Knitted Mathematics

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Today, via a post about an obscure pattern in a Ravelry forum thread, I stumbled across Woolly Thoughts for the first time. In their own words:

We are designers of mathematical knitwear. Or perhaps we are mathematical designers of knitwear. Whatever you want to call us, many of our designs are simple geometric shapes combined to make elaborate patterns.

But that is not all that we do.

We are mathematicians at heart and so most of what we do has a mathematical basis.

I’ve always thought that there should be a way for me to combine my love of maths and knitting but never taken the time or effort to investigate and now I don’t have to, it’s all been done for me!

I love geometric designs, especially when there’s a particular mathematical thought behind them, so I was just blown away by their selection of throw patterns. I ended up buying the booklet for Double Vision, mainly thanks to the beautiful pictures of finished items. There are lots of other things on there, not just throws, so it’s worth taking some time to have a wander round the site. They don’t publish patterns as such, the booklets are more like guidelines, leaving plenty of room for your own interpretation.

Double Vision takes a lot of yarn so I’m unlikely to be knitting any of their other patterns any time soon, although there are a couple that I’m thinking would translate well to painted canvases to decorate our new flat and another couple that I’d love to make up as cushion covers. Apparently I’ve been well and truly inspired!

I also received a very friendly email from them along with the electronic delivery of my pattern, which given my recent ranting about customer service, was much appreciated.

Oops! I bought some yarn.

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The Internet is evil and must be stopped. I haven’t done this in a while but today I succumbed and went shopping online in a spare 5 minutes at work. I really ought to know better by now.

To add insult to injury, I discovered that there was money sitting in my PayPal account that I hadn’t realised was there. It was, of course, impossible for me to use their simple option to transfer it directly into my bank account. No, I had to find somewhere to spend it.

Fortunately, there are a vast range of places on the internet which accept PayPal as payment and some of them even sell yarn.

I started with a PDF pattern from Woolly Thoughts (more about which in a post to come) and followed that up with yarn from Cucumber Patch to make said pattern. Except that I discovered that Cucumber Patch also had some discontinued Jaeger yarns at prices that I couldn’t resist.

I have a shrug that I knitted in Jaeger yarn some time ago and have never worn because shrugs just don’t suit me (not that that stops me knitting them!). There isn’t enough yarn in it for it to be worth frogging it and re-using the yarn but I discovered a pattern in Knitty that adds a stretchy body tube to the shrug to create an entire top and have been meaning to do this for ages. In the meantime, however, Jaeger discontinued their yarns so I had basically given up hope of getting the same yarn in co-ordinating colours for this project. I was over the moon today then to discover that not only did Cucumber Patch have the yarn that I wanted, in colours that would look good, they also had it in sufficient quantities!

The only fly in the ointment is that this, together with the yarn for the throw from Woolly Thoughts, adds up to a lot of yarn and I’m due to move house in about five weeks. True, I’m only moving two doors down and two flights up but I think the yarn is going to need a box or suitcase all of its own.

Oh well, at least the money isn’t sitting doing nothing in my PayPal account any more.

Christmas Knitting

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I finally got around to uploading the picture of my Mum’s Christmas neckwarmer so here it is.

I’m really lucky that my family always appreciates handmade things and this and my Dad’s Henry scarf were really popular at Christmas. I completely forgot to get any pictures of Dad’s finished scarf, which, considering the time and effort that went into it, is very frustrating. I think I’ll need to get him to take some pictures and send me them!

In the end, I really liked the way the So Called Scarf pattern came out, even though I’d used solid colour and not variegated yarn like everyone else seems to. Fortunately, my Mum spotted straightaway that it was supposed to be a neckwarmer and not a full scarf and didn’t need it explained.

My So Called Neckwarmer

The dying art of customer service

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Everyone knows that people in London are rude and unfriendly because the city’s just too big and crowded but should the same really apply to those working in customer service?

This is a topic that’s very close to my heart at the moment. Between organising a wedding and renovation work on our new flat, as well as the actual purchase of the flat, I averaged about two phone calls to suppliers per day last week. That’s not including several emails that I sent out and one written letter. The standard of response that I received varied wildly. Blackburn Bridal in Blackheath are currently at the top of the hall of shame for not replying to either an email or an answering machine message and then being advertised the next day in a bridal blog that I subscribe to with the suggestion that interested brides should email or phone for an appointment! Only a very short distance behind at number two are MFI. You’d think the fact that I’m planning to spend several thousand pounds on a fitted kitchen would be enough to get me an appointment with a salesperson but two phone calls to their ‘appointments’ line later, still no appointment. Add to this list various kitchen fitters and a snooty assistant at Berketex who tried to tell me that trying on dresses 9 months before my wedding is ‘leaving it a bit late’ and I’m less than impressed.

On the other hand, I’ve also had some fantastic service. Our plumber, as always, has been an absolute star in terms of replying to voicemail messages and putting up with me and the estate agent rearranging appointments left, right and centre. I only hope that his final quote makes me as happy as his service so far. Pantiles Bridal in Tunbridge Wells were also fantastic, replying to an email that I sent faster than I thought was possible. We couldn’t arrange a mutually convenient appointment but that’s my fault rather than theirs.

Finally, a weekend in Scotland went some way towards restoring my faith in the service industry. I can highly recommend Falkirk taxi drivers as friendly and extremely helpful. The reception staff at Airth Castle Hotel (where we were attending a friend’s wedding) were also great. (The waiting staff were a different matter but they were just incompetent rather than rude.)

If not for the great job that our conveyancing solicitors have been doing so far, I’d have had to conclude that good service is only available outside of London.

Anyway, I’m still looking for a reasonably priced, reliable kitchen fitter covering the south-east of London so any recommendations will be gratefully received!

His Dark Materials – find your daemon

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If you’re a fan of the Philip Pulman His Dark Materials trilogy, did you know that at the Golden Compass film site you can take a quiz to choose what your daemon would be? It’s at http://www.goldencompassmovie.com/ (Warning! The site is all flash and plays music. Bad website!) Go to Daemons and click ‘Choose your daemon’ and answer 20 questions to have your personality analysed.

Picture removed since embedding an object really messed everything else up!

Apparently, I’m solitary, assertive, modest, dependable and flexible and, therefore, matched with a chimpanzee! Not exactly what I was expecting for my personality type but the description is spot on so I guess they know what they’re talking about.

It’s all very silly but made me smile so I thought I’d share.

Edited to add that I’m now in the huff as Steven’s daemon came out as a snow leopard which is much cooler than a chimpanzee.

I have a confession to make.

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I don’t like the jumper I’m knitting. There. I’ve said it.

I still love the look of the finished jumper in the pattern pictures and I really like the fabric that’s coming off the needles but I can’t stand the pattern. It uses complicated increases and decreases that I don’t think I’m doing properly so I’m not getting the look that they’re supposed to achieve. Also, they’re so complicated that I’m having to stop and read the instructions carefully every time I come across one, which is currently four times a row.

I’ve been trying to work out why I’ve barely knitted since Christmas and it wasn’t until I spent some time on Ravelry this afternoon looking at patterns and projects and starting to get enthusiastic about the idea of knitting again that I realised that it’s not that I don’t want to knit, it’s that I don’t want to knit this jumper. And, since it’s the only project I have on the go at the moment, that translated to me not wanting to knit.

So, I’m going to frog it, reclaim the yarn and start on something else. I’ll put the pattern back on the shelf and come back to it another day, making sure I take the time to properly work out and learn the increases and decreases so I get the result that I want.

Of course, this means that poor Steven who has had a respite from me knitting for the past three weeks (which he needed after the stress of my Christmas knitting) is going to have to put up with it again.

Back in the land of the living…

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..or back online, anyway. Apologies to those of you who were worried by my prolonged absence from my usual online haunts. A lack of internet access whilst visiting relatives over Christmas followed by a vast quantity of Things Needing Done Now when I got back home meant that I just haven’t had time or energy to spend online. Things are getting back under control now though so I’m starting to work my way back in.

The good news is that we’ve made progress with planning and organising on both the house-buying and wedding front. We’re nearly ready to exchange contracts on the flat (at which point the sale becomes legally binding!), have agreed a completion date (when we actually get the keys!) and have started organising tradesmen for the work that needs done. We’ve booked a photographer for the wedding and I’ve arranged some dress appointments and even already tried some on. There’s still a lot to do on both fronts but at least it feels like we’re moving forwards.

Finally, before I forget, Happy New Year!

The ‘before’ pictures

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Steven and I went round to the flat that we’re buying the other night to take some measurements and photos so that we can start properly planning the work that needs done. Fortunately, the rooms were bigger than we remembered them being, which is always a good thing. Unfortunately, they’re just as hideous as we remember and there’s just as much work needing done, if not more so. Anyway, if you’d like to take a look at just what we’ve let ourselves in for, Steven’s put the pictures online at his Picasa gallery.

La donna è mobile

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Or, in English, “Woman is fickle”. I should point out that this is a comment aimed directly at myself before I offend anyone. I changed my mind about the scarf that I’m knitting for my Mum again yesterday mostly due to the horrible cold that I’m currently suffering from. It’s become clear that because of the slightly wider width I went for, two balls aren’t going to give me a long enough scarf. I had thought I would just pick up another ball at I Knit last night but since I spent most of yesterday huddled under a blanket on the sofa, I didn’t think taking my germs to a Christmas party was a brilliant idea. So, Mum’s scarf is now going to be a neckwarmer instead.

Straying from the path

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Usually, when following a knitting pattern, I use the exact yarn recommended as I’m always worried that it somehow won’t ‘work’ without it. However, having decided to knit my Mum a scarf for Christmas at the last minute and not having time to spend tracking down particular yarns, I thought it was time to be brave and try yarn substitution.

So, I picked my pattern and looked up the details of the recommended yarn on www.yarndex.com so that I could at least attempt to find something similar (a slightly fuzzy aran weight). So far so good. There was a small doubt in the back of my mind though. The photos of the scarf accompanying the pattern didn’t look like it had been knitted with aran weight yarn and definitely not with fuzzy yarn.

Undeterred, I bought two balls of the Wensleydale Longwool aran yarn, which I’ve mentioned before, and cast on.

The yarn was beautiful, the pattern pretty, the combination of the two …. bleugh!

Never mind, I had added lots of beautiful scarf patterns to my Ravelry queue earlier in the month when I thought I might eventually get around to knitting something for me again so I went back to the drawing board and started on a new pattern.

The yarn was still beautiful, the new pattern was pretty … and you can see where this is going, can’t you?

Again, despite the pattern claiming that it used aran weight yarn, that’s not what it looked like in the photos so I decided a change of approach was needed and went through my list looking for patterns that looked like they had been knitted with fuzzy aran. At last success with My So-Called Scarf.

Although all the pictures I’ve seen of this scarf have used variegated coloured yarns, the scarf looks beautiful in solid cream as well. It also uses nice big needles so is knitting up very quickly, a definite advantage when there’s less than a week to Christmas and you’re casting on a present for the 5th time!

Fingers crossed that I don’t change my mind again!