KnitWit

The Fourth Plinth

*Warning! Contains gratuitous Archers segue*

After work I went to Trafalgar Square to see Marian Cinnamond on the Plinth. Antony Gormley's Fourth Plinth project has been running for a week but is set to run for 100 days (until October time) and will feature 2,500 people over this time period. Tonight seemed to be knitting night because although plinthers had been randomly chosen, two knitters were featuring and Iknit had organised a knit around the Plinth.

I have to confess that I am slightly obsessed with the idea of the Plinth - I love the social aspect to it and I have found myself quite frequently wondering who is on it at various moments. I'm loving the range of the different things people are choosing to do, like raise awareness of a particular organisation, cooking food or having a tea break. I'm very jealous that one of my co-workers has a space on the Plinth although he is having no truck with my attempts of trying to teach him to knit. There is still time to knit a flower for Anne Makepeace going up on the Plinth on Sunday 26th July so I might just have to be content my doing that!

(And as I can't keep The Archers out of any discussion of the Plinth, I did think that although the contest for the Ambridge Plinth did start off in an inspired fashion with Jill Archer baking bread at height, the culmination on Sunday of Gormley opening the fete and Joe Grundy as the Angel of Ambridge was a tad disappointing I feel).

Anyway, we trundled along and knitted and got some slightly strange looks but had a lovely time nevertheless. Marian knitted with aplomb and also drank tea out of cup & saucer which was fab. Hurrah for knitters! 

Liz and Felix were there with Brenda Dayne. It was very nice to meet Brenda (despite not being an avid Cast On fan) and we somehow got on to a discussion about strawbale building. I have a secret desire to build a strawbale house and Brenda shares my enthusiasm.  As she is currently living in Wales and being active in searching for land I suspect she might be in a better position to make it a reality some time soon but nevertheless it was a lovely discussion. 

For strawbale inspiration, for people interested:
- North Kesteven District Council in Lincolnshire is the first local authority in the UK to use straw bales to construct social housing which I think is very exciting.
- Ben Law's amazing and beeeeutiful woodland house in Grand Designs can be seen here.  (It always makes me cry this episode)

(Liz and Brenda working it for the camera!)

We also had a discussion on knitting community and my militant public knitter views were exposed. (If it is possible to be such a thing) I have always felt strongly that knitting has a social role and I have always loved the way that with knitting, discussions across a wide range of topics (from personal, political & technical questions) intersect with projects and conversations almost seen knitted into the fabric of the knitting. I did get quite indignant when a local cafe owner argued that the knitting group would be better suited to a community centre rather than a busy, public cafe. For me, I love the reclamation of knitting from a largely private, domestic sphere and drafty community halls where it is too easy to ignore,to be a more visible social activity and it was nice to be able to celebrate this on a sunny evening in Trafalgar Square.

Birthdays, Boats, Candles & Cakes

 

It was my birthday last week and I had a thoroughly lovely time. I tend to like staggering the celebrations and this year was  no exception.  I started on Wednesday evening with dinner at Waccaha after managing to leave my new hat in the pub. (It has since been reclaimed thankfully!)

Celebrations on the day included being treated to a lovely breakfast in Chapters in Blackheath, going by boat (!) from Greenwich to Embankment which is something I have wanted to do for ages. Inside it is a bit like a coach so I insisted we sat outside.

Then onwards to the Natural History Museum to see the Darwin Big Idea exhibition and giggling at John Hegley at Arts Admin. Poetry about guillemots seems very apt on my birthday – I am determined to find a video online to post of it. (My incredibly bad limerick did triumph in the poetry competition) Peppermint tea and hummingbird bakery cakes ended the day nicely.

Still prolonging the birthday joy, I had drinks in the pub on Friday where I was spectacularly late (even by my shoddy timekeeping standards) and continued celebrations on Saturday by going to an Anti-Valentine’s Massacre where my friend Catherine launched her new EP and then to an evening of bawdy songs with Bellowhead. (This including dressing in drag, men in makeup, a burlesque dancer and some of the rudest songs I have ever heard. You can check out photos here to get a favour of the evening.

Back in Oxford on Sunday, I had a lovely lunch at The Black Boy in (old) Headington with my family, which I can thoroughly recommend, lovely food and really nice atmosphere, with beautiful roses, pressies and lovely conversation. Finished up with fruit cake and candles and singing. Perfect birthday long weeked.

Reclaim the (Snowy) Streets

I should caveat this post by saying, I don’t like snow. Its cold, wet and EVERYTHING breaks and I really don’t like being cold & wet however pretty it is.

“Its going to snow on Monday”, J said, “Humph” said I.

When I got up yesterday morning, I looked out my window to see a sprinkling of snow – bah! I thought, no problems getting to work. If the bus doesn’t arrive, I’ll come home. I bustled around making tea, grumbling at the girl reading the shipping forecast who I thought was rubbish. She put punctuation in ALL the wrong places! And while I forgive a lot of things, the shipping forecast is sacred.

However, as we got inside the M25 the snow looked quite deep but still pretty. Then then my team at work started calling saying they couldn’t come in to work from places like Fulham and Baker Street. “Really?” I said, “no buses, no tubes, that’s a bit strange” and sat tight.

J called “South Eastern Trains website has broken and I’m going to work by boat”, a little extreme I thought.

Bus slowed to snails pace, ho hum, I started to regret not having any knitting with me. 

8.30 am – my boss calls, “Don’t bother coming in, its really deep in London and you don’t want to be stranded”, “I’m at Marble Arch…” I replied and still I ventured on.

Finally I arrived at Victoria, very deep snow had drifted across pavements, train station closed. Behold the snowy wonderland – roads empty of traffic, a strange muffled sound and people passing each other smiling. It was a like a strange parallel universe where everywhere was blissfully empty to tramp about. I did get slightly wet feet, apparently my boots need fixing. My legwarmers however rocked.

9am. Got to work and I was the only person in my department of about 70 people. Everyone I called is snowed in, and I decided that I didn’t want to get stranded so decided to pick work up and get back on a bus before they stopped running too. I think three cheers should be given for Oxford Express bus drivers who managed so well with the horrible conditions and also all the men who were shovelling snow and ice and gritting pavements as fast as they could.

But, I may have got sidetracked with my camera on the way back to the bus. Look Big Ben, icicles, snow, hurrah!  

Coming back was fun – I saw some lovely snowy countryside with red kites circling looking for food. And now, feeling stoic and smug I’m writing some marketing plans, wrapped in a blanket and wearing my newly finished selbu modern hat.

And I have to admit it was quite fun even though I don’t like snow, usually.

More of my snowy pictures can be found in my flickr set here.

Banishing the grey days

Last week I was feeling decidedly lacklustre about the weather and the Iknit event on Saturday proved the perfect antidote to a grey long week. It was lovely – I went on the knitting hut minibus with my mum and my sister and a great day was had by all.  I managed not to take any photos of the entire day so excited by yarn, fashion shows and bumping into familiar faces. There was giant knitting, dutch knitting café with amazing socks and biscuits, the knitted landscape photos, an angora rabbit (who didn’t look very happy, I’m sure we should have been able to liberate/stroke/take it home to play ), and this sheep which Holly kindly photographed for me.  

The vintage knitted swimwear in the Sitch in Time Fashion was simply great and would love to be able to style myself in a 40s fashion from time to time. The slightly curled hair is just fabulous but possibly might not work with my hair.

 I wish I had seen Jane Sowerby speak but I had got bit overenthusiastic about having coffee and had failed to read my programme correctly so missed her talk. I did have a lovely chat with her afterwards about Prism yarn and looked at her shawls, they are breathtaking in real life and I might have to acquire her book, Victorian Lace Today, in the near future. 

Oh and the Yarn Harlot was very funny indeed as expected. I found myself slightly freaking out by the fact everyone was knitting around us and by the end felt compelled to start knitting. It was like an strange spell fell on people and people who didn’t start of knitting were certainly knitting by the end. One of the most fun things was spotting what people were wearing – I don’t remember doing this last year but I kept seeing stunning shawls or cardigans that were clearly handknit and making notes about things to look for on Ravelry. I’m sorry if you saw me staring!

The marketplace was similar to last year in that most of the stalls were local, independent enterprises and so buying from them really felt in someway like supporting a cottage industry.  I purchased a skein of variegated sock yarn from the Natural Dye Studio which caught my eye and was on my list of allowed purchases. It is a bamboo-merino mix which will be interesting because I’ve long resisted bamboo as a fibre. (Doesn’t feel right to me somehow).  The variegated colours of the Natural Dye Studio were stunning so I’m sure I’ll be purchasing some more in the future.  Quite fancy trying their Dazzle range.

However my main obsession was this lovely gorgeous black stuff. It was from the Heathland Hebridean stall which I spent a lot of time – the wool is undyed, as it comes from the sheep and has a fantastic colour which reminded me of peat.  It is quite rough so I think felting is probably its best use. But most of all I love the project that the wool supports. Heathland Hebridean is a conservation grazing project in Sussex where the rare breed flocks help manage the lowland heathland. Buying wool is protecting a unique biodiversity and help manage the landscape as well as sustaining a rare breed. (Looking at their website you can also buy sheep and mutton). I ended up buying about 6 skeins for felting projects and also revealed myself as a big biodiversity geek – apparently I was the only person to start talking to them about the importance of sheep grazing for nature conservation!

I ended the day buy buying a Herdy mug – it is going to accompany me into meetings. The profits from the mugs go to Herdwick Sheep breeders and Tourism and Conservation Partnership in the Lake District.

On the way home I was struck by the fact that most of my purchases reflect my new interest which is looking at the relationship agriculture has in shaping and conserving the natural environment.  I was really struck when I read a recent post on Crafting for a Greener World that biodiversity is an area which gets overlooked in the whole eco-crafting debate quite often and wool production for instance impacts the landscape and ecology quite a lot. I’m interested to know more so if other people have read interesting blog posts, articles or books on this subject I'd love to know more!

A belated present

A hot water bottle may seem like an odd gift for a friend in July but that is because the said gift was made in winter for a February birthday. It then fell victim to never being in the same time or place as me when I saw its intended recipient.  However my long suffering friend realises that sometimes certain time delays are inevitable and if belated presents were ever going to be an issue I doubt we would have been friends for the best part of two decades (how old are we Raks?!)

Anyway, here we have a recycled hot water bottle made with love and gifted with a copy of Fur and Gold by Bats for Lashes. Raks also seems to be at the forefront of my rather experimental craft skills – she was very nice about the rather strange sock monkey I made her before but I’m hoping that this is a more useful and aesthetically pleasing present. 

Last November on a very dark and wet evening, I went to a Make Lounge workshop with one of my colleagues. The workshop was a lot of fun – I liked the ethos of it which was essentially to help time-poor people carve out time to do craft and also to try new skills. I think if I were to do others I’d try fabric painting or possibly the plastic recycled bags one. Doing workshops like this is probably a bit of an expensive way of trying something new but it was really well run workshop and people on the course where lovely. Anyway, this was an attempt to overcome my fear of sewing and cutting fabric and it did work to an extent! The tutor, Emma Seddon, was so nice and patient and I spent  most of the evening cooing over buttons, beads and felted jumpers and drinking red wine. (I’m not sure that the wine really added much to my craft skills). I am very pleased with the result.

Basically you make a pattern from paper by drawing round an existing hot water bottle and then were left to adorn it how you wished. All the jumpers were bought from second-hand shops and pre-felted before the workshop and actually the hardest thing was deciding on which ones to use. Obviously because the jumpers were felted you didn’t have to worry about edges fraying and it meant you could create quite bold effects. Lots of people used embroidery but I decided that I would use the textures from 3 different jumpers as the main decorative feature. (I did then cave and added the beads because they were so so pretty but they might not be that comfy). The front pieces were slipped stitch together and a basic running stitch round the outside.

I really struggled to let this one go as I do love how it turned out., I’m not sure that these photos do the colours justice but the back is a dove grey with blue and dusky pink on the front. I didn’t actually test it as a hot water bottle but I hope it works. I'd like to try more in the future - I'm keen to find some argyll jumpers to use. Those minging golf jumpers could be turned into lovely things!
Happy Birthday Rakhee!!

Who are...

these people who are going to vote for Boris? Seriously?
I’m frustrated – I can’t vote because I don’t live in London and I can’t campaign because my job requires me to be politically neutral therefore I cannot impact the outcome of the Mayoral election at all. And my question is but really, do people seriously think that Boris can do a good job?

Jonathon Porritt has written two really good posts about the election here and here from a sustainability perspective.