Stash Avalanche

Holiday crochet

We're on holiday. The plan was to sit by the pool, and visit friends but instead we've had rubbish weather and a rather poorly Stashlet which has meant staying home, brow mopping, chocolate flapjack eating and dvd watching. A perfect excuse for some holiday crochet!

I did plan to bring two lots of yarniness with me, but once the Drops Alpaca had gone in the suitcase, I realised there wouldn't be enough room for more. Mind you, I don't think I'll manage more than one garment over the next two weeks and probably not even that! So here I am, crocheting the Good Vintage Cardigan, which I was trying to hold off from until I'd finished my other project.

I'm not a big crocheter and previous attempts at garments have been disappointing but I realise that in part, this is due to the fact that I was crocheting with cotton which creates a very heavy garment. And then I saw this cardi and felt that I really must try again.

The original pattern is for King Cole Merino Blend 4ply but as knitting shops are rather scarce where we are, and since discovering the Drops yarns, I'm a bit of a convert, I thought I'd give the Alpaca a go. I decided to run with roughly the same colours as the original, although I think this pattern would also be nice in an ecru and navy, so my colours are...

 

...left to right

2923 golden rod

6347 grey purple

3770 dark pink

2925 rust

6790 dark blue

2916 dark lime

3720 medium pink

7238 dark olive

and the main colour is 0517 medium grey.

I originally started a size 12-14 but after about 5 rows of the border, it seemed awfully narrow so I pulled it out (not to be recommended with this yarn as it's too fluffy) and went for the bigger size. Somewhat amazingly, my tension seems to be pretty accurate so crocheters must work at a generally looser gauge than knitters (where I consistently need to go down a millimetre or two).

I'm generally not a fan of mustard - which is pretty much what that golden rod colour is - but I am so enamoured by it that I am already plotting a golden rod jumper - possibly this, and ditto the dark pink, which is darker in real life than it is in the photos and reminds me of strawberry sorbet. Just not sure I will have the patience to knit a whole jumper in 4ply though...

It was a bit of a slow start as the yarn tends to be a bit splitty, especially when you're starting off, but once I got to the treble clusters it was much more co-operative, probably because I wasn't fighting with a snakey chain and was able to hold everything a bit more taut. Progress is moderate - you crochet the fronts and back in one piece to the arm holes so it feels like everything is rather slow, but since taking these photos earlier this afternoon, I've got as far as the grey row after the lime green. I did find the lime row very bright and was wondering if it wouldn't be too fluorescent with everything else, but now the grey is going on top, it seems to be calming down a bit and I think it might work.

Modifications so far: two extra rows in the border. I was going to do more but I wanted to get on to the clusters and couldn't wait any longer.

I'll post a progress report later in a few days.

 

 

 

Lanesplitter skirt

Hello! Gosh, so much time has passed and so much thinking about posts has been done, and where has it got me? I have a whole winter's saga of knitting to tell you about, but that will have to wait for next time.

Today we're here for the Lanesplitter skirt. Woo! I have been coverting one of these for ages and finally (finally being mid January!) got round to making one.

I was so enamoured by the colours of the Drops' Big Delight in Rosegarden in that Quant headband that I made over Christmas, that I decided to make my Lanesplitter with it. With the 'normal' Lanesplitter, you use two different colourways, but I decided to use the same for both stripes and just start at different places in the colour graduation.

Well, what happened? I have to say this pattern looks difficult but is really easy. My only problem was that somehow I completely miscalculated how much I needed to knit and ended up with a waist that was about 18" too big! So there was a degree of pulling out to be done, but even that was relatively painless. Using two strands of the same colourway worked well and there were only a couple of times when I had to break the yarn and start further down the ball to avoid a big patch of same-colour-both-stripes.

For comfort's sake the waistband was knitted in Patons' Cotton DK, and does admittedly look rather lurid, but no-one will see it so I don't mind.

Verdict: Great, easy pattern - very suitable for a confident beginner. Yarn was a little scratchy on the first wear but after that, feels fine (and I still haven't got round to making a half slip for it...).

Next up in Big Delight, a cardigan. but rest assured I will not wear the two together. That way madness lies.

The Weihnachtsmarkt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We went on the last day and it was heaving. Elbow room only. But the stalls were beautiful and I could spend a fortune there - if only I had the baggage allowance to bring it all home!

 

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...