Star in the Darkness

This is another teeny tiny star. The square in the centre of the star is 1 inch across. I made up the block pattern myself, although obviously it is based on friendship star. It still needs trimming. The blues of the background are more similar in real life.


It took huge amounts of pfaffing, until I realised that rather then try sewing 1.5 inch strips to 1.5 inch rectangles, I could sew 3 7/8 inch squares (which were already cut out) to 4 inch strips and then trim down. More planned wastage, less accidental wastage.

Update

Recent finishes: a funky fur hat (two weeks from start to finish) and a pink crochet bag (4 months from start to finish). I've also done some crochet squares.

Recent starts: entralac bag from Yarn Forward. If you're thinking about doing it, the pattern has a lot of errors. And you can't refer back to the article on entralac immediately preceding the pattern, because the article doesn't use quite the same method.

It was Knitting Group last week, but I didn't want to take the bag. Instead I started a the second glove of a pair I was knitting last year. I got quite a bit done: then I realised at teh end of the evening that last year's glove was all 2x2 ribbing, and I had been doing 1x1 ribbing.

Ferret's Quilt Show II

This is a fuller report of Ferret's quilt show - I didn't have time to write a longer one on Sunday. I did enjoy it immensely.

Edited to add link to Sunday's review.

First the quilts. Photographing quilts can be really hard to get the real effect, and it was quite dark. I only took a very limited number, and then decided that the ones on her portfolio page would be better then anything I could take.

So I'll repeat the photo from before:


I didn't spend as long as I could have looking at the quilts, because I was too busy talking to her friends.

Her cat was on display, and it was extremely effective. There is a textural distinction between the cat and the background. It was almost three dimensional. Another dimensional quilt was 'Autumn', with the leaves that she has shown on her blog. Some of the leaves are stitched down only in part, so they could flap around in a wind. The quilting was excellent too with the shapes of leaves quilted into the background. It's the quilt on the right of the picture.

On the nudes, I'd talk about the effect of "negative space", if I was entirely sure what it meant and it didn't sound too pretentious. But what Ferret has done is take a large background space and not entirely cover it with picture, just enough to have the suggestion of a hand, or a leg.

Her Union Jack Quilt was on display. It was interesting listening to the comments: people recognised it as being punk related, whereas the commentators at the Festival of Quilts where it was on display, didn't get it. (Or at least the retired ones who go on a Friday didn't.)

Ferret has also got some really nice friends. Sometimes you meet someone new and they have done the same sort of things that you have done and like the same sort of things you like. Ferret's friends were like that. We talked about Charles Babbage and zombie attacks and gravitational lenses and Gary Gygax and the Science Museum. And about other things along those lies.

To summarise, I had a really enjoyable evening, and the quilts are worth seeing.

Ferret's Quilt Show

On Friday, I went to the opening night at Ferret's quilt show. It's definitely worth going if you are in the area, the quilts are very different in real life to in photos.



Ferret is the one in black.

Click on the picture to get a full-size image: Ferret is the person on the right, with long dark hair.

Visit to an Oxford College: writing as a distraction

I walk along the High Street in Oxford, regretting that I have no map with me, but knowing I have studied them well enough that a map in my hand would not gave me any more information.

I reach a long, anonymous building which is probably the right place. The windows are above head height. A few steps set in to the wall lead up to a dark oak doorway: a group of people are on the steps, as well as a small noticeboard propped against the side. "Is this Queen's College" I ask and they assent. I push open the small door set into the larger one, and go through.

The porter's window is to my left. I ask the way to my meeting: staircase 4, back quad. I hope I can recognise staircase 4 from staircase 5 and staircase 3, this is all new to me.

I start to go around the quad, under the cloisters. But the woman I know is here, and says to go across the quad. I open a small metal gate: the path leads directly across the square, between two lawns with short, green grass. Between the grass and the path, there is a flowerbed on each side. The effect is symmetrical and controlled: each flower bed contains two rows of small blue-purple cultivated primulas. Elsewhere they would be called primrose, but the use of the Latin name is appropriate for this place.

I walk down the path to the far side, amazed that I have the right to do this. At the end, a single pale pink hyacinth shows between the rows of primulas. It looks out of place, but there is a row of hyacinth plants between the rows of primulas. It is the only flowering hyacinth: I am the only person here.

I walk through the archway to the back quad. Another courtyard, with a number of closed doors set into the walls. Above each door is a number painted on the wall. As quickly as I can, I scan for the number four. Through that door, and the meeting room is obvious. There are people here, I have arrived.

---

Through a window at the back of the building, I see two carved gargoyles chasing along the buttress of the neighbouring building.

---

I leave at twilight. A man wheels a bicycle across the front quad, a scene that could have played out at any time in the last 100 years. His fluorescent yellow jacket glows in the gloaming, seemingly incongruous in this setting but it anchors me to the twenty-first century.

---

I write this to distract me from the knowledge that my first-born is taking his first GCSE exam now: years before most of his age-group, and it is the hard 'triple-science' award.

I survived an Earthquake

Or perhaps that should read "I felt a minor Earthquake which took place some way away".

The BBC story is here.

It was a big Earthquake for Britain - there was at least one injury. And lots of chimneys fell down. I know this is barely newsworthy any where else, but for us in Britain it is headline news.

It was just before 1am, and I felt the thing I was sitting on wobble from side to side. I heard some floorboards creaking. Not a lot else to say :-).

FWIW, if you felt it, there is a questionnaire at the British Geological Survey here.

The last time I felt an Earthquake, it was like having a hippo turning over several times in bed next to me.

English coast

We went to the Suffolk coast last weekend. The weather was cold, windy and sunny. The colours were fascinating in the clear light: the sky really was this even clear blue.



Another shot, looking up a cliff, catching the bushes silhouetted against the sky.



Equally fascnating was the sea. The colour was a dark greeny-purple.



One photo just caught a glimpse of the wind turbine in Lowestoft on Saturday. The sails had been removed following a lightning strike.




By Sunday morning, they had put them back on: if I'd known in advance I'd have tried for better photos. In the little basket hanging down from the crane there are two people: you don't get a sense of the scale from just looking at it.



Craft wise, I am making a funky fur hat for Kiddo. Yes I know some people are snobbish about acrylic and polyester. OTOH, she specifically asked for it, and I like Sirdar Funky Fur. It feels nice, and is easy to knit with: well you can't see the stitches very well, but if you don't need tolook at it, it is easy to knit. When I took this photo it was looking rather caterpillar like, but it has grown widthwise then.

The yarn came from a wool shop in Lowestoft "at the top of town". If you start in the main part of town, say by Chads or the library and keep walking through the pedestrianised centre - away from the station - then over at the traffic lights and keep going upwards a little way, there is a smallish shop on the right. It had a good range of medium priced brands, including sock wool.

Email - what's that?

I don't seem to be able to email out at the moment. I'm getting some bounce messages, but not for every message I send. But I have no evidence that the others are getting through.

(My usenet posts are getting out. Hmmm.)

According to blogger dashboard, I have posted 195 times. I think I will do another giveaway when I get to 200 posts.

Making Squares

I borrowed a new crochet book from the library last week: Crochet Inspirations by Sasha Kagan. It has about 200 crochet stitch patterns: ranging from the simple double crochet up to complicated pineapple mats.

It has re-inspired my Learn to Crochet blanket.

Peephole granny(144):



Catherine Wheels (39 - unfinished):
In the book the wheels are more circular and stacked: mine are off-set and more blocky. I still like the effect.

This is a good book of stitch patterns. There are plenty of clear pictures, and every pattern has both written instructions and a chart. The written instructions use US terms, as does the chart key, but it includes a conversion table from US to UK/Australian terms.

This is not suitable for a complete beginner as it does not include a guide on how to make the basic stitches (eg a double crochet). OTOH, any extra explanations are extremely clear: for instance in the description of the "cluster 7" stitch (needed for the Catherine Wheels), it tells you to do the partial stitch 7 times, then "draw through all 8 loops on hook". These little details make it very usable. Another little detail is that the website has a list of all the yarns used in the book.

I've also been making a stripy square, but have no photos. My next pattern from the book will be crosshatch (61).

I made another friendship star using a different method.

I wanted to reduce the amount of bulk (I was not trying for accuracy), and I succeeded in that. But I didn't like making it as much. It was fiddlier in the sense that it took more thinking - I was sewing triangles to a parallelagram, and appliqued the other star points in place. I expect it was like making a Dear Jane block, but it just seemed like too much pfaffing.

I even prefer the look of the proper Friendship Square

Impressions: 22 1/2 hours in Paris

Journey:

A building with the words "wine and beer" painted in large letters on the side.

Double decker passenger trains.

Rail side graffetti.

Arrival:

Crates of carefully arranged colourful fruit outside shop doors.

Elaborate carvings above doors and windows.

Collars placed just so, on elegantly dressed French men and women.

A pile of woven scarfs in a department store.

Bolts of liberty fabrics for 27 Euro per metre.

Nearby, a shop with sewing machines and a log cabin quilt in Kaffe Fasset colours on the wall: at the back three women sit, talking or sewing.

(Rue de Castellane, near Galeries Lafayette and Printemps.)

Evening:

White unicorns, one with a scorpion on its back.

A white wrap, possibly knitted from Kidsilk Haze, or Tilli Thomas.

White stoles being brought to the tables, for cold ladies to drape elegantly around their shoulders.

Chocolate Asiette with deep red sauce.

Morning:

Fresh pineapple in the fruit salad, as sweet as if it had been just been plucked from the tree.

"Je voudrai une savon, si vous plait."

The handbag I yearn for, in the window of a shop which is shut on Sundays.

Touristy t-shirts and thank-you chocolates to take home.

Departure:

Anxiously waiting for our luggage to be brought to the pavement outside the hotel.

Foreign place names in a foreign language carved in the facade of Gare de Nord.

Brown-grassed railway cuttings, made colourful with the red stems of leafless bushes.

Teeny Tiny Patchwork Block

I wanted to make a single nine-patch block.

As I cut the squares, I wondered whether it was worth getting out the sewing machine.

There were four half square triangles, so I used 'quick piecing' methods.

The finished square: it will measure just about 2.5 inches when it is in situ.



(Why so small? The orange was already cut into a 1.5 inch strip, and I wanted to find out if I could use it for a very small star. It's doable - just!)