Sometimes legs are overrated

I am taking a break from blankets today to introduce you to Annie! My new apple friend. She is super sweet and so loving. 

 

One of the things one must accept in marriage is the broad landscape of what constitutes love language. Pete's is 'giving Jellycats and/or chocolate', among other everyday things like driving me wherever I need to be because I hate driving, and coming along when I want company on a walk. 

Obviously I love this situation a ton, but the Jellycat thing has gotten a little out of hand. We have a LOT of them now. I actually have to be careful about walking him past a store that stocks them, because he cannot help himself. This is hard because I also have a terrible weakness for them. A few weeks ago, for example, we were both magnetically drawn into a store with a shelf supporting the weight of a wombat, and I wanted to buy it SO BAD, and insisted we must not do so under any circumstances, and we left without him. Then on Valentine's day I found my very special wombat waiting for me at the end of a trail of square chocolates because wombats poop in cubes. 

Be still my heart...

Anyway, back to Annie. I eat a couple of apples every day and Pete can't go long without buying me something special, so: Jellycat apple. Fair enough: not complaining about that! But Annie had a problem, and one I've never stumbled across before with this brand. 

It was her cute corduroy legs.

And her equally cute corduroy stem.

 

They smell like burnt petroleum, or a dead tire in a heatwave.

If you're reading this you're probably to some degree a fabric nerd, so you may have come across this issue before. It usually happens with a cheap fabric that insists it's a cotton, or sometimes it's a stretch polyester blend. It can be random, too. I have been burned by fabrics that smell fine in the store but after you wash them, they have this headache-inducing odor that does not go away ever. And it's pervasive, getting into any other textiles stored nearby. 

Regardless of how Jellycat came to use such a suspect corduroy, something had to happen for Annie's well-being and mine. While I figured out what that might be, she sat on the arm of my favourite chair, safely away from the other Jellycats, where I could pet the part of her that wasn't stinky so she wouldn't feel totally rejected. 

I mean OBviously that wasn't sustainable.

Finally, she and I came up with the answer.

THE RIPPER. 

My mother's ripper, actually, which gave me the emotional fortitude to go in and shred the stitches on a $30 toy.

Doing this surgery gave me an even deeper appreciation for Jellycat quality. The legs were tucked into holes in Annie's body, but the fabric allowance on the depth of those cavities is so generous I will not have to stitch them shut unless I someday allow a child under three to gnaw on her. 

Seriously: still smiling. What a perfect patient! 

The stem was not embedded in a seam at all, but stitched into a deep depression in the top of her head, separate from her leaf, which was unaffected. 

And the thread was white, so once I managed to work it out into view it was easy to see what I should pull and what I should not. I used tweezers for the final part of the surgery. 

Annie was lovely throughout, and afterward she was so happy to be able to meet her colleagues properly. 

 

That's William, my wombat, on the right. The bee on the left is one of two on our New York Times Spelling Bee team, though I can't say she's helped me win, ever. (I'd like to be able to convince somebody that *my* love language is letting Pete win at Spelling Bee every day, and that it doesn't just happen because he's so much better at it than I am, but here we are.)

Annie is so happy to be footloose and fancy free now. She and Wendy, the bunny macaron Pete gave me ages ago, are having great chats about having no legs.

And she and Squash, the squash Pete gave me also ages ago, are giggly over their plan to infiltrate next year's Christmas display as baubles.

All in all, the surgery was a massive success, leaving Annie free to live her best life.

We both hope you're living your best life, too. Thanks for dropping by today and we'll see you next weekend!

 

 

 

New yaaaaarn

Lookit what came in the mail this week!

Remember when I was short one ball of yarn for my current blanket and couldn't see paying shipping from England for just the one ball, and thereby justified buying everything I needed for an upstairs blanket? Well, that's what this giant gauzy muslin bag from Wool Warehouse is about. It's so jammed with blues and greens you can't see the red, but it's in there!

It's always such a gamble trying to match anything to the upholstery and curtains in our main bedroom and my tiny office upstairs. There's a sofa in each room, both done in the weirdest blue which I would have called navy until I saw navy on it, and the same drapes, which also have a lot of strange colours in the blue and creamy floral print. 

But darned if I didn't nail it with the slightly teal 'Mallard Blue' which is close enough for both fabrics without actually clashing.

I couldn't be happier unless I was actually working on this thing.

See what I mean? These colours are tumbling around on this curtain-print sofa cushion like they're already at home. It's gonna be so good!

Here are more glamour pairings with the drapery fabric. The grey beige of Parchment that matches one of the two stem colours, with the cream, called Cream, that matches the background...

And the grey beige that doesn't quite scream at the mushy peas green (aptly called Mushy Peas) that traces the stems and dominates the leaves.

 

 

And how about a closeup of Mushy Peas with the curling vines on the drapes?

  

These five colours were to be the lineup for this blanket - a lighter sea blue called North Sea, a grey beige, a cream, mushy peas green, and the teal blue:

 

But I have this other pale blue colour from an early shopping spree called Duck Egg, which also matches part of the curtain print... the pear shaped bit just to the right of this ball.

It seems to be friendly enough with the other two blues.

It's also from the other mill that used to make this yarn, and therefore it has the shinier element I don't really like messing around with the matte finish of the other colours. So I'm thinking maybe it could be a border? Or if I opt for a granny square blanket, the yarn I use to piece it all together? 

Or maybe I should leave it out entirely, and use it with the leftover blues in some other small projects for these two rooms. 

SO many possibilities. And so much work to do before I get to pursue them! 

Hope your weekend is full of fun or comfort, and thank you as always for spending a bit of it with me. See you next Saturday, hopefully with something that isn't a blanket. 

(but no promises, heh.)

 

 

 

 

Fluffy fluffs

The good news: the new blanket is going great!

 

Check out these impeccable stripes. So lush. Wish I'd made the original blanket's stripes this wide. 

The bad news... 

Okay, I don't actually use my finished stripey blanket that much. Probably five or six times in the two or more weeks since it's been available. I love the way it looks waiting for me on my ottoman but I haven't been that cold. And I'm not going to complain about the little tails that are starting to poke out of the spots where I ran them in, because that's life with acrylic. There are no little clutching fibers holding each other in place, like with wool.

What does concern me is the fluff. Especially given the aforementioned light use.

I don't know if you can see the serious halo coming off that off-white stripe in the middle. So maybe this second pic will explain it better. Check out the blurred upper end of the pink stripe vs the crisp lower left.

 

And it's super localized, like the slight pressure from my knees and toes are just too much for the yarn's structural integrity. 

Arg, right? and here I've just bought a ton more of this yarn for a third blanket to match the bedroom. I guess I'd better only use that one over the duvet!

But still... learning to make a crochet blanket has been a really soothing process. I was reading yesterday how helpful two-handed crafts are for mental health and addiction recovery, and it made me feel glad that even less-lasting materials like I'm using are available affordably for people who need them for coping strategies. 

Also, I don't know whether I'd have been able to justify shelling out wool prices for a blanket so big it takes nearly three months to make. I've bought plenty of frivolous things, but even I have limits, ha!

(of course, now that I know how to do this, I will totally be shelling out for wool some day.)

Hope you've got a satisfying and high quality project to work on this weekend, or some other pleasant way to pass a little quiet time! Thanks for dropping in and I'll see you next Saturday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Colour Combos

Something I find interesting about striped knits (or in this case, crochet) is how quickly the dynamic changes when you add a new colour. 

 

I absolutely love these four stripes together, don't you? The effect is a bit 1970s office drab, but so calming. I also loved the first two colours (the green looks wrong here, but you know what I mean I hope)...

And the next two colours...

Even though those two separate combos are completely different moods. Summer forest and winter frost.

I'm kind of sorry to think of adding the next two stripes...

But I'll do it, and when I finish with the rest of them I'll miss the calm of the first four but love the warmth and controlled chaos of the ten-stripe collection I settled on.

 

This is going to be my second-ever crochet blanket and I was so determined not to mess up like I did with the first one, I started that first green stripe easily ten times, including the time I ripped back when I'd gotten as far as four stripes because I had to accept it wasn't going to be wide enough.

And when I did get it wide enough, I started weighing the yarn before and after each stripe (which I am making wider this time to reduce the amount of ends-running-in I had to do last time) to be sure there wouldn't be any yarn shortages at the end.

Thank goodness too, because I only have one ball of this colour!

And I will need at least an extra ten grams of it. 

I was very lucky in that Wool Warehouse still had some stock with the same dye lot. But it's hard to justify spending ten dollars on shipping for four dollars of yarn, so I might've accidentally bought yarn for yet another blanket. This is going to be my Year of the Blanket, mark my words! Though I might do a different stitch for that one. We'll see.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend with sunshine and no yarn shortages! And lots of colours you like together.

 

 

The complete blanket

Guys, it's true. The blanket I thought would take a few weeks (try: twelve) is DONE.

Isn't it a great match for the drapes in the room where it'll live?

And that border - what a dream! 

Okay... maybe it's not *perfect*. 

Like, really not. 

Though who's to say it's not just beckoning a passerby to unfurl it, the better to curl up and cosy? 

I swear I added extra ease on the corners, but there's only so much you can do when the tension on the sides is irregular, owing to the person crocheting it having no clue what they were doing. 

And it's not like curly corners affect function, right? Ditto the wavy belling inside the borders, caused by the same problem...

 

I had to pinch a bit and skip openings when I was setting up the border, which I did like three times trying to get it as flat as possible.

Still, I'm happy with it. It's a first try at both blanket and crochet, and it's warm when it's on me and pretty when it's folded up.

In the end it came out a bit over three feet wide and a bit over four and a half feet long, which is the perfect length for tucking under on a chilly evening to crochet.

Except... now I'm out of something to crochet. 

Next!

Just kidding. I will of course be knitting socks while under the blanket, and repairing socks, and weaving that scarf I still haven't finished after five years.

(but maybe not till I've finished the second blanket?)

Hope you've got a cheery warm weekend lined up even if it means staying indoors to make it happen, or something else that's fun. You deserve it, amiright? And thanks as always for spending a bit of your time with me. See you next Saturday with anybody's guess for a project to share! 

 

Gifting for your future self

Happy Valentine's Day!

 

Recently I was looking through old knitting gear bags for a tape measure and found this adorable collection I must have assembled for a little trip I don't even remember now. And I thought, how sweet of past me to have put this together for future me!

The tape measure was curled up neatly inside a pill container, and a second pill container was loaded up with colourful stitch markers. 

A plain square tin had plain stitch markers. I wonder what project I was working on? A lace shawl? Been a while since I've done that, but I know this isn't the only time I've included a small Swiss Army knife for its all-important scissors. 

I drift in and out of an obsession with setting up the most compact tool set possible, but here I was clearly looking to maintain the usefulness of older items (the first few inches of the tape measure's markings are worn with use) or prolong the usefulness of discardable ones (the tiny tin which once contained mints.)

This was a fun find! 

Now to pay it forward by making sure that present me gives future me a totally organized yarn and tool stash, so I can be orderly and serene when colour matching a sweater that needed invisible mending, with yarn across three different storage areas. Unlike last night, ahem. 

Too ambitious? I think so too.

Hope you have a lovely weekend lined up, and thank you for spending this little bit of it with me!

 

In love with Tana Lawn

Recently I treated myself to a little parcel of Tana Lawn cotton from Liberty of London...

I didn't shop at the linked site but rather from Studio 39 Fabrics here in Canada, which stocks a swoony variety of Tana Lawn patterns (spoiler: one of these four is not Tana Lawn, just a print I absolutely loved for my evil scheme, detailed below.)

And can we also take a moment to admire the bonus gift of a bit of Tana Lawn Betsy tied into the parcel?

 

If you don't know this fabric, it's cotton in an incredibly thin and soft weave, patterned with the most colourful designs. I first stumbled across it at a jumble sale during the year I lived in England, where I picked up a skirt in what I now know is the Thorpe Hill pattern. It had to have dated back to the seventies, in an unflattering below-the-knee length which I shortened a few inches and wore long past the lining getting holes and into the fabric itself getting a bit weak. I mean, for such a fine textile, it is hard wearing!

But because it's so thin, it's also cool to wear even at high temperatures. At another jumble sale a while later I found a bright pink floral blouse in it and omigosh. So soft and comfortable no matter how hot the day.

I thought of this fabric during one of the cold snaps last month, when I started to dread the prospect of very hot weather when, rather than putting on another sweater, I will be stuck back in a rotation of cheap T shirts, sometimes two or three a day if I get out for a few walks. Le Sigh. Clothes are so much more interesting when you can layer them and combine fabrics, right? But in high summer, the only way to survive is in loose-fitting breatheable bag.

Evil Scheme Reveal: scarves made from Tana Lawn to tuck into my roster of cotton V neck Ts. Not hot, but outfit-making, and sun-protecting.

Ready for runway time?

Meet Joanna Louise...

And here is Wiltshire...   

Plus the piece of resistance, a reunion with Thorpe Hill!!! 

I was so excited to see this fabric and recognize my beloved skirt (which was a brown colourway, but no matter.) Of course I had to have it.

Bear in mind, most of these prints are available in a range of colourways, just like our beloved winter woolly yarns. 

B L I S S  

Before I finished my shopping I had also fallen hard for this Moonflower print designed by Kimberley Kight. (seriously, you should click on the link and then click on her name for the rest of the collection because it is a FEAST.)

How cute will this be on a not so desperately hot day with creamy linen floaty pants and a black linen top? Or the reverse. I have a lot of cream or black linen, it turns out. 

Plus you know that pink selvedge is going straight onto some other project as a showpiece. It's too awesome to be wasted inside a seam, don't you think? 

The Moonflower fabric is very affordable but the Tana Lawn... not so much. I could only spring for half a meter of each of that, which should be enough for an infinity scarf I can throw on and walk out with. Or a bandana plus maybe a little knit accessory pouch? This is tomorrow's problem. For now, let's just luxuriate in a couple more pretty fabric pix:

Today of course is VERY cold and tomorrow will be more so, which means I will not be sporting any of the cute outfits I am now excited to wear in July. Instead I am hunkered down inside to work on my current writing project, enjoying the sun pouring in through the windows, and grateful I finally finished fixing my super warm semi-felted sweater.

Really hope you have a lovely couple of days lined up, or at least some lovely moments to get you through if not. Thanks again for dropping by and I'll see you next Saturday!