The Way Knit Was

Today's page from Stephanie Pearl McPhee's Never Not Knitting page-per-day calendar (the one I went on a ridiculous trip to get) was a 'The Way Knit Was' page and it amused me greatly:

"I have too much love for my poor people who obtain their bread by the employment of knitting, to...forward an invention that will tend to their ruin."

- Queen Elizabeth I, explaining why she wouldn't grant William Lee a patent for his knitting machine in 1589.

The 'Darnley Portrait' of Elizabeth I of England,

oil on panel, 113 x 78.7 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London

Of course it's not amusing that there were/are 'poor' people or that William Lee's battle to get a patent for the knitting machine made his life so horrible, but the tone of Queen Elizabeth is just so haughty - 'my poor people'!

Making history

Yesterday afternoon two women from work and I took the afternoon off and went to watch the 82nd Academy Awards on a big screen in the Gold Lounge foyer at Reading Courtenay. You paid $15 for a ticket and got a glass of bubbly and constant canapes throughout the afternoon. It was a lot of fun, I put a flower in my hair, Janet wore her high silver shoes, and Sharon wore a cute yellow scarf to match her cute yellow skirt.

There was a real Oscar statuette there that had been won by one of the Wellington members of The Lord of the Rings production team. His wife was there minding it but we were allowed to pick it up and have photos with it. It was surprisingly heavy!

Here I am, really happy to have won...

And now quite emotional about being recognised by the Academy.

I will definitely go again next year if I can, it was a really nice afternoon. We liked Sarah Jessica Parker's dress and felt that Charlize Theron's was a big mistake.

Then it was Monday night Knitting Circle where another historical event took place. After 6 months, Penny finally finished her first ever knitting project. A cabled scarf.

Here she is weaving the ends in while wearing it.
(Of course the blur is the speed of her hands rather than my poor photography...)

And here is a close-up of the pattern. Very impressive for her first ever scarf and such an awesome colour!

The Baby Knitters Club did not have such a successful evening. I changed to circulars and did my 8 rows casting on 5 stitches at the beginning of each row and somehow ended up with a hole. Anita thinks I did a yarn over instead of a backwards thumb cast-on somewhere along the line. It took me so long to cast on the stitches and knit the 8 rows I couldn't face unpicking the 8 rows and fixing it so I carried on. As Anita pointed out, it's not for any particular baby so it really doesn't matter. It's still annoying though. I want perfection!

The Hole

I'm really going to have to let go of perfection because at this stage it will be a miracle if I ever finish this thing and it has any semblance of the picture on the pattern or a Baby Shrug in general. Especially because when I counted to check I had cast on the right amount at the end of the 8 rows I counted 98, then 88, then 98, then 88 stitches. I went with the 88 because that was the right amount and I didn't want to count again... Overall, it currently looks like a crab and I have no idea how what I'm knitting turns into something you can knit together to make a shrug.

The Crab

Meanwhile, Anita was feeling very bootie confident and marveling at her speed until she cast off and realised she had forgotten to knit rows 9 - 13 which meant her bootie had no sole (and yes, I am appreciating the fact that being a knitter means you get to legitimately say amazing sentences such as 'feeling very bootie confident' and 'her bootie had no sole' and not be talking about Beyonce).

Luckily neither of us are planning on having our own babies anytime soon because we need a lot of practice before we would be able to clothe them in garments that aren't holey or sole-less. However, we shall continue to fight the good fight and potentially conquer these tiny baby creations. Potentially.

Rosettes, Mannequins, and Banana Muffins

So the card turned out quite well. It took me a lot of last night to make the rosette because I've never made one before and just figured it out for myself through trial and error (I can do things without the help of the internet!). It's not perfect but I'm very happy with it.

Sadly no knitting has happened this weekend and is unlikely to until Monday night Knitting Circle tomorrow. That's because after finishing the card I met Guy in town and we walked around looking at the first day of this very cool NZ International Arts Festival event, Revolt of the Mannequins. French street theatre company Royal De Luxe has put mannequins in 10 shop windows around Wellington and each day the mannequins are moved, less noticeably at first and then more and more obviously. A story unfolds in each window (the stories are unrelated) and the mannequins are pretty lifelike and often freaky looking. Royal De Luxe has done some really amazing work with giant puppets operated by cranes - see this YouTube video of The Little Girl Giant as an example.

This morning I made muffins bright and early as had a friend coming for lunch. My favourite tried and true Best Ever Banana Muffins. They honestly are so quick to make and always taste good.

Best Ever Banana Muffins

3 large ripe bananas

1 egg

3/4 cup sugar

1/3 cup melted butter

1 1/2 cups four

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

(can add chocolate chips if you want)

Preheat oven to 190 degrees celcius. I'm all for the fan bake setting.

Mash bananas in a bowl (I use a potato masher, much quicker than a fork), whisk the egg in a cup and add to bananas. Add sugar and melted butter. Mix with a wooden spoon (not sure what difference this makes but the recipe specifies it).

Sift in flour, baking soda, and baking powder (if you want to add chocolate chips add them now - about half a cup or more depending on how chocolate-y you want them). Mix quickly.

Bake for 15-20 minutes in greased muffin tins. Makes 12 muffins.

So quick and so good.

And now I'm off to rehearsal and then the Fringe Awards this evening. If only I could knit at social events without being considered antisocial or weird. I wanted to knit during a show the other night but Guy expressly forbid it, he said it would be so off-putting if he was in a show and looked out into the audience and saw someone knitting. A poll of one other person found that this view was seconded. Fine. When Tea for Toot is on I am going to INVITE people to knit if they want to, I won't be offended.

The Sound of Good Fortune and Crafty Buys

Last night I was very lucky to be able to go to a NZ International Arts Festival show for just $20.00. Ever since I read about Sound of Silence in the Festival programme and the saw the poster for it I wanted to see just how this whole 'three hour theatre piece set to the music of Simon and Garfunkel with no dialogue' worked, but at $78.00 for the cheapest ticket bought under normal circumstances for a lot of the shows, I had decided I could only go to one show and I wasn't prepared to make Sound of Silence my one show.

However, very luckily for me, Guy's friend Erina lined up at 10.30am in Midland Park for the ten $20.00 tickets available at 12.30pm each day for each show that is on that night. She got two tickets to Sound of Silence, her friend could no longer go with her, and Guy said that I wanted to go, so voila! At 7pm at the TSB Arena, Sound of Silence began with me in the audience!

(images above courtesy of napoliteatrofestival's photostream on flickr)

(image courtesy of NZ International Arts Festival website)

I'm so glad I went. It wasn't like blow-you-out-of-your-seat-amazing, it was quite gentle and slow but it had great humour and the costumes and set were amazing. These photos don't show some of the best costumes but man I would so love to raid their costume racks! Surprisingly, you quickly get used to no speaking and it was nice to give up trying to read narrative into every little scene and just enjoy what was happening on stage each moment and absorb the overarching narrative of the show as a whole. That's sounding a bit theatre-y so I'll leave it there... Basically, those Latvians from New Riga Theatre know how to make a beautiful show and I was so lucky to be able to go.

Then today Anita and I went on our first Baby Knitters Club field trip to Craft 2.0. So many nice things of which I purchased a few:

Pretty lemon cupcakes.

Something I had thought might tempt me...this is Cherry Ripe by Knitsch. Of course I had to buy it because of the name (and the fact that it's awesome colours). There were so many beautiful colour combinations, Anita bought 'Almost Iris' which was light purple and yellow. I think I'll try knitting my first pair of socks with it when I'm done with the Baby Shrug (so, in the very distant future).

I was looking for a present for my Nana's 76th birthday next week; she is very hard to buy for because she loves reading but borrows all her books from a friend who seems to buy one a day (and the library), she doesn't like knick knacks - she has one small display shelf with a few select items such as a wee vase she bought in Sweden, and she has a set number of photo frames on the mantlepiece (4) and a photo has to be good enough to replace an existing one to get displayed rather than adding another frame to the collection. If she was into design she'd definitely be a minimalist.

So I like to try to get her practical things, things that she'll use. For Christmas I bought her a really nice tin of English Breakfast Tea and some honey sweets. Today I bought her three tiny pillows filled with lavender. She's been having trouble sleeping and won't heed my advice to take up knitting again (she just laughs when I tell her that if she's awake at 1am she'll be able to whip out her knitting, knit a few rows, and she'll soon get heavy eyelids) so she can tuck one under her pillow and use the others as drawer scents. The fabric is cute and I love the design and image on the Tea Pea label. This evening I'm going to make a card to go with her present, a bit of an experimentation with sewing fabric onto card. If all goes well, it shall be revealed tomorrow.

I really wanted to buy one of the Sweet William prints but that will have to wait for another day (or birthday...I'll be adding it to the list).

So apart from having to leave lots of stuff I would have liked to have taken home behind, it was a nice little visit to Craft 2.0 and some very good purchases made. It also made me want to get out the sewing machine, but we'll see. As my 4mm 60cm-length circulars arrived in the post yesterday, I might try to get some Baby Shrug knitting happening. First I'll have to work out how to actually do what the pattern asks but like Maria, I have confidence...

Parting is such sweet sorrow

Last night when I got home there was a big brown envelope on my bed which was very exciting as I had no idea what it could be. Then when I picked it up I realised it was the Autumn 2010 issue of World Sweet World which was even more exciting.


My excitement quickly turned to disappointment though because I noticed that the picture on the cover had the words 'Thank You and Goodnight' as part of it and that it was called the 'Peace' issue. The letter that accompanied the magazine confirmed my suspicion. It was the World Sweet World magazine's final issue, they won't be publishing another.

I subscribed to World Sweet World in early January after buying a copy of the Summer 09/10 issue to take to the beach with me. I loved the Summer issue, I pored over it in the tent and read every single page (notice I said 'in the tent', not 'in the sun'? Guy would be like, 'Get out of the tent you freak, it's a beautiful day', but woe is me with my pale pale skin and its extremely low tolerance of the midday sun even with sunblock on. I may have spent the hottest part of our days at the beach in the tent but I also did not get sunburned at all. Take that UV rays!).

The articles were interesting and well written, there were cool ideas for things to make, and the design and layout of the whole package was cute and appealing. It was also produced by New Zealanders with all New Zealand content which I really liked. A crafty colleague of mine (she makes cards and likes hunting for vintage fabric) loaned me two earlier issues she had bought after I told her that I had bought and enjoyed the Summer issue. The quality of the content in both of those issues was also really high so it seems like it was a recurringly awesome magazine.

I'm really sad to see it go. It's exciting for its editors that they're having their first baby, a new little DIY project to work on. And of course there's still this issue to read, which has a beautiful cover by an artist I just discovered on Sunday (funny how things like that ALWAYS happen, you never hear of someone, then you read about them/see their work and they seem to keep popping up for a while after that).

Devon Smith and Sarah McNeil have an exhibition of their art on in The Pit Bar at BATS Theatre at the moment. I LOVE Devon's drawings and I think someone should buy me one for my birthday...I have already said this to Guy and I'll be putting it on my mental birthday list (which I should probably make into a physical birthday list because otherwise when people ask me what I want I forget and have to try to think of stuff which is never as good as what I later remember was on my mental list).

Guy and I were at BATS on Sunday night to see A Love Tail. On Tuesday night we went to Salon which takes place in the actual hair salon, Fallen From Grace Hair Salon (for the first Fringe Festival I was ever involved in we did a show called A Darling Bud of Maybe - had to get the name in there because it's so cute - whose main character was a florist and the show was in an actual florist shop. Thank you Susan White Florist!). Then last night we saw Who's Neat? You!, Ruby Tuesday, and Sun Drugs. We didn't plan to see Sun Drugs, I didn't even know it was on, but it was free and in The Pit Bar and I'm glad I did - it was crazy, funny, and kind of inexplicable.

So that will pretty much wrap-up my Fringe 2010 viewing I think. The Fringe Awards are on on Sunday night which will hopefully be a fun evening. I think Guy is performing one of Brotastik's songs from his show which I'm sure will go down a treat.

Another theatre/craft link this week. In the 'Indulgence' section of the weekend Dominion Post there was an article about a woman whose exhibition of works made from yarn is on at the Mary Newton Gallery until the 27th of March.

Last year I directed a show for the Fringe Festival that we staged in the Mary Newton Gallery. My friend visited it one day and realised it had great acoustics and would be perfect for the little musical she had written that we were going to put on. The women who run the gallery are really nice so I'm going to try to get along and see the exhibition because it looks very intriguing.

And finally, I got an email confirmation today that my order of 4mm 60cm-length circular needles from The Yarn Queen has been posted. So I should get them tomorrow. Yay! I was getting worried because I know The Yarn Queen office is closed on a Friday so if I didn't get my email saying that my order had been posted today it would mean I wouldn't get my needles until next week. And I want to get the better of this Baby Shrug!

Ummm, CUTE

This is Anita's first finished bootie. I am so jealous, it is so tiny and adorable. She's not happy with her sewing of the seams on the bottom though so is not going to be using this as part of her pair. She's knitting another two. Apparently babies really care about how perfect the seams on their booties are...

Still Life: Bootie on Couch Arm

There it is just hanging out being all cute on the arm of a couch.

As for the Baby Shrug, both of the girls I'd normally ask for knitting advice weren't at Monday night Knitting Circle last night so when I got to the 'change to circulars' part of the pattern I just went back to my dishcloth.

However, today I received a reply from the Raveller I emailed yesterday who had finished the Baby Shrug pattern the other day and she answered my questions: she used a 32" length circular because she'd just bought some for making adult jerseys with (although she said sweater because she's American, those Americans, so cute) but she thought I could squeeze by with a 16" although it may be a 'tad tight'; she said a 24" or 29" would be perfect though. I do not need to join for working in the round.

Hurrah! She said if I have any other questions she's 'glad to help'. What a lovely lady. Isn't Ravelry the best invention ever?

I also realised today that I don't have 4mm circulars of any length anyway, I have 3.5mm and 3.75mm ones and the 3.75mm ones are what I'm knitting the dishcloth on at the moment. So I bought some 4mm 60cm length (24") circulars from the Yarn Queen and I can't wait to get them in the mail so that I can get on with the shrug!

The Baby Knitters Club is planning a field trip for this Saturday to Craft 2.0 at the TheNewDowse. I am rather excited about this because I went once late last year but I misjudged the bus times and ended up only being able to spend about 20 mins there before having to turn around and come home again in time for something else I had to do. So this time we can take Anita's car and be all leisurely.

A few more rows and a wee find

The baby shrug had a bit more progress made on it on the train from the Wairarapa to Wellington on Saturday evening (I made a very flying visit, over late on Friday night and back in time to see Guy's last show on Saturday night, but it was nice to hang out with Hunter for a few hours on Saturday and make another batch of cupcakes...):

(without the aid of a hand model it looks like this)

Voila!
(Hand model: Guy Langford - because my hands are too pink and stubby)

Not a lot because I got sleepy after a few rows and slept until Upper Hutt. But a fire on the tracks between Waterloo and Petone delayed us and I got more done while sitting waiting for the train to move. The lovely train guard who was keeping us updated said to me, 'Aren't we nice? We stopped the train so you could finish your knitting' as he walked past. I dutifully chuckled and replied, 'Yes I thought so, thank you'. I could have said, 'HA! We'd have to sit here for about three days straight and call in knitting interpreters before there was any hope of me finishing this stupid thing'.

Stupid thing? Okay maybe a bit harsh but honestly: 'Long circular and straight needles'? I get that there are two lengths of straight needles and Anita loaned me a pair of long 4mm ones. But 'long circular' needles? According to Ravelry there are NINE different lengths of circulars and on the Yarn Queen website there are three. Surely I don't need a pair of 80cm length circular needles for a BABY shrug. How long is long? Is it longer than the shortest or is it the absolute longest? Come on Miss Bliss, give me a break here.

Also, I am nearly at the part where it says:

'Change to 5mm circular needle.
Shape sleeves
Cast on 5 sts at beg of next 8 rows. 88 sts Work a further 18 rows.
Divide for fronts'

Now, to my logical mind it does not say 'join for working in the round' anywhere. So in a logical Cherie world, I wouldn't join it for working in the round. BUT, I'm suspicious of this knitting gobbledygook and I feel like maybe in the logical KNITTING world it would follow that if you have to change to circular needles, you know you have to join for working in the round, so there's no need to spell it out.

SO confused. Also, I have no idea HOW I would join it for working in the round because the way I did it for my hat was to begin a row using the tail and the working yarn for a few stitches. But now the tail is a whole 21 rows away at the bottom. My guess is it is not worked in the round and you use circular needles because they make it easier to have stitches dangling off the bottom on a spare needle than straight ones do. But who knows.

I am off to Monday night knitting circle tonight so hopefully someone can help me. And if not, I have emailed someone on Ravelry who just finished this pattern the other day and asked these questions (not in such a rambling, whining way of course). I hope they don't mind a random person from New Zealand emailing them all the way over in Indiana asking them knitting questions. I wouldn't mind if that happened to me - if the situation was reversed I'd be all excited and look up exactly where Indiana actually is, but you never know.

In other news, I went and looked around a few second hand shops in Carterton and Masterton during my brief visit on Saturday (I'm looking for a tall, narrow, real wooden bookcase) and had to buy this because of the title:

And because it is such a perfect representation of the stories the women in our show would have grown up with and of the genre that Enid Blyton was working in with her short stories and The Wishing Chair and The Faraway Tree books.

There's an inscription in the front page of the book, 'To Carol, Wishing her a happy fifth birthday, love from Sandra'.

The shop I bought the book from had a whole eclectic mix of things (a lot of them quite overpriced) including this:

I can't find a picture of an original or a restored one of these, not with the handle thing in the front or frame bit on the top like this one so I wonder what it looked like in all its glory.

Lots of pictures of ones like this though, although not surrounded by old bath claws.

I love old stuff. Except dolls, but that's a story for another day.