| Lizards I need to know about lizards. Odd info, anecdotes, personal appreciations, myths, stories. Please get in touch. No, I'm not going to keep them as 'pets'. Thanks. |
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to browse and drool |
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s*t*a*s*h! (blush) |
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Abandoned. Kittens have stormed the basket and resistance is futile Beaded top in hemp Hemp yarn from House of Hemp in 'gosh', kingfisher blue / green. Very, very nearly there  Sleeveless top for Toz in duck-egg blue Rowan DK Soft. Toria started it and has run out of steam. Scarf in charcoal grey Rowan Polar Very chunky and soft. Yarn was a presi from DH Mike. |
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Raglan baby sweater 2003 2002 |
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Finished Object! The top-down raglan is being worn at this very moment - catastrophic digicam failure (batteries have run out) is impeding photographic evidence. Only 18 sts to 10cm made this a lightning-fast project. And it was fun to do. I'm tempted to start another in light toffee beige alpaca mohair, knit lightly to the same tension or even grosser. I know, I know. This is not like me. I've been working away at Laurie's 4ply shorts to recover my equilibrium. Kitten news You all wanted to know this, so brace yourselves: Phoebe has come on heat at six months old (earlier than our other kits ever did) and has spent the night in our bedroom yowling and mrrrrrrrrping and doing gymnastics on and off the bed edge. She is desperate to get out. Hopefully it will last only a couple of days. She is far too young for a first litter and we were not planning one anyway. She is currently trying to remove the catflap by force. Please send her soothing kitty thoughts to calm all those hormones. Vet visit will be scheduled on Monday :) Finnish blogging There are only 5 million Finnish speakers in the world, so I am told, but Anne V at The Unbearable Lightness of Knitting is one who knits and blogs too. And best of all she is obviously hopelessly yarn-addicted! Scroll down past the Finnish - unless it's your tongue or you are unusually skilled in the foreign languages department - for lots of tales in English, including a yarn-buying trip to Paris. She's got some really fine links as well. January 20th Guardian Article Good old Grauniad, see here for a nice little article with Debbie Stoller. Cheap and cheerful Amazon shipped a copy of 'The Ultimate Knitted Tee' a couple of days ago. I've been looking forward to this for a while, as I wear tees and tops, and intend to increase my stock considerably this year. I'm having fun with this book although my response is twofold: on the one hand it is filled with frumpy designs trying to look glitzy, incredibly large gauge (18 and 20 sts to the 10 cm is seen as 'fine') adding to the frump factor, and weird shapeless 'shapes' - what is that thing on page 39, for instance??? On the other hand, the layout of the book is quite inspirational. 4 main chapters introduce techniques for the following constructions: bottom up, top down raglan, side to side and diagonal. Each technique has patterns in four different styles: 'casual comfort', 'workaday wear', 'café chic' and 'glamour girl'. I really like that kind of thinking for adaptability. No, I'm serious! If one gets past the frump factor and the models trying desperately to look sexy and alluring (what is that woman on page 127 doing with her tits? The girl on page 114 may have dislocated her shoulder - and page 39 *again* for that matter: Freddy Mercury did it better), there are a lot of design and construction ideas to be gained from the book. I have started a top-down raglan, just because I haven't done one of those for years and years. The instructions are strange - for instance on the pattern I adapted, you are not told how many stitches you are supposed to end up with having increased to the widest part of the garment, or for the underarm rounds; nor is one told how many stitches one ends up with at the widest part of the sleeves. All these elements are covered by being told to work until the raglan is 9" long - theoretically of course this will produce the right number of sts, but... I would still add that information to the pattern. I had to work it out as I was adapting. In any case I have tinkered with the gauge, the shape, the texture and the colours and am nearly done with it, galloping down the straight to the lower edge. On reading all four top-down raglan patterns, one can get the general idea and design one's own. There are some interesting ideas for using novelty yarns, and in fact a vast range of really odd fluffy, feathery, glitzy, ribbony, frou-frou yarns are pictured actual size, so the book acts inadvertantly as a colourful guide to what yarns are out there and how they knit up. Whether you would ever want to put them into a tee is a different matter. If you are used to the sheer class and refinement of Rowan designs or similar, this is a shock, but it's been good fun nonetheless. . January 9th Review to Preview Well, what happened in 2004 that really made any difference to me? It's good to look at the past year to be able to make a judgement about whether one is moving forward - and in which direction. It's like drawing a line in the sand, a baseline to make feedback meaningful. It's also interesting to see the interplay of world events with personal journeys. Ready? 9 most momentous happenings, discoveries and slippery slopes for me in 2004, in no particular order: US elections. That means more political activity for me this year. We are all responsible. ATPNI, NLP and CST training (see below): Ongoing. Opening of MFR (Myofascial Release) clinic near Bath (Lacock, where Harry Potter was filmed at Lacock Abbey): I see more clinics in the future. First European capitals then further afield. Asian tsunami: Initiated my regular gifting to MSF instead of just one-offs. Also stimulus for firming up 'giving back' structure for the clinic. Many bodywork practitioners do this, giving the income of one day a month to charity or working one afternoon a week for free, with clients with big needs and little income. Totally sorted yarn stash. Really. Somehow recovered active German fluency: This is odd. I can't quite work out how it happened. Might have something to do with reading in German again. And when I think in German I think slightly differently than when I think in English, so it gives me an alternative approach to problem solving. It's in the structure, I think. Ask Chomsky / Lakoff / et al. Kittens Cleo and Phoebe. Half Siamese. They often drag things off, quite big, heavy things. Today they dragged my purse (small wallet type thingy containing bank cards, driver's license, etc) out of my bag and under our bed. We panicked considerably, searched through the house several times and were on the point of cancelling the cards when the purse appeared on the bedroom floor with the kits sitting around washing each other as if nothing had happened. As soon as I post this, I shall think of several more momentous happenings - c'est la vie. Count these as the highlights. Training. I choose and pay for my own training, so this is really a case of money going where mouth is: The following is edited January 2006 for the sake of clarity. Applied Psychoneuroimmunology (ATPNI): this was a mistake. The hype sounded good but this particular organisation has managed to lose every single one of their last two level 1 (originally NLP Practitioner) course participants, including me. I was the last to cut my losses (late summer 2006), and they were quite big losses. You can't say I don't give it my best shot! However, I have not lost my interest in why the body does what it does and the relationship between the emotions, stress, our psychological, neurological encoding and the functioning of our body, our health and well-being. Neurolinguistic Programming practitioner certification: mind-body techniques to be used in the context of ATPNI. Same course as the ATPNI one. Should have done it with a different company. Craniosacral Therapy II with the Upledger Institute: more CST and bodywork training coming in 2005. Wonderful stuff, particularly when combined with other mind-body approaches. (And SER I further into 2005, since I am now editing in 2006). Major purchases and acquisitions in 2004 Er... rather a lot of books. Yarn. Training. Some new furniture for DS1 Chris' room. More books and yarn. I think that's all. We haven't been on holiday. Skip: we have a skip sitting in the drive, and we have cleared out all the unwanted and unpassonable items from the barn, workshop and house, mainly relating to having had very small children who now do not require samll-child paraphernalia. The odd bit of furniture that really was not going to see much more daylight. And all my old folders (metres and metres of them) from when I was a secondary school teacher. I love clearing out!!! New interests, fascinations and inspirations Applied Transformational Psychoneuroimmunology. It ties together bodywork with psychological and physiological approaches. I like the big picture. Shawls. Knitted shawls. Or throws. I've been threatening and promising myself. I'm going to knit one this year. Myofascial Release and related bodywork. The more I see of it, the more I do it, the more beautiful and fascinating it becomes. Releasing the fascia, the membrane which surrounds all the muscles, muscle fibres, organs, bones, nerves, vessels, an immensely complex three-dimensional bodystocking, that can get stuck through physical or psychological trauma. When we have an emotional response to something, this is logged neurologically, then the first place for it to affect the wider body is in the fascia. And that affects the functioning of everything else in the body. Everything. That's a big issue. It's enormous. Traveling again. I spent most of my childhood being carted around like unwanted hand-luggage, and was only too pleased to set down roots and build a home I could be happy in. Now I feel I could fly again... Natural fibres and their textures and colours. So many bloggers have contributed to my developing a delight in natural fibres. Thank you! I haven't tried spinning yet, as I have a very healthy suspicion that it may become addictive, and I have too many addictions already. Maybe when I am old an greyer. January 6th Blogrolling Finally I've done it... I've added an RSS feed to this blog and a blogroll for the blogs I keep up with. Obviously not all good blogs have this wonderful RSS feed and so I shall continue to add them by hand. It was surprisingly easy in the end, but I wouldn't like to have to explain it to someone else to do their own. Having dug through many tutorials on the web I used this article to tell me how to do it. Rowan Polar scarf et al Finished! I used 4 balls of Polar and a zig-zag wide rib pattern (picis later). I'm now shooting through the shorts to go with Laurie's raglan sweater. JamTart, Cleo and Phoebe have spent the morning chasing each other through the house. Cleo and Phoebe stalk JT and JT chases them. No hissing, we think they are playing. As the kittens have their dry food out all the time, JamTart has been helping herself as well and for a while last week almost earned the title SumoTart. The chasing will do her no end of good. January 2nd Kittens on guard At the top of the stairs, just in case someone tries to pass without permission. Like JamTart.  Au revoir pierrot! Or maybe not au revoir at all... I think I may be done with this particular incarnation of the great Patricia Roberts harlequin extravaganza. This is what is left:  Yup, Phoebe and Cleo got at the basket once too often. Their party piece was - is! - to drag it off the window sill and to wherever their lair is (changes from day to day). After rescuing it several times it became clear that the two criminal kits had it in for Pierrot. They just couldn't resist. I had to remove the addi turbos bacause they were beginning to chew on those. Shriiiieeeek! I have now cunningly left the basket as a decoy. All other knitting has escaped since they discovered Pierrot. January 1st 2005 Happy New Year! Here's the alpaca baby sweater (unblocked) from Erika Knight's Baby Bloom - see my full review here  And the kittens entwined on someone's lap:  |
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Archives:
Knitting Archives 2004 Knitting Archives 2003 Knitting Archives 2002 |
| Send an email to Anne |
Knitting books now:
 Baby Bloom - Erika Knight Knits for pregnancy and babies to 12 months. Totally recommended. In the US it's called Knitting for Two 
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Read this month: Brenda Kinsel: Wie man einen Badeanzug kauft. Kari Cornell (ed): For the Love of Knitting Manuela Brinkmann: Unterwegs zur Vollkommenheit Keith L. Partain: Psi in the Sky |
 Explore a quality, original, independent web site here: The Infinite Stitch Money, religion, politics. Yes. |
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Balade -Marie Fleur des Prairies - Val Histoires d'aiguilles - Isabelle Sockhaus Strick-Tagebuch KnitDad's Blog - Larry 
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