Jumper!

I found a really fab looking, huge and intricate square to crochet.
The pattern is called Sophie's Universe from LookatwhatImade.
I didn't stick to the colours specified, and used what I had and really enjoyed making it - although I know I made a few mistakes, but I am still chuffed with it.
      The only problem was: what was I going to do with this piece of crochet?
      The obvious use was as a cover for a large cushion. And that solution meant that I could do it again as I would have to have another square for the other side.
      But while I was contemplating it, Graham held it up for me to have a good look at. It is a different thing when you have been looking very closely at the intricate detail of something you are making and then to see the whole thing.
      And when Graham held it up in front of himself, I said jokingly, 'You know, that could be the front of a jumper. I could make another square for the back and one each for the arms!'
     Graham turned round to look at the effect in the mirror over the fireplace and said thoughtfully, 'Oh yes!' then demanded that I make it for him!
      I thought 'Why not!' and decided to have a go.
     Obviously the first thing I needed to do was make another three Sophie's Universe squares, and whereas it didn't matter too much if the front and back colour ways were slightly different, the two arms needed to look the same.
     This was going to take some crocheting, but I was up for it!
     Three squares later, I then had to figure out how to fasten the pieces together into a single garment.
      I started by making four small triangles and two oblong pieces which I used to form a yoke to fasten the front and back together, then I had a look at the sides and as Graham likes a floppy jumper rather than a tight one I need to add a few inches in at the sides.
      This was actually easier than I'd thought as I simply crocheted rows of double crochet and back post double crochets, to make ribbing, straight onto the sides of the front squares. I had crocheted the arm squares into tubes and safety pinned them in place again so that I made the sides the correct length and width to join directly onto the underneath seam of the arm.
     When the side panels were the right size I simply crocheted the front to the back and continued around the arm hole to crochet the several pieces into one.
    I don't know how long it took me to make the finished garment, something like two to four weeks, I think. But I was really chuffed with the results.

Graham says he likes the jumper, it is lovely and warm - but whether he will ever actually dare to wear it out in public, that is a different matter.

      Incidentally I don't think I managed to make any of the panels completely correct to the pattern, but I am still chuffed with the results.

Mind the Gap

Since I started crocheting I have accumulated a bit of wool.
      Well, quite a bit of wool I suppose.
      Although, you can never have enough wool, I believe.
      Anyway most of my wool is now housed in seven large, lidded, plastic storage boxes, and these have to be stored somewhere. They were piled on the end of the sofa, and on the floor in front of the main pile. But when we had to shift everything for the plumbers, the whole lot was put into one tall pile at the opposite side of the room.
     We were both impressed that it went in one pile and was still clear of the ceiling!
     Anyway when we were re-positioning the furniture after the plumbers had gone, Graham and I thought how good it would be if we could put the pile of wool containers at the end of the sofa, where there was a gap which looked to be just about the right size.
     Graham got out his tape measure and went forth and measured. And lo! The devil of it was that the gap was about ONE INCH* too small.
    He tried shoving the sofa as far towards the sideboard as it would go, but no, it really was one inch too small.
     He tried inserting one of the boxes in the gap.
     No, it really, really was ONE INCH (you bastard!) too small.
     I looked at the far end of the sideboard and saw that the sideboard could be moved one inch, and one inch only to the right, and would not interfere with the opening of the door into the living room.
    However the sideboard has been in that position since we first moved into the house and had sunk and anchored itself into the carpet. And it also had a large book case standing on top of it. And it was surrounded by a pile of stuff (a BIG pile of stuff) that we have yet to sort.
    So, the sensible thing to do would be to move everything away from the sideboard, empty the book case and remove it, and empty the sideboard so it could be lifted easily into its new position.
    If you have read any of my blogs up to now, you will know that that is not the way things go around here.
    So Graham shoved at the sideboard and I pulled at it.
     And it stayed put.
     So I said, 'Maybe we ought to try emptying and shifting the book case.'
     And Graham vanished to the shed, shouting over his shoulder, 'I'll get the crowbar!'
    (The Crowbar?!)
    So he fetched the crowbar.
    If you have nice furniture, dear reader, I would not recommend the crowbar method.
    But with a mighty heave from Graham and the crowbar, and a pull from me, suddenly with a jerk, THERE WAS MOVEMENT!
    'It's moving!' I yelled, half in surprise, as the sideboard was unrooted and headed towards me at the speed of continental drift!
    We managed to move it an inch.
     And yay! all my wool boxes are now in a nice heap in the previously too narrow gap.

  Ta da!

     And we can still open the living room door! (bonus!)



*For the youngsters amongst us, one inch is 25mm or 2.5 cm

Tidy? Us?

You know the trouble with shifting stuff in the house? You know, like when you have been having central heating installed?
        Well the trouble is when you shift stuff from the pile in which it has accumulated over several years and put it somewhere else, THAT is when you actually look at it and think to yourself, 'Ye gods, that is a heck of a lot of stuff!'
        And you also think to yourself, that maybe if that pile has been there for several years, maybe we could ...... get rid of it....
      Now, that is a radical thought.
     So we filled the wheelie bin for recycling, and we filled the wheelie bin for 'general household' stuff. And there was still a huge pile of stuff that had to go somewhere.
      And because we now have radiators on many walls in the house (well six) that means there is less wall space to shove stuff up against.
     Actually we did apologise to the plumbers for the amount of stuff they were having to manouver around and they said, 'Oh this is nothing!' and they told us of one place they had recently been to where you could only walk down passageways between piles of stuff just wide enough for one person to get through. This did make me feel a bit better.
     But still, I have got the 'throwing stuff away' bug and now I want to THROW STUFF AWAY!
     So yesterday Graham and I got all of my jigsaw puzzles together.
     Not a big job, you would think.
     But before I got into crochet, I did jigsaw puzzles. LOTS of jigsaw puzzles.
     So we got all of the jigsaw puzzles and went through them all, just picking out the ones I really like and throwing away the ones that were huge, mainly brown, very difficult, or I just was not too keen on. We kept about ten jigsaws - well maybe a few more than ten.
    Then we looked at the pile we had put for getting rid of, and counted them up.
    There were over sixty!
    And now those sixty puzzles which were going out, were creating another huge pile in the living room. So we girded our loins and went off to the dump with a car so packed with jigsaw puzzles that Graham had to have a pile of them on his lap.
    When we got to the dump and Graham headed for the 'cardboard only' skip with the first lot, he met a chap who asked if any of the puzzles had trains on.
    You want puzzles with trains? Sure here have this one, and how about this one. Oh and that one over there.
    The elderly chap went away bemused and taking stuff away from the dump when he had come to get rid of stuff - he was really chuffed and kept thanking us.
    We came home over sixty puzzles lighter, and thought:
     What can we throw away next?

Central Heating

Just before christmas last year we had a phone call from our Landlord's agents telling us that we were going to have to have central heating installed in the house.

     I immediately went into a panic thinking how much stuff would have to be moved and where were we going to put everything?!

     In January we had a phone call from the plumber telling us that he had been tasked with visiting our house to make a plan of where radiators would go, new boiler, pipework etc 

    Thank goodness it was a nice young chap we know from previous visits.

     He duly arrived and toured the house with Graham looking at where radiators might be fixed. As soon as he arrived he said, 'When they told me I had to go and look at Mr Raven's house to install central heating, I thought to myself 'Mr Raven won't be wanting that!' '

    Anyway he turned out to be a chap who wanted to make life as easy as possible for himself as well as us, so managed to point out places where radiators could go causing the least amount of stuff shifting and hassle.

     A week ago, we had a call from the plumber saying his plan had been approved so he needed to make an appointment to come and get it stuck in. So we spent the beginning of last week preparing the house, moving stuff out of the way and leaving clear space for the plumbers to work when they arrived 8 am Thursday morning.

     Luckily there were only two of them, and Paul (the boss) had already told us it would just take two days to fit it. Also luckily both men have dogs and like dogs - which was very good as we knew our two, and especially Tallulah, was going to want to watch everything they did. 

     As soon as they arrived a large lorry also arrived and a great pile of radiators and copper piping was unloaded into our front garden.

     It wasn't until the lorry had gone that Paul checked the invoice and found that they had unloaded a set of radiators for another job of his, a large house in a nearby town. So he was quickly on the phone to get the right ones delivered - which they were within a couple of hours. The plumbers were able to use some of the piping and smaller radiators to get started, so there was no delay that we could see.

     We tried to get on with work as best we could, and keep out of the plumbers way.

     On Friday we had to go shopping and it was actually quite nice for the dogs to have someone in the house while we weren't there. Tallulah attached herself to one of the plumbers and ended up sleeping next to him while he was working.

     During one phone call from a customer that I know well, I said the house was upside-down because we were having central heating installed. There was a stunned silence at the other end of the phone. 'We only had double glazing installed last year.' I went on. More stunned silence, then:

     'Do you have an inside toilet?' she asked

    Aah, there we are children today who don't realise that you can live without double glazing and central heating.

     And yes, we do have an inside toilet!

     By four thirty on Friday afternoon the central heating was installed, including a large radiator in our bedroom, 'I bet that one is never turned on.' said one of the plumbers sagely - and he is right, I hate trying to sleep in a warm room.

Graham with Tallulah pointing at large radiator in our bedroom.

   

Of Flea Doom, Dogs and Cousins

Last week  Graham popped into our local pet supply shop in Hull to get some Flea Doom.
     Now, as anyone who has bought any recently will know, the good stuff is not cheap. £22 for a box with three doses in - which between two dogs means one and a half doses each.
    So last Sunday he got the box to give Tallulah and Bridie their dose and found that the box was empty. Wondering if he had had a 'senior moment' and thrown out the full box and kept the used and now empty one, Graham delved into the wheelie bin and found the box which he had thrown away. Yes it was empty too. I asked him if he had kept the till receipt, no, of course not.
     So this week we had to go again and buy another box, so that we can flea doom the dogs and get rid of any little passengers. When he went to the counter and paid, Graham asked the assistant to open the box just so he could check that there was something inside this one, and explained why.
   'It sounds like you got one of the dummy display boxes,' they said, 'They aren't supposed to be put out for sale.'
    So no help there, not even an apology, or a handful of free chews in compensation.


     When we got home from the shops we found that we had three dogs.
     Charlie was visiting, so we had three dogs trying to poke their noses into the shopping bags and wondering what that yummy smell might be.
     It wasn't long before Charlie and Tallulah got bored and went out to play in the garden again - I say 'garden', more like a mud pit at the moment, having been churned up by three hounds racing round and round.
    Anyway, sometimes the play gets a bit lively and noisy, so Graham popped his head out of the back door to shout at the dogs, to see the frozen tableau of Charlie underneath facing one way, Tallulah on top facing the opposite way, but Tallulah's back leg in Charlie's mouth. The look on their faces clearly saying 'What?' in the tone of teenagers everywhere.
     It reminded me of an incident when we used to have a shop in Barton, the town at the south end of the Humber Bridge. I glanced out of the window one day and across the road I could see a boy holding another boy around the neck, his head under his arm, and casually punching the second boy in the head.
    I opened the shop door and shouted 'Oy!' across the road and the tableau froze. Then the standing lad shouted to me. 'It's ok missus, he's me cousin!' and the lad under his arm nodded vigorously and shouted 'Yeah!'

St Valentine's Love Spells

Love spells can be worked at any time, but St Valentine's Eve and Day (13th and 14th Feb) have been used for this purpose since Roman times - although then it was called Lupercalia.
     Some spells seek to find out the future - who will I marry? Who is the mysterious sender of this Valentine's card? And this is often done by encouraging magical dreams:

Rosemary Love Dream Spell
      Take a sprig of Rosemary and some rose water up to your bedroom when you retire at night. Stand naked in your room and dip the rosemary in the rose water. Use the sprig to sprinkle yourself with a few drops of the rosewater and say:

Rose Water and sweet Rosemary.

Love and sweet remembrance be.

When I dream in bed this eve

Show my true love unto me.

     Now put the rosemary sprig under your pillow and get into bed and go to sleep without speaking any more


To Keep Someone in Love With You
    Now this works best if your lover has given you a rose, preferably a red one. But if this has slipped their mind, go and buy yourself one, but when you do, say in your mind that this is done on behalf of your lover.
     Now set the table for two people, yourself and your lover. Put them opposite you and light a red candle in the centre of the table.
     Now make a sandwich using bread, butter and the petals from the red rose sprinkled with sugar or honey. Cut the sandwich in half and put half on your plate and half on your lovers.
     Then say:

Juno, Queen of Love and Marriage,

Keep [name of lover] in love with me.

As I eat this meal, so shall his/her love stay with me always.

Then eat your rose sandwich.
     If your lover is present and eats the other half of the sandwich, that is ideal, but if they cannot be, then let the candle burn down and then take their sandwich outside and break it up for the birds to eat. For birds are the messengers of Love.

Build Those Brain Cells!

It is February and the nights are growing noticably shorter.
     It is lighter in the mornings and stays lighter longer in the evenings and the birds are certainly recognising this. It is nice to hear the dawn chorus in our garden, with one particular blackbird who seems to start it off. He is loud, proud and full of song and inventiveness and his voice seems to over-top all the others.
     This time last year I went for my first cataract operation and I still remember the wonder and amazement at the difference this made. The sharp crispness of objects, but above all the brightness of the colours of everything!
     I think this was the re-awakening of my love of colour, when I just had not realised how muted and misty my world had become.
     And it was the colours of wool, which somehow really called to me.
     At first I wanted nothing but strong and bright colours. Pale colours, pah! I'd had enough pale and watered-down shades, I wanted vibrant, deep, rich colours, colours that were proud and bold!
     Then, late last year I took a hand knitted blanket apart and it had been knitted using up all pale coloured yarns. These were made even paler because the knitter had used two yarns together usually a pale colour and white, making the overall effect even paler.
     When I had taken it apart I had loads of wool and I wanted to make something with it - and the large blanket of squares I came up with used the juxtaposition of these shades, plus the occasional deeper hue, which turned out to be far more colourful than I had ever expected.
     A week or so ago we were watching a TV programme about healthy living - now I freely admit that while watching these kinds of programmes I feel I ought to be eating a hunk of fatty meat, enhanced with a giant bag of potato crisps and washing it down with beer or a gallon or two of strong red wine. Anyway, the presenter, Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, was advised that as we get older and our brain cells start dieing off, that one of the ways to stimulate the brain and encourage new brain cells to be created (yes, we can make more!) was to take up a hobby such as knitting or crochet.
     Apparently learning a new skill can help the brain create cells and learning both new stitches and how to read knitting and crochet patterns and translate the strange shorthand into something understandable, will increase both brain activity and cell renewal.
     So by learning crochet over the past year, I was actually doing myself good in more ways than one.

     Incidentally taking up any new hobby, or developing an existing one can also do the same thing. Painting or any kind of art or craft, particularly those which need hand eye co-ordination are also good ones.