Stash Avalanche

Happy Spring

We don't really do Easter at Stash Towers, so depending on what you do...

Happy Easter or Happy Spring!

ps. I am inordinately pleased with my tree. Just wanted to gush for a second. Thank you.

Happy Holidays!

We would normally be in Germany now but due to finances and the bump, we decided to stay in Ireland this year. Just as well, seeing as the snow has completely buggered up Dublin Airport, and now Mr G is going down with a horrible cough, so it'll be a quiet one for us.

And as a friend (with kids) said smugly the other day, enjoy your last Christmas before the baby comes because next year your house will be full of plastic!  I hope not but I suppose we'll just have to see...

In the meantime, I wish you all a festive and peaceful weekend (snow permitting).

(I only have a muffin tin to make my mince pies in, so the pastry always ends up crinkled, and I always overfill them (being a bit greedy...) but they taste good so who cares!)

A little bit of stash building

Well, as I said yesterday, I'm here to tell you about my little spending spree while we were away.

I didn't actually buy as much as I wanted because really I wanted to buy nearly everything and that doesn't really fit with having no job and no money, so I just stood, gazed at fabrics and fondled lots of balls of beautiful yarn until I thought the shop assistant was going to throw me out.

I had actually intended to buy lots of fabric; last year there was lots of broderie anglaise that I lusted after and stupidly didn't buy, but this year there was nothing that waved at me at all. Perhaps it was just as well though, as we had so much to cram into our suitcases on the way home that large amounts of fabric wouldn't have fitted at all. At least with yarn you can squish the air out and make it take up less room.

So, what did I get? This little lot, that's what:

 

It's all by Schoeller and Stahl, who seem to be a pretty big yarn manufacturer in Germany. It's a shame they haven't made it to the UK (or perhaps they have, I'd love to know if anyone has found a UK/Irish stockist*) because their yarn is really beautiful, especially the more classic 4plys and DKs. I got completely mesmerised by some gorgeous silver grey wool and a really dark purple 4ply cotton, and it was really hard to tear myself away. Perhaps those will be a Christmas purchase...

So, the Big Ball Soft really is a big ball - about 8" in diameter! It's 200g of an acrylic/wool/polyester/mohair mix which is really soft to the touch and would, I imagine, make a really warm jumper. The colours range from a silvery grey to a chocolaty brown - there were other colourways with oranges, purples and greens but those sorts of random dyes never do it for me.  The ball band claims that one ball is enough for a women's long sleeved top (on 8-9mm needles) but I was a bit dubious and got a second ball just in case (well, it was in the sale so I didn't feel too terrible about that!). At the moment, I feel a long cardigan coming out of this but we shall see what happens when I get it on some needles.

The Elfin is an acrylic/mohair mix which is also lovely and soft to the touch, and I thought would be very nice for baby jumpers and the like. It was in the sale too but I just got the 3 balls (for the moment at least).

And the Ronda (and blast! now I have the Beach Boys going round in my head) is a wool/viscose mix with a fantastic sheen - I have to say the photo doesn't do it any justice as all. I was really glad to find this as I got about 6 balls at Christmas and then found I didn't have enough to make a jumper, and ended up spending ages on Ravelry and Ebay trying to find more. And even more luckily, it is the same dye lot, so there will be no need to juggle different balls or create far-too-subtle stripes. My motto with this, and the Big Ball yarn, is more is safer than less!

But these will all have to wait as I really need to sort out the pre-holiday wrap - decide how long I want it to be and finish it off. And then perhaps there will be for some soft German fluffy-ness!

Happy Wednesday!

*but you might find someone has some for sale on Ravelry or Ebay

Back again!

Eee missus! It feels like I've been away for ages!

We got back from Germany late on Sunday night and spent yesterday in a haze of shopping, unpacking and making up for lost time in the ear scratching department with the Grey Cat. We didn't have a super fantastic time as Mr G spent the first week with a cold, and the weather was very variable to say the least, but we did catch up with some friends and of course, it was nice to have a change of scenery.

So on the subject of scenery, here are just a few pictures of why I like Germany...

Perhaps this doesn't happen everywhere, but where we are urban grass verges often get planted up with perennials, even in the inner city, and to my mind look much nicer than endless grass (and are more cost effective, but that's just the landscape architect in me coming out!)...

 

And people respect these and do not trample through them as I cynically expect would happen if you tried this in the UK or Ireland.

Within a 10 minute walk of where we stay is the edge of a forest which stretches about 20km to the south east through the city suburbs. It is fabulous for biking and running (and of course, walking!), and can be quite knackering depending on which route you take, as some tracks are seriously steep!

There are the main routes through...

 

... and then lots of little side paths, some of which are marked as trim trail routes (yellow for easy, orange for medium, and red for oh-god-I-think-I'm-going-to-die)...

 

And every so often you get little information signs telling you about the plants and animals you might encounter...

 

(Sorry, this one is about Sycamores - I should have found something a bit more interesting, shouldn't I?).

We also went to the zoo but some how I had no interest in taking any photos, I think perhaps because photos of captive animals don't really do any justice to the animal itself.

So anyway, now we have to mentally stumble back to the real world, put away the suitcases and wake up at a sensible time for Mr G to go to work (poor him!).

Tomorrow I'll show you the results of my little German stash-building shopping spree.

Happy Tuesday!

Not really a tutorial for a holiday laundry bag

What do you do with your dirty clothes when you go away? I used to put them in a carrier bag - potentially stinky - then I started using a cloth bag (probably from Aldi), then I made a holiday laundry bag.

I had a cloth bag that had ripped at the top which was the ideal candidate for re-purposing, although you could just as well use an old pillow case or grab a rectangle of fabric and sew it up to make a bag.

I had a scrap of Kaffe Fassett fabric which I ironed onto a bit of Bondaweb and then cut into shapes. I arranged these on the bag (although you could hardly call this arranging) and ironed them on, then zigzagged round the edges. I did this on both sides.

I made two button holes in the middle of one side about an inch from the top and then folded the top over and sewed it shut to make a casing for a drawstring.

 

And that was it.

Except that every time I went away I had to hang it from the drawstring and then pull the top open to put things in. So I had a minor brainwave and sewed two loops, one at the top of each side seam. Now I can hang the bag from a clothes hanger and it stays open until I take it off, pull the drawstring shut and put it in my case to go home.

 

I sewed them downwards so that they tuck into the bag when it's closed.

The moral of this story: sometimes even the simplest things take time to percolate through to the front of my brain, but when they do, they work out very well indeed!

Of course, if I hadn't needed all this brain percolation, and I'd known at the time that the finished item was going to end up photographed on a blog for the whole world to see, I would have been neater, and used matching threads, and incorporated the ends of the coat-hanger loops into the drawstring casing, but you can't have everything.

Newgrange

While my mum was here, we went to Newgrange in the Boyne Valley in County Meath, which is up near the border with Northern Ireland.

Newgrange is a Neolithic tomb (designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site) and is older than Stonehenge in the UK and the pyramids at Giza, so pretty damn old. In fact the whole Boyne Valley (as in The Battle of the Boyne) is full of neolithic burial mounds - you could spend a good couple of days exploring. There's a pretty good website on the area here if you'd like to read more.

Unlike Stonehenge today (where you can only view from afar), you can actually go into the mound (it's a tight squeeze) although it's by guided tour only, which was good in that you learnt about the site rather than just wandered around aimlessly, and also slightly annoying (in that our guide could have improved her public speaking technique!). 

Mr G and I have found a lot of tourist attractions we've been to in Ireland so far have been disappointing (there's no English Heritage equivalent here so it's frequently a bit hit and miss), but we'll definitely be going back to the Boyne Valley, although I think I should read up on the Battle of the Boyne before we go there otherwise I think it's likely to look like any other field!

Anyway, enough of the boring babble, here are the photos...

 

Crossing over the River Boyne to get to the shuttle bus...

 

Looking up to the mound from the bus drop off, with our guide dashing off in the distance...

 

Because the whole mound was overgrown, and the soil and external stones were slowly falling forwards when it was discovered (not helped by landowners quarrying the site in previous centuries), the facade of the mound has been reconstructed by archaeologists but the design (if you can all it that) was based on the white quartz stones and big river pebbles found at the base of the mound...

 

This is the front of the mound with the entrance to the burial chamber. The dark stone shows where the original mound was cut back to enable visitor access...

 

Beautiful spiral carvings on the kerb stones...

 

And the most amazing thing about the tomb (I probably should have told you this at the beginning...). See the entrance? And how there's a lintel above it with another opening? That's the light box, and for about 5 or 6 days over the Winter Solstice, the rising sun shines through this into the central chamber, which is a pretty impressive feat of engineering considering that the tomb is over 5000 years old, and the passage to the centre is S-shaped not straight (you get a demonstration of it when you go inside - although a bit quicker than the real thing). The thinking is that the winter sun would shine onto the remains of the Neolithic peoples' ancestors and ensure that the new year would come around again, and the world would start to get warmer.

You can't take photos of the inside of the tomb but go here to see some. You can also put your name down for a lottery where 50 people are picked every year to actually be present on one of the days when during the Solstice when the sun lights up the chamber. That sounds like something worth experiencing, although if it's cloudy, you're stuffed.

And here's a view over the rest of the valley - you can really see why people chose to live here, good views to see your enemies coming up, protection on three sides by the Boyne River and fertile soils for growing cereals...

 

Those markers in the foreground apparently denote where individual cremation urns have been discovered but Mr G had to ask about that, so Newgrange take note, some interpretative signage would be helpful!

Now back to reading all my feeds... I have nearly a week's worth to get through, so it could take a while...

Normal service slowly resuming

Well, foof! Having my mum to stay was great but rather exhausting. We Did Stuff every day, and frankly it would seem that I'm out of practice! Another reason to find a job.

I did manage to make two cakes, both from the Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache cook book. The first was Coconut, Lime and Blueberry Slice (which I made with lemons and raspberries, because I don't like lime much and I think blueberries are tasteless).

 

This was not a huge success. The idea is that you replace a traditional pastry base with coconut, but we (Ma, Mr G and I) decided that it didn't work flavour-wise, and fell off the filling rather too easily too. The filling itself tasted good (nice and tangy) but was a bit rubbery so not entirely appetising. So this one is consigned to the probably-won't-make-it-again pile. 

And, on a diet note, the coconut base costs about twice as much in WeightWatchers points as normal pastry would.

The other one was more of a success. So much so that I forgot to photograph it until it was half gone...

 

It's Vanilla Cream and Raspberry Swiss Roll, only I used strawberries and Philadelphia in the filling instead. It's does look rather overwhelmingly 'cream' orientated in this photo, but the fact that it was Philly and therefore less fatty worked really well. I'll post the recipe later today or over the weekend.

On the sight seeing front, we went back to the Botanic Gardens in north Dublin and had a potter around the glasshouses and herbaceous borders, and had a delicious lunch in the cafe. I didn't take any photos of the cake selection but they all looked to die for, and if you think the swiss roll above has too much cream, you should have seen the roulades at the Bot Garden! Fortunately for my hips, I was too full for pudding (an unusual state indeed!).

Anyway, the Bot Garden has of course got more colourful since I went with Mr G a couple of months back...

 

 

Lots of Achilleas, which I love...

 

 

Hostas and geraniums...

 

Lillies about eight feet high...

 

Delphiniums in a myriad of blues...

 

... and a Cornus (but can't remember which one) in flower. I would love to have one of these in my garden. The flowers are the teeny tiny green bits in the middle, and the white 'petals' are actually bracts (modified leaves).

We also went to Newgrange in the Boyne Valley, but that's a whole 'nother post...

 

Not a post on sewing

Hello. this was supposed to be a post on tunics/kaftans/call 'em what you will, but the past few days have been a bit mental, and I have job applications to stew over tomorrow (and Friday to probably) so that will have to wait. 

So a quick answer to Gill, who was asking about where to get the Shearwater kaftan pattern, and then some photos to pass the time...

A few sellers on Etsy were selling it but most of them seem to be out of stock or have really stupid postage rates which I am not prepared to entertain. Try Make It Perfect which has a  list of suppliers you could trawl through. When I have a bit more time (so probably at the weekend) I'll try to come up with a more useful answer, so please bear with me!

And now to photos. Mr G has had a few days off from work so this afternoon we went to the Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin in north Dublin for a little stroll, and a little snapping with the camera. I think our timing was a bit off because most of the daffs were over, but (I think due to the weather getting cold again) there weren't that many spring shrubs out. But having said that, there were still lots of tulips out, and peonies starting to flower, and bluebells, and ... well, see for yourself....

In the glasshouses...









and outside...









Hope you like them all. Oh, I have lots more, but if I don't go to bed now I will turn into a pumpkin!

Excuses, excuses #1... The Shrug

Hellooo!

I started this post last night and then had to give up and go to bed, and when I woke up this morning, I decided that if I told you about all the things I wanted to tell you about in one post, you would probably pass out from exhaustion. So I decided to split it into a few posts and hopefully you'll stay with me!

Here goes...

Well, so much for trying to blog more regularly. I'm supposed to be reporting back on the progress of the Rowan cardigan, but I still haven't finished it! I did reknit the strip of garter stitch on the bottom of the back (it wasn't the whole back that was on the wrong needles - just the (non)rib bit) and then I got to sewing the sleeves together and suddenly, other things were far more interesting!

My first excuse is The Shrug. I knitted a shrug over Xmas from some cheapy cheapy synthetic yarn that I impulse bought from Lidl . I took the yarn to Germany for something to do while Mr G was out making up for all the squash he'd been missing (quick diversion: Mr G is German - did I tell you that before? Squash courts round here (in Ireland) seem to be pretty rare so whenever we go to Germany, he rounds up his squash-playing friends and drags them off the the court round the corner). Anyway, it's just as well I took the yarn, because it was SOOOO cold, I needed all the extra layers I could get.

However, the sleeves were far too large and baggy so (see? now the excuses start...) I worked out a pattern (always useful!) and made the sleeves narrower. I had also done a crochet edge on the original and I decided to do a rib on the rehash instead. It worked out well and I've been wearing it pretty much non-stop ever since.

I spent ages trying to take photos of it this morning, but in the end, the only one I was happy with was this blurry one. All the rest were horribly unflattering (I'm not very photogenic at the best of times, and what with squinting into the sun... I think you get the idea...).



To be honest, it still needs some ends weaving in but I was so cold when I finished it, that I was too busy wearing it and never got round to it. I knitted it in the round from cuff to cuff, and was quite pleased with myself for doing that. 

I think if I did another, I'd knit from cuff to middle and then join down the centre back, because when you knit from cuff to cuff, the increases from cuff to shoulder (ie. knitting twice into one stitch) make little eyelets, whereas the decreases from shoulder to cuff don't. So if you were aiming for perfection, it would be a minor fail. I was aiming for warmth, so I think I can live with it  :¬)

So. that's excuse #1...  Do you like it?