Reflections - five years of blogging

This blog has been going for five years today, sometimes with frequent posting, sometimes with infrequent.

At times, the blog has been a refuge, at others an obligation.

It has also been a practise run for the news blog which is now my job.

Five years ago - even one year ago - I certainly did not expect to be running a frequently updated website, which was read by hundreds, even thousands of people a day, including journalists from the national press, but it happened.

The life I have now, is the life I want. An exercise for the Open University's T160 course involved writing about your ideal life. Mine involved doing bits of research, bits of writing, bits of talking to people/giving speeches and possibly even going to meetings. And a month ago I realised that's the life I had.

In the last five years I have a new interest in the history of maths, although that is sadly neglected at the moment.

I'm also doing more craft then I was. I've learned that it is the number of things you finish that matters, not the number of things you start. I'm braver about trying new things - designing embroidery for instance.

I've met lots of interesting people, some only virtually, some in real life as well. The separate strands of my on-line life now merge, whereas I always kept them separate before.

There are many lessons I have learnt over the years. But the idea that really transformed my life most was a question: "looking at your life over the last week what would someone else say was your priority?"

The idea that you have a goal, a one-true-purpose in life is a straighjacket. Find something that interests you, that makes you alive, do it, head in that direction for a while. Don't expect to arrive whereever it is the signposts list, just follow the signs for a while.

When you find the purpose that matters, it will be almost impossible not to do it. If you haven't found it yet, head into the unknown, fearfully or fearlessly. The value in working out what your ideal life will look like is not so you can craft it, but so you can recognise it when you have it.

Finally, I succombed.

Yes, I have joined the 13,000+ other people on Ravelry and started making a Baby Surprise Jacket.

I even bought yarn specially: the project needed easy-care yarn with long stripes, and I had nothing suitable. So I bought some James C Brett Bliss in a yellow/green/white combination, and cast on.

No pictures yet, not even the yarn.

FWIW, I will be coming up to my fifth blogaversary in a few days. Scary thought!

Tile 2

Yes, I went to Ally Pally, and I even came back. No photos of my purchases, which were almost entirely sewing related.

Every time I've been, the West End Embroidery stall has drawn me in, to study carefully the fantastic embroidery kits. I've loved them every time, but they always looked too far beyond my ability...

Until this year, that is. I overheard someone commenting on them: it was obvious she'd done several. So I asked her whether they were really tricky - not at all, she said, much easier then they looked.

Buoyed on with her confidence, I bought Tile 2, almost the smallest and the simplest in the range.

But it lacked one thing: those lovely circular star like stitches, whose name I didn't know. I wanted to do them in the corners, and halfway along the side, in different threads to match, the rest of the pattern.

The corner stitch looked lovely. However the shiny rayon thread simply did not work at all. So I unpicked it and carried on and have now done all the squares around the edge.

Loden Progress

When I met the Secretary of State last week....

I've been a bit busy, doing things like meeting the Speaker of the House of Commons and government ministers. Of course, it helps if one of them is your MP, but it still sounds impressive.

However, one thing I've found is that when I'm doing intensive brain work, knitting lace helps to rest my brain. It's not that it is relaxing, but somehow it uses a different set of brain cells to analytical thinking and provides a more thorough break then most other options.

However, Loden went wrong. Just like the other side of the front went wrong, I had to frog Kidsilk Haze. (The lace was not as even as I wanted it.) Now I'm slowly knitting back to where I was.

FWIW, I'm going to the Knitting and Stitching show at Alexandria Palace on Saturday. Anyone else?

Very, very, busy

My children think they are neglected, my husband thinks he's ignored, no wonder I haven't posted.

But I have crafted, a bit.

A few rows of Loden to rest my brain between complex spreadsheet tasks. A little bit of embroidery when dealing with emails gets too much. A section of Moss on the Summit in the evenings, when my brain has had enough of writing.

Ta Da

Well, that was fast. Started Monday, finished Wednesday, a cot quilt for a new baby.

Lindisfarne to Iona

The wool I blogged earlier this month was bought while on holiday in Scotland. And then I bought some more, also 'local', also undyed.

On the first full day of our stay in Scotland, we went to Lindisfarne, and on the last full day we went to Iona. We didn't go to the abbey in either place (to be saved for another trip): and although the two islands are on the opposite coasts of the UK, the monastery at Lindisfarne was founded by St. Aidan from Iona.

Lindisfarne is cut off by the tide for a few hours at the time, and we thought we'd have time to walk round the entire island. We didn't: the walking guide said allow three hours for a three mile walk and this was surprisingly accurate, but it didn't tell us about the nasty spiky seed heads that caught onto trousers (jeans were OK) and spiked through onto the unhappy teenager. I made my first crafty purchase, a small cross stitch kit of a celtic cross. It came from a shop called Celtic Crafts, which was mainly a gift shop with a few small cross-stitch kits. It was small, but also covered with backstitch. I completed it during the holiday, and took photos at the nunnery on Iona.




We weren't staying at Lindesfarne, but in Coldstream, within a mile of the border with England. However, we went from there to Edinburgh a couple of times, and saw several shows at the Fringe. I went to K1 Yarns, a nice little yarn shop, but nothing tempted me there. Another shop which might interest craft-bloggers was the Grassmarket Embroidery Shop, a few minutes walk from K1, at the far end of the Grassmarket. It had a somewhat intimidating display of work in the window, and when I went in, there were racks of embroidery threads and other materials. The shop keeper was friendly and in the back room were some kits. However if you wanted to design your own work, this was the place to go.

Halfway through our trip, we drove to Loch Awe. We actually went through Stirling on the Saturday of UK Knit Camp and Ravelry Weekend 2010, but we didn't stop. We had a long drive to the banks of Loch Awe and the remote holiday cottage we were staying in.

We did various touristy things: a day in Oban, where I bought my First Yarn in Ages. It came from a croft (I think) a little way north of Oban.

On the last day we had a coach trip to Iona. We went from Oban by ferry, then a coach took us across the Isle of Mull, before another ferry took us the short distance to Iona. We walked to the end of the Island, and stared at the Atlantic.


Then back to the village, where I photographed my completed cross-stitch in the nunnery. We looked in the little gift shops, and I was unable to resist it: more new wool, a beautiful, soft, snowy-white ball of shetland, spun on Mull - we had passed the mill on the coach.

Having missed the Ravelry day in Stirling, I also missed the Festival of Quilts - even though we drove through Birmingham on the appropriate day.

I bought wool today

The last time I bought yarn of any sort was January 2nd 2009.

It wasn't even for me: a ball of blue yarn in the sale, to make a phone case for my daughter, and a ball of red Debbie Bliss something-expensive to make an iPod case for the same daughter.

Then in an effort to use up some of my stash, I stopped buying yarn. (Only yarn, not material, not embroidery stuff, not patterns.) It was a challange to myself to avoid buying yarn for a year.

It was hard to begin with, the aching desire to buy something, anything just to own something new. (A whole year - how could I do it?) But I struggled through.

By the time, a year had passed, I'd got used to not buying any yarn. It annoyed me as well, that I'd bought wool at the start of January, so my year of not buying was oddly offset. I continued to not-buy-yarn until it became so long since I had bought something that the next thing I bought would be The First Yarn in Ages. It would have to be something worthy, something special, and nothing was quite that good enough, until today.

A single skein of Hebridean aran-weight undyed wool, slightly scratchy, but it will be warm, and comforting, and will be an accent in something, as yet unthought of. A souvenir, a special skein. Newly bought wool.

Crafting in August

Progress made on Pax Vobiscum and Concentric Oblongs.

Summit had a bit of a hitch. I got to the end of the first ball and discovered that my other ball wasn't the same. Where the first had all been fairly muted changes, the second had darker darks and lighter lights. After some thought, I realised there was nothing much I could do about, and got knitting.

Unfortunately, a dark stripe appeared at the boundary between the two balls: the repeat in the yarn colours was just the same frequency as each little segment. I carried on for a while, but this bugged me more and more, until I could stand it no more and ripped back to where the new ball started. So now I am doing something complex, involving restarting the knitting using yarn from partway into the ball, and knitting towards the end, and then hopefully being able to continue at the partway point. It's too complicated to explain in words, but I'm just hoping it works, or it will be frogpool time again.

Craft a bit further in July

Your wishes on my last post seems to have done it. I'm back crafting. Not a lot, enough to get over the "done nothing" hump.

I've done a bit of knitting on Summit, but not quite enough to finish the first ball.

I've done a bit of needlework on Pax Vobiscum, but lets face it, this one will take a very long time.

I've even done a bit of the handquilting on my leaf quilt.

School holidays in three days.

Craft mid way through July.

July stitches knitted: 0
July stitches sewed: 22

So far a fairly pathetic month in the craft front. No especial reason, except I've got out of the habit.

I'm about to go onto my second ball of yarn on the Summit shawl, and the variation is much greater then on the first ball. What do I do? Do I take lots of photographs and blog it in excrutiating detail, or do I just get on and knit?