May 2013

The adult form of the varied carpet beetle is about 3mm long. They start turning up in April/May, flying around, eating pollen, looking innocent and LAYING EGGS THAT TURN INTO EVIL YARN EATING MONSTERS.

The larvae eat wool and other natural fibres. There is nothing quite so frustrating as trying to knit with a ball of yarn where the thread has been eaten through every few meters. And let's not even mention the horror of looking through your stash and seeing something wriggling.

I am now officially on beetle watch. So, to any carpet beetles reading this, come near me at your own risk.

31/05/2013

Fun in the Sun (Except I'm Indoors on the Computer)

So it's decided to be summer at last, warm and sunny, with a light sea breeze. Perfect weather to enjoy my day off.

I've been inside all day.

That's mostly by choice. I'm more of a cool-and-grey person than a warm-and-bright one. Also it turns out that a big library of flat shapes doesn't take very long to design, but it takes a hell of a long time to type up. I've done the first three today, so that's something at least.

The blanket continues to grow, slower now as it's become less exciting and new. This is usually the point at which I get distracted by a new project. It's not helping that it's the end of the month and I would usually be moving on to a new project about now.

27/05/2013

Accidental Blanket

I always get carried away when I start knitting something new. I knit one flower, and suddenly I have an urge to knit all the flowers, different types in different colours, I decide to become a professional flower knitter who has hand-made bouquets all over the house... and then I get distracted by fossils or leaves or biscuits and I never get around to it.

For the past few days my thoughts have been centred on making pictures from basic shapes. I started off with a plan to knit a shape and stick it to a card. Then I thought about knitting a background to sew the shape to. Then I couldn't decide on a shape or a background. By this afternoon I had seven postcard size rectangles of knitting sewn together and I can't stop.

(The flower on the bottom rectangle isn't finished and I've still got some finishing touches of embroidery to do generally. The dark blue rectangles are blank because I haven't sewn on the nine planets I make yet. Yes I said nine. Pluto counts.)

At this rate I'll have half a blanket by next week. That's the point at which I usually get distracted and the project goes on my large pile of to be continued... Here's hoping I'll actually get something finished this time.

26/05/2013

Die! Die! Die!

Just sitting here, enjoying some late evening knitting when...

What the hell is that?

It's certainly a beetle.

But is it an evil, natural-fibre-eating beetle?

I don't like the look of it.

Death to all beetles who touch my yarn.

In other news I got a bit carried away with making fuzzy-felt style shapes, and am now accidentally knitting a blanket. More on that tomorrow.

18/05/2013

Sshhh, it's a surprise...

First off, don't worry. I haven't forgotten about the blossom pattern I'm supposed to be writing up. It's just that when I worked it out I wrote it down on a random piece of paper instead of in my special knitting patterns book. I have temporarily misplaced the random bit of paper (that'll teach me) and instead of working the pattern out again, differently, I'm hoping the random piece of paper will show up.

More importantly, what am I going to knit this month? Well, a couple of weeks ago I was given a big box of wool (thank you Gill). It was very exciting but, due to my raging paranoia about bloody carpet beetles, my lovely new wool has been sat in quarantine at the top of the stairs. I think it's finally time to open up the box.

Nice.

It got me thinking that I should really send a card or something to say thank you. Then I thought that I could knit something and stick it on a card, because that's sort of what I do. Then I thought about fuzzy felt.

Fuzzy felt kits consist of a flocked board and lots of differently shaped pieces of felt – some are simple shapes, others are silhouettes of animals and people. The idea is that you make pictures by arranging the same pieces of felt in different ways. The board stops the pieces sliding around.

I had hours of fun with fuzzy felt when I was little. You could make so many different designs using the same shapes. If I work out a library of flat knitted shapes the same thing will happen. I'll be able to arrange them in an infinite number of designs, then stick my designs to cards or sew them on to other knitting projects.

10/05/2013

And Relax

Put down the knitting,
The book and the broom.
Time for a holiday.
Life is a cabaret, old chum,
Come to the cabaret.

Sally Bowles – Cabaret

Since my last update, I've eaten an awful lot of good food, had a trip into the big city, danced, pranced, solved a murder (don't worry, it was a pretend one) and learnt to say pineapple in 26 different languages.

I haven't done much knitting though.

More Results

Back to business then. My shell hardening experiments from the beginning of April are probably as set as they are going to get. I can hold up the shells by the edges without warping the shape, but they aren't entirely rigid. I would describe them as about the same stiffness as a thin layer of paper mache. I can't tell if this is how it is supposed to work, or a result of my using non-natural fibres. I'm going to have to perform more tests to find out.

Happily, the hardening solution did not effect the colour or the look of the knitting.