Plumbers and Hats

I'm still not getting much knitting done. I started the snails on the Kauni, but I did it while plumbers were running up and down the stairs and shouting, so when I started the second round I found an rather enormous mistake quite soon. I was doing the pair of snails, so I've ripped it back and I'm now doing single snails, all heading in the same direction. It's not worth photographing yet, but I'll let you see it when the coils are beginning to show.

The plumbers are finished meanwhile, although the floor may need to come up again to see if any horrible damage has been done by the puddles. The news on the insurance front isn't too good, but having a dry floor is a considerable consolation.

Greatgranny, I don't know about 'binnock', but a bannock is a sort of bread. It's a large oatcake or a flatbread, a bit like a large scone, and if it was a few days old it would certainly be hard. There is a delicious variation on it called a Selkirk Bannock, which is full of sultanas and butter. A Selkirk Bannock allegedly has a shelf-life of two months, but I don't think I've ever made one last more than a couple of days. I eat it spread thickly with butter too. When I lived in London I sometimes startled my friends into silence by spreading butter on gingerbread, which is the way it's eaten in Scotland. Mmmm, butter.

The huge pink hat in the previous post is the Daisy Hat from Itty Bitty Hats, by Susan B. Anderson. I've knitted it three times in different sizes and this is the biggest. I think I must have knitted it quite loosely too. The Bunny hat in the jigsaw (see sidebar) is from the same book. You can't see them here, but it has the cutest bunny ears. And there are some more here - it's a wonderful book.

And Knittingwoman, I have added a hat jigsaw, just for you.

Needles, Needles Everywhere

The first lot of knitting needles arrived on Saturday. And then the second lot arrived today. They took respectively four weeks and six days to arrive, posted on 28 January and 19 February, both posted by First Class International Airmail. Oh well.

That's the first lot in the photo. They've been washed and artistically arranged; the second lot are lying around in a plastic bag. I'll get to them.

I've even tried knitting with a pair from the first lot, and have cast on for the Habu Kusha Kusha scarf. The combination of superfine merino yarn and stainless-steel-and-silk yarn isn't bad to knit with at all, but I still don't feel I've got the right needles; these are short enough, but I think they're too heavy. I can't believe I'm making so much fuss about this. Maybe I just need new glasses, but I have to get a new tooth first so the glasses will have to wait.

I knitted one ball of the Mavis scarf while I was away on Friday night, between the train journey and sitting on the sofa. I expect it to grow quite a lot when blocked, and I have some bits and pieces left over, so one more ball should be enough. I need to block the sweater pieces first, and do the small rolled collar, but I can't block the pieces meanwhile.

I have been kept from my knitting and my blogging lately by a series of domestic disasters, the most pressing of which were a busted lock on the street door and a puddle of sudsy water which kept appearing and disappearing on the bedroom floor. The busted lock meant that we could hear the buzzer on the entryphone, and speak on the intercom, but I had to keep dashing downstairs to let people in. The sudsy puddle meant endless confabulations with my upstairs and downstairs neighbours to try and trace its origin. My upstairs neighbour was somewhat distracted because her bank had just informed her that someone had used her credit card to book a £650 hotel room in Dubai, amongst other things, and my downstairs neighbour had a dose of flu. Do you think there might have been a small black cloud hovering over our property?

The sudsy puddle and subsequent investigations have meant that I am moving the bedroom furniture around rather frequently, and I just can't face trying to block sweater pieces on the bed at the same time. They will have to wait until I am feeling slightly more serene. The source of the water ingress has now been found, which caused only minor devastation, but it appears that there is a blockage lower down so we are waiting to establish the extent of that. The plumber will be back at sparrowfart tomorrow.

While I was away, I was able to check that one of my youngest relations is putting to good use the items that I knit for her. I would say that she is. Do you think I should have made it a little smaller?

Mavis's Sleeves

I was looking for my address book in my handbag and what should I find but my camera? I wonder how long it had been there.

So these are the sleeves for Mavis. They aren't actually bell-shaped, that's just the way the stocking stitch has curled. There will be some serious blocking soon. I didn't try to match the sleeves, but I'm happy with the way the colours have fallen, with most of the interest in the lace part, but also a flash across the top. Both sleeve caps are the same shape, so that must be how they're meant to be; that, or I've made the same mistake twice. I haven't manipulated the colours in this sweater, just taken them as they came in the ball, except on one occasion where I snapped the yarn in order to avoid a big beige stripe across the top front. After lengthy debate my friend has decided that instead of the original high collar she would like a plain neck and a matching scarf. I'll do that in the chevron stitch. I said, 'And I can just knit until all the wool's gone, that way there won't be any wastage, which she was very pleased about, and then I thought, 'What have I talked myself into?'

So while I get round to the blocking, I've cast on for a scarf that is three chevron's wide, starting with a bit of purple. I might manage the colours a bit on the scarf, so that she gets the bright colours at the ends.

The re-discovered Kauni has reached the end of the second repeat of the big Zilboorg pattern from Fancy Feet. I was searching for another pattern when I remembered the snails. I don't know whether I'll do them in pairs or if I'll just have them all going round in the same direction. Speaking of Kauni, Purlwise had a great photo yesterday.

There's a nice piece by Hazel Tindall, who appeared in my last post when she won the World's Fastest Knitter title again, on the UK Handknitting site here. She refers to knitting lace as well as her colourwork and the speedknitting. I wonder if some publisher has got her lined up; hers would be an interesting story.

I watched Michael Clayton last night, just out on DVD. It's very good and I think I managed to follow the plot. I have a theory that when the director writes the script, the dialogue often falls short because the director is so busy thinking about how it will all look, but that isn't at all the case here - terrific script as well as a great looking film. He also wrote the Bourne films (well, the first two were good) and Armageddon, one of my faves.

No knitting needles have arrived yet but I didn't really expect them so soon. Maybe Monday. I'm going away for the night, so I have to dash now, but I've got two new knitting books to write about when I get back. Watch this space.