Lace, lace, lace

M's birthday finally forced me to get on with blocking - seeing that one of the lace shawls I finished, was supposed to be her birthday present! And here it is:
Yarn: Kid Merino (Crystal Palace Yarns)
Colour: Sage
Pattern: Melon Pattern (Victorian Lace Today by Jane Sowerby)
While I was at it, I also blocked my Sea Silk project:
Yarn: HandMaiden Sea Silk
Colour: Ocean
Pattern: Print O' The Wave Stole (Design by Eunny Jang)

This second shawl was much fun to knit, especially with the scrumptious Sea Silk yarn - highly recommended!!
I loved Eunny's design, although it was a pity that there was an error in the border design, and also I preferred not to separate the centre into two panels.

We have a poster

I had such a great time on my birthday weekend! Having CFS or rather CFIDS (Chronic Fatigue Immune Disfuction) my social life is not great. Work always comes first and then I need so much time to recover that I don't like evenings out.
Apart from KH and KL who had to work that evening all my London friends made it to the club. T. even dragged his massage chair across town, I wonder what they told him in the cloak room. We got a table on the side of the stage, basically looking into the big band's music stands! Perfect! The food was fabulous and I really liked the music!
Unfortunately - from a blogger's point of view - one is not allowed to take any pictures into Ronnie Scott's. G. took a couple after the show in a cafe opposite the club, but they are not really flattering for anyone of us... we were in a rather silly mood.
I still need to put on pictures of my shawl. G. has taken some, so she might put them on tomorrow morning. Keep checking!
The great Sunday news is: the poster for our concert on the 10th of October is online! Check it out at here. We have been cooking on this program for a while now. We called it Waiting Room Project. Since KH's heart is beating for contemporary music we have been looking at a possibility to integrate it into a concert program and still get a 'normal' concert goer into the concert. Usually contemporary music is only done (and listened to) by specialists. I think we need to keep music alive. This means not only trying to reach out and get young people into concerts/opera etc, but also encourage new music. I'll tell you more about this another time as it's time for Michael Palin's New Europe show on BBC1. I have to watch it!

Birthday!

Today was my birthday and G. made me a sheep! And she made me a LACE SHAWL!!! I also got a glow in the dark stick, bubble bulves (haven't had that since I was 9) and a cherry lip balm. Since I still don't have a cat here I got lots of cat cards and cat birthday candles on my birthday muffins - there wasn't enough time to make a proper cake. That is a plan for the weekend. The girls are taking me out to Ronnie Scott's tomorrow. Yey!

blanket and pipes

Now I want something like this! The weather is perfectly horrible - drizzle!! This is an euphemism for the fact that you are going to be soaking wet when you leave the house. It's this soft, light rain which crawls under your clothes, and I swear even your skin and bones (if you stay out really long). The blanket on the picture is the one I've made for my sister earlier this year, the log-cabin-mega-project. It took about 45 minutes for ONE row in the final square! The flat giraffe is a book mark I got my sister for her 'light readings'. I think the plan was to snuggle up in the blanket and grab a good book. She is going to graduate from medical school in January and there is a lot of 'non-light' reading to do. But she loves the blanket so it gets used - light reading or not. I have been thinking of knitting one for myself and I found an easier (portable) pattern somewhere on the internet. It must be somewhere in my bookmarks... I finished my green jacket, but it's still missing buttons. Maybe I can buy some tomorrow... My list of what to do gets longer and longer. On a happier note my blue shelves (on the picture below) now are the home of my new box files (LOVE them) with music (in ORDER) and a lot of my scores. Some live in the living room. Still, my room looks like after a small bomb explosion although one can see how it could look like when everything has found it's place.

AND the pipes in the kitchen have been replaced and we can now do the dishes. No more swimming pool in the kitchen sink! According to J who stayed home for the plumber he took 3 hours and he had to lift the floor boards. I'm glad we stayed away from that! :-)

An eventful weekend

M. and I set out to have a laid-back weekend as our photo-shoot event to make promo pictures for the October concert was postponed: some rest, some knitting, maybe a visit to the gym, some good cooking (we took that beef roast out of the freezer to try a new recipe), maybe going for walks in the sunshine....
As you might have guessed, this is not quite what happened. As we both had a day off work on Thursday, we had started our 'mission' to improve the kitchen: new silicone around the sink and water tap, sanding and re-oiling the kitchen work surfaces, and then M. also white-washed a shelf and chest of drawers for her room.
Well, come Saturday, a little trip to Divertimenti brought us home with new storage containers, a muffin tray, butter container, and a few other goodies, but not the colander we had set out to buy. And of course these had to be put in place, and while one is at it, one could clean the cupboards in the kitchen, and......

Sunday started with beautiful weather and a Sunday paper, followed by a lovely lunch with a mutual friend on the Southbank of the Thames - then a bus ride home and .....

A completely blocked drain (not blocked due to the residues of our cleaning, but there since Friday) in the kitchen sink forced us to experiment with our abilities as plumbers after Mr Muscle drain cleaner had done nothing to clear the pipes over night - completely unscrewing and cleaning out the pipes under the sink (which didn't do any good as the blockage seems to be further down in the system, but was quite a funny sight of two women with yellow rubber gloves and fairly disgusted facial expressions), and M. decided that now that she had started, she could also go on to paint the big shelf blue - more sanding and painting followed and we eventually collapsed with a cup of tea at about 9pm on Sunday night..... pictures to follow.... off to work now.... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Wooly Sheep Diary 2 1/2

... where Miss Maple came to life. This is a picture from our Sunday breakfast at the beach at a café. It was somehow magical. Now don't get jealous S's house is actually not on the beach we had to drive there - for a couple of minutes :-)
I really love the city, but there is nothing like a peaceful time at the sea. S. only bought this house recently and we helped to sort our the music library... and I thought I had lots of scores! Well, I do have a lot, but most of them didn't make the trip to England and remain with my parents. Needless to say that we visited the only wool (and framing shop) in the area - run by totally mad people according to S., and G. bought some stuffing material for Miss Maple while I got a nice very small Christmas gift for my Mom. I want to be prepared this year...

G. seems to be on a sheep trip... all I can say is that there is one more on her needles at the moment, probably due to the fact that I Knit London extended their 10% off all wool as their birthday present until Saturday 15th September. Great offer!

Are you addicted to wool? Do you think that wool souvenirs (wool bought during holidays) don't actually come from your 'wool budget' but fall under the category 'holiday gifts' and therefore increase your ability of buying wool? Are you also trying to find knitting shops in all the towns you are visiting and happen to find only the ones that are either closed or with unfriendly staff? There is help - if you happen to live in a German speaking country or go there on holiday, Annkaris's Strickblog started a list of knitting shops. She calls it 'Ein Handarbeitsreiseführer'. What a supercool idea! I will try and link her map to our blog.

Woolly Sheep Diaries 2

And here she is: Miss Maple! (no spelling error - Maple as in Maple Syrup, in honour of the great sheep detective of Glenn Kill). As predicted, she came into being before either lace shawl was blocked, and the felted bag is also still quite a way from being finished... But who could resist? I certainly couldn't.
Right from the start, she enjoyed good company and very nice surroundings, as we were visiting my friend S. who lives near THE SEA!!! So one of my obsessions has already been passed on to Miss Maple: I'm sure she will always be crazy about sea and waves and strolls along beaches. M. (who came along as well) thinks I completely loose my marbles when faced with the seafront. There is an initial joy that just bubbles up, can't be controlled and expresses itself very inappropriately in childish jumping up and down, and running to the water to have at least touched the sea, even though it's probably too cold to go in....
Well, as far as Miss Maple was concerned, this weekend was the best: she came to life near the sea and amongst lots of opera scores and within sight of a baby grand piano. What more could a sheep want!

Oh, I forgot to mention (and was asked on my last 'woolly sheep diaries'): the pattern comes from The Knitter's Bible. To finish this post, one final glamour shot of Miss Maple:

Woolly Sheep Diaries....

The woolly sheep is growing and a step closer to coming to LIFE...! It's really like having a little bear skin ready to go in front of a miniature fire place...

Now it's waiting for an underbelly and some woolly sheep inside... erm... stuffing :-)

Woolly Sheep

Now, I should be finishing what I started.... at least that's what I keep telling myself all the time.
Alas, the truth of the matter is that I enjoy knitting so much more than blocking or sewing together.... or.... well, FINISHING! Although I love the feeling of having a FO in hand, I just don't like the tedium of getting from the last knitted knot to the FO. So my overview at the moment is:
1 blue Seasilk shawl - finished knitting about a month ago, still needs blocking
1 green KidMohair shawl (for M) - finished knitting about 1 week ago, still needs blocking
1 Lana Grossa Gala jacket (for my mother) - finished knitting about a month ago, still needs blocking, sewing together, crochet border, sewing on buttons
1 felted messenger bag - on the needles at the moment (I am using my Knitters' Coffee Swap pal's gifted yarn and just found something to go with it at i knit london....Shetland Marl! So this is still in process and I am actually looking forward to felting my first felted object)
1 Woolly sheep - on the needles since yesterday, as I couldn't resist starting after I just got the black and white wool from i knit london at the same time as the wool for the bag... Knitting loops is so much fun! (and no, not enough fun to be starting on a bath mat).

So lets face it, the woolly sheep is most likely going to be finished before I've finally blocked that lace shawl....