Christmas Crafting!

I'm going to make a couple of assumptions - one, that the recipients of my crafting aren't following my blog, or two, they may have opened their gifts already . . . but if you know who they are, it's a seeecret, shhhhh!  And if you work at the school and you've got a parcel from Madam to open, close your eyes, stick your fingers in your ears, and go, "LALALALALALALA!!!", okay?

So, Madam likes to give her teacher and classroom assistants etc Christmas gifts.  She often asks me to make specific things, which get changed around as I try to find stash yarn to suit - I don't want to be buying extra yarn, you know (ha!) - so this year there were four gifts to make.

Number one:

A granny-stripe cowl - pattern here - which I altered only in colour choice - I started with a black foundation chain and first row, and also finished with black, and inbetween I alternated yellow, burgundy and teal.

Number two:

I have a Zoom Loom, which I LOVE - it's a ?maybe 4 inch square? pin loom, which you can wind yarn onto in such a way that you only have to weave the last quarter of its length.  I raided my stash for a rainbow-ish selection of tonally dense yarns, and Zoom!  Sixteen squares, single-crocheted together, and edged with a dc, ch1, skip1 border . . . which makes it look a little like a film-strip, I've just noticed . . . hmm, maybe an idea for the future!

Number three:

A Spiral Scarf from Norah Gaugin's book Knitting Nature, which I made in DK instead of 4ply.  I reduced the starting hexagon from a 24-stitch side to a 20-stitch one, and knit till I ran out of yarn.  The hexagons are 1x1 ribbed, and I went up to a 4.5mm needle, so they are squishy and delicious.  It's a short collar-ish scarf, but will keep the chill out from your neckhole!
 

Number four:

Is a brioche stitch Faucett scarf from Knitty.com.  I love this yarn - James C Brett Marble Chunky - and I had previously made a pair of knitted slippers for this gift, which I put on just to try them out, and couldn't take off - so I needed something fast and easy, and this was just that.  It whizzed along, and is ridiculously squishy and gorgeous.  I found it hard to give this one away too, but seeing as I have the same yarn in purple, and all the time in the world, now that the Christmas gift-knitting is mostly done . . .

So there we go.  The studio is finally done - I just need to tidy up in there and get some photos to share, and I'll get writing about that soon, I promise.

Merry Christmas!  All the best of the season - I hope you all have a great holiday!

Brown paper packages tied up with string!

I recently took part in a swap on Ravelry, with some of my friends from the fantastic Ankh Morpork Knitter's Guild (the Terry Pratchett fans' group in ??possibly the biggest online fiber-crafts community??).  Anyhoo, a swap is where we set up a group of people who all get to make and recieve gifts for each other, which as a crafter is really cool as we're always making stuff for non-crafty folks who often don't appreciate the time and effort that has gone into their gift.

Part of the deal is that we share photos and write up about what we've recieved, so I thought I'd share here too . . . plus I can share photos from here to the swap thread . . .

So, here's the parcel which arrived from my lovely friend Ilwin in the Czech Republic!

And on top of the box, when it was opened - uh-oh!

All of the things.  Presents, and postcards, and a bag of teensy seed beads, and CHOCOLATE!   MMMmmmmmMMMMm!

The first of the handmade goodies - a row-counter necklace (isn't that clever - the beads can be slid up and down and they stay where you move them to - I'll have to figure out how to use it properly), some sparkly dangly earrings, and stitch markers for crochet and knitting.

I may have mentioned my fandom . . . 

TWO crocheted scarves!  How gorgeous are these! The purple one is folded over, and has it's own wee shawl-pin.

Some acrylic yarn in jewel tones, which will be very handy - I love fancy yarns and all, but bright cheerful acrylics are what I most often find myself crafting with, and don't those colours just make you smile!

But what's this?  Who's been sleeping in MY yarn?

It's the feegle, of course!  I shall have to find a suitable containment method for this wee scunner, or he'll offski with the chocolate and any "medicinal" liquids he might find about the place!

I wonder if he has a name . . .

Two for joy!

There is still work to do, but I finally have a working studio!

It's been up and insulated for a couple of weeks now, but on Thursday of this week Andy the electrician came and connected a new fuse box, so I now have one double socket . . . which doesn't sound like a big deal, but it so is!  It means I can get out there after dark and have a light to switch on.  It means I can leave a tube heater connected on a frost-prevention setting, so the stuff I take out there won't get damp from condensation.  It means I can put a proper heater on when I want to do a bit of work.  In short, it changes a shed into a workspace that is safe for my materials and comfortable for me.  There are more wonderous sockets and switches to come, but this first is the one which really makes the difference.

I got a bee in my bonnet earlier in the week, and bought some cheap vinyl so the flooring would be down before the electrician came, and on Friday night I decided to race down to Ikea in Bristol as soon as hubby got home from work, to get a bit of storage and lighting sorted out.  I bought myself a couple of £15 (???!) Laiva bookcases, some Kallax storage units, a Hektar floor lamp (which will live next to my table as it angles light downwards like an oversized desk lamp), and four Ranarp spotlights (which attach via a lovely big springy clamp, so I'll be able to move them around and focus light wherever I need it).

Yesterday was spent putting things together (oh, my poor hands!), and today I have been hauling every crafty thing I can find out of the house and finding it a new home.  I may have a couple more balls of yarn than I, strictly speaking, need (seeing as I have filled all the storage space I had intended for yarn already), but I also have a vintage glass-fronted bookcase and a charity-shop bureau which have yet to be brought out of the house, so I might manage without another late night drive to Bristol.  You can't see all the yarn in this photo . . . it's hiding just to the left, and in those boxes with the square holes at the bottom . . .

It's so quiet out there, compared to the hubbub of children and tv and central heating that you hear in the house.  I could hear magpies scuttling about on the roof out there earlier, and last night there were tawny owls calling each other from somewhere not too far away.

In my rummaging today, I found a piece from the life drawing class I took before Madam was born.  The tutor had said at the start of the pose to think of Egon Schiele, so my pencil moved with a nervous, jittery energy, and I drew this.

I've brought it out to the studio, not as  pin-up, but as a promise.  I can do this.  I can make things worth looking at.  This is my special talent, and dammit I'm going to USE it!

Stu-stu-studio!

It's UP!  Up up uppity up!  (happydance)

It was actually properly up this time last week, but Mr Gary-the-gardener took ill and so the glazing didn't go into the french doors until Friday (when the window fitters took pity on me, and popped it in, bless them), and today Gary is back on the job and sealing around the doors and window.

So as of now we are watertight!  The guttering is ordered, Mr Andy-the-electrician will come by soon to look at getting power out there (and to check out the fault in our upstairs wiring in the house), and there's a bit of paving outside to finish off . . . and then we'll be on to insulation and OSB board, and chipboard flooring, and I'll have a workable space!

The new windows in the house are all finished too, and it's like having a whole new house.  It's warmer and quieter, there are obscured glass panels where we need them instead of where we don't, and the difference in the amount of LIGHT is astounding.  I can stand in the back garden and see clear through the house, between the guest bedroom and the landing window!  It's bizarre how much it changes a place, having the right windows and doors . . . and doors that close securely with a click, and open happily without a shove!  Oh it's so lovely!

The Christopher Wave

When I was little, I was in the Girls Brigade (one of my Great Aunts was involved in running the local troops), and at one of the annual show thingys they sang a song which went,

"Riding along on the crest of a wave and the sun is in the sky!
All of our eyes on the distant horizon, look out for passers by!"

(which, of course, I misheard as "Christopher wave")

And that's how this weekend is feeling - on the crest of a wave - on a high, zooming along, with the slightly stomach-churning possibility of the wave breaking and crashing around us at any point.

The studio is here!  In many very heavy and unwieldy bits!  There are also a fair amount of bits of playhouse which, having been bought from a third party by the shed-building business, need a thorough soaking in wood preservative before we figure out how to put them together, and so I have been preservative-ing this afternoon when really I ought to be clearing windowsills and shifting furniture away from them because on Monday morning, the new windows are coming too!

The weather forecasters are saying that Monday will be wet and windy and cold . . .

Hubby has taken a holiday day on Monday, and our lovely gardening guy will be here too, hopefully getting the studio mostly up (I've been lobbying for Hubby to work from home on Tuesday just in case he needs to take 5 minutes to help with any heavy lifting to get it finished off), and I've bought one pack of polystyrene insulating boards and one pack of lovely-smelling sheeps' wool eco-friendly insulation stuff so I can start figuring out what the next steps will be.

So by this time next week, the house will look different, the rooms will be brighter (and hopefully warmer), and sitting quietly in the garden there will be a space just waiting for me to fill it up with creativity.  The thought of it makes my heart sing, and if we get the words wrong, my heart and I don't give a stuff!

Radio silence!

Apologies for the delay in service!

As has been the running theme for this year, I've had another breakdown - this time my laptop, hence the blogging hiatus.  A replacement doesn't appear to be on the cards just yet as internet searches have led Hubby to believe that it can be fixed by means of some disassembly and application of a heat gun.  I am not convinced.  In the meantime we have bought Madam a Kindle Fire (they were on offer), so a mild addiction to a free Boggle app has also been causing distraction.

Things Have Been Moving on the Studio front!  The foundations are gently curing in the late summer heatwave, and the shed will be delivered next Friday, with a view to putting it up the following week (or possibly the week after, as we're hoping to scam some advice from the double-glazing fitters who will be there then).  I'm beginning to wonder whether I ought to paint the outside of the shed before we put it together, if I get the weather for it . . .

Here's a shot of the foundations and the tyre-terracing on the slope behind which has been obligingly swallowing up topsoil as we dug it out.

I sourced the tyres from a local auto-repair place, which was more than happy to have them taken away.  I found that the lower-profile tyres (the ones with a shallower side wall) are much sturdier for building with and climbing across.  We've been drilling holes through the treads and bolting them together horizontally, and my gardener, Gary, has been packing the topsoil in and keeping them level across the slope, which is trickier than it looks because the sizes of tyres vary so much that finding similar sized ones to keep the rows even is nigh on impossible.  If you're doing landscaping work or mixing concrete (or removing about a cubic meter of compressed bamboo rootball that's been growing through gravel), I can thoroughly recommend getting yourself a Gary.  He's been awfully handy . . .

Oh, and I've found that cleaning the tyres, and spray painting them in situ is easier and more economical than painting them first then assembling them.

I tried to find a picture of what it looked like before we started, but the only one I could find was taken so long ago that the full horror of the overgrown bamboo and trellising collapsing under the weight of honeysuckle and brambles had not yet occured.

Perhaps the wide view might help -

Where the tyres start is where the garden virtually ended before - we own up to the center of the old railway track at the top of the slope, but over the years it has become so overgrown, and the slope is so steep, that with kids and pregnancies I just couldn't get it back under control.  There were trellises making a fence at the bottom of the slope, stopping me from being able to access even the lower edges . . . so we're hoping that now we'll be able to safely climb across the tyres and we've got at least a chance to keep the brambles down.  There are four apple trees and a pear in there too, which I'm hoping will start to produce more edibles once I can reach to prune and harvest the poor things!

Well, that's all I've got time to say just now - Little B is watching Cebeebies from the baby-cage (which is what we've been calling the playpen) downstairs, and I've got to go fetch Madam from after school football in a bit . . . and I haven't even mentioned the shed design, and the cheap windows I sourced, or even the fun I had at the Bristol Wool Fair . . . and I can't tell you about my current crafting because I'm doing a SWAP BOX (excitement)!  I'll fill you in soon.

So tyred!

In order to get my studio built, the next stage in the process is going to be digging out a section of the back garden to lay a concrete slab.  Hopefully by this time next week I'll have a big old pile of lawn-ish and slightly weedy topsoil . . . and I have a plan for that!

Actually this plan has been bubbling under for a year or so, you see I have a section of old railway embankment at the back of my garden.  It's steep and originally it must have been a stone construction, and it's covered with a shallow layer of topsoil and a thick layer of scrubby weeds and brambles.  Aside from some narrow steps, it's nigh on impossible to navigate the slope, and keeping on top of the weeds and brambles has been beyond us for a while.

Then last year I saw a picture of a recycled tyre climbing thingy in a kids playground on Pinterest.  The tyres were painted and piled up, and filled (I think) with bark chippings, and I thought, "I could do that up the side of my slope!".  So the plan is to clear the weeds down to the ground along the bottom edge of the slope, lay down some old cardboard to kill off any remaining roots, and start with a row of spray-painted tyres, bolted together for extra security.  They'll then mostly be filled with the topsoil as it gets dug out, and I'll plant into those tyres.  I've got a big bag of slate chippings from a previous garden re-jig, so some of the tyres will just be filled completely with chippings to make pathways to climb across the slope as the layers of tyres build up, and on dry days they'll be nice spots to sit too.

So . . . on Saturday I picked up my first stack of old tyres from the local garage.  I've been washing them down in a paddling pool, with a trug full of soapy water and an old dustpan brush whose pan got stepped on.  Madam's been enjoying de-gravelling the treads with a screwdriver for me, and once the first lot were dry, they got sprayed pistachio and daffodil.  I can tell already, this is going to look good.

I'll take some pictures soon!