Shop Hop on Friday

Craft blog? I've heard of those, I'm sure I left one lying around somewhere. All my crafting is rather dull at the moment, it all seems to be mostly acres of stocking stitch.

OTOH, there is a shop hop on Friday/Saturday. Patchwork Corner in Hemel Hempstead, Threads and Patches in Fenny Stratford and Art van Go in Knebworth are taking part.

I have plans to go on Friday. I'll be going to Patchwork Corner and I expect to go to Threads and Patches as well. Maybe I'll see you there??? (Maybe I'll wear my ravelry badge, that would be a good way of spotting me.)

Picnic Photos

At last, the bloggery picnic photos. All pictures clickable, but they download slowly.

Some of the people who came. Also, note the pockets in the chair - balls of yarn and knitted rabbits.


Kate's quilt, and a lovely insulated picnic bag.


Moogsmum's quilt

Detail of quilting - isn't it cute?


Kitty's quilt


Before the Egg swop


Child in tree


PS Sorry for the uninspiring prose, but I wanted to get these up.

The bloggery picnic report

Full marks to Lucy Locket for organising the bloggery picnic. It was fabulous.



Even though I'd never met anyone there, I felt like I knew them all. We arrived at Millet's Farm early (it was closer then the route planner implied), so the kids and I spent 15 minutes looking round. At the alloted hour of 11am, we approached the swings, hoping to find the right group. And we did - Jane and her daughter. I think we were both relieved not to be alone, but we soon spotted more bloggers. Introductions were made, people swopping name, blog-name and craft.

Then we found a spot on the grass. Picnic mats - including some home-made ones - were unfolded, and we settled in for hours of chatting, eating, watching kids play, more chatting, cups of tea from the restaurant and even more chatting. Children played together, teenagers chatted or ignored each other.

After lunch, the Easter Egg swop happened: a pile of Easter Eggs on the ground, and the youngest got to pick first. Eve (a lovely person) had brought some little packets of mini-eggs as well. Then the grown-up swop. I got a pretty fish picture from Emma (no blog as far as I know), and the bag I'd made went to Julia.

(The pattern came from Village Fabrics: it was part of a kit, but I used different fabric.) And there was more chatting. And some people got out sock-knitting, and the people who hadn't brought any sighed, and wished they had got theirs. Did I mention, we all chatted?

I'm not going to do a roll-call, because I always worry I'll miss someone out. But Lesley and Lucy were just like their blogs. Ali (big sister) is less bossy then might be supposed. Julia (little cotton rabbits) is a lovely person, Kate makes gorgeous bags. I didn't spend nearly long enough talking to Kitty or Jane. And Ali and Trash were there too.

(Pictures are waiting for DH to find the memory card reader: he had it at the weekend.)

That was fun

I'm just back from the bloggery picnic organised by Lucy Locket.

It was fun to meet such a lovely group of people. The saying "a stranger is just a friend you haven't met yet" seemed so true. Photos and more details later.

Tomorrow...

I'm busy looking for the green stripy bag in my profile picture - it has been honourably retired for some time, and may be sunning itself on the Riveria or something.

(You really thought I looked like that? Oh.)

PS Ferret, if you haven't got an email from me, its 'cos I haven't sent one - but I can't do Thursday.

Lanarius - person who does stuff with wool

lanarius - wool-worker

One of last week's Latin words was lanarius. It may not surprise you, but I wanted to find out exactly what a "wool-worker" was supposed to do, and so I've spent far too long on the 'net trying to find out exactly what a lanarius did.

The typical translation seems to be "you know, the person who does stuff with wool". An alternative - in an old English-Latin dictionary - was "wool-draper", probably using "draper" in the sense of "fabric seller". Eventually it turned out that the suffix "-arius" did in fact signify "person who does stuff with...".

The English-Latin dictionary also had a translation for woosted: woosted being the old form of "worsted", the spinning term. The Latin it suggested was "lana subtilior contexta", which when translated back into English is "wool finely/simply woven/connected". Not being a spinner, I don't know whether that is a reasonable description of worsted - perhaps some of my readers know?

My investigations also led me to a phrase from Pliny - "lanae et per se coactae vestem faciunt"

If you search out where it came from (Pliny's Natural History, Book LXXII, a copy here,) the whole sentance reads:
"lanae et per se coactae vestem faciunt et, si addatur acetum, etiam ferro resistunt, immo vero etiam ignibus novissimo sui purgamento"

I'm inclined to translate this:
"Wools and forces-it-against-itself makes clothing and, if bound with vinegar, they even resist iron-swords, but truly as well, the newest way of cleaning them is by fires."

If you are an RPGer, you will recognise cloth armour in that description, and if you are into knitting, you will recognise the burn-test for checking whether something is wool or not.

Pliny has more about sheep, but translating that will wait until I know more Latin words.

By the way, day's blog post is brought to you by my Latin TMA - the tutor called it "an excellent start", and I'm generally feeling smug.

Waistcoat worries

Do you remember this? That's the waistcoat I'm knitting from a charity shop kit. It's been my watching TV knitting, and has been chugging along nicely. I've made some changes: for instance there is more ribbing at the bottom, and the body is a bit longer.

I'd long been aware there probably won't be enough of the main colour to do the pattern as shown.

So I'd been hopping around a bit: the back up to the top stripes, then each of the fronts to the top stripes. Above the stripes, I'd planned to continue with the very pale colour to the shoulders.

On my second front, with two rows to go to the start of the stripe pattern, I had this much main colour left:


And then I looked lower down, matching the stripes earlier in the pattern:



And I looked higher up:



There was a definite difference in length! Only two rows, but when each row is about 0.6 cm, two rows difference is a lot.

So I frogged - lots - and knitted it again, and forgot to take any photos. I just had enough of the main colour to finish that side, with about 30cm to spare. All is well with the world.

A bloggy meetup, and a forum move

Look what Lucy Locket has been arranging - a bloggy meetup on the 8th April, at an open farm, south of Oxford. It should be a fun day out in the Easter Holidays.

The other thing of note is the mass exodus from the Angel Yarns knitting forum at http://www.knittingforums.co.uk, to Phoenix knitting forums at http://www.knittingforums.org.uk/. The full story is a bit muddled, and probably the best place to get the back story is in the angel/phoenix forum on ravelry. I'm not going to speculate on motives etc, but it seems to me that a load of kerfuffle could have been avoided with a bit more communication.

A woman in technology

"I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire but only if 1,000 other people will do the same."

The woman I have chosen is Steve Shirley. Steve is a woman, short for Stephanie.

I chose Steve because she created the F1 group in 1962: it was a company which specifically employed only women as computer programmers. If that shocks you, it is because we have come so far since then - she talks about the prejudice of the past here.

In the early 1960s, discrimination against woman in the workplace was overt and blatant. Even professionally qualified woman could be told that they could only work in certain parts of an office and that they could not be allowed to meet clients. It was not in any sense subtle.

Steve chose to be known by that name because of the prejudice against women: it kept open doors for her. Now that she is a dame, she uses the name Stephanie again.

She was also a founding member of the The Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, the 100th worshipful company to be formed (some of the others date back before the fifteenth century).

Surprise Conservatory

You didn't know we were going to be building a conservatory last week? Well, nor did we. I mean we'd ummed and arred about getting one and finally decided to sign on the dotted line. Maybe we would have somewhere to sit by the summer holidays.

On Wednesday the builder and the conservatory salesman came round to sort out the final details. At least, that's what I thought they were going to do. And then they said "we could start tomorrow if you want". "Oh" I said. "OK then".

Hence Thursday and Friday last week involved skips, and pickaxes, and wheelbarrels of rubble, and cups of tea, and paving stones. Today involved the pouring of cement, the arrival of bricks, and many more cups of tea.

Mothering Sunday

Some people get flowers for Mothering Sunday.



I get holes in the ground:




(One hole is the footings for a conservatory, the other is now a pond.)