Belated ally pally round-up (photo heavy!)

I know I'm a week late but it's been a busy one so in every sense, better late than never. For those of you who have never visited the Alexandra Palace show I thought it might be nice to have a look at this, which is me walking through about a 1/10th of it.



I really did have a very lovely time and, a la Wormhead, was having trouble carrying everything on the way back at the end of the saturday. I got some really awesome things but my biggest splurge is yet to arrive - enough pukka shetland wool for the scoop neck fairisle in the most recent Vogue Knitting. Ooooooo. Anyway, from what I did get....
Hip knits silk and the new magazine on the block:

Fat quarters and beads and the like:

Handmade paper for an altered journal swap:

The cheap stuff - for a hard wearing trivial pursuits cushion and the variegated for the shawl on the fornt of the Vogue shawls book:

Lovely pure wool Twileys Whisper or something like that for either a boxy cardigan from knit1 or a jumper:

Wicked chocolate notebook with a mix of square, lined and blank paper inside plus the latest Interweave knits and a patchwork-how-to-book:

Patons washed haze (50p a ball!) for a cardi and the touch yarns merino for I don't know what but I loved the colours and it was 25% off:

Lots of little things to play with - ribbons, non-slip feet for Pooch's next handknit socks, square sequins etc etc


So what has this massive acquisition done to the yarn chest? Well, I had actually been very good before AP and during stashalong - I had a big clear out and sold a load on ebay. I also then took a huge bag of odd balls to NWKTog group and shared them out with the rest going to the charity shop. So despite having bought all this I can (just) close the war chest:


So with all that going on you'd have thought I'd be happy with my little lot and get down to some serious knitting right? No! What I did was get a cold and my mood slipped again and was quite down for a couple of days. I found myself not really in the mood for knitting so instead have been making ATCs for swaps. I rather liked these on the theme 'fall florals':


I have been feeling a bit better the last couple of days though and was even better once my end of the knitting magazine swap arrived. I got these two awesome magazines from the US:

I had never even heard of them and there were a couple of 'how have i lived without....' type items in each. Feast your eyes:






This last one is crochet and I thought I'd try it as a scarf first to see how it looks.

So there you have it. Actually you don't - I made the coolest bag in the world last night but I reckon that's enough photos for today!

Oh my god, it's tomorrow!!!

True to form I have got a cold. I feel really really achey - like I've done a cross-country run or something. And we all know how likely that is. But I struggled in to work today like a good girl and have spent a lot of the day fantacising about ally pally and rediscovering my love of strawberry shortcake. Now I'm talking about old skool, not any of this twee little thing WEARING TROUSERS!!!!!! What the hell! Anyway, calm down Byrne and remeber that opnce upon a time you used to be a feminist. True, you were 14. But still. Remember your roots.
Look at these things though!

The original little miss.

Who nowadays dares hug a duck without fearing the RSPCA?

Not a child protection officer in sight.

Not a true original charactor but so cute I had to include her. There are tonnes of website out there with loads of good stuff on (as I discovered this morning). This is just one and the graphics are rather good.

So has she actually done any knitting then or what - I hear you ask. Well, not much I must admit. I did whip out this rather nifty crocheted string bag though out of the finest mercerised cotton oddball I had to hand at the time.

I'm disproportionately pleased with this and it will be accompanying me this weekend. Inside are the goodies I recently sold on ebay and some more ATCs on their way to be swopped.

And speaking of swaps the 'whats in a purse' swap parcel arrived and it was AWESOME!

My spoiler, from Portugal, included not one but two beautiful handmade objects - a key ring and a pouch - plus sweets, lipgloss, playing cards shaped like an icercream and more. Lucky me!

Finally, I have been quite taken up with the woolly thoughts yahoo group and when I went to the 60 years of british art exhibition at the hayward (very good by the way and only a fiver if you're passing) I couldn't help but think of the bridget riley paitning that has been used on the website and on all the promo material in terms of a cusion. Garter stitch stripes with long strips sewn together. Do you see where I'm going with this? Not that I'll actually do it of course. And then I saw this:

Now look, don't hate me. I know the exhibition said no photos. And I know it reduces the quality of the work to be shown in crappy non-flash light like this rather than in the flesh which was a whole lot better. And I know it's just wrong in so many other ways. Let's leave that for now and I'll flail myself with a circular when I get home. (Not as penance though, just for fun...fnah fnah - all going a bit weird here now so back to the point.) This painting was surely designed to be freestyle crocheted. My hands are suddenly too achey from flailing at the keyboard to carry on typing so I'll just leave you with that thought and we'll see what happens.

Incidentally if anyone is at ally pally tomorrow and would care to say hello I will be at the knit and natter or knit and relax or whatever it is called this year at 11am. You have been warned! I'll be the one with the string bag. Fnah fnah.

A whole lot of crafting going on

I was rather busy at the weekend doing all sorts of crafty little things. Some were experiments for the second edition of 'ProudtobeCrafty' - your favourite crafty zine. Last few copies are still available FREE so email me with your postal address to littlelixieathotmail.com

I saw some scrapbooking letters that were 3-d and made something like this so decided to pull out the fimo and give it a go. The wire I had for the joins isn't perfect but seems to be holding together.

When I wrote before about swaps and how I'd got fed up with them my secretpal8 got upset and annoyed and I haven't heard from her since. I tried to explain by email that it was because SP8 had been so good that I'd got fed up with the paltry-by-comparison swaps at swapbot but it doesn't seem to have worked and I guess I never will receive that final parcel. It's a shame because up til now SP8 was really good for me. Anyway, one of the swaps I did before I got fed up was 'something chocolate' and my swap partner was in australia. She sent me the following really rather amazing goodies:

The cherry ones on the left were *GORGEOUS* and barely lasted the journey home from the sorting office but the koalas win the 'cute' prize. Lookie here...

Aren't they sweet. And very yummy!

The background of that picture brings me nicely on to ProudtobeCrafty project number 2 which involves using packaging. The Japanese and Americans seem to do this quite a lot but we seem to largely use the wrong sort of plastic. So I went shopping for packaging rather than food which, you can imagine, led to me coming out with a rather weird assortment of groceries. One was a pouch of raisins which turned into this.

It's a kind of large needle case/pin cusion. Details will go in the next zine along with more pics.

I haven't mentioned it so far but let us not forget that it is only FOUR FREAKIN DAYS TIL ALLY PALLY or until I get there anyway. I am like a kid on xmas eve - I just can't wait. I finally managed to get it together enough to buy 'Cushy Numbers' - mathematical knitting patterns from WoollyThoughts. Their website is a bit unreliable at the mo but you can see all the books, patterns and final objects here. Email patatwoollythoughtsdotcom to order. I am absolutely definitely going to do a curves of pursuit cushion. They have a Yahoo group too called 'woollythoughts' and there are some fun people in there.

Buttons

Here we go....


Picture at http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y193/littlelixie/wtw2.jpg


Picture at http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y193/littlelixie/wtw1.jpg

Wear Your Wool To Work Day

I have been meaning to do this for ages and the thing that was holding me up was not having a button. But now I still don't have a button but am not waiting any longer. To fit in with Ally Pally and it being National Knitting Week I declare next wednesday (11th October) to be WYWTWD - or Wear Your Wool to Work Day! Your challenge is to create a button and also spread the word! What you do is.....wear soemthing that you have knitted to work. Or school. Or Uni. Or around the house if you're not working that day. Pretty simple!

In other news here are some photos....

This is the spiral tank top which I have run out of wool for! Tess thinks she can do me some more. Feel like such an amateur in running out!

This is the first of Pooch's lobster mittens. Long story. In case some of you haven't noticed, and for the rest of you to read once you recover from your faints, The Byrne is using dpn's. I know. I knwo I hate them. The fact that I'm using them and for fairisle no less is surely a sign of my immense love for The Pooch. Or some sort of sick, masochistic thing.

I bought a book in Oxfam called 'knitting 4 seasons' which is pure 80s but has some rather interesting things in it. One of them is this coat.

There is also a top in the same pattern. It seems to call to me....

I received mt copy of the 'cut out and keep' zine which is really lovely. It is A6 size.

I also got some wicked 'to do list' bookmarks and a 'girl hooker' badge which is pink with a crochet hook on! I will be watching for the second issue. You can buy the first one here.

And talking of zines....here is my entry into the first challenge!

I'm pretty sure I'm not eligible for the prize since I'm judging although I wouldn't mind keeping one of the goody bags that are on offer. There are still a few zines available so email me (littlelixieathotmail.com) with your postal address and I'll send you a copy. Everyone else send me your photos and they'll be posted in this album. Top three get the prizes.

Glitter sperm

I told you I'd try and sort out a picture. It looks better in the flesh.

Did I mention Pooch's pants? Can't remember now. But many of you who have items similar to Pooch around the house will know that once they find something they like they seldom want to change. Pooch liked the 3 pairs of pants he had and nothing would induce him to change or, and this is key, add to their number.... So byrne breaks down and buys Pooch pants but lo and behold, they are the wrong sort. So Pooch goes out and buys his own pants to prove his point and.....

{as an aside - let's all speculate on how this is going to end. Before you scroll down post a comment and let me know!}

....the pants Pooch buys are IDENTI_FRICKING_CAL to the ones Byrne bought except hers were from Tescos and his are from M&S. This is the result of 10 minutes alone with these pants.

The bars on the 't's aren't very distinct in the photo :(

I was in Greenwich last night and saw this billboard. Isn't it amazing? Not the actual billboard - more the fact I had my camera with me.

Of course this is actually quite appalling and I hope no one was hurt.

SkipNorth has, by popular demand, expanded to take a whopping 35 people. Now that really is a whole lot of knitters! This means we now have some extra places available on this too-cool-for-somethingorother knitting holiday in March 2007. More details at www.proudtobecrafty.co.uk. There are going to be flyers handed out at Alexandra Palace so I don't expect the vacant slots will be vacant for much longer!

Reasons to be cheerfull. 1, 2, 3.....

I really like that song – reasons to be cheerful by Ian Drury.

I spent more time navel gazing (or naval gazing as one of my colleagues once wrote in a widely circulated email) this weekend and have an addiction to craft (or cr-aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-ft as Pooch nows calls it – he’s been working on his south of england vowels after a life of phonetic crime up north). I obsess in order to distract myself from having time to feel stuff, innit. And then I hoard stuff so I can never run out of things to do. Because then I would have to use the byrne noodle for something other than glitter positioning. And on the subject of this, because life is never too short for such things, I made some sperm out of glitter glue last night. Now let’s review that sentence for a minute and reflect.

Yes.

I would show you a picture (have just realised I’m making this sound worse) but didn’t have the camera handy. Suffice to say it is an ATC for a pregnancy and still-birth awareness ATC swap on swapbot and no glitter was cloned or harmed in the making of this object. I guess you need to see the picture really.

The first copies of the zine have reached their destinations and people are being very nice about it. But I need ideas and suggestions for the next one folks so email away or leave comments. If you are thinking to yourself, “What zine?” or even “zine = ?” I refer you to my previous post (scroll down because I screwed the formatting). Remember if you would like a copy (it is FREE!) you need to send me your postal address as I can’t get that from your blogger ID. Thank God. Goodness only knows what nonsense we’d all get in the post otherwise. Drifting off there into snail-spam-holocaust-mode. You can email me your address to littlelixieathotmaildotcom and be assured I will not post you any snails. Fnah fnah.

I leave you with this. Surely one of the most amazing creations of our time. It is firmly on my to do list.


(naval gazing)

And the beat goes on

Ugh. I am supposed to be going to a keep fit class tonight after work. You can tell where this is going though right? I don’t wanna go! I wanna go home and eat cake. Poo.

Anyway. Let’s get over that and move on.

I have had lost of swap post this week. The first was a couple of brooches with are really rather lovely.

The one on the right is double sided and has a pixie on the back in black and white but for some reason I don’t have a photo of that.

For the second I’m going to take you on a little journey of discovery because it was such fun to discover the contents.

Then…

Wait for it…

Ta da!

Loads of lush stuff! Lots of papers and things for card making. And then some choc and shower gel and mmmmmm, lovely!

Lastly I’ve had two lists for the list swap.

One of these was 10 bits of advice. The advice given was so good I didn’t think it was fair to keep it to myself.

The other was 10 things that make you happy and that is the one with the maple leaf on it. Receiving them definitely made me happy!

The thing is, I have had a bit of a revelation about swaps. What I’ve realised is that they are far too much hassle and why on earth am I bothering? I think I got too excited about the last secret pal and missed the sending and receiving. I spend money buying things to swap and then have to spend twice as much posting them. So I have resigned from all swaps in future other than ATC ones. Because I am pretty hooked on ATCs.

I had loads to think about last night so ended up not going to knitting so I haven’t seen the gals at Golders Green for about 2 months now which is quite distressing. I wonder whether I didn’t go in order to avoid any kind of emotional response because that is what I was talking to therapist Janet about. It’s worse than I thought which worries me, although you wouldn’t know it to look at me. I’m basically suppressing every reaction to things and avoiding all sorts of stuff so as not to have to experience things. Janet was commenting on how I don’t have any wrinkles. She was wondering whether it was because I don’t do facial expressions unless I am overdoing them when overcompensating and playing the fool. The thing is, I just don’t know what to do. How do I learn to react to thing or to learn to react to them without then running away from that reaction? All quite glum making. Could really do with a bar of chocolate. I just realised I’m feeling sad.

There are somethings that are just too cool to put a short title on

This is one. For I am talking about SKIPNORTH.

Man. I know I am the organiser so should probably be a bit calmer about things but this holiday is shaping up to be one of the baddest things ever. In a good way. Because now we have a history (i.e. Feb 2006) and have proved our buying worthiness places are actually willing to open especially for us. It is just awesome. And people keep volunteering to run workshops on the Friday afternoon. There is just too much good stuff going on to believe it will fit into one weekend.

Incidentally, bookings are still open at http://proudtobecrafty.co.uk although 19 places have gone and we were originally only taking 20. I've maxed us out to 28 but that will leave us straining at the seams so once they're gone they're gone unless I go mad and get a bigger coach. Unlikely.

You'd have thought an international playa such as myself would be rolling in wonga but alas this is not so. I am on a strict budget this month although in fairness this is so that I can afford to splurge at Ally Pally. Ooooo, I am just so excited about that too. Got a mental shopping list of all sorts I need to get. Yeah, *need*, right. Whatever. This all means more selling on ebay and I have decided that one of the things I will be passing on will be some of the sockhop sock yarn. I'll let you all know when it goes on. That stuff is fricking nice but I've discovered I can get a pair out of one skein so have ended up with twice as much as I needed. And that's on top of my already crazy stash of sock yarn.

I got my magic yarn ball last week and it was awesome as I believe I might have mentioned. Here is what it looked like when it arrived:

Looks good enough to eat! Here it is afterwards:

So many lovely things! I had a dream last night that I was using the littl green flowers to embellish something I'd knitted. It looked absolutely amazing - the most amazing anything has ever looked but I can't remeber what it was now.

The last photo is Proud to be Crafty- the zine that beats all other if only because it is free. Let me have your postal address and a copy is yours. Email it to me at littlelixie@hotmail.com or leave it in a comment. Just remember - it has to be your real actual living address and not your email. It's not available online. Ooer.

Epiphany

Had an appointment with my therapist last night. That's my therapist Janet, not the one Pooch and I go to together. The crux of it is this...... (sit up straight folks, this is the big one.)

I get depressed because I withdraw from emotional situations and don't open up to people. I won't let people look after me or show emotion to me because it freaks me out. I avoid any situation that couold get emotional.

Now when I say emotional I don't mean *any* emotion. There's a sliding scale. Emotions I can't stand are things like compassion and sympathy that is being directed towards me. I'm fine doling it out to others but witnessing others receiving it or god forbid it coming my way is a big no no. There are other emotions as well but those are the obvious ones. So anyway. This explains a whole heap of stuff. The next steps are to

1. Recognise how I have avoided emotion in the past.
2. Recognise the situations I avoid in order not to have to be uncomfortable
3. Start exposing myself to these situations.

That's going to be the hard part because it literally makes my skin crawl when I feel what are really perfectly normal things. If you are talking to me and you see me wrinkle my nose I'm either about to sneeze or the skin on my face is (almost) literally trying to move to the back of my head. It is quite uncanny.

SOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.....................

Enough of all that. Let's just say things are looking up and for the first time I really feel like there might be some tiny pinprick of light far away there in the distance at the end of the tunnel.

Il pleut

Beaucoup or however you spell it. Basically it's wet in london. And it matches my mood because I'm well pissed off. And I am trying to work out whether this is one of those animal, vegetable or mental type annoyances.

It is true that aspects of work are quite trying at the moment and I have a presentation to 1/3 staff this afternoon where most of them are only there for the cake and the rest are worried, confused and therefore not far off irritable themselves. So this is fair reason for being moody. This definitely counts as vegetable.

It is also true that I have 'got the builders in' and other such dumb arse phrases men use for women having periods. This then could be an animal cause.

This brings us to the mental. I have a postcard that says something pithy like 'I used to be sane but the effort drove me mad'. When, dudes, do I get a fricking break from effort? I am now sorely tempted just to go all out there and sit at my desk naked smoking a haddock like a cigar. Or perhaps a little torrets (you know what I mean, I just can't spell it). How about if I just sat here and shrieked 'fuck, shit, bollocks' every 30 seconds. Is that how people who develop these little quirks start out? Are they one day just fed up with the urge not to strangle their fellow tube traveller and so they start taking their tights off on the tube before this develops into a fully fledged naked-haddock-smoker type manifestation? Because, basically, I have to keep telling myself it's just PMT. Now, do 'normal' people have to sit around reminding themselves they're not insane all the time? What if I stopped telling myself this. Would that mean that I then went mad? In which case surely that means I'm mad already and it's actually slightly insane to be pretending not to be.

I was having an early morning conversation with a colleague 2 days ago and he started talking about euthanasia or something and I pointed out I wasn't the best person to ask. He had forgotten my little holiday in the madhouse a couple of years ago and was shocked to hear I was a depressive. "But Alex, " he said. "You are so young and you have so much going for you. There's no reason to be depressed." Is there perhaps anyone in the world who when they think about this thinks that it genuinely helps to say that. When that is said this is what I hear: "But Alex, there's no reason to be depressed. Stop being so self-indulgent and think about all the people in the world who are actually having a bad time. And by the way the fact that you actually are suicidal really underlines that you are sick. Sick. And doomed." But I know he meant well and was trying to cheer me up.

Anyway - no one is to leave any comments about all this. Let's just pretend it didn't happen.

In OTHER news, sane news, the adult surprise jacket is going well. I must have all of about 2 inches on the needles now. I do remember thinking about doubling the yarn and doing it at least DK but no, I've started in 4-ply so I'll finish by god. It is very relaxing to do - all that endless garter stitch, but the yarn is a bit splitty so it does take a little bit of attention to make sure I've got all of it when I go to wrap a stitch.

I got my Magic Yarn Ball yesterday from the swap bot spot. This is basically a ball of wool which has been unwound and then rewound but with lots of cool little things inside. Mine was AWESOME! I have forgotten the camera or you'd have a chance to share. I think I will include a description inside the second edition of PtbC.

Zines still available BUT you MUST MUST MUST send me your postal address. leaving a comment is no good. I need your postal address to post it to. You can email this to me at littlelixieathotmaildotcom and a copy will be in your postbox a few days later.

I have to end there as I have to go and set up for this dumbarse presentation. Still no internet at home so no more from me for this week. Have a good one peeps.

White collar crime

I tried, right. I tried to go to Rymans and use their photocopier and what happens? It costs me 80p in jams and then after i ask the staff which way round to put the paper it copies twice on the same side of the paper I'm using. That's a fiver I'll never see again. Anyway... I am now forced to abuse the office facilities and also to stay late tonight so no one sees me doing it. I guess if I were to try and rationalise this I would say something along the lines of unpaid overtime in exchange for use of copier but in all likelihood I'll be on swapbot so it doesn't really work.

Anyone who wants a copy of the zine leave a comment but INCLUDE YOUR ADDRESS! I need to know where to post these stolen copies.

On a swapbot theme I am now well into ATCs and have been flinging them around the world. I posted about a squillion parcels yesterday so look out those of you who have me as a swap partner. One of the things I sent was this which I am really in two minds about.

It's a brooch incase anyone was wondering. Yeah I know. I wonder if it would have been better with just 4 petals.

Doing a round up I have finished the first pair of socks made with the divine sock hop sock yarn. I found you can do a pair out of just one skein which wasn't what the website said but I won't cry about it. It does mean there might be some skeins available if anyone is interested. I'll let you know when and which though once I've finished my xmas presents.

(Note half-arsed cable attempt up centre front.)

So does anyone remember this?

This ugly little booger was a baby jumper started approx 9 months ago for darling Yoshimi who is now about 9 months and wouldn't fit into this if you steam boiled her for half an hour. It's also quite ugly. I can see it flying towards the dulani project or whatever it's called. Is it possible there are hundreds of kids running round war torn, far-flung places wearing ugly jumpers? Poor little buggers - I know it wouldn't matter to them what the stuff looked like as long as it was warm.

On the subject of knitting (which strangely, this being a knitting blog, I do seem to be talking about) I have been reading deeply and one might say obsessively of my new Elizabeth Zimmermann (or 'The Mann' as I am going to refer to her from now on) books. I'm on 'knitting around' which gives a different pattern for each month. I keep getting these urges to pledge to knitting each of these garments in the order given. And all those in The Mann's "Opinionated Knitter". The patters are just sublime and so easy to adapt. Lots are based on a percentage system so it doesn't even matter what your guage is as long as you know what it is. What a dude. The reason I bring this up here is because it has already occurred to the byrne brain that baby jumpers knit up faster than adult (dur) and still give you a chance to try out the techniques she uses. So watch this space.

Yeah, probably won't come to anything but I'm thinking about it a lot.