yarnstorm

yarn break

Still here, still with red ink stains on my fingers, still drinking tea out of red mugs. Those were the empties I showed in yesterday's photo. I really wanted to get a nice shot of all the mugs lined up, but I couldn't get them all in.

I've taken a yarn break on the advice of everyone who commented and said I needed some balance. I don't need much encouragement, but you made me realise that it really was necessary to find some yarns for a crochet project.

Although it's stunning and clever, I'm not planning on making the bag in the photo, but I was inspired by the wonderful jewel colours in the crocheted granny squares; there's jet, jade, amethyst, ruby, pearl, amber, emerald, sapphire, and many more. Because it seems that I, too, cannot resist the granny square phenomenon much longer. In fact, in one of my tea breaks I crocheted my very first square (practice colours only)

and then spent the next tea break scanning the photos of Alicia's amazing afghan to check whether I had got the pattern correct. Alicia's beautifully crocheted and blocked squares offer a masterclass in crochet construction.

I'm not sure I'm ready to commit to a whole granny square blanket but the colours, the patterns, the yarns are all beckoning. And it's something to think about during my next tea break.

                          ***

The bag is in this Japanese book which has a very misleading title (ISBN 4277171532).

as snug as a bug in a rug

It's all very exciting. A rather wonderful photographer will be coming here on Tuesday to take a few shots for the book, so we are giving the house a quick face-lift (just don't look behind anything). It's on occasions like this that Simon becomes my fairy godmother. Even though we agreed years ago that he would have the career and I would be at home and work occasionally, he is always incredibly supportive when it comes to something which matters to me (the Master of Wine exam, the MA and now the book). Which is just as well, as he has the hoovering and tidying gene I seem to be missing.

He swoops through the house and is ruthless with clutter (occasionally a little too ruthless, and I have my Marigold gloves at the ready to go through bin bags which contain theatre tickets, unread magazines and newspapers, instruction manuals, guarantees). He is my very own Mary Poppins waving a magic feather duster around.

He has learned to be very careful with my creations, though, and I was touched to find the ripple crochet carefully arranged on a chair with the yarn in the middle, as snug as a bug in a rug. I love the way he has no idea how it works, so just scoops the whole thing up like a baby and hopes nothing falls out or unravels or de-tangles.

I'm also feeling like a bug in a rug as I work snugly in my office, with Simon acting as a bouncer to prevent under-age gatecrashers from disturbing me. I never cease to be grateful for his literal and metaphorical broad shoulders.

ripple & ripple

Simon has gone to Florida for a week and I'm left with a ripple blanket for comfort. So I decided to get the other sort of Ripple and have a few rippling nights (so close to, and yet so far from, that wonderfully old-fashioned English word 'ripping').

The ripple blanket is a great antidote to writing all day with hunched shoulders and with irregular hand movements over the key board. As soon as I pick up the crochet my shoulders relax, my hands go into soothing regular movements, and I wallow in the waves of colour washing around my knees. The children like it when I crochet because they can get much closer to me than when I'm knitting (and there's less risk of needle-related injury) and they like it even more when I announce it's ripples and Ripples all round. 

The blanket is far from finished, but there is already enough for me to see plenty of lovely patterns and intriguing juxtapositions when it's folded or heaped or spread out. The photo above shows the bottom edge, and the one below shows the current working edge.

It's amazing all the variations you can achieve with such a simple pattern. I'm happy with the way the colours are working - this is Missoni meets Scottish Highlands - and I have even included a Galaxy Ripple chocolate brown ripple to make it all the more comforting.

Who needs to go all the way to Florida when you can ripple away at home?

mental and visual snapshots

My brain is brimful. Little thoughts keep popping up just when I think I am thinking about something else, and I have to make scribbles and notes wherever I can. There are bills and tickets and envelopes and hair appointment cards with enigmatic words on them all scattered around the house, in pockets and in bags. I am sincerely hoping that these little snapshots of my brain's activity will come together to make a meaningful panorama.

This week and next will be broken up into even more fragments. Two children are off this school this week, one next week. Two have a birthday tomorrow and one husband disappears off to Brussels for the rest of the week. There are two separate birthday celebrations, two parents' evenings and a netball tournament. Obviously, I try to be flexible but it seems like I'll need to be a Olga Korbut-style contortionist for a while.

I'm bobbing up and down on new waves of crochet. It's the same pattern from Jan Eaton's 200 Ripple Stitch Patterns that I used before, and is soothing, easy and sufficiently mildly diverting when it comes to colour changes to keep me interested without posing too many challenges. I don't need any more excitement than this at the moment. Although I do love these brilliant red chillis on a hand-painted plate, especially the way the little flashes of scarlet look like chillis.

February 14 is not Valentine's Day here, it's Tom and Alice's birthday. This year we shall be making mini heart cakes in these tins.

The arrangement on the tray is so beautiful, I hate to disturb it. Plus I am worried that I won't remember how to put the pieces back in the correct positions. So I thought I'd better take a snapshot as an aide-memoire. Perhaps someone could do the same for my thoughts so that I can slot them all back into the correct order in my brain?

it's my happy hippy heart you hear

I'm an old hippy at heart.

I had to laugh last night when Phoebe caught me closeted in my study listening to Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour and happily crocheting along. She reckoned I was even crocheting in time to the music, but I think I was spellbound more by the rhythms of Bob's speech.

I'd read about these programmes in various places but didn't realise I could listen to them until I saw yesterday that Radio 2 is now repeating them. It's a simple concept: Bob Dylan chooses records on a theme ('divorce', 'flowers', last night it was 'maps') and introduces each one. No ads, no trailers, no news, no rubbish, no gimmicks. Just Bob's voice and the music. He tells you all sorts of wonderful details about the lyrics, the writers, the performers and the places. Sometimes he goes into a classic, rambling, poetic riff and it's an education in style.

So my crochet hook flowed over the waves of a new blanket. I had told myself once was enough, but I have come back for more rippley crochet. I stocked up on Rowan Pure Wool DK yesterday and couldn't wait to get started. That's why I was in the study alone with my hippy, happy thoughts and Bob Dylan.

This time I wanted less of a fiesta feel and more a Scottish landscape idea. I'd thought of using tweed yarns but there aren't enough intense colours in the Rowan range, so I went for the great value, basic DK again. I chose colours for heathers, wild flowers, skies, trees and lochs. I am not setting a completion date, but will just go with the flow (man).

I'm wearing my hippy socks for the first time today.

I don't think I've worn knee-high socks since I was at school but it's so cold and I have to watch Phoebe play netball later, so I decided to get out these lovely, stripey Missoni socks. You'll probably (definitely) think I'm mad when I tell you that I didn't buy these to wear, but for inspiration.

I love the stripe formations and colours and thought how great they would look in something knitted or crocheted. But needs must and I am wearing them. And they look great with my flower-power quilt.

pineapple passion

One of the best presents I ever received was a pineapple in a paper bag - given to me at a time when a pineapple was way beyond my student means. I remember being so thrilled when I took the fruit out of the bag and realised the act of generosity it constituted. I displayed that pineapple until I could bear its juicy temptations no longer, and it was the most delicious piece of fruit ever. And very romantic.

I was reminded of this personal passion fruit when I was in a very chic grocery with Alice recently. She went into raptures when she spotted a whole candied (or glace) pineapple - leaves and all. I couldn't not buy it for her as my own act of pineapple generosity and, besides, it is quite bewitching to look at. Plus it lasts longer than fresh ones which are out of season at the moment.

It's amazing what a single fruit can inspire. The pineapple has wonderful sculptural qualities, brilliant colours, an amazing texture and a bold surface pattern. These translate into an inspirational natural object which can be turned into all sorts of forms. It's no surprise that Matisse painted a pineapple; I like the idea that behind the hard, prickly exterior lies an exotic, intense interior - something like Matisse himself, if Hilary Spurling's book is anything to go by.   

Pineapple and Anemones Henri Matisse (1940)

One of my favourite pieces in the Manchester City Art Gallery is the HUGE ceramic Queen Pineapple by Kate Malone. This has to be seen to be believed. 

   

I am also very taken with the idea of a pineapple teapot, like this Staffordshire Creamware example which was made around 1760 (and probably costs more than all the tea in China). It would take an exceptionally generous wooer to buy this.

   

But I find myself inspired on a more domestic level. If I can't have the teapot, I could at least have a pineapple teacosy and my thoughts are turning to a kitsch, bright, beaded version with a burlesque topping of pointy leaves that Carmen Miranda might favour. I could pour tea from it to accompany a retro Upside Down Pineapple Cake complete with garish red cherries.

Or a fruity quilt? I bought the pineapple fabric (above) from equilter because I liked the graphic quality and the spaces, but I'm not so keen on all the overblown, hot-house prints that pineapples inspire. I'm thinking of a fruit theme rather than a Pineapple quilt (a complex-looking and sounding version of the Log Cabin pattern - Patricia Cox's book has some lovely examples), but I do admire the way the lines and fabrics cleverly form a spiky pineapple motif.

And who knew that there is practically a whole industry devoted to pineapple crochet? There are some really intricately beautiful pineapple designs (as opposed to pineapple stitch) and I just wish I had a grandmother willing and able to make me a few of these. Alternatively, should I have a few months to spare, I could always knit a pineapple afghan.

But, before I get carried away with pineapple possibilities, I must read The Pineapple: King of Fruits by Fran Beauman which sounds just...delicious.

on the crest of a wave

I'm ending 2006 on the crest of a wave. On 5 December I wrote a post in which I gave myself four weeks to crochet a ripple stitch blanket. And here I am, 24 days later, a very proud hooker.

There was the slight hiccup of a week's false start, but then I got back on the board and really started surfing. I've been going strong since and haven't fallen off once, and now I have my first crochet project ready to snuggle under (in fact, I had to do the last row or two of crochet around Phoebe as she's already been snuggling).

I loved the stitch as much as I thought I would and it became quite addictive. Crochet is remarkably easy to put down and pick up and I find I don't have to sit up straight all the time. I can slouch, sit on the floor, put my knees up - all of which is impossible with knitting needles. Crochet brings out the inner slob in me, obviously.

As for the making details, I started off with a vague colour idea (bright, Matisse-y colours) and two-row stripes. I didn't want a repeating pattern and nor did I want the result to be so random it lacked cohesion. So every two or three rows I would line up the potential yarns for the next few rows to make sure that I didn't get any big gaps between colours or any conspicuous pattern. Tom had to be consulted on this - he has great spatial colour awareness and his vision really helps. And then I just crocheted, and crocheted, and crocheted.

One thing I hadn't really realised was just how much yarn crochet can guzzle. My initial purchase was far too meagre for a decent-size blanket, and it didn't take long before I was manically searching out all the DK wool yarn in the house. In the end, I used 925g of yarn in masses of colours and brands, and virtually wiped out my DK yarn stock. The blanket is made mostly with Rowan 100% wool DK yarn, plus various bits of Jaeger, Debbie Bliss, Anny Blatt and several other French yarns, and there's even one stripe in red Blue Sky Alpaca.

I stopped when I felt it was large enough (it measures 115cm/45" x 130cm/51"). If I'd carried on until the full 28 days had elapsed I would have run into murky stripes (I have no more brights left) and, anyway, I wanted to finish before 2006 did.

The pattern is 'Soft Waves' in 200 Ripple Stitch Patterns by Jan Eaton (Apple, 2006) using a 4mm hook and approx 200 stitches.

I'm planning on making more waves in 2007...

surfing

I'm happily surfing the crochet waves of my blanket now. It's as if I'm bobbing up and down on a multicoloured sea and even the Clover crochet hook I'm using looks like a mini surf board.

But then it also feels like I'm going up hill and down dale. I make a gentle climb up to the top, do an extra twirl or two at the peak like Julie Andrews at the beginning of The Sound of Music,

and then sweep down to the valley where I regain my breath for the next ascent.

It's a great pattern and I love the rhythm. I'm doing random stripes because I wanted to see how a traditional, non-designed, using-up-leftovers approach worked. The result is that it's becoming a go-faster stripe blanket which is dangerously addictive as I want to see how more and more colours look. Not good when there are so many other 'useful' things I should be doing. But then a little displacement activity always keeps me sane at this time of year.

first hurdle

Well, I fell at the first hurdle with the ripple blanket, the first hurdle being the correct crochet stitch. It does help.

I sat and hooked my way through the chain, the beginnings of the ripples and the stripes, and then began to realise my work looked nothing like the pattern photograph. But I was too idle to get up and check in another book to see what I should be doing. Finally, I shifted myself and discovered that I'd been doing single, not double, crochet. Ho hum. That's what comes of being lazy.

I decided I liked the effect enough not to unravel the strip, and Phoebe very kindly suggested that it would make a good scarf for Josie the giraffe who apparently needs one urgently (as well as a new eye). She was right, my bungled blanket looks just great on Josie.

However, when Phoebe had gone to school I sneakily put the 'scarf' on Stanley, the pink bear I knitted last year and, secretly, I think it suits Stanley better. He even looks quite intellectual in an Oxbridge-student-gone-awry sort of way.

So, I have to start my ripple blanket all over again and reconsider my time-frame. Mmmm, better not say too much as I'm clearly not yet a thoroughbred crocheter, by any stretch of the imagination.

gestation

When I was little I was always fascinated by the gestation periods of various animals. I could quite understand why a mouse might emerge ready to face the world of cheese and skirting boards after a mere 21 days, but I couldn't quite see what an elephant could possibly be doing for 650 days inside its mother. And it couldn't even speak or read books when it was born.

I am still bewildered by gestation periods, but these days I tend to think of them in the context of my own creative projects. Why does it take me nearly 365 days from the conception of a pair of cabled sock in Fleece Artist Cosmic Dawn (see post below) to actually knitting them? And then why can the secondary gestation period of a sock, ie time on the needles, take anything from two days to two months?

The longest gestation period I have ever endured was that of my first quilt. I noticed the other day that I bought my first quilting book, Patchwork by Kaffe Fassett and Liza Prior Lucy, in 1999 but didn't get round to making a quilt until 2004. Five years. Beats the whale (500 days) and rhinoceros (450 days) hands down.

But writing a blog makes me concertina these time periods quite dramatically. It's all too easy to announce the impending arrival of my latest baby, only to let it gestate well beyond its due date. So I try to set myself realistic targets and get things done. All very laudable, I'd say, except that my crocheted ripple blanket whose imminent arrival has been discussed on these pages, is still only at the book, hook and yarn stage, and the latter only of today.

I like to turn ideas over in my mind before starting something new. So I thought about crochet, bought a book about crochet, tried to teach myself to crochet, cried over my non-crochet, went to a crochet workshop, bought a crochet pattern book, thought a little more about crochet and finally, today, bought the yarn.

But this is more than even I can stand, and the midwife in me is getting impatient to see my Ripple Blanket. So I hereby announce that in four weeks there will be a new arrival in the Brocket household. And it certainly won't be 24 days early like Tom and Alice but, with a little luck and perseverance, it should be like Phoebe: right on time.