applicable) to arrive home from college today to find the following:

a tattooed man asleep on a fly-tipped sofa outside my house.  Hmm.  He was getting the tan of his life.

I spotted Community Support Officers on their beat, so they should be along soon to move him along.

DB and I visited Le Café Anglais for a party last night and the evening turned up one of those delightful coincidences. We got talking to a stylish lady who, it emerged, had the pleasure of working among those hallowed shelves of silvery-grey covers, Persephone Books on Kensington Church Street. This was delightful enough in itself. She imparted that the newest Persephone Books was, in fact, a joint venture with the much loved Elgin Books.

Elgin Books has been without formal premises for some time, but it used to be located on Elgin Crescent in Notting Hill, the same street DB and I used to live on. (The premises are now the home of chichi food emporium The Grocer on Elgin). More nostalgically still, DB used to work at Elgin Books and has happy memories and enduring friendships from his time there.

As described in my earlier post, Kensington’s Persephone Books is an oasis of literary loveliness, but this provides us with an even greater incentive to support them. I’m taking DB to visit them this weekend.

We are blessed with a number of excellent bookshops in the Notting Hill area - perhaps I should do a blog tour of them for visitors to the area? We have The Travel Bookshop, Books for Cooks, Blenheim Books, Daunt Books, an excellent Oxfam Books, Notting Hill Books, and at least a handful more. It’s never really occurred to me how spoiled we are.

The deadline for my final college project is drawing near, so I have little time for anything which isn’t project related. I started work on the Retro Redux Shrug from Lace Style, but it looks like a mess of grey at the moment. I’m questioning my choice of yarn, too (it was all I had which was the correct weight), but I like the pattern a lot and there’s no harm in trialling it with some dispensable yarn.

A blast of sunshine on a gloomy day.

Marigold sock number one is complete, but destined for the frog pond. I stupidly cast on with 2mm needles, thinking they were 2.25mm and the sock is too tight around the ankle (I wear a UK size 5 and a half). The pattern is an enjoyable one so I may well return to it, possibly with a less bright yarn. The pattern is quite busy (although perfectly simple to knit) and when combined with lairy yellow yarn, the overall effect is…extravagant!

Sunshine and showers were scheduled today but I saw rather more of the latter when, having reached a bit of a brick wall with my college project, I took DB’s advice and ventured out into the rain seeking inspiration. My first stop was the latest exhibition at Somerset House - Skin & Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture. The perfectly assembled mix of models, maquettes, garments, computer images, drawings and prints provided real food for thought. I heartily recommend it.

My next stop was a yarny interlude - my first visit to I Knit in their new Waterloo premises. I was looking for an aran weight spring/summer yarn in a solid or semi-solid colour. Unfortunately, they didn’t have anything fitting the bill, but like the hapless fool I am, I succumbed to a little something, anyway(!) Two skeins of Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend in colourway 9254. Yum.

My final stop was very special and closer to home. The famed Persephone Books has opened in west London on Kensington Church Street, only a short hop from Chez Spitting Yarn. Jane has written about Persephone Books from time to time and I’d been meaning to visit their premises in Lamb’s Conduit Street. Well, they saved me the trouble! It was even more delightful than I hoped it would be. En masse, the books are beautiful in their silvery-grey jackets and cheery end papers. What I hadn’t expected was such a wonderful selection of non-Persephone books. Their buyer has excellent literary taste. The shop is not large, but it was difficult to walk out without another “little something”.

In fact, I entirely failed to resist. When I got home, I was pleased to find that my book and yarn purchase complemented each other.

There’s something about spring and socks. I always seem to get the urge to cast on for socks when the weather warms up and there is blossom on the trees. This year is no exception. In any event, my growing sock yarn stash also needed pruning.

I trawled at length through Ravelry to find a pattern I liked which was free, written for one circular needle and which required a 2.25mm needle (I wanted to try out my KnitPicks circular). After some indecision, I decided on the Marigold socks. They looked cheery and springy, with a pattern which looked interesting, but not too challenging. I am determined to improve my sock knitting this year. I can knit a sock, but it’s always a bit of a battle. I need an instinctive understanding of sock construction and I’m only going to get that if I knit a few pairs of socks.

It’s a short row toe, which I like. I generally prefer toe up construction (a) because you can make the socks shorter if it looks like you’re low on yarn and (b) because my ribbing seems to turn out better.

The baby blanket continues to grow. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I love love love Blue Sky Alpaca organic cotton. The blanket is going to be done way before the baby in question is born. How organised am I?

In an earlier post I offered up a hand knit for rehoming and today I did the draw. The winner is…

Email me your address, jennyff, and I’ll pop the Clapotis in the post to you!

This weekend DB and I popped in to the West End Whingers Second Annual Party. In case you haven’t discovered WEW, go and visit. In their own words they “begrudgingly cut into their wine time to tell you whether it’s worth missing the Merlot for the Marlowe“. They funny.

To try and recoup party costs and in the grand tradition of the London west end, they were selling over -priced confectionery, which I found difficult to resist…

Schoolyard favourites! Check out the helpful consumer advisory messages…

I’ve been pressing ahead with a college project, so there has been limited knitting. The Organic Baby Blanket has grown a little.

Blue Sky Alpaca Organic Cotton is heavenly to knit with. I picked up 5 skeins for half price at the Stitch and Craft Show at Olympia and I now wish I’d picked up more.  Lovely stuff.

I have a severe case of startitis, which is challenging when I have so much non-knitting stuff to do.  I’s experiencing that really physical urge to grab needles and yarn and cast on for a new project.  Is it just me or is the season for it?

I was doing my regular trawl through the interweb on the trail of places to buy yarn in London and came across a couple of places which may sell yarn.

• A stall/shop in the Stratford Indoor Market
• A shop called Finnesse on the Roman Road

I haven’t been to either and wondered whether any one could (a) verify their existence and (b) confirm whether or not they sell yarn.

Don’t forget to let me know if you come across some hitherto unknown about emporium of yarn so I can update The Page.

The body of the Everlasting Bagstopper string bag is complete.  I’m on my way towards doing my bit for the plastic bag campaign.  If you look carefully, you can see where I fudged the pattern a few rows up from the base.

I was planning on knitting a tweed or seed stitch strap, but the hemp yarn produces irregular stitches which look untidy in the dense fabrics which those stitches make.  I may well follow the pattern and sew a fabric strap instead.  I have a couple of sewing projects I want to tackle in any case, so it will encourage me to get the sewing machine out.  I have several pieces of gorgeous Liberty fabric which really should be shown the light of day.

A friend of mine is incubating her second child and, inspired by Anna’s lovely Old Shale Baby Blanket, I have cast on for a feather and fan blanket.  I ended up not using Anna’s pattern, because my Blue Sky Alpaca Organic Cotton was a bit bulky.  I found this pattern using the yarn, which seemed a good alternative.  I think Anna’s pattern makes for a generous blanket.  F.pea’s pattern is smaller.  I did consider extra pattern repeats, but the cotton is quite bulky and I don’t want the blanket to be too unwieldy.

All these babies are doing wonders for my knitting!