Make a Clock, using your favourite fabric

This is an idea that popped into my head a few weeks ago and I finally made mine yesterday so thought I'd share the process. 

You will need:

• A clock mechanism with hands (see note below about this)
• An embroidery hoop of the size you want your clock to be
• A piece of fabric big enough to fill your embroidery hoop
• Waste cardboard at least as tall as your embroidery hoop plus 2 cm.
• A pen
• (not shown) Glue suitable for sticking card to wood
• (not shown) Scissors

A note on clock mechanisms: You can get these quite cheaply in a number of craft shops and online. I do not like the sound of ticking and so I looked for something called a "continuous sweep" mechanism. Otherwise any clock mechanism will do. I found mine on ebay where prices went up to £10 per unit, but mine was about £3.50 inc postage.

On your card draw round the inner edge of the inner ring of your embroidery hoop. Then add on an extra 1cm on each end and cut out this shape. 

Using your scissors make a number of small cuts through the extra centimetre of card and up to the line you have drawn. You are effectively making  a number of tabs which will fold up at 90 degrees to the rest of the card. 

Put your fabric in the embroidery hoop and trim off the excess at the back so it looks neat from the front. 

Flip the hoop over and insert your card. You'll see that the flaps I cut earlier are now pressed against the inner hoop while the main body of the card is flat against the fabric. 

Once you are sure everything is fitting properly use glue to stick the flaps to the embroidery hoop (but not to the fabric - afterall you may want to change the fabric in 6 months and having it all glued on will mean you need to cut out more cardboard instead of just changing the fabric).

Using a skewer or your scissors and keeping your fingers clear, make a hole in the middle of your hoop, going through both the card and the fabric. The hole needs to be big enough to fit the shaft of the clock mechanism through. 

Follow the manufacturer's instructions regarding fixing the mechanism in place, placing of the hands and battery. 

Now put your clock up on the wall and sit back while time passes. 

Hints:

1. My clock hands kept colliding and stopping themselves when I first put it together. As they were plastic I got a dish with boiling water and dropped them in for a minute. I carefully fished them out and was able to straighten them so they now move smoothly over each other. 
2. Pliers may be useful for tightening the clock mechanism washers and nuts around the cardboard and fabric. 
3. As mentioned earlier, you are not stuck with this fabric forever. You can make it seasonal with special summer or christmas fabric, or show off some of your embroidery or patchwork. When you do want to replace it carefully remove the clock mechanism and undo the embroidery hoop. The fabric should just fall out and the card is attached to the inner loop so should stay in place. Put in your new fabric, tighten the hoop, make a hole in the fabric where it needs to be and replace the clock mechanism. 

If you use this tutorial please make a voluntary donation of just £1 towards my ongoing craft addiction. 

Chocolate Dipping Sauce Recipe

This simple sauce takes less than 2 mins in the microwave and is good on fruit and, for the true sugarholic, marshmallows!

You will need:

• About 40g of cooking chocolate
• Tablespoon of honey
• Knob of butter
• Microwavable dish
• Fruit/marshmallows
• Skewer/cocktail stick

Precise timings will depend on the power of your microwave, and if you don't have one you can use the traditional bain marie. 

Break the cooking chocolate into pieces and put in the microwavable container. In 30 second bursts, zap the chocolate until it has started to melt (For me this took two 30 second bursts). 

Remove the dish from the microwave and without stirring add the butter and honey. 

Put back in the microwave and zap until the butter has melted (for me this was just one more 30 second zap). 

Stir until smooth and serve while still lovely and warm. 

Additional options: you can add some cinnamon or other spices or a small shot of your favourite liquor. Just bear in mind with the latter that this will make the sauce runnier and so you may want to omit half of each of the butter and honey to compensate. 

Bookmarks to Print

I've been meaning to do this for about 3 years so here you go - print your own bookmarks.

Simply

• download the pdf file
• get hold of a piece of A4 thin card or thick paper
• print it in black and white (my preference) or colour
• Cut into 5 along lines shown

All this was prompted by this amazing etsy notebook:

Source: etsy.com via Alex on Pinterest

More Ideas Than Time

Source: google.com via Alex on Pinterest

This captures things quite perfectly at the moment. I am at that well-visited and often ignored place, a crossroads.

After my split from Pooch (and before my recent re-descent into madness) I had a short-term fling with a man who said several times "You don't want to get into a relationship straight away - you need time to find yourself and work out who you are." At the time I took this to be commitment-phobic bullshit but didn't really care because he was really quite amazing in bed. But these months later I am all too aware of the, undoubtedly coincidental, truth in these words. I still think he was only saying it as a pre-emptive measure against me getting clingy, but then my therapist would say that was because I was globalising.

It was my annual appraisal at work last week. My Director can be terribly annoying but she is very good at conducting appraisals and very good at giving feedback. She talked about my highs and lows, all very fairly, and then also talked about the future. She talked about my 'personal style' which is 'playful' which in itself is 'great' but can mean people don't see me as being the competent professional that I am because they don't take me seriously. Essentially, what it boils down to, is that I'm getting too old to throw paperclips at people in meetings just cause I'm bored.

All this, along with a suggestion that I might like to consider applying for a 2-year program to train leaders in my sector, plus the CEO's anti-pep talk about us all having been working there too long, is making me wonder what it is I want at the moment. 

A year ago I was married, my husband was earning more than me, we had almost enough money for a deposit on our own flat and I was in my job so that I'd qualify for maternity pay and have something decent to come back to after maternity leave was over. Now I'm single, I've had a 1.9% payrise while inflation is 4%+, am paying 50% more rent than before to live by myself so saving much less, and have been in my job for 3+ years with no real incentive to stay or, indeed, to go. I have no ambitions and no aims and the only thing I'm really sure about is that maternity leave and house buying is not going to be featuring in my future any time soon.

It's all so tedious. I saw a book the other day called How to Save an Hour Every Day that guaranteed to save you an hour a day (duh), but I found myself wondering what I'd do with that hour. And if you have to work harder the rest of the time to save the hour, won't you just want to spend the hour slumped on the sofa watching CSI? I like having a job I can do 9 to 5 and then not think about the rest of the time. I don't want to work longer hours or stress about stuff. But equally I don't know that I like the idea of being someone who sees their peers become more senior and successful while they just stagnate. Plus not being able to afford to buy a flat which I can finally paint a colour other than magnolia. So maybe it is worth putting yourself out to become something more than you are. But then it does help if you have an idea in mind for what 'more' would be like.

Anyway. As Poirot would say "It gives one furiously to think." Whatever else happens, at least we can always rely on Rick.

Source: None via Alex on Pinterest

PS: The frog picture was about people being clingy, and not about the sex part. But, you know, works both ways I guess.

PPS: This blogpost was brought to you in association with The Ahmad Jamal Trio, specifically this.
I'm not usually into jazz but this is so freaking sublime. And you can get most of the album on iTunes for £2.49. Sweet.

Spit and Polish

It was Marathon weekend in London yesterday. Unlike in previous years where they went along a road about 3 mins walk from my flat, this time I could kneel on the bed and watch them go down the road outside. For example, this is the woman who eventually won it. She's running faster than I can sprint and this is mile 16.

Impressive.

I heard someone on television saying they are going to leave a lot of the barriers and things in place for the royal wedding. Not that I'm expecting them to drive past my flat. And in any case I shall be further into town waving a small flag and wearing some union jack pants. On my head. But I will actually be there because I'm very happy about the royal wedding and like that kind of thing. I remember having a street party when I was 4 years old when Charles and Diana got married. Happy days. For me at least - not so much for them in retrospect. So having an affection for the royals I was rather freaked out to see this postcard in amongst my latest Artbox order.

That's just freaky. Of course Artbox is my go to supplier for completely unnecessary stationary, including stickers. And what do I need stickers for? (for a flexible definition of the word 'need')

I'm nowhere near finished. The button ones I was particularly pleased with. They're Artbox too of course.

If you've made it this far through this post you deserve a little treat, so let me introduce you to Chapter 1 of "Lixie's Adventures with Gentlemen". The therapist says to gently push my comfort limits to get used to being sociable again and talking to strangers without freaking out and so on. So on Marathon day I'd been in doing the occasional clap out of the window and listening to the church opposite dolling it's bell continuously. It occurred to me after a while that the bell must be electric as it was bonging once every 15 seconds. That is just long enough for you to start thinking it might have stopped when it bongs again. After about 2 hours of bonging I felt I was going insaner and decided to go for a little walk. I went to the Thames path (about 1 min away and in the opposite direction to the bongalong) and having always turned left in the past decided to push my boundaries and turn right.

Naturally it was a dead end.

But, there was a blond guy sitting on a bench in the sun reading a James Patterson book. He was wearing sandals which did almost put me off but I girded my loins and sidled up to him. He looked up and smiled and closed his book which I thought was fairly encouraging so I uttered my awesome chat up line "Would you rather carry on reading your book or would you like to have a conversation?". I tell you, the boys at work are really impressed with that one. When I first saw him I was honestly not thinking "Aha, likely victim." But as we got chatting we seemed to have a few things in common and made each other laugh and time passed quickly. He was polish and also spoke german and russian (something very sexy about russian) and was an engineer. We talked about all sorts but it wasn't until the first hour had zipped past that I mentioned wrestling. And it was about that time that he mentioned his wife and child. I'm not saying there was a correlation, but I will be mentioning wrestling sooner in future just to save time. We chatted for another hour and he wanted me to go to the cinema with him since his wife and child were away visiting family and so he was on his own all weekend, but that just seemed very wrong (I can imagine how I would have felt in the past had I been away and my other half had gone to the cinema with a girl he'd just met that afternoon) so I declined. We'd been sitting on the bench the whole time but he stood up as I got up to leave and it turned out he was about 2 inches shorter than me. Not that it really matters but still....

So what did I learn from Chapter 1? First off that I can talk to a strange man - or at least a man who is a stranger and then may or may not turn out to be strange. Second that I can be proactive and go out and meet people. Third, that I should mention wrestling sooner. All in all, it was a valuable experience.

pushmepullyou

Can you do any pull ups?

Or push ups - same sort of thing.

I am not an exercise enthusiast so I guess maybe I could do one if I really had to. But the point is that you're familiar with the concept. 

I'm so tired.

It's not really physical, although sleeping is a bit hit and miss and the dreams mean it's not always that restful. It's the effort of trying to stay afloat.

Usually you can just swim through life. Maybe there will be storms and rough seas but even if you get tired you can just roll on your back and float.

And if you're lucky you get a lilo or something.

But at the moment I keep thinking of that Sylvia Plath quote* "I'm not waving. I'm drowning." That and the Lichtenstein picture.

To float you have to be bouyant. You have to be less dense than the stuff around you. And apparently this goes for mentally as well as physically. If you don't float then you have to pull or push yourself up and stay up. And it's tiring. But if you let go and relax down it takes an awful lot of effort to pull back up again because you're already tired from the last time you did it.  

Plus you have to keep convincing yourself that it's worth the effort to pull up again.

What has unbouyed me this time? Not that it takes much.

One of my only single friends has started dating someone**. Cause for celebration? Happy that they're happy? Ha. The therapist says my own experiences with Pooch are globalising to all men. She may be right. My first thought on hearing this was "It won't last."

So now I'm tired, depressed *and* bitchy.

* Oh God, she's quoting Plath. Never a good sign.

**OMG!!! And her name is Alex. He's loved up with someone with my fricking name. FFS.

It's a sister thing

My sister came to stay last night. She is rather more glamorous than I am but it so happened we were both wearing out name necklaces so I felt a portrait was in order.

She complimented me on the crafty bits I'd produced for my new flat - such as the curtains and the fabric bowl I blogged about a few weeks ago. I think all of us who craft can become a bit complacent about what we make. It doesn't do any of us any harm to sit back and bask in some praise occasionally. Leave me a link for something you've made recently in the comments and I'll come and leave you a comment on it.

My main project at the moment continues to be the ripple blanket. I have also got a more portable pair of socks on the go but since I finally finished the sock cardi this is my main one.

Happy!

Wrestlemaaaaaaaaaaniaaaaaaaaaa

I just love WWE. My love for it has grown considerably since the separation. Wrestlemania is the biggest event of the year for WWE and it happened last sunday in Atlanta. This gives you an idea of the scale.

There were apparently 71,671 people there and I so should have been one of them but couldn't get leave from work because of deadlines. Meh. There were obviously csome other brits there, since Armando Iannucci tweeted this pic of one of the memorable signs in the crowd. 

I love the signs. One of my all time favourites was on a large piece of card and said "THE GUY BEHIND ME CAN'T SEE". Simple perfection. 

People ask me all the time why I like wrestling. After much thought I decided I like the fact that it has boundaries so people very rarely get seriously hurt and the general athleticism. You can't say it's not impressive when a 6'10" 300lb man holds a 6'4" 255lb man over his head while standing on a table and flips him on the ground. 

The Commentators speculated that he might have "shattered some internal organs". Whereupon he gets up and does more or less the same back again. Or when the taller guy (The Undertaker) rebound of the rope and dives headfirst over the top rope in order to nut his opponent (Triple H).

Pretty awesome. 

And what to do while watching wrestling? Why, what else but knit. For the sock yarn leftovers cardi is almost finished. 

I actually thought it was finished. I sewed in all the ends and added buttons....

......but that collar just isn't working. So I need to rip it and redo the last inch or two. Such a nuisance but will be worth it in the end. 

I'm pretty happy with it though! I'll be writing a tutorial type thing on how I approached it.

It's been a pretty hard week all told. After the weekend I was pretty low and then I had another set back on Monday night. But, these things are sent to try us and I'll be at my Mum's this weekend for some R&R and hopefully to catch up on some sleep since that's been all messed up too. I've been trying to keep this in mind at all times:

Source: imgfave.lg1x8z.simplecdn.net via Alex on Pinterest

It's hard, but I'll get there in the end. 

The Joy of Pills

We all know medication has side effects. I am pretty sure I've blogged about this before. And it's not like I haven't been on this stuff before. But this time it is doing my head in somewhat. The sleep disruption - well, I can cope with waking up at 4 or 5am for a month or two. The weird feelings associated with eating - again, not the end of the world. The headaches, cold hands, mild paranoia - all bearable. But the memory loss? That is just screwing me up.

I went out this morning and had to come back twice for things I had forgotten. An hour ago I went out to the supermarket, taking a long windy route so I could walk round the dock and do a token bit of exercise. I left without my list and came back for it. Then after a 20 min walk I get to Asda, am within spitting distance of it, and realise I've left my wallet on the sofa. So I go to the DLR to get the train one stop back again because I figure that's enough exercise, and get on it going the wrong way. Then when coming back the right way, I almost got off at the stop I started at rather than twigging that I now needed to go two stops to make up for the wrong one.

Geez.

I think maybe I'm just tired. And side-effects do wear off, usually, after a few months so I just need to make sure it doesn't get any worse, at which point I have to haul arse back to the doctor and ask them to try something else.

I really want to get back into the habit of regular blogging again since I have missed checking in. I had a bit of a sock knitting binge while I was at my Mum's but since then have been mainly working on things for the house. This bowl now sits on the coffee table and more are planned for the bathroom.

The ripple blanket for the sofa is only on it's third colour but is already looking good.

I'm using the attic24 pattern which is free here although I have made a donation to show my gratitude - I like that way of paying for things. I'm also nearing the end of my ripple cardigan in left over sock yarn. I really feel like I have been knitting this thing for most of my life, but Ravelry tells me it was only christmas eve when I cast on. The day will come when I cast off and I can't say I'll regret it.

I'm planning posts on being down at my mum's and a few others on the new flat and so on. One thing that will need to be explained is the chocolate chickens.

But then that is a story for another day.

Swaptastic

Second day back at work - feel like am surrounded by a skin like a soap bubble that could burst at any point, but apart from that things are going pretty well!



To lift the gloom a bit I have join round 7 of the UK Swap. It's organised on Ravelry here and is open to anyone in the UK. Sign ups close 11th April and the single send date it 1st June with a £20 min spend.

Hey, why don't you sign up too?
S

Stand Back. I am going to try Science.

When I moved, my best friend helped (i.e. did most of it) while wearing this t-shirt.

Source: store.xkcd.com via Alex on Pinterest

Alex (his name is Alex too - but he's male. We shared a flat once and people asked whether it got confusing. I always felt it would have been more confusing if it had been confusing.) is a proper scientist with a PhD which he strangely refuses to use (as in the "Dr" bit) and now works in Science Policy. He may be on linked in. He's met Neil Armstrong and knows Prof Brian Cox off the telly. He occasionally politely humours me when I come out with something vaguely scientific because although we did our Physics degrees together I have forgotten 99.9% of mine whereas his brain just keeps expanding daily. I was reminded of this in my therapy session this week where, for reasons that will become clear, I started talking about one theory to do with the creation of the universe.

Think of the path a bouncy ball makes as it bounces across the room.The ball hits the floor and *boing* that is the big bang. It springs up into the air and that is where we currently are - the universe is expanding. The ball stops rising and starts to fall again - the universe stops expanding and starts shrinking. Ball nears the floor again and then goes off again - the universe shrinks to nothing in a big unbang and then big bangs again and it *boing* all starts again.

I dare say that since I did Astrophysics someone has disproved this theory.

Alex would know. But it came up in therapy because we were talking about recognising cycles and patterns. The Therapist is naturally very keen on me getting better and not having a recurrence at a future date. So she keeps pointing out that I've gone mad before and got better, so can do the same thing this time. My counter argument, and the reason for the undoubtedly scientifically inaccurate analogy, is that it did get better, then it got worse again. And so far the getting better and the getting worse again have happened in equal numbers which looks to me like a cycle. But then once you have recognised the cycle you have to break it.

In my science-addled mind I'm going to call this "Going Supernova on your Own Arse" although Alex will explain to me how that is wrong.

Of course it is often said that there is nothing new on heaven or earth, so I find it easy to believe that life is mostly a series of repeating cycles of behaviour. This is often born out in knitting, where I find myself making the same pattern more than once, or at least using the familiar increases and decreases. But with the SunRay Ribbing top I am returning to something I had mostly frogged and cast aside.

Not only am I returning to something that is broken, I have also converted the pattern to knit in the round so as I fix myself my knitting also revolves. As I knit I have been thinking about my next project, which I hope will be something that has been inspired by being down here at my Mums. She has a collection of Spode and other blue and white china. As I have eaten from these plates and bowls during the past few weeks I have grown more aware of the patterns, and the way they might translate into fairisle.

There is a free online tool for converting photos to charts for embroidery and knitting here. It needs some work and manipulation, but I think it could work.

It will certainly make it easier to chart a whole jumper's worth.

I leave you with a final thought.

Source: store.xkcd.com via Alex on Pinterest

6 Years of Lixie

Today is the 6th anniversary of this blog. From that first week when I couldn't get the pictres to work properly, through all the ups and downs, I have arrived here - somewhat bruised and battered but still in pretty good nick.

Looking back I see a mention of my stash filling 4 boxes (fairly small ones too from the picture) at the time when Pooch and I first moved in together and wondering whether to try and hide this from Pooch and enter into a life of deceit, or just brazen it out. Considering that after my recent move to a much smaller flat it was 4 bin bags worth, and that was after a massive destash, I am once again struck by how things that seemed so important or tragic or serious just a few years ago become so nonsensical and trivial with hindsight. In a few years am I going to be looking back on my marriage breakup in much the same way as I do on when Matt Andrews didn't really notice me when I was 14? Back then I'd spend hours writing in my diary about how unfair it was. Now I have a blog. Somethings change while others stay the same.

Of course there have been some great times over the last 6 years. I've made brilliant friends through knitting and blogging - Nickerjac especially who I first 'met' through her blog (and blogged about the day we first actually met back in June 2005). It was together that we started SkipNorth and although I'm very sad to have missed out on the recent one I'm really proud of how they have grown from such humble beginnings. It was also Nickerjac who taught me magic loop which enabled me to move from my obsession with socks knitting flat and seamed up the sides to actual proper socks, which are now my default go to item if I want something fairly calming to knit.

My recent rerun with depression has made it harder to think ahead, and certainly when this episode first started I couldn't think 6 minutes ahead, never mind any longer than that. Thanks to my Mum and the meds I am now feeling a lot better and will be back at work again next week. I think looking ahead another 6 years might be a bit ambitious, but let's put some goals in for the next 6 months.

• Finish the blog header I started, or at least did an M and an I for.
• Find a knitting group and go at least twice a month.
• Finish the hexagon patchwork quilt.
• Book a holiday to replace the one to Seville I've just had to cancel.

Modest ambitions, but all achievable.

To end, I've put together some photos, although these are only for the last four years since I wasn't using Flickr before then.

www.flickr.com <> <> <> <> <> <> <> Littlelixie's 4 years of Lixie photoset