Bank Holiday Weekend

I haven't put so much thought into a swap since Secret Pal had it's heyday. I signed up for the 'advanced' category for this Pouch Swap and then got the heebies about whether I was good enough or what I was planning was advanced enough. I'm almost done and hope it's ok.

I laid out my arrangement for the clamshell side then did needle-turn appliqué to secure them. I haven't done a lot of this so was worried it didn't look neat enough. So some Perle 5 and chain stitch later...

For the other side of the pouch I wanted to continue the scrappy theme and the linen but try something different. I drew my design on some scrap cloth and then sewed the pieces straight onto it - like paper piecing (but not 'english' paper piecing like I do with hexagons).

I had a lot of scraps to choose from. My partner seems to like rainbow colour schemes so red yellow orange on one side meant blue green purple on the other.

The green's weren't working though so I ended up with this.

I appliqued a linen circle, this time using the freezer paper method which wasn't as time consuming as I'd thought, and chain stitched with more variegated Perle 5.

I really hope she likes it! And that just leaves me with the lining - which will be a plain fabric - and adding the metal purse frame. Phew!

I had a lovely time with the Romford Knitters yesterday which also meant I got hold of the last of my SkipNorth haul which I'd managed to leave at Nickerjac's house.

I also got a box frame from Hobbycraft while I was there so will finally have a chance to do the button display I've been planning since at least February. Which reminds me. I pinned this earlier:

Good idea huh? I'm tempted but then home is where I relax so I don't want to feel pressured with a to do list looming over me. Will think about it though.

Thinking About Japan

It is 70% likely I will have the chance to go to live in Japan for a year - in or near to Tokyo. This is clearly a big thing. I have known about it for a week or two but I only started taking it seriously yesterday lunchtime. There's a lot to think about.

I have never been there myself but know the sorts of things most people know. 

The biggest stumbling block is being dependant on someone else for a year. I am not psychologically compatible with the idea of being a kept woman. 

I would really like to be though. 

If you heard it was 70% likely to rain, you'd take your umbrella. They have umbrella lockers in Tokyo. 

And umbrella vending machines. It makes you wonder - they don't even have those in Manchester, and it's always raining there. 

Pretty Pouches

My partner in the Pouch Swap seems to be an expert at this kind of applique.

So I'll be avoiding that. I am quite taken with this kind of thing:

But it is a bit simple. Plus I've been thinking of this kind of patchwork.

But then I also like the idea of a pocket on the outside. Plus I was thinking of having embroidery on one side. See what I meant in my last post about over-egging the custard?

But there are so many cute ideas in my head...

Or maybe I mean on Pinterest!

But then that is exactly why I like Pinterest. You can tuck those inspirations away for when you need them.

Oh but then maybe this?

Or...

Pinterest - angel or devil?

I Made 34 Envelopes

No reason at all. I don't write a lot of letters.

Bit odd. Just had an urge.

I am not considering only making it to day 4 of the knitting and crochet blog week as a failure. It is 57% completion. That could even be an A* in a bad GCSE year.

I had a very quiet weekend as I'm exhausted from work and I have a cold. I finished off the knitting on a cardigan and picked out buttons and then did a tiny bit of sewing.

It's my first ever attempt at clamshell patchwork and used a technique described here.

I decided it was too jerky for me. I've since tried needle-turn instead and that was much smoother. It's an experiment before I begin seriously planning the pouch I'll make for the Pretty Little Pouch Swap. I have so many ideas but I don't want to over-egg the custard.

My other project this weekend was finally putting together my succulent garden. I've been planning this for a year now and had been waiting for the growing season to start so I could be sure the succulents would take root properly. I had the Journey to the Centre of the Earth type sets in mind. 1959 I mean, obviously. Only a blurry shot of the whole.

But then...

This one goes pink along the edges if kept in direct sunshine.

Most importantly - very hard to kill both succulents and plastic animals.

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week Day 4 - Colour Review

First, let us be clear. It is c-o-l-o-u-r not color. There is no 'you' in color. No 'u'...you know what I mean. There is a u, clearly. Colour.

Many years ago I went off to a Specialist to "get my colours done". In fact I blogged about it back in 2007 and the business I went with is still in operation. It seems hard to believe now that up to that point I didn't wear purple and was actively trying to include more pale pink in my life. Although it was a luxury I found it very worthwhile and I still have the little wallet of colour swatches - and in fact took it to SkipNorth with me.

Colour is something I think about a lot both as a knitter and as a sewer. In fact I selected this image for my inspiration mosaic for a swap recently.

It is from The Embroidery Thread Lovers Group on Flickr which is for people who like looking at pictures of embroidery thread. DON'T JUDGE ME! I lead a quiet life and have no cats. I adore all of these colours. I can imagine wearing layers of clothing in these colours and striding around in a light breeze looking all exotic. Imagination - awesome.

I find choosing colours for fairisle highly problematic and have tried using tools like colour palette generators to help. The idea is simple. Take a photo/image with colours you like in it (I've chosen this one just as an illustration)...

Upload it and get your palette...

It is difficult though because this doesn't exactly translate to yarn colours automatically so you still have to go and find yarns that match. The best bet (especially for fairisle) is to try Jamiesons of Shetland. They have 220 colours in their gorgeous yarn but it is not ideal (for me at least) for wearing next to the skin - so what if you don't want to commit to always wearing a long sleeved, high neck top underneath? Plus you really need a shadecard to see the colours for real to choose them - and their shadecard is £12. Probably worth the money considering the work it must take to create one but...£12.

All this means that I do not do half the fairisle I would if I had more colour confidence. What I do knit ...

...tends to do the colour for itself. And when making quilts...

...I tend to stick with a particular colour group.

It is strange to me that I am more than prepared to dive in and try something, prepared for it to be awful, when thinking about a concept. But when I have the concept or idea and am confident about it, I am not willing to take a risk on colour choices. Perhaps the moral for today could be to be prepared to take more colour risks in the knowledge that when I do that with overall projects it often turns out quite well. Or I get over it if I have to throw it away once finished.

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week Day 3 - Visually Speaking

The challenge for Day 3 is to create an infographic. This is actually something that interests me and, if you are also a geek, there have been an interesting series of articles about them on Harvard Business Review Blog recently. However, life has been busy and so I cheated and went with a Visual.ly template based on the google analytics for this blog. That's not to say it's not pretty cool.

I need to think about this a bit more to work out what it means. Clearly I'm distressed my page views are down 0.6%. But on the other hand I'm delighted 21.76% of you are coming back for more - hi!

Here is a quick widget for you to 'hi' back - or you can leave a comment of course.

And in other news...dig my handbag - my latest FO.

I am going to have to do a proper post on this once KCBW is over. It deserves its own post. It is q-u-i-t-e awesome. Quite.

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week Day 2 - Project Planning (4KCBWDAY2)

Day 2 is about thinking of or researching a project that embodies your house. I have just the thing...

I have joined a swap on Flickr for a small purse/pouch. To join you had to post an inspiration mosaic for your Partner to use when deciding what to make you. This is mine.

If you click on the image you'll find the links to the individual photos on Flickr. 

I've always found these mosaics (which anyone can make here) a useful way of gathering ideas. There's one from 2010 on resin pendants here. I've been putting a few together after seeing my partner's mosaic and very brief questionnaire. 

I am also a great believer in letting the sub-conscious mull over a problem/idea and letting a solution occur over time. For instance I've been wondering what to do to with regards to quilting my hexagon handbag. During my 4am coughfest I decided pebbles was the way forward. 

It is one of the techniques I tried when I did a machine embroidery course and a bit of practice on scraps should get me back to a suitable standard again. 

The niece-in-progress is rapidly approaching FO status. I have therefore whipped up a couple more of these.

The nursery has a seaside theme and the father is doing up an old VW van. I've followed this tutorial again but have added an end strap for hanging on to them.

You just pop it in when sewing across the corners of one end of the outer fabric. A handy addition.

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week Day 1 - Early Start

I have been coughing like a mofo for more than a week now. Thus my early start at 5am this morning. In the early days of Pinterest a regular pin was one stating marshmallows were invented as a sore throat remedy.

I am therefore maintaining the profits of marshmallow (and hot chocolate) manufacturers in the London region.

All this means I can start KCBW early though and the theme for today is why you chose your house.

"The House of Bee: Bees are busy and industrious, but can flit from one interesting project to the next as bright and shiny things capture their interest."

Let me begin with a story...

Picture a french lesson for a class of thirteen year olds in the early nineties. The teacher wheels in a television on a trolley. The TV is roughly a cube and weighs more than the teacher.

A video recorder is attached to the television. The teacher gets out a video tape and puts it in the machine. The screen lights up and the class starts to fidget. "Blimey!" says the teacher. "The TV goes on and you all stop concentrating. Easy to see the effect TV has had on your generation."

Now to be honest Miss Williams undoubtedly never said "blimey" in her life but it was 20+ years ago and I forget her exact words. The gist though has stayed with me all this time. The generation before me were mesmerised by moving screens while my generation had them in the background in their formative years and so grew up, depending on your viewpoint, multi-tasking or unable to concentrate on one task. It has certainly left me unable to "just" watch television. Hence the state of my sofa and the table next to it. This isn't me but illustrates my usual position in front of the goggle box.

Knitting on one side, at least one patchwork project on the other. Ideas notebook buried under a pile of fabric scraps. You get the idea.

As I have got older I have got slightly better at keeping the WIPs down. I have a list on my phone of other projects I want to begin once these are finished. When I started blogging I followed A Mingled Yarn, who sadly decided to stop blogging at the end of last year. I was amazed when many years ago she revealed her stash - which consisted of about 7 balls of yarn, all of which she had firm plans for. I realised then that she had one project at a time on the needles and that amazed me as I can't imagine concentrating that hard on just one thing for any length of time.

So that explains me and how I work, both in craft and in my professional life - where frequent interruptions mean this style is a strength.

Tomorrow's blogpost is all about a project to embody my house and fortunately I have one in mind - for a swap I recently joined. Until then...

Spring Hits London

After the longest winter I can remember, Spring hit London over the weekend. Non-stop rain on Saturday followed by warmth and intermittent sunshine on Sunday. Mustn't knock it after months of freezing cold. The trees have responded by going from zero to blossom in just 2 days which is pretty impressive really. The crab apple trees along the road to the station were bare and dead looking on Friday. Today they are all covered in apples the size of conkers. Small conkers, admittedly, but it is only Tuesday.

There is nothing much to report chez byrne other than Pooch having caught norovirus. Pooch is notoriously careful about hygiene and bulk buys hand gel, refuses to touch handrails, wipes his cutlery in restaurants before eating and so on. Having eaten my share of garden earth in my youth I consider such precautions pointless and while I've had my fair share of illness this year (I'm still coughing after last week's cold) he seems to attract the more explosive types of germs. I guess they are the only ones that can make it through the clouds of antibacterial spray.

I come to you today with two main intentions. The first - that all important hairband updated. And the second  the easing of a fear through the problemsharedisaproblemhalfed school of logic. So, to the hairbands.

You might remember me hissing about this a few weeks ago:

It actually makes me angry just looking at a picture of the little fucker. Well, no more! Behold!

The one on the left has now been my go-to hairband for the last 10 days, while the one on the right was made at the same time and has been unused. Apart from the slight difference in length - which I put down to the knot tightening with use - I can't see a difference whereas with a normal hairband I'd be throwing it away by now in a fit of fits. Plus, where babybliss get you for about £3 for 6, folding elastic (for it is that) is £1.89 for 2m from this seller on ebay. There are many other sellers - I just picked that one and they were fine to deal with. Each band takes about 20cm of stuff so that's 10 for £1.89. Bingo. I have heard rumours of polka dot folding elastic in america. Take me to it baby.

On the handbag front I am progressing nicely and so the time of attaching the fabric to the frame draws closer. You see, the only frame I could get of the type I wanted is a sew-in frame.

I have only used a sew-in frame once - on this bloghop. At the time I said...

"The sewing in was interesting but pretty fiddly."

...which is byrne code for "oh my god I nearly shot myself in the head rather than try and get the fabric in the frame but it's over now so we can all calm down and get on with our lives". Somehow I forgot that though in the excitement of having this handbag come together. So here I am sharing my concern that I'll spend all this time on the fabric part and then cock up the frame part. So...when does 'sharing' start making me feel better exactly?

My 1000th Post

In honour of my 1000th post I tried to recreate the apperitif I so enjoyed in France. The original was an elegant masterpiece of a drink while my version was more like a drawing in crayon but it went down smoothly.

Take a few raspberries and mash'em with the back of a spoon. Smear messily around rim of glass. Find you have no plain granulated sugar - use caster sugar. Spread over kitchen floor and rim of glass so it sticks to the sticky raspberry gloop. Add fizzy wine. Add too much Chambord because that weird little bottle pours strangely. Tip in rest of raspberry mush. Glug. Hiccups. Done. Nice one Gordon.

Where was I..ah yes. I have been brung low by a cold so have mainly been huddling with a grumpy expression, but I have got a few things done. Baby bunting for example.

Regular readers might have just done a double take and thought I was shamming here. But no, this is the inside version of the outside bunting you saw last year at Nickerjac's wedding (which was actually made for my sister's wedding - long story).

You see, outdoor bunting is single thickness, raw edge and uses string. Inside bunting is double sided, finished edge and uses ribbon. According to the Book of Byrne. This is for the neice-in-progress's nursery. Then there's this.

I am not too sure about the measurements, but then very few people nurse cushions so it will probably be ok. I used this pattern, more or less. The inside is red flannel while the outside is some chirpy cheap cotton. Is also for NIP. The little one is apparently in position and according to the midwife "if she was any more engaged you'd be in labour" so I am all set to assume the crazy aunt position at a moment's notice.

Pooch was very sweet and a few weeks ago bought me a yarn bowl which just arrived yesterday.

Isn't it beautiful? It is from this Etsy seller who I would definitely recommend.

I'm currently knitting from balls of James C Brett (yep, cardigan is still slowly progressing) but I'm going to rewind the balls so I can use the yarn bowl properly.

Meanwhile I've got the following underway:

• Marble cardigan - about 80% done
• Mum's shawl - about 75% done
• Deb's cushion about 70% done
• Handbag for me about 30% done
• Other things for NIP 50% done

So I'd better take some more cold and flu remedy, put on a Marple and get on with it.