- It will cost more than you think.
- It will cost more than you have.
- Presenters of property programmes will usually know more about property and building than the people appearing on the show.
- People appearing on the show will usually ignore any and all advice given by the presenter (or their builder … or their architect).
- It will take longer than you think. (This is especially true if your plan is dependent on good weather … in the UK … in November.)
- Doing things yourself may save money but will rarely save time.
- Living on-site is always a Bad Idea.
- Not visiting the site regularly to manage contractors is a Bad Idea.
- There will always be a problem with the structure of the building that cannot be seen until work starts. (If it’s a period property or listed building, this will immediately double your costs and amount of time required … at least.)
- I will ignore any and all of the above lessons when it comes to working on my own home.
Left brain vs. right brain
I’m pretty much a left-brain type person, i.e. good with numbers, logical, structured, except for when I’m very much a right-brain type person, i.e. creative, intuitive and a bit of a dreamer.
Studying for actuarial exams is about as left-brain as it gets and my right-brain appears to have gone into creative overdrive by way of rebellion. First, there was the coffee cosy:
Then the pirate eye-patch:
Then a new banner for the blog:
I’m quite proud of the banner which is the product of my own photography and GIMP skills. I’ll never be a graphic designer but it’s fun to play every now and again. (All the books in the banner have been digitised, by the way, and are available from Project Gutenberg. The large brown ones are the “Letters of Charles Dickens” and the smaller green ones are the “Fascination of London” series.)
To top it all off, my notebook is bursting with scribbled ideas for new projects and I’ve started swatching for a Spring scarf based on the pattern of raindrops on a window (did I mention the bit about being a dreamer?) and a tea-cosy. In fact, that’s the swatch for the tea-cosy in the banner.
Some day, by which I mean after the exams, I might even be able to put my left-brain to work writing up the patterns for these projects!
“Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.”
Audiobooks are my new favourite things and there is almost nowhere that I won’t listen to them. I listen while commuting, on long car journeys, sitting at home knitting, in the bath or lying in bed waiting to fall asleep. Although I only recommend the last if you are already familiar with the plot!
It turns out that I’m a lot fussier about my audiobooks than I am about books that I read to myself though. I’m less forgiving of bad plots when I listen to them and I’m absolutely unforgiving when it comes to bad narrators. A good narrator is an absolute must and, for me, there are two qualities that make a good narrator.
Continue reading ““Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.””
How-to: Make a pirate eye-patch
You will need:
- black felt (2 4″ squares or 1 piece 4″×8″)
- black elastic
- thin cardboard (1 4″ square)
- scissors
- pencil
- needle and black thread
- craft glue
Using the outer line on the template below, cut out two identical pieces of felt. (Tip: double your felt and cut through two thicknesses at once to get them as similar as possible.)
(Clicking the template will take you to Flickr where you can download the larger size for easy printing.)
Using the inner line, cut out a single piece of cardboard.
Sew your elastic to one of the felt pieces, making sure not to twist the elastic before attaching the second end. Back-stitching in the shape shown in the diagram should be nice and strong.
Glue the cardboard to the centre of the felt piece that has the elastic attached and then glue the second piece of felt over the top making sure that the elastic is sandwiched between the two pieces of felt. You may want to add extra glue where the elastic has been sewn to the felt.
Once the glue is dry, your patch is complete. If you would like a neater edge around your patch, you could add blanket stitch all the way around.
Aarrrhhh!
Not your usual Easter crafting
It feels more like Hallowe’en around here this weekend than Easter. There are no eggs or chicks or bunnies, instead we have pirates and bluestockings.
Pirates because Steven is attending a stag weekend next weekend that requires a pirate costume. Fortunately, we live close to Greenwich which is a good place for buying general pirate stuff and we whipped up a quick eye-patch as well. (Expect a how-to post with full details shortly.)
Bluestockings was a term coined in the 18th century to describe educated, intellectual women and, with the amount of studying I’m doing at the moment, I think I qualify and now I’m knitting the socks to match.
These are the “Evening stockings for a young lady” from Knitting Vintage Socks and are a great example of what I love about Ravelry and what I don’t like about Knitting Vintage Socks. There are several lacey sock patterns in the book but none of the socks in the book are photographed being worn. Unfortunately, this makes it impossible to see the lace patterns at their best. So, when I decided to knit a pair of lacey socks, I narrowed my choice down to two by looking at the book and then logged on to Ravelry to see what they actually looked like worn. This actually helped me to decide that I didn’t want to knit either of the patterns that I had short-listed but did want to knit these ones instead. I had never considered knitting these socks based on the photographs in the book but I’m absolutely loving them.
A close-up of the beautiful open-work pattern:
FO: Golf socks for Mum
There was going to be a much nicer picture of these socks (which are the Pom Pom Peds for my Mum) to go along with this post. It was going to be nicely posed with props (golf balls!) since I found the remote control for my camera yesterday. Unfortunately, it seems that the remote and my mini-tripod can’t be in the same place at the same time since I now can’t find my tripod. Also, the battery in the remote control is dead and since it takes a watch battery, I don’t have a replacement in the house. Add to that the fact that I couldn’t find a single golf ball despite there being dozens of them somewhere in the house and I decided that a nice photo of the socks just wasn’t meant to be. Hence, the lying_on_the_floor_with_feet_up_on_the_sofa pose.
I do seem to be turning into the sort of knitter who can’t knit a pattern without changing something. With these, I lengthened the cuff slightly and used a completely different toe so that I didn’t have to do any grafting. I know grafting isn’t difficult but I do find it fiddly and I actually prefer the finish of a non-grafted toe. This toe is the French Toe as described in Knitting Vintage Socks.
Now I just have to wrap them up and send them to my Mum with my fingers crossed that they will fit!
My tuppence-worth
I try to avoid politics on this blog but having spent today in a building round the corner from the Bank of England and the G20 protests I do have a couple of things that I’d like to say to some of the parties involved. Before I do, it is worth mentioning that lack of sleep and an excess of caffeine have left me a little on the grumpy side today!
Protestors – please don’t put questions on your placards. Especially ones like “Why do we have to pay?” and “How am I supposed to feed my kids?”. It took great strength of will to walk past without answering them and you really wouldn’t have liked my answers.
Bankers – if you’re wearing jeans instead of a suit to try and blend in with the protestors, you shouldn’t really wear them with expensive designer shirts, jumpers and shoes; you weren’t exactly inconspicuous.
Politicians – stopping in front of a handy camera crew to shake hands with the police officers keeping an eye on the peaceful protestors is just cheap; you know who you are.
Metropolitan Police – Operation Glencoe? Seriously? I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you’re just working your way through a list of Scottish glens and that this was in no way a reference to a slaughter of innocents by government forces. You can see why that might be a bad parallel to draw, right? Right?
Now that I’ve got all that off my chest, here are some pretty pictures of my walk home through Greenwich Park.
The Royal Observatory:
A weirdly blue-tinged view over the Maritime Museum towards Canary Wharf and the Isle of Dogs:
I love Spring!
Bless your little wool/nylon blend socks!
From looking at this first photo and, indeed, from looking at the project itself at first this could easily be mistaken for a baby sock. Looking a little closer reveals that it is actually adult-sized. In fact, it’s the first of a pair of socks that I’m knitting for my Mum as a belated Mother’s Day present. She wears a lot of these little trainer liner socks when playing golf so I’m hoping these will get lots of use.
The pattern is Pom Pom Peds from Purlbee. I haven’t decided whether or not to make the pom-poms yet. I know my Mum has a strong preference but I can’t remember whether it is for pom-poms or against. I wonder if there’s any subtle way I can work the question into a conversation!
And here’s one I made earlier from the same pattern with some leftover Opal sock yarn. Unfortunately, I don’t think I have enough yarn to do the pair but since I still don’t really like the stripes, maybe it doesn’t matter.
These are a really quick knit, that’s one and half socks since Friday.
Cry me a River
Now, I’m generally considered an intelligent person but like many other intelligent people, I occasionally do things so lacking in common sense that people wonder how I’ve managed to survive as long as I have.
So, recently there was a weird confluence of events. I finished my Katje cardigan without having planned what I fancied knitting next; Birdwoman was talking about knitting lace; I had been raiding my stash/unfinished projects and reclaiming yarn from projects that I was never going to finish.
Next thing I know, I’ve cast on for a River with some Kidsilk Haze that I’ve had for a long time. It was going to be a shrug but I finally admitted that I was never going to wear the shrug and I should use the yarn for something else.
Now, one of the reasons I was so keen to move directly on to a new project was the fact that I have my next set of exams in less than a month and I needed something to distract me.
Note to self: knitting lace in fluffy mohair does not help relieve stress. I don’t think I’ve made this many mistakes in a project since my first garter stitch doll’s blanket when I was 7.
Some times it flies along with no problems at all and then there are nights like last night when it takes me half-a-dozen attempts to get to through a single row.
Never mind, I’d still prefer this
to this
any day!
FO: Katje cardigan
Ta-dah!
Another finished cardigan. This time, Katje from Cocoknits, knitted in Noro Cash Iroha.
Even more amazingly, I have actually woven in all the ends already. There were a lot of knots in the Noro resulting in a lot of ends to be woven in but two episodes of Battlestar Galactica and one episode of Blackpool later, they were all done. It helped that that was the only finishing needing done on the cardigan; no seaming whatsoever!
I love this cardigan. It’s a great casual wear and the yarn makes it nice and snuggly.
My only complaint is that it seems that Spring is finally here and I might not get to wear it as often as I’d like!
