Sock yarn Mash-up

It’s no secret that I love a good self stripe yarn. But while I have been really good at knitting my way through my leftover solid sock yarns (with my massive garter ripple squish blanket for example), I’ve been less successful at dealing with the nearly 500g leftover striped sock yarn - nearly all of it from the West Yorkshire Spinners Birds collection.

Socks for me or my boys take around 60g yarn (although they are now growing rapidly) but that means that I have an awful lot of significant leftovers of around 40g or so. I always felt that the bold stripes needed their own showcase and that they might overwhelm a mitered square blanket or something similarly large, and so I did what I usually do - shove them into a bag and prevaricate.

But this recent lockdown saw me rootling through my stash in search of inspiration and I suddenly had the idea of knitting these yarns as a mash-up. One colour repeat of one ball alternated with a full colour repeat of another.

I gave my boys the task of pairing yarns - and first up was my youngest son who chose the Bullfinch colourway paired with a Christmas yarn from last year. I did my usual toe-up sock with a fish lips kiss heel for speed and they practically flew off the needles. I had almost forgotten how quickly self stripe yarns can zoom along.

I was so pleased at how they knit up - and they were instantly seized by my son - always a sure sign of a winner. I’m now cruising along with a Blue Tit/Goldfinch combination which is going to be nothing if not colourful! Watch this space - possibly with sunglasses for an update.

Things to craft during a lockdown - that aren't knitted hearts

I’m not going to add fuel to the fire here but I think most knitters and crocheters will have seen requests for hearts to donate to Intensive Care Units up and down the country. Apart from the questionable logic of sending items into critical care areas during a pandemic, and the suspiciously similar wording which to me screams ‘scam’ it dawned on me that there are surely some more practical and tangible uses we could put our needles to right now.

Rainbows have become a real symbol of positivity and hope during this crisis and many people are placing them in their windows for children and others to spot on their daily walks. I’ve seen lovely chalked rainbows on pavements, kids drawings on sheets of craft paper and some brilliant knitted and crocheted ones.

Rainbow of Unity by Kerry Jayne Designs

And for the knitters - there is a knit version by the very talented Sincerely Louise - which can be found on her blog

Nurse Mates by Esther Braithwaite

Type ‘bunting’ into Ravelry and you’ll find some great examples

And if you are looking to make things now, to save for future donations how about:

Premature baby hats

Hats for the homeless

Mitts or gloves

NICU baby blankets

At such a difficult time we all want to do things that help our fellow humans and the feeling of helplessness in the face of a constant barrage of awful news is very real. I’m not trying to be trite here but to sincerely suggest some projects that might help with that awful ‘I must do something’ feeling - but yet won’t risk overwhelming services that are already stretched to breaking point.

Please craft responsibly

A Letter from Home

“To send a letter is a good way to go somewhere without moving anything but your heart” Phyllis Theroux

This quote was posted on Instagram by the very talented @giuliawrites recently as part of a project she is running at the moment. As so many of us find ourselves inside with our thoughts and feelings, letter writing is one way that we can express ourselves - in a deeper way than with tweets or phone calls. Giulia is collating a series of letters and inviting others to participate in her project too. So here’s mine.

A Letter from Home

The calendar tells me that today is the 1st April, and the blossom buds outside my window seem to be in full agreement. My brain is struggling to process this though, having effectively lost a month to illness, self isolation and now of course a ‘lockdown’

All of these are such negative terms though and now that I’m feeling better I am trying hard to think of things in a more positive light. I haven’t ‘lost’ a month, but I have spent a month getting over a nasty bug (possibly Coronavirus, possibly not - who knows), helping other family members get over their illness in turn and learning more about patience than I ever thought possible.

I have adapted to a new way of living and working - almost overnight. Making it up as we go and finding solutions that work for our 2 kids and 2 adults working at home. 

Like everyone else, we are all just making it up as we go along. No one has experienced anything like this before. We truly are living in exceptional times and we need to remember that and speak kindly to ourselves - using the same tone that I use to my children when they come to me seeking reassurance.

I’m finding great comfort in focusing on the small everyday things around the house just now. Enjoying those little moments of calm, that cup of coffee sat on the doorstep in a patch of sunlight, listening to the birds who seem to be on nest-building overdrive. There are moments of calm, even joy, in every day. The trick is to spot them when they are happening.

Being confined to the house, being limited in what groceries we can buy and when, being uncertain and fearful of the future - this is a reality for so many people now. But it has been a reality for a long time for those members of society with a chronic illness or who find themselves isolated for whatever reason. The fact that now I find myself facing these issues really highlights my own privilege in a way that is starkly unavoidable.

I have no answers and no magic solutions to this. Just a hope that when this passes, and it will eventually, we emerge with a renewed appreciation for what we have, for our freedoms and hopefully a greater understanding of the struggles of others.

It's OK to not be productive

It's OK not to not feel like knitting
It's OK to not feel productive
It's OK to just sit and look out of the window

I don't know about you but I'm feeling overwhelmed by the smallest things right now. Not least the plethora of adverts and messages on social media telling me now is the perfect time to learn a language or do that course.

Turns out that no, it really isn’t

I'm having a hard enough time keeping it together in front of the kids, doing all the usual mum stuff and getting our house ready for who knows how many weeks of two adults and two kids working from home in a small 3 bed semi.

Mercifully my temperature blanket has become my knitting of choice right now. Absolutely no need to think, plan or wind yarn. Just sit down and knit in the allotted colour for the day.

Who knew at the start of the year that my blanket would be something I actively enjoy working on. I thought I'd have reached the tedium stage by now but it turns out that’s exactly what my brain needs.

I'll be ignoring all marketing emails and unsubscribing from anything that tells me "now is the perfect time to..."

Unless of course it is "now is the perfect time to prune your social media and eliminate all unnecessary crap" 

Permission Slip

For the first time in over a week I've felt like picking up my pen and writing. Most days I knit, but if I'm struggling either mentally or physically then my writing is the first thing to go - which is ironic as writing is the thing I know that helps me the most.

Getting thoughts out of my head and into paper is the best kind of therapy there is - a notebook never judges after all.

And the first thing I'm writing today is a big fat Permission Slip.

Feeling unwell and spending more time in the house I've been online a lot more. Yesterday I realized that I had spent most of the day circling around Twitter reading a mish mash of facts, opinions and rants from people as scared as I was. Put simply it was the worst way to spend my day.

So inspired by JessicaRoseWilliams on Instagram today I've come up with a few simple strategies on my permission slip to myself

1. Turn off Twitter (in fact delete it from my phone this weekend)

2. Check out the WHO and Public Health England website once per day

3. Watch the main news headlines and then turn it off

4. Journal a page a day. No censorship just write how I feel without having to adjust it to consider how what I say affects others (my youngest son is very upset by this too)

5. Go for a daily walk

6. Cook something nice from scratch, even if it's just carrot soup

7. Read a book - fiction - and as far from the 21st century as possible

8. Hug my family

We often joke about retreating into our ""family bubble" at difficult times - at least we have plenty of experience of that

Just writing this helped me, I hope it helps you too 💕

Beginning with the end in mind

Or in my case, I think it should read ‘Beginning with the ends in mind’

Because of course I didn’t. I ploughed headlong into my Temperature Blanket with nothing more than a vague hope/expectation that I would deal with the ends as I went along. Predictably I didn’t - well, I did for a few days but then I got bored.

So now I have 60 days worth of blanket - and very pleased I am with it too. With the endy, tangly mess at one side - not so much.

I had thoughts of maybe just braiding it and having an attractive ‘french plait’ feature down one side but after doing a little reading - and I weirdly dreamt about it last night too - I think I’m going to go for the option of working an i-cord tube and rolling up the ends inside the tube as I go.

I’m planning to have a little practice later on today to see how I go - I’ll report back just as soon as my cold medicine kicks in.