I've Had A Great Week

I have had a great week. Monday I had parcels delivered. Tuesday the washer was repaired. From Wednesday onwards I have been riding on a metro tram from Piccadilly to Media City with Rachael, Roger, Martie, Louise, Sarah and some other fabulous knitters and crocheters.

Rachael is involved with a project with the Contact Theatre in Manchester and invited anyone who wanted to come along for the ride.Each day has been different. Wednesday and today we had Claire Rooney who was making up songs from suggestions that the passengers gave her. She wanted them to say what was the best thing that they had ever found and then she made up a song about it. Brian the tram driver entered into it and said the best thing that he ever found was his wife! The ticket inspectors have all entered into the fun of it so it has been a happy atmosphere with passengers singing along and shaking fruit shaped maracas.

On Wednesday we also had a rap and beat box group Country Boys Struggle and the lead was  rapping about topics given to him by members of the public travelling on the tram. I have put a link to the Contact Theatre in my blog page title. I do hope that those of you not in the UK can still view it. If you look at Day 3 video of Lost and Found then once you have listened to a bit of opera you will see glimpses of me along with other knitters and crocheters on the tram.

Tomorrow is the last day and instead of knitting on the tram we are meeting up at the Contact Theatre at 2pm to continue knitting and watch some more performances. It is the start of International Knitting Week so we are partly doing it for that as well.

The latest copy of Inside Crochet arrived yesterday and there was an article about Rachael from Artyarn who started off the Kings Arms knitters and has been involved in so many projects including this one with the Contact Theatre. This article is mentioning the work that she does with the Ministry of Craft. I will show you some of the contents of this magazine at the weekend.

Another of my bargain 1p books arrived today. Well it was 1p plus £2,80 postage. It is  Baby Knits by Debbie Bliss

The book is secondhand and the cover is a little bit dogeared but I don't mind that. I doubt that it's previous owner ever knitted anything from it as there is no obvious sign that the book has been left open at any of the pages for a while.

Extremely pretty to look at but not one that I would tackle at the moment. I always have practical thoughts when I see something like this. My first thought is " How do you change the baby?"  It would have to get stripped every time it wet itself as there doesn't appear to have any popper fasteners in the crotch area.

Most of these patterns I could make but wouldn't as I am not a lover of very intricate fair isle or pattered knitting for a small child. I don't mind putting in a lot of effort into knitting for an adult but as my son could get dirty sitting still, I went for plentiful and easy to clean when he was small. I suppose if you had a child who sat still and didn't look for every bit of dirt or mud to play in then it might be worth taking the time and effort to make some of these. I find it an effort to knit these days. I would rather crochet.

More work has arrived. I bought these plastic folders for storing patterns. I have a lot of pages torn from magazines that are extremely tatty plus a lot of battered knitting patterns. My aim one day is to have everything in a labeled folder so they don't keep getting worse everytime I have to rummage through them to find a certain pattern that I am looking for. I am not starting sorting them out this week though.

I haven't been doing a lot on my crochet as I was mostly knitting and crocheting strips whilst on the tram. These will be put on display at the Contact Theatre. Rachael was encouraging people who got on the tram to add a few rows. Those who stayed on the tram for the whole journey and knitted quite a few rows were encouraged to tie luggage labels with their names or a saying and tie it onto their bit of knitting.

Most of the people travelling on the metro this week have been lovely about what we were all doing and made comments like - we wish you were on here every week. Travellers from many different places who barely spoke English were there shaking maracas and joining in the chorus of Oh Yeah. Most people left the tram with a smile on their faces. There were the odd grumpy ones but they were in the minority.

I have enjoyed my week of riding the rails and am looking forward to the Contact  Theatre tomorrow. When I had a car I used to go along and watch plays pre main performances for a very small fee. I am not sure if they still do this but it was ideal for anyone on a limited budget to see live theatre. Even if they still do I  would have to travel to and from by taxi and it is across town.

There have been loads of photos taken, but not by me, but I have been promised some so I will put them on the blog when I receive them.

I have managed to get about this week. Wednesday I stupidly had a shoulder bag and a walking stick and so hardly got more than a couple of streets before I had to call a taxi as my back was hurting so much. Yesterday and today I wore a backpack and used my crutches. My back and legs are hurting today but it was nice to be able to get out and about. Coming home today though I only bought a loaf and I struggled to carry it home. I should maybe use my crutches just for a walk up and down the street and my scooter for any shopping.

A Hooded Shawl

As I have mentioned before my son asked me if I would make a shawl or something with a hood for my daughter in law to wear when she is reading in bed and gets cold shoulders. As you have already seen I have made her a chenille knitted shoulder shawl but I decided to try to make something with a hood. I used the Triangle shawl from Contemporary Crochet by Sys Fredens as a base for the triangle shape. I used 2 x 200 gram balls of James C Brett Marble Chunky bought online from Purplelinda. It is a lovely soft acrylic chunky yarn that comes in a variety of shaded colours.

I then added a crochet edging as I think that the shawl as per the pattern looks unfinished without one.

Then I made a basic hood. Instead of sewing it to the shawl I decided to stitch buttons to the hood so that the shawl can be worn with or without the hood. If she wants to wear it over her dress then all she has to do is unbutton the hood and it's a normal shawl once again. I just used loops within the crochet as buttonholes.

I got these yarns in the Black Sheep online sale. I have ideas for yarn mixing for Christmas presents and for one of them I wanted themes of beige and brown so I am starting collecting bargains in fancy yarns to use up with some other yarn from my stash. The pink balls are just for frivolity as I love the colours.

Why exercise books and coloured pencils? I am going to try to be more organized with my pattern writing. When I am designing and altering patterns I have bits of paper scattered about the house which I invariably lose and then when I want to make something again I can never remember what I did. The books came in a bargain pack of 10 so I will use each one for something different. One will be for designs that are, as yet, still in my head, another for actual written patterns and another for my machine knitting. I am sure that there will be different categories as I go along.

I am still organising. Why does flat pack furniture have to involve so much sweat and tears? I am a woman so I did try to follow the instructions (unlike a man) but as they were just diagrams which didn't really help much there was a bit of unladylike cussing before the pieces finished up looking like this.

Yes I did notice that it said SHOE rack. However living in my little doll's house which has a hall the size of a doormat I needed somewhere to store my collection of scarves, hats and gloves. They were previously on a rack that was too small and finished up as a great tangle of scarves and I could never  find the right one when I was going anywhere. Now they are quite tidy and as the rack is on wheels it give me access to the meter box which is behind it. As it isn't very wide then there is just about enough room for me to pass by to the staircase and to open the front door. Gosh one of these days I will look tidy. I am sorting rooms out bit by bit.

I still have to find a permanent home for my little drawers and flat trays which hold my haberdashery as at the moment they are in my front room by the side of my chair making the room look messy. Perhaps I need to find room in my dining room as that is now a work room with 2 knitting machines and cones of wool stored in there. I could sort out my bookshelf that is filled with baby wool at the moment and make some spare room on there for them.

I still haven't got started on knitting lace on the knitting machine and every day I say to myself - Today is the Day but it never is !

Next week I will be taking part in this event (info taken from Artyarn website - link in my blog title) I am not sure which days I will be riding on the Metro but it sounds like a great deal of fun.

June 6th - 10th - Stitch n' Ride, Manchester City Centre (UK)

Join ArtYarn on a Manchester Tram and be part of a new performance based commission for the Lost & Found festival (via Manchester Contact Theatre).

More information will be released soon, in the meantime if you like the sound of this then e-mail for more info at: info@artyarn.org to get on the list of performers.

Venue: A Manchester Tram, Manchester city centre

 

Rachael's blog is well worth a visit as it is always full of very interesting things happening in our local area. I have been lucky enough to take part in quite a few of her  projects and hope to continue doing so in the future. She is a real inspiration to me.

 

The day is a wasting and so I must occupy myself with something. As my Mother used to say. "The Devil makes work for Idle Hands" Is it any wonder that I fill my days? I think that my Mother (and my Aunts) scared the hell out of me when I was a child. If I sit doing nothing I feel such a sense of guilt .