Stash Avalanche

A useful rediscovery

 
Agh! Here's another post that I wrote two weeks ago and then had to wait until this morning for the combination of good weather and Mr G being available to take photos (before he rushed off to work). So you'll have to forgive the squinting (sun very bright) and my shove-it-in-a-scrunchie-coz-I'm-feeding-the-baby hairdo.

Every morning for the past 5 months, I've woken up and thought to myself " today I really need to start doing sit ups". And have I managed it? Have I, heck!

Ok, well, I did about 12 once, but that was it.

Then a few weeks ago I started running again, which was part fantastic and part hell. I love running once I'm fit and practiced enough to be able to keep going for 30 minutes or so, but it's the getting there that's the hard part. A week of run 2 minutes/walk 42 minutes four times, then a week of run 3 minutes/walk 3 minutes four times, blah blah blah until I can run for 30 minutes non-stop. Not fun.

And then we went to Germany (with my running gear) and the luggage got lost (with my running gear) and Baby Stash needed extra cuddles because he didn't like the heat, and my running mojo evaporated.

So, what with all this failed running (I really need to get going again but getting up at 6.30am to do it doesn't exactly act as an encouragement) and distinct prominance of post-baby belly, I have been rediscovering all last year's Spring Tops (blogged here, here, here, here and probaby some place else too). Empire line tops are a godsend when you look 5 months pregnant but are actually 5 months post-pregnant!

And digging around in my box of summer clothes this afternoon a couple of weeks ago, I found this...

A Spring Top dress, which I can't seem to find any posts about at all. It's based on my fourth Danielle top which I think was Spring Top 3 but without the band between bodice and skirt. It was made (as usual) in Ikea's Bomull cotton and dyed with my favourite Denim Blue Dylon dye.

The ridiculous thing is, I really wanted to make a plain blue dress to take to Germany but never had the time, and there was one sitting in my cupboard all along. Doh!

Added today:

There is no zip or anything, it's just a pull-it-over-your-head dress, and while that is really easy and comfy, it does make it look a bit on the baggy side. We tried taking photos of it baggy and with the back held tight (with a clothes peg) which makes it look somewhat more sophisticated, but rather annoyingly they came out looking exactly the same.

So next time, and I think there will be a next time because I've been pretty much wearing this dress non-stop since I found it, I will make it more close fitting in the bodice, and also raise the armholes a good inch and a half (because there's far too much bra side showing). I was going to take a photo of my armpit to illustrate the problem but I thought I'd spare you.

And in other news... Baby Stash goes for a trial couple of hours with a childminder this afternoon, so fingers crossed he has a good time. If that works out, he'll go for a couple of mornings a week and I'll be able to job hunt, house hunt (found a really nice one this morning but they wouldn't rent it unfurnished), finish the distance learning course I started last year, and sew. Sew! Hurrah!

Update! I felt so rubbish about not doing any situps after I wrote this post that I started them the very next morning, and even though I have never felt so unfit in my entire life, I think I'm actually making progess. So hurrah for that too.

CTSB: sun hat

At last, the final and very late entry for Rae and Dana's Celebrating the Summer Boy...

I wanted to get a better photo of Baby Stash modelling his sun hat but bad timing and now the weather have conspired against me so here is the wee sprog sitting in his bouncy chir and sucking his fingers. Very cute, but bad for his eczema.

Ooh! and he's even modelling his tunic - only just noticed that!

I made the hat about a month ago but me being me, I made in in Ikea Bomull so then it needed dyeing, and I only managed to get round to that last weekend. It's from the same Burda 9522 pattern that I made the navy short onesie from, and whilst the finished article came out very happily, I have to say (yet again) that this is not a great pattern to work with in terms of fabrication and directions.

I'm used to bucket hats being, or at least looking, reversible. In other words, no raw edges. If you follow the pattern as it is, you end up with a raw edge where the brim and the what's-it-called? sides? are sewn together, which to me looks pretty cheap and not very cheerful.

I ended up turning everything underneath, pinnning it to within an inch of it's life and top stitching it, which did the trick. I suppose you could also bias bind the raw edges, which might look quite smart.

There was also a lot of (far too much) ease between the sides and the top of the hat, of which there was no mention in the instructions, and made me a bit annoyed as well.

The thing is, I don't understand what has happened to Burda. I'm sure they weren't always this slap dash about their patterns or their instructions, and I think it's sad that they appear to dumbing down. It's not like the hat or the onesie are difficult to make - and I'm confident that even a beginner could manage to sew with jersey - so why end up with a poor quality garment?

Sorry. I have inexplicable stomach ache, the poor Grey Cat ended up at the vet for the second time in three weeks with a serious leg wound (what does she do when she's out?), next door's house alarm  has been ringing since quarter past 11 this morning, and I discovered my favourite summer jumper developed two holes when it was last in the wash, so perhaps this is not a good blogging day!

Grumble, grumble.

By the way, the fantastically cute ribbon is from Blooming Felt, who have quite a few lovely ribbons for sale. Their minimum order is £5 (which is really no hardship at all given what they sell) so I also got some dinosaur ribbon and some sky rockets ribbon and these will make an appearance at some stage. The great thing about all these ribbons  - apart from the fact that they SO CUTE - is that the designs are woven into the ribbon, not printed on like a lot of the stuff you can get. So no looking crappy after they're been in the wash ten times.

More tunic developments over the weekend...

I'm still here!

Thought I'd better holler a brief hello in between feeds, just so that you know I haven't completely disappeared under a sea of nappies!

This week seems to be a lot busier than last week, or perhaps I should say, this week there has been less time to do things, mostly because I've been trying to sleep more. You can only function on adrenaline and muesli for so long!

There has been no time for crafting - the cat net is still unfinished (but fortunately the cat is too freaked out by Baby S to even think about a snooze on his head!) as is a cardigan I haven't even mentioned here yet and the footmuff which, I'm embarrassed to say, has been lying on the kitchen table with the sewing machine for nearly a month now. It probably only needs another half an hour spent on it but I haven't found that yet, let alone any time for tidying!

I have been trying to get out to take some photos of all the blossom that has sneaked out whilst I've been busy but yesterday the sky was a very unphotogenic grey and today, coming back from the doctor (a routine check up for Baby S where he was pronounced cute, enormous and very healthy),  feeding time was somewhat more urgent. So. Perhaps tomorrow...

Today's accomplishment is a stew, requested by Mr G who was complaining that he feels like all he's eaten for the past 2 weeks is sandwiches. I know how he feels!

Baby S has been keeping us up with 2 feeds during the night but the doctor suggested cluster feeding in the evenings (rather like cluster bombing but with milk) in order to get him to sleep through better. If this works, I'll hopefully be back on the knitting, crocheting and blogging with a bit more frequency, and there'll be less of the falling asleep in front of CSI. Fingers crossed!

ps. If everyone could stop blogging for about a month I'b be very grateful - there are over 600 posts in my feed reader and I'm managing to read about 3 a day!

 

A week in crochet

Ah, so nice to be back on-line. After thinking that we were about to lose our broadband provider and finding that this was not the case, two local masts went down on Friday and it has taken 4 days to sort them out. That's  four days of thinking "oh, I'll just look that up on the inter... BLAST!", 4 days of blog posts to read and 4 days of not knowing exactly what my bank balance is (rather ctirical at the moment).

But now we seem to be back up and running (fervently touching wood and crossing all digits), so I can show you last week's telly crochet and this week's hospital crochet.

We got a list from the hospital telling us what to take with us and it includes 2 cellular blankets, so I decided to make a Stash Avalanche version.

(We were even graced by some rare sunshine for semi-decent photographs today!)

It's the same ripple pattern as the striped blanket I made in Sidar Flirt last year. The yarn is some 4ply mercerised cotton that I got from Lidl a few years ago - it's actually very similar to Rowan's Sienna, perhaps a tad bit thicker.

I toyed with the idea of a dark blue border but decided against it, so really it's just a basic square of ripple with no bells or whistles.

Having made it, I realised that it is probably not a suitable substitute for a 'proper' cellular blanket, especially for swaddling (too thick, me thinks) but it's a good basic blanket to add to the collection and I think it will last better than the Sidar one (I say this because I saw some tops knitted with Flirt at the Dublin Knitting and Stitch Show last year and the beautiful sheen had really gone out of the yarn, which I put down to washing. It was pretty disappointing actually because I love that yarn and had at least one pattern lined up to knit).

I was also toying with how to make a cat net last week. Much as Mrs Grey Cat is part of the Stash Family, we are not too keen on her using Baby Avalanche as a hot water bottle, especially as new borns can't push a cat off themselves and are likely to suffocate.

Because we don't have a lot of space (that should probably read as "too much stuff") and are planning to move, we decided to buy a basic crib initially rather than a ginormous cot. However these are just as inviting to a snoozy cat so we needed something to keep the baby out of harm's way.

It seems that you can get cat nets for cots, and cat nets for prams but nothing to fit a crib (Mothercare, please note: you can make money by selling accessories which go with cribs too, you know). I also read several review which said that the dense meshes that are generally sold as cat nets are so dense that a cat can actually sleep on them (like a hammock presumably!), and that didn't strike me as too good an idea either. So I decided to make one.

My first idea was to use Solomon's Knot but I quickly came to the conclusion that I didn't have enough yarn. So I thought about it over the weekend and decided to invent something along the lines of a filet crochet mesh (you can find a good little summary of basic filet meshes here).

It turned out to be a good idea, especially as yesterday's routine ante-natal appointment with the GP resulted in me spending 5 hours at the maternity hospital because my blood pressure was up (so they needed to rule out pre-eclampsia) and she (the GP) couldn't feel the baby's head in my pelvis anymore and wanted to rule out a breach presentation.

It turned out pretty simple. Multiples of 4 chains plus 3 to turn. One row of half trebles to establish a firm (-ish) edge and then sucessive rows in triple treble every 4th chain (and starting the next row with 8 chains then first tr tr into 4th chain). Well, to be pefectly honest the first row of squares was done in double treble but I decided the result wasn't square enough.

So while I was strapped to a fetal heart rate monitor and waited for test results and a doctor, I meshed away.

Baby Stash's head is still in the right place, you'll be glad to hear, and so far, pre-eclampsia doesn't seem likely either but because the hospital has to be doubly sure that I'm just very pregnant and there isn't something dodgy about to kick off, I get to spend another 5 hours meshing (and getting far too hot - they really need to turn the heating down in there!) there tomorrow (er, yipee?). So it shoulnd't take long to finish and be ready to be tied onto the crib in anticipation of Baby Avalanche's arrival.

Happy Wednesday!

 

Oooh!

Well! Just as I was logging into Typepad I got a message from Andrea at Apples and Pears awarding me a Stylish Blogger Award! Eeee, missus! How exciting! Thank you so much!

I have been trying to think of 7 interesting things to tell you about myself but I can't at the moment, so I will jiggle this around in my head for a few days and see what I can think of.

In the meantime, I wanted to tell you about a walrus. Yes, alright, this is a blog about crafts and cookery and suchlike, but I'm pregnant and therefore can take outrageous liberties and blame it on the hormones! So there!

In Forest Hill, in deepest south London, there is a museum called the Horniman Museum. It opened in 1901 and was built to house the collections of Victorian tea trader Frederick John Horniman after they outgrew his family home. Horniman's original collections centred around natural history specimens, cultural artefacts and musical instruments, and this has been developed over the years - it now has an amazing range of artifacts from other cultures (eg. African and native American), and recently opened a new wing, which if I remember right, houses a large musical instrument collection.

Horniman's original idea was to "bring the world to Forest Hill", which , if you know Forest Hill, may well make you laugh, but it certainly is a worthwhile museum to go to if you are visiting London.

Anyway, the walrus. 

(photo from here)

Horniman collected a number of animal specimens including a walrus which was presumably sitting on an ice berg, enjoying the sun and minding its own business in Hudson Bay in Canada until a chap called J.H. Hubbard came along with a big gun in 1870 or thereabouts.

In those days, not much was known about animal anatomy so the art of taxidermy was a bit hit and miss. In the case of this walrus, it was rather a miss - the taxidermist didn't know that walruses have skinfolds, so he stuffed the skin to within an inch of its life. And now, this taxidermical (is that a word?) cock-up has made this animal probably the best known walrus in London.

I can't go into stuffed animal galleries anymore, they really make my skin crawl, but I do remember the few times I've seen the walrus and I really feel for him, poor chap. He even looks like he's straining to keep upright in the photograph!

So why did I tell you about the walrus? Well, I waddled up the hill to the vet yesterday morning (Mrs Grey Cat needed some wormer) and thought, god, I feel just like that walrus. The baby is now in a tentative head down position which makes walking uncomfortable (they never tell you that in the books!) so I really am staggering aound in a rather over-stuffed manner. My teeth are fine though.

By the way, did I mention that we're going to get another scan? Tomorrow, in fact. So hopefully we will get a definitive answer on what sex young Avalanche is. I'm still sewing in variety pack mode (when I manage to find time to sew) but a definitive answer would be helpful, doncha think?

Study buddies

When I study, the Grey Cat studies too. Her desk is on the windowsill.

She's doing ornithology...

... and dream therapy.

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!

The wrap... hmmm...

Ahem. Things have got a bit out of hand.

Remember I told you the wrap was about 5 feet long and that I had about 4 skeins left? Well, perhaps there were 5 or 6 skeins. I'm just about to start my last skein, but I think I won't bother...

(After he took this photo, Mr G said I look like Darth Vader in his cape. Thank you. Harrumpf!)

So er, 5 feet plus 5 skeins suddenly equals bluddy-hell-that's-long! Too long, in fact. And seeing as we're going away tomorrow, there won't be any time to do anything about it until we come back.

But I do feel rather sneaked upon. A week ago this was a perfectly respectable length and suddenly it's 20 miles long! What on earth happened?!

I shall need to decide how long I want it to be and then I think I will unpick a row rather than pull it all out. The Grey Cat has suddenly taken a liking to it (she curls up on one end while I knit away at the other) so I think I will make the leftover bit into a cat bed or cat blanket. It seems a bit ridiculous to pull it out and then reknit it.

So, in one sense the wrap is finished (certainly in terms of length!) but there is a bit of work to do yet. Do you like my picot edge, by the way? I thought it could do with just a little something to make it look like a finished item and not just some random piece of knitting.

Oh and is it just me, or is everyone else in Blogland on holiday? My feed downloader thingy has been conspicuously deserted this past week or two. We shall be away for a while ourselves but I've lined up a few posts to keep things tottering on.

Happy hols!

...and now the weather

It's not that I'm avoiding you. I have two posts I want to get out of my head but the weather is against me, and is being aided by my camera and the Grey Cat.

It's real on-off weather here today, one minute bright sunshine and a total downpour the next. It's being alternating between the two all day. so then when we had the first good sunny spell I dug out my tripod, screwed on the camera and found the battery was totally dead. And then it rained.

And now it's sunny again but the camera is still plugged into it's charger with a resolute orange I'm-not-charged-yet-light and Mrs Grey Cat is using it as a pillow. Really, what is it with cats?

So sorry, I have words ready to tumble out of my brain but the technology needs to catch up.

Can it be possible?

Hello. I really wasn't sure what to call this post. The Power of Boredom? A Small Girding of the Loins? It Finally Happened? But yes, all those things and more.

You see, I've finally finished the Rowan cardigan . I know. What on earth happened? I'm not actually sure I can believe it myself, but it's true. I stuffed up on getting my 3rd Spring Top started on Saturday, and then in the evening I got all twiddly-fingers and couldn't sit still, and thought oh, what the hell! and sewed one and a half sleeves, and one side together.

And then yesterday, whilst sewing the spring top, I thought of a little variation I could do which involved running down to the fabric shop and buying a bit of different gingham. But by then it was 4.30 and I really couldn't be bothered, and the sun as shining, and in fact it was so warm that I could sit outside for more than 2 minutes without turning blue (hey! Irish summer!). And the cardi sewing had gone so well on Saturday that I thought I'd just sit in the sun and finish the thing off. So it's done! Can you believe it?

I sewed a tape across the shoulders this morning (something I got from my mother which stops the garment getting too out of shape) and then my assistant and I took some photos. I learnt two things during this 'photo shoot'. Number 1, my photographic assistant does not provide much assistance, and number 2, you have to trick the camera to get an accurate colour reproduction. Perhaps I should I known both of these things already, but you know...

So here it is (minus buttons which I shall go out and get after I've posted this).



This is pretty much the real colour, a kind of ox-blood red, which is one of the only reds I really like on me (but I bought it about 7 years ago and it looks like it's been discontinued). I think the proportions are a bit off compared to the ideal in the Rowan book but that's what comes of being a lazy arse and not doing a tension square first (although I can usually and reliably just go for needles that are 0.5mm smaller than the pattern recommends, and be ok). 

I think doing the squares pattern all over looks much better than just the front (as in the Rowan original). I shall post a photo of me in it once I get some buttons on it and can pin down Mr G (so probably the weekend).

As I said, my assistant was pretty useless...







... and I had to trick the camera to get decent colour reproduction. You can see the difference between the first and second photo.  I found I had to aim the camera (it's a little Ixus thingy) more at the background, semi-depress the button, and then move the camera aim to the cardi, to get a dark enough red. Aiming straight at the cardi and doing a point-and-shoot resulted in far too light a colour (as in the terrible colour in the close up of the seam below).

Here's a view of the shoulder tape if you're curious...



You can sew it on by hand or machine (I did this by machine as I had some dark red thread already on a bobbin), but it's just cotton tape measured shoulder to shoulder and then shortened a fraction (maybe a centimetre or so, but not much more), then evenly distributed across the cardi shoulders. 

The pattern instructions have a garter stitch neck, but I don't have much patience picking up evenly distributed stitches, so I did one row of single crochet and one of half treble, and left it at that. There are no button bands and the button holes are knitted into the body of the front, so I decided something understated for the neck would work best.

In retrospect, the reason why I avoided this sewing task for so long was because I wanted to use mattress stitch to sew the pieces together, something I had never tried before.  Usually I just pin them together and do a back stitch, but that often creates too bulky a seam. But there were all those squares to match, and it's really difficult to see what you're doing with this yarn (although looking at it now, I don't really know why), and so I put it off.

But on Saturday night, I felt a bit bloody minded and just got stuck in. But you know, do I read instructions? I could vaguely remember what mattress stitch entailed so I just picked up a needle and sewed away. And then had to take it all out again, because I had done it with the wrong sides out, and as every self-respecting mattress sewer knows, you have the right side out. Idiot. So I did it again and somehow it worked. I decided not to care too much about how well the squares matched up (because you won't really be looking at my arm pits, will you?) and it came together pretty quickly. Look, I even managed to do one bit perfectly...


So if you've never tried mattress stitch before, I can recommend it, just not with Rowan's Summer Tweed as a first attempt. And just use some plain stocking stitch, ok? Leave all that fancy pattern/lace malarky to the professionals and the reckless idiots (hello? you called?) out there.


Update: no suitable buttons as the LFS this morning so things will have to wait a while.