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Seven weird things about me (how to choose...)
Our church has for some time supported Anne Moore, a British nurse who works in Kisiizi Hospital, south-west Uganda. She visited the church this weekend and described her work there. Kisiizi Hospital is a busy regional hospital with very limited resources. Children and even adults sometimes have to share beds, and if there is no room in the beds then people sleep on the floor. Many patients, including babies, are HIV positive (but fortunately they are receiving drugs and quality of life is improving for them). The point of telling you all this is that she mentioned that knitted clothes and blankets for premature babies would be really welcome. I'm not sure that I'm ready to launch a huge appeal, but if anyone would like to knit baby clothes I would be happy to collect them. A couple of us at church will co-ordinate some kind of box to be sent over. The clothes will be hand-washed, so you don't need to use acrylic if that offends you! Have some fun with soft cosy left-overs or impulse buys (hem hem...). Hats, bootees, cardigans and blankets would be the most useful. Mittens a bit less so, and definitely no leggings (because they don't wear nappies). Anne said that garments of all sizes up to adult would actually be welcome.
I've been thinking about the issue of heat. The low and high average temperatures quoted by the BBC are very different, so I would guess that the nights are quite cold - Uganda is very hilly and has a high rainfall. And of course premature babies need to be extra warm anyway. I might make some adult bedsocks.
So this morning I got out all my random balls of 4-ply and dk and made a selection of the softest yarns and most cheerful colours (I don't really have baby wool as such), and I have started a baby blanket. It's not a traditional baby blanket, but I hope it will appeal to someone who likes bright colours!
I've been experiencing some aches and pains in my hands. I don't feel as though they are specifically knitting related, but I'm giving sock knitting a rest for the moment because I do tend to knit them quite tightly and the dpn's press into the palms a bit. Nice soft 4-ply on gentle wooden needles seems just the ticket!
What does it mean when you buy a bedspread and when it's delivered your first thought is 'what a lovely see-through zip bag for storing yarn in'!
(The bedspread's OK, too.)
Since Friday I have done nine hours of digging on the allotment. The downpour yesterday made such a difference to the soil; after the wind had dried it off we went up there and did a marathon session digging and planting. It really looks like an allotment now. I'll take some pictures soon.
Some knitting has been getting done, in a slow but sure sort of way. When I got back from Chicago I couldn't focus on Kerry Blue (literally, first from cross-eyed tiredness and jetllag and then from a stinking cold), but I have done a little more recently. I am definitely over halfway there!
From centre to corner along the 'rib' measures 13" unstretched. I think my shawl will be smaller than the one in the book because I have used quite thin needles.
I have finished the back and both sleeves of my 'Perfect Sweater'
and I don't mind at all that this is making slow progress, because it is making progress. I'm not experiencing those feelings of misgiving that herald the abandonment of a ufo.
I seem to be doing socks more than anything else at the moment. First I finished the pink variegated trekking socks using yarn that Dawn sent me:
Plain, cuff down with an eclectic heel and flat toe. I think I started them in March, and as I knitted the last stitch at Liberty's on 26 April, that's pretty good progress for me. On 26 April I cast on for another pair of Trekking socks, using yarn that had been in my stash for a couple of years. I must say that I'm a bit disappointed at the way the colours are turning out, but for some reason I'm knitting them up really quickly.
These are also cuff-down, but I did a standard heel flap with a garter stitch border, which I like a lot.
Finally, a pair of socks which I started months and months ago - In December 2006. I'm knitting Nancy Bush's pattern 'Conwy' with Cherry Tree Hill yarn in the Water colourway. I had to adapt the pattern a bit to allow for my wide ankle and foot. For some reason I got fed up with the stitch pattern and cast them aside, but now I'm really enjoying the knitting (by the way the foot isn't as huge as this picutre makes out!). I think this Cherry Tree Hill yarn is fantastic. It feels lovely, makes a firm fabric and the colours are so well blended.
No, she's not a Rowan cardigan:
She's a rugosa hybrid rose, and I wish I had smellovision so that you could appreciate her beautiful scent. She has now made quite a tall, arching shrub. She shares this part-shaded bed in our back garden.
Ninety degrees to the left:
The rose is Madame Alfred Carriere and she's doing splendidly this year. In the centre, with mid-green deeply cut leaves, is Paeonia davidii that I grew from seed. Last year I took a photo on 7 May of its first flower. Now, on the 4th, the three flowers are finished - so there's a little phenomenological evidence of the early spring!
Our front garden is much sunnier and drier. Here: cistus, euphorbia, sage, Geranium renardii and a pink (Mrs Simpkins).
Here: iris (Jane Philips), nigella, lavender, and a self-sown thing that I can never remember the name of (begins with c, bees love it).
One last one, sorry. Euphorbia again, lambs lugs, a perennial wallflower and more sage (and a little cotoneaster peeping in at the top).
The story starts a couple of years ago with Lene's blog, Dances with Wool. She posted here some unusual mittens that she had knitted following a traditional technique from Rovaniemi in northern Finland (Lapland). As you know I love knitting mittens and finding out new traditional techniques. So I was frustrated at not being able to work out how they were knitted. I could see that it was a kind of intarsia in the round (because the palms are not patterned) but that was as far as it went. There weren't any descriptions published in English - then.
All went quiet until I read on the Yarn Harlot's blog (... you can get there yourself, surely!) that she had taken a class in knitting Rovaniemi mittens with Susanna Hansson. I could hardly contain my impatience and envy, but I reasoned that eventually more information would leak out. Then my trip to Chicago had to be organised. I had the option of staying on a couple of days by myself to look around. In doing one of my routine sweeps of the internet I came upon the Windy City Knitters Guild workshop weekend - led by Susanna Hansson. Yes! I could be there!
So, on the Friday evening I found myself at the Evanston Ecology Centre with about twenty other knitters (all women) and Susanna Hannson. She is a good speaker and had lots of mittens to show us, both traditionally coloured ones knitted for tourists (that Lene calls 'ugly' mittens) and Lene's own. (The 'ugly' mittens aren't ugly, just a bit bright! See in the background.)
This was a lecture, however, rather than a class and it was a little frustrating not to get down to the knitty gritty of how you actually do the intarsia technique. Susanna told us about the Sami people and their traditional dress and how she believes their weaving techniques have influenced the mitten knitting. You can see this in the clever way they organise the many ends of yarn:
If, like me, you'd like to know more, watch out for Piework magazine early in 2008. Lene's writing an article with a project to knit using the Rovaniemi mitten method.
Isn't the internet great? To think that I'd end up in Chicago in a roomful of mid-Westerners to hear a Swede speak about an obscure Finnish mitten!
