Splendidly soporific stripes

I am a tired girl.

We are back into school. It's a delightful term, full of lovely literature and relevant history and fun songs and beautiful art and music. We're learning about James Cook and listening to Chopin and practicing our Latin and French and working on Bennett Blanket and having a perfectly lovely time. Jemimah is playing badminton and hockey, and we're off to see The Australian Ballet dance The Merry Widow.

It is also a difficult term. I'm working three days a week from 9-7pm. It's a hands-on, highly demanding job, that leaves little time to actually teach Jemimah, and requires an incredible amount of self motivation for a nine year old girl. Each morning we rise early to complete Bible and memory verses and recorder practice before we leave. Jemimah narrates at lunch time. After work we finish up MEP maths and do our readings - she to me and me to she. Something like that anyhow. In between she does things alone: maths, French, Latin, reading, apologetics and history. It's hard, and she doesn't like it much at all. We have a few hissy fits, but all in all she's doing great, and I'm really proud of her.

By the time it gets to night time, I'm tired.

And so I've been sitting by the fire and crocheting.

Stripe,

after stripe,

after stripe.

Very soon now my stripes will form a cushion. Something like this.

Soon after that things should get back to normal.

That will be very excellent.

But now I am off to bed. Stripes are soporific I think.

Satisfying but sleep inducing.

Satisfying soporific splendid stripes.

Just thought you might like to know what I'm up to.

What are you doing? I'd love to know that too. I'll read all about you in the morning. Now I'm off to bed.

Nighty-night.

The Ripper Ripple Rug Reveal

Okay, okay, so I like alliteration. Too much probably. It is rather silly, I know.

It is the excitement, you see. The fantastically fluttering feeling that I have when I get to show off my latest completed project, is creeping into my writing. Which is okay, I think. Silly, but okay.

Anyhow, to the task at hand, and without further ado, here she is in all her rippling goodness. Ripple. I started her back in October. You can read about that here. She was finished at the start of March. So Ripple will, of course, always remind me of the floods. Maybe she even kept me sane. We'll, not quite sane, but less crazy that I would otherwise be. She didn't even get wet. Strange that.

She is made out of Grannie scraps, is Ripple, only then I had to purchase a few balls of colour to stop her looking dully boring. Wabi sabi murky is good, but washed out leftover grey is not.

At 130cm wide by 195 cm long (just over 4' x 6') she is the perfect size for our bed, which is where she is living. You can find out details of the Noro wool I used here, and I used Lucy's pattern from here. Apart from that incredibly long foundation chain, she was quite easy, and rather therapeutic with all that ripply deliciousness. The first row almost brought me to tears though. I think I redid it three times before I managed to get it right. But you forget that agony. Eventually.

I'm currently working on a Grannie Stripe Cushion. Nice and small. I've had enough of rug sized projects for a while. Especially since Jemimah and I are halfway through a knitted blanket called Bennett. Bennett Blanket. I really like knitting, but it is so slow compared to crochet, and our project is so big. Fun, but slow. I'll show you these shortly.

But now, back to Ripple. Do tell me how wonderful she is. I am so modest, yes I am. But she is a ripper, isn't she?

Grannie crochet footstool

It is wonderful being on holidays. Already we've had time to visit the Strawberry Fair, go swimming, have friends to dinner, gather great bunches of spring roses, read lots of frivolous books, cook up a storm, and sleep.

I've also spent quite a bit of time chocheting. But not on Ripple. I've had to order more wool for her. I've been working on this:

It's a cover for a footstool.

Like?

I've had the stool forever. It is upholstered in a pretty needlepoint cover, but in orange which is bad, and the piping has frayed and it was time for an update. Only for as long as we've been in our peaceful home - coming up nine years now - I've had no idea what to recover it in.


Until Deb posted this.

It was a great project to work - only a weekend's worth of hooky, really. I used up scraps of Noro Silk Garden from Grannie and Ripple, crocheting two strands of yarn together on a 4.5mm hook, and formed the corners using Deb's directions by omitting the three extra triple crochets in the four corner spaces. (Three triple crochets and one single right round.) Deb also recommended omitting the singles in the last row to bring it in at the bottom edge. This forms a nice snug edge to keep the cover on the stool.

It was great fun to make. It grew incredibly quickly, and would make a fantastic handwork project for kids. As long as you have a spare footstool with a frayed cover hanging around somewhere like I did.

I like it.

The Really-Very-Good-Weekend

All weekends are good, don't you think? Some are really-very-good. This past weekend was a really-very-good-excellently-nice weekend. One of the bestest for a long time.

To begin with, it was long - one of those Thursday night to Monday affairs. That's an essential criterion in the very-good-weekend rankings for me. Secondly, it was in Geelong. With my mum. And my sister. If my brother had been there it would have been pretty near perfect. (My dad would have had to be there for a totally-perfect weekend. Dad and Audrey. But I digress.)

Anyhow, we had four whole days of really-very-good-excellently-nice fun. Mmmmmm.

We started out on Thursday night fraternising with the Beautiful People of Geelong. The Social Set, as it were. The 'In Crowd'. Now before you look at me with horror and delete me from your blogroll, I am not part of this group. At all. I am the hoi polloi. The many. The common folk. I do, however, gain a great deal of pleasure watching the privileged ones at play, and in seeing how 'the other half' spend their time.

I am rarely part of high society. Except once a year, on or around Remembrance Day on the 11th November when my beloved mother hosts her annual Hamlin Fistula Fund Fund Raising Dinner. That's where we were on Thursday night. Here. Eating the most sublime food. And hobnobbing with important folk.



Three years ago my mum and her friend Marie set out to raise $100,000.00 for this deserving charity. We thought they were mad. And they're proving us wrong. More than $7,000 was raised on Thursday night. That's enough for operations to cure another six girls, to allow them to live normal fulfilling lives. To have children. To return to their families with their heads held high. That's what my mum thinks is so worthwhile. So do I. It was a really-very-goodly-excellent night, and my sister and I were incredibly proud of our fabulous mother.

The rest of the weekend we recovered.

I huggled under a Grannie that belonged to my grandmother and read Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader.

This slender book will only take you an hour or two of your next really-very-good-weekend to read, and I thoroughly recommend that you do. It is a delightful little fairy tale of a story about what would happen if one day the Queen was lead by her obstreperous corgis into the mobile library van at Buckingham Palace. The Queen of course doesn't read, but once there she borrows a book because, well, one does need to be polite, doesn't one? One should at least feign an interest. As Queen one has a certain sense of duty, doesn't one?

The Queen doesn't think much of her choice - a novel by Ivy Compton-Burnett, but when she returns the book she is directed to The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford. She is hooked. One book leads to another, and with the aid of Norman, her gay amanuensis, (you'll need to read the book to discover why he is called that), she embarks on a quest to read her way through English literature. And French. And Russian. The Queen had become a Reader. With a capital R.

If you, too, are a Reader, you'll love this book. I did. Get it.

Just so you know, there is one instance of x-rated language. Totally unnecessary, but there. Beware.

My really-very-good-excellently-nice weekend also had plenty of time for hooking. The crafty type of course...

I spent several incredibly enjoyable hours sitting with my precious mother working on her gorgeous knitted blanket. While she mattress stitched blocks together I outlined them in rows of chocolaty brown triple crochet. And we talked and talked. It was nice. Very-goodly-excellently-preciously-nice.

Wonderful, isn't it? See how wabi sabi her colours are...

I did lots of other excellently-very-good-things too, but if I tell you in too much detail you'll still be reading next weekend, and that would not be goodly-nice of me at all.

I started rereading P G Wodehouse's Blandings Castle Saga. Told you earlier that I like seeing how the other half lives, didn't I, and Something Fresh is just perfect for that. Love P G Wodehouse. Do you? Thank You, Jeeves is my favourite.

We ate out at a restaurant on the Geelong waterfront. We went to church. We discovered a new-to-me second hand bookshop in Castlemaine and bought a whole bagful of delicious titles including the highly regarded The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead and Man-Shy by Frank Dalby Davison. You know how excited I get about new second-hand bookshops, don't you. We celebrated the very-goodly-deliciously-exciting discovery that my much loved nephew, Prince Oh, had finally learned to read. Hurrah!! We had coffee with Jeana and her delightful girls. We picnicked on sushi. We shopped for Christmas pressies. We slept.

It really was a really-very-goodly-nice weekend.

Just one other thing before I go - and I am going, I promise you that...

We're on holidays!!!!! Eight blissful weeks of summer. Mmmm. This helped make the weekend pretty nice as well.

The Great Grannie Reveal

So this is it. Finally. The incredibly self-indulgent post that enables me to boast openly and deliberately about how clever I am. Let's face it - that's the the only reason that I have to show you these photos of the gorgeously delicious Grannie in all her grannilicious completeness.

So do ooh and ah over them and tell how wonderful she is, won't you?

Thank you.

Although I have already moved onto another project, this one of sheer ripply pleasure, Grannie will always remain special. To begin with your first love is always special, isn't it, and before Grannie I had only one solitary Grannie Square to my name. One. You can see her here, if you like. So Grannie will always be my first.

My feelings for Grannie will always be special for another reason, because for me those 204 silky mohair squares contain so many memories. I began her in April, and I worked on her in Japan in May. I crocheted her on the trains, on the Underground, and in the buses. I crocheted in ryokans and hotels and in train stations and kissaten and restaurants. These are lovely memories.

She was already pretty big and beautiful by July when my Dad first felt unwell, and I have wonderful photographs of her draped over his hospital bed. She was therapy to me during those next few short weeks as we came to terms with his terminal diagnosis and determined to live fully every minute that we had him with us. I couldn't sit still in those days. I knitted dishcloths, gloves and cushions, and I worked on Grannie. Obsessively. All the time. I had sore thumbs and wrists and shoulders. And still I crocheted. My Dad thought she was pretty special, and that makes her extra nice as well.

Finally, of course, Grannie will always remind me of dear sweet little Audrey. I wish I had taken a photograph of her curled up sound asleep on Grannie pooled on the floor around her. That would have been lovely. Alas, I didn't, but the memory still remains. Forever.

Yes, Grannie is one special blanket of lovely, lovely memories.

These pictures show Grannie in her intended home, draped over the end of the Guest Bed. I love getting this glimpse of her as I walk past the open door of the guest room on my way down the passage from our bedroom to the kitchen. She never fails to give me a thrill, even now. I am clever, aren't I? Imagine me being able to crochet. Finally. See, you can teach an old dog new tricks after all.

To some details.

Grannie is made of the sublimely huggly cuggly Noro Silk Garden Aran weight yarn in five colourways joined randomly but with some attention to colour placement.
45% Silk
45% Mohair
10% Wool
I joined each square using a round of the neutral colourway number 47, using a join-as-you-go method from YouTube to keep a fairly wabi sabi colour palette that matches our interior decoration. The crochet hook was 4.5mm.

As a border I used six rounds of trebles in the same neutral colourway as my joining colour, edged with a bright final round of six trebles followed by a single crochet stitch in oranges and pinks - colour 84. You can see it here:

I mentioned that Grannie's intended home is the Guest Bed, but she is rarely in residence there. Mostly you'll find her folded at the end of the sitting room chair by the fire, or more often than not, pooled in the middle of the sofa. This makes me sublimely trippingly happy. I love, love, love to see Grannie being used for the lovely snuggling that I intended her for. That's what all blankets are for really, isn't it?

(Bow modestly, and await thunderous applause.)

Rippling

Everybody's Rippling.

Well, I am, and Cee is, and so's Pip. And so what about you - are you rippling along with us? Do you want to? You can get the pattern from Lucy if you do.

It's fun, rippling is.

Very fun indeed.


(Don't you like the way my rug matches my cup?)

Oh, I finally finished Grannie over the weekend. The final ends are tied in, and she is looking simply spiffing, she is. I will take some photos to show you very shortly.

If you'd like to have a geek, that is.

Would you?

Jeanne is happy to be home

Soft boiled eggs and soldiers. Eggs from a girlfriend's hens. Sliced white bread from the bakery with lashings of butter. A sprinkling of salt.

My family to share it with.

Oh yes, it is good to be home.

We begin our final term of school today after our unexpected super-long holiday. You'll find us in the sitting room by the open fire snuggling under Grannie. She is almost, almost done. So satisfying that.

A Peaceful Day indeed.

My favourite things

My Auntie Mary tells me it is time for a Grannie Update. So here she is. She's a real grown-up rug now. 110 squares of warm huggly cuggly warmness. Oh I do love you, Grannie!

You can see my cushion there too. Alas no update on the buttons as yet. Soon, I hope. I'm halfway through knitting its twin. Maybe I'll put them on the spare bed when they're done. Good plan?

This is my Japanese haribako. Which just means sewing box, but sounds so much more exotic and impressive somehow. It is just so kawaii, don't you think? Prettiness in practical items really appeals to me. You can see the scissors in the top pic, complete with tinkling bells, along with a pretty little needle holder my sister-in-law gave me for Christmas a few years ago. I like it too.

I notice that in the Grannie pics you can see part of my Asiatic Pheasant china collection. Would you like to see some close-ups? We don't use the pieces much any more, although we used to once, but I just love seeing them there in their cabinets. Like?

So here are a few of my current favourite things. Well, this week anyhow. Actually, my favourite thing right now is my Dad. And my Mum. And my husband. And my daughter. Of course.

But mostly my Dad. This week.

Have a nice weekend, my friends. You're my favourite things too.

Poorly

I'm feeling poorly today. I have a sore head and a sore stomach. I'm not about to die anytime soon, I'm sure, but I am certainly feeling sorry for myself. The trouble is that nobody else is giving me any sympathy at all.

It is indeed fortunate that I was able to collect my wool order on the weekend in the way to Geelong, because I have made myself a nest on the sofa by the fire and I've been working on this. Sigh. It is so satisfying. Cuddly too.

I bought these on the weekend as well. Aren't they just the most beautiful knitting needles you've ever seen?