TV is not enough.........

....I always have to have something to occupy my hands while watching/listening also in the summer we had the long journey north and I wanted something to do to pass the time.  I found this pattern on Ravelry, a Drops yarn design, here and it was perfect.

Each element is quick to finish and the whole blanket/throw grew quickly.

A closer look

My other TV companion is a hexagon patchwork,.  I have no idea what it is going to be and having started out as a stash buster I am now happily collecting small pieces of cottons from friends. the hexies are an inch and a half.  I wanted it to be as varied as possible as I am not a fan of the traditional "hexagon flower". This is a scan of part, those aren't clever half hexagons it is just a bit scrumpled on the scanner.

My daughter said the wrong side looked more interesting, I am inclined to agree.

Day out.....

I went up to see the Prism exhibition at the Mall Galleries, always a pleasure and  yesterday didn't disappoint, though I wasn't quite so bowled over as in previous years but then it is all a matter of what speaks to you. I bought a photographic permit but it is for personal use so I can't share them I'm afraid.

It was a glorious day, real flaming June and the Mall was sparkling, decked out with flags for this Saturday's Trooping  the Colour, unfortunately I am elsewhere on Saturday otherwise I would have been tempted to go and watch, I do love a military band.

The stands were ready and I found the Horse Guards Arch had a very modern halo

and St James' Park was so inviting

and in Trafalgar Square I found more elephants and this one was taking a rest in the shade.

I love these little statues which pop up all over, I would love to see them all (258!) one of the main problems is they seem to be a very popular place to eat your sandwiches!

  I popped into John Lewis and found this

No prizes for guessing what I am going to make with it.

It worked.....

Thanks to a cold, dull Bank Holiday and tennis on the TV, I finished the Meobius scarf.

This is just long enought to make a cosy neck warmer, so next time more wool, more stitches.

Going round in circles...........

One of the things I like about our EG meetings is that you never know what is going to happen, or what you are going to learn.  If we brush aside how to restore the fuses, which I didn't really want to know about, there were two other delights yesterday.  One was Susanne's demonstration of how to cast on a Moebius Scarf, this a You Tube demo link and this is a picture of mine at the moment.

I have no idea if it is correct and won't know until I cast off.  I had a terrible time fighting against "casting on " with the wool in the wrong hand.  Great fun, thanks Susanne.

The other was Fay's heads up on a new book by Jan Messent, Celtic, Viking and Anglo-Saxon Embroidery.. Gorgeous. I have ordered a copy. Thanks Fay.

I have been very remiss with my postings on Ideas of Inspiration, the first part of may was glittering gold, hope this will do.

The second part of May was the letter E, I think these will fit, I found them on my last visit to London

Just realised this one qualifies on both counts. Hurrah!

Knitting.....

Gina was right the little hats for the Big Knit...see last post...are really quick to do.  One of the things I have always liked about knitting is that you can read or watch television at the same time.  Nothing like a bit of multi-tasking.  Here's what I made whilst watching Strictly Come Dancing last night.

If you want to see some really inspired hats there is a fun Flickr site.

The Big Knit..

Every year I come to this too late, this year, thanks to Gina I have about a week to join in The Big Knit for Age Concern run by Innocent Smoothies and Sainsbury's.

Normal service......

has been resumed. I hope. After my problems with the Photos on Yahoo Groups last Saturday my PC refused to boot up at all, to cut a long story short according to the expert(wonderful man) it was probably one of those automatic updates that didn't work properly. Heigho! Anyway it is fixed and now I can finally go an see what everyone has been up to.
But first, I was dying to show you this.

It is a Venusian Rainbow Backed Daisy Eater (he is a bit confused as he has never seen snowdrops before)and he is a distant relation of the rainbow backed fuzzy nutted moon snatcher made by Jude. I fell in love with him on Spirit Cloth last year and having been longing to make one since. As you can see mine is knitted and he literally "just grew" with constant reference to to the fuzzy nutted moon shatcher. Because he was so closely inspired by Jude I asked if she would mind me showing you. Her generous reply was that there weren't enough of these "fuzzy guys" in the world. So there you go,thank you Jude oops be quick, he's off...

The ultimate deterrent......

During the latter part of the "summer" I watched a lot of tennis and golf on TV. To give my hands something to do I knitted a square blanket from old balls of wool I had lying around. I know it wasn't beautiful ("Mother what you doing? asked my daughter)but I thought with the winter coming on (not much weather change there then) my ancient Mrs Fussy would like something to snuggle. She Hates It. I put it in her usual sleeping place, on the bed in the spare room, she immediately moved onto a shopping bag that was also lying there. I moved the blanket, she moved, and so on.....so if anyone has trouble with cats going where you don't want them to go, knit one of these!!

Unbelievable.....Having written the above,I just went upstairs to photograph the offending article and .......

Who said cats were contrary animals!

Meet my girls........

In the south east of England we are not having a good finish to Spring, the longest day is about two weeks away and we are having to put the lights on at 8pm. YUK. I hate grey, I would rather have storms than this dull, heavy, sit on your shoulders type of weather which seems to have been going on for weeks.

But today a couple of nice things happened. First a phone call to say that a friend of my husband's who had a stroke is now at home and doing fine and then there was my May Calendar Girls Card from Carol

The texture is wonderful and the flowers are like sunshine coming from behind a cloud(I wish). It is a geat addition to my collection.

So in the cause of cheering up.... Meet my girls! Inspired byJulie Arkaell I am in the process of producing these for my golf clubs.

When I showed them to my son he gave me an old fashioned look, "Well, they'll make people laugh" I said defensively....."Or step away" was his reply.
Fortunately they make people laugh, I think they have improved my golf and if not when I make a bad shot who gets the blame....?

Knitting back in fashion....

It would appear that there is a renewed interest in knitting over the last couple of years. When I was young I was a great knitter. One time I went to visit my brother we had been there a little while when he leaned over and said "Are you alright?" "Yes, I'm fine " I replied "Why". "Well you've been here ten minutes and you haven't got your knitting out yet, so I thought perhaps you weren't well" !!!
But it was true, I was never without a piece of knitting and Saturday evenings weren't the same if I didn't have a new project.Shawls, baby clothes, a flower power jacket in the 60w, always something on the go. Some years later I knitted an aran sweater for my daughter in a weekend and had tennis(knitters)elbow as a result and since then have done vey little.

I was just browsing the V&A site, (the Victoria and Albert Museum in London is a wonderful treasure house of fine arts and fashion.)and I came across this section in which they have published free patterns from the 1940's. Who remembers socks knitted on 4 (often slightly rusty)steel needles?

My picture is from "THe Needlewoman" at a slightly later date that the patterns at the V&A.