Steel Kitten

I think I'm hooked

Yesterday I pulled out the old knitting machine I had stashed under the desk in my hobby room - a Brother KH 881 with ribber. Just to take a look you understand. I'd not looked in the case since I'd picked it up from the former owner two years ago. 

Now that was a 5:30pm. Then I thought I'd put it together to see how hard it was to put together. As you do. I read through the instruction manual. Then screamed and read through it again more slowly with my brain in gear. 

By the time I'd read that and put it together it was 7:45pm, early enough to have little go. I wasn't hopeful. It hadn't been used since the 1980s so would probably be badly gunked up with stale machine oil. 

It wasn't.

By 9:30pm I had the basics down. By about 11:00pm I'd stopped swearing at the machine when I realised I hadn't got the required weighting evenly distributed so that's why I couldn't cast on properly.  By 1:30 am I closed the door on the hobby room after knitting my first cushion!

How cool is that? 

Doing it by hand would have taken me a good month, if not longer. I did this by machine in about 2.5hr (a little extra time required to unpick a small problem!). Plus 30 minutes for crocheting the cherries today. 

Question: do you think the cherries look a bit measly? Should they be much bigger, or should I do a few more along the top. What do you think?

I've never been a good knitter.

I start loads of knitting projects, but usually never finish them. I usually nause up on one of the three crucial elements of good knitting: correct needles, wool or pattern. 

I have a screwy tension so I'm forever playing with the needle size. Sometimes I'm too big, sometimes too small - most of the time I'm both at the same time. By the time I've worked out the needle size on the tension swatches, I get a bit bored. So often I just get started on the project instead and that's the beginning of the end. 

Second, I have so much wool hanging around. I never specifically buy new wool for a project so I have to make a choice of what to use from my stash. More often than not I'm wrong on that choice. I pick 4ply instead of DK because I like the colour, or try and get away with an Aran or chunky where DK is needed. 

Finally, the pattern. I'm always too ambitious on this score. I have the attention span of a gnat so why do I pick the ones where every stitch is different and I need to be fully focused constantly?

Nope, me and knitting don't mix. But I keep trying. And unpicking.

Which is why it's such a surprise that this new project is working. I found this book...

...at a boot sale for £1 and it has amazing simple homemaking projects, one of which is knitted cushion covers in simple stitches. I'm doing the third one down; just k2, p2 for two rows then p2, k2 for the next and so on. 

 

You know what? I think I've cracked it. Home furnishings in simple stitches.  The book has even inspired me to root out my knitting machine and find someone to service it so I can do bigger projects because, let's face it, trying to knit a blanket or throw by hand will take me...oh...probably the rest of my life. Not to mention give me carpel tunnel.

We've had a little visitor....

 

While out at the end of the garden trying to clear a path through the wilderness yesterday I was suddenly aware of a large prickly pog watching me a few feet away near the compost bin. As pogs are never supposed be out during the day my first instinct was to grab it and get it in the house in case it was ill. 

It was so tame - it let me pick it up and didn't struggle at all or roll into a ball. It kept trying to disappear up my sleeve and into the crook of my arm like Gonzo used to. Once in the house and firmly ensconced behind the bathroom sink pedestal, it proceeded to scoff a bowl of cat food before crawling into a box with fleeces for a short nap. We could then see the spot of nail polish on its back - it was Gonzo!

While she was asleep, we hunted around the end of the garden for a nest and found a tunnel into the bottom of the compost heap.

 

 

By lying face down in the dirt among the rotting plums and crazy wasps, I managed to peak in and saw a tiny little prickly heap with its bum hanging out of the main nest area. We were so excited! We released Gonzo after about an hour and she shuffled off round the back of the nest and disappeared inside the heap. 

 

Then again today at around the same time, she came out and two little balls of spikes followed! Baby pogs. 

 

Then another two came out of the entrance, sniffed the wind, turned tail and shot back in again and stayed there.  The two brave ones were so cute! They're about 3 weeks old and had a great time sunbathing, sleeping, scratching, munching plums and rolling around in the grass until Gonzo came back after an hour and hurried them back in the nest. 

 

Then at 8:45pm Martin and I sat up camp at the end of the garden with coffee to wait for them all to come out. We didn't have to wait long. In the dusk light, four little dark bundles emerged, scoffed the cat food we left for them and then wandered around our feet and the bottom of the greengage tree. After 40 minutes of listening to them plum munching and playing, we left them to it and walked very slowly back to house shining the torch in front of us all the way. 

You know what this means don't you? Underweight babies come Bonfire night.....

Lovely, but barmy

Work has been barmy lately. Lovely, but barmy. The 60-page website morphed into an 80-page and I managed to get it to 3rd draft stage in just over three weeks. The client is over the moon so I'm a happy bunny too, but it did mean that all I've done for weeks is work. I've seen far too may 5am starts and 12am finishes. 

Still...a few things have happened that I want to share.

1) I had a house guest. My niece - fashionista and fan of all things vampire - came to stay for a week (hee hee, she's going to kill me when she sees this picture!).

She very graciously accepted an uncomfortable blow up bed on the floor of my hobby room, the latter of which disappeared under a storm of clothing and shoes as all girls' bedrooms do at that age. In fact mine still does and I'm more than twice her age. She had a go at sewing. She sniffed through my bookshelves. She got to squeeze the chickens and feed them naughty things. She cooked her own food.

She left behind this hideously squeezed tube of tomato paste that I felt obliged to try and straighten out and squeeze neatly from the bottom. I failed. The tube was too far gone. These damn fist grippers - they drive us neat bottom squeezers mad ;-))

2) My leeks got planted...finally. I heard them whisper their thanks as they eased their cramped and starved roots into the moist fertile soil.

3) The lavender and buddleia in Zone 1 got a stay of execution. They were due to be ripped out and replaced with a design I had planned about 18 months ago based on dwarf Thumbelina lavender and standard roses, but the bees and the butterflies were going mad for them. I've never seen so many feeding at once -I counted around 30 butterflies one morning. To hell with the Zone work that week. In the end I left everything alone for nature to enjoy.

4) Martin and I were forced to clear the back of the kitchen garden in a hurry yesterday when this cute little girl was found out in daylight choking to death with bindweed wrapped around her throat.

She weighed 450g, so she's not Fozzie or Gonzo. She's definitely a spring baby, but whether she came from our girls or the existing mother we don't know. After a bowl of beef cat food and a good day's sleep under fleeces in a box in our bathroom, she was released into the garden at dusk the same day.The last thing we saw was her little spiky bum wriggling at high speed into long grass by the compost heap.

5) Finally, Martin and I attacked the fireplace today to replace a broken throat lintel, which guides the smoke up the chimney and provides support for the bricks above the gap. It suddenly fell into the grate last winter and you can see how badly the smoke has damaged the wallpaper as it escaped up behind the mantlepiece without the lintel to guide it.

Just as an afterthought, I cleaned up the soot with sugar soap. That led to giving the chimney breast a lick of white paint...

...which unexpectedly morphed into a paint job on the alcoves on either side of the fireplace because suddenly I passionately hated the previous owner's choice of colour (orange) and happened to have a tin of Ecos organic paint in Zucchini under the stairs and a paintbrush to hand...

...and then I brought in my favourite painting by New York artist Albert Camurati. This is an original oil and was commissioned by someone at great expense for their kitchen.

Quite why the former owner chose to put it into an auction, where I paid the staggering sum of £3 (and got an ink sketch by the same artist thrown in), is still unknown. I know the former owner was gutted because he stopped me afterwards on the way out of the auction hall to tell me about the painting and sketch, and he looked gutted. I'm sure he thought they would go for more money. But not many people are interested in veggie pictures.

It's not painted yet behind the TV - that happens tomorrow when we'll be pulling the TV out to sort out some of the cables...and of course we have a huge amount of tidying away still to do as evidenced by the amazing amount of belongings crammed into that side of the room!

Now of course the rest of the room looks shabby, so this week I'll make my way slowly round it replacing the magnolia walls with fresh white paint. This room is due a major overhaul next year, but until then this will do.

I love spontaneous painting. Great fun.

Paxo's last flight

We knew it would happen sooner or later, but didn't think it would happen so suddenly without warning. We found Paxo dead in the coop this afternoon, possibly from a heart attack or stroke. She wasn't ill, she seemed fine last night and very active and running around yesterday. 

Well I say she was fine, but she's never been back to 100% since her illness a few months ago. She had her appetite again and was putting on weight, but she wasn't the gun-ho, beak-in-there girl we used to know. She was quieter and more reserved, sometimes she needed feeding separately from the rest if they pushed her out of the way, but she was on the mend definitely. 

We buried her under the Photonia bush because that was her favourite spot. Come rain or shine, she had her little area under there she'd scratched out of the ground to nestle. Bisto has been inconsolable for most of the day, calling and hunting for Paxo round the garden. We found her several times in the conservatory hidden in a corner making comforting noises to herself and rocking backwards and forwards. Several times Oxo squashed in there and sat with her to keep her company, talking to her and trying to get her come out. When you see them like that, it hits home very quickly how they must suffer terribly in battery cages. 

Poor Paxo. She sure was a good chicken. 

Kitchen inspirations

 

Credit: Fired Earth

I've spent the last few days searching the net for inspiring pictures of my ideal kitchen to give you some idea of what style it would vaguely resemble. This kitchen from Fired earth was the one that started me off when we first moved in.

It's not necessarily the style of the cupboards or the work surfaces in particular, but the amount of space the kitchen has without cupboards on the wall and the feeling of simplicity and cleanliness. The idea of getting everything off the work surfaces and using the walls in more interesting ways to store things is also a big pull for me.

The painted cupboards are one feature we will be having - the kitchen is so dark though it will need light walls and a light ceiling to compensate.

 

Credit: Housetohome's photostream on Flickr

These tiles I love - the shape of them is wonderful. Martin of course thinks they look like the tiles you find in a old Victorian public convenience [sigh]. Men. How do you train them to have taste?

The floor will be dark slate effect too - we already have the tiles for that. Although Martin and I can't agree on the way they should be laid. He wants them all lined up straight, I want them staggered like the picture above. He thinks I have no taste. I think he's an anally retentive perfectionist (and that's from me! The anally retentive perfectionist). But galley kitchens are long enough without adding to the overall perspective of that.

Credit: Height's photostream on Flickr

I love the cup handles. So does Martin. but I like them on the drawer fronts only. Martin wants them on every cupboard, which I think is weird. I also love the style of sink taps. Martin hates them [sigh].

I have given up on the idea of a Belfast or Butler sink. My mother had one for some time and she said it took a long time to fill and she kept smashing things on the bottom, so the linen finish stainless steel one stays (complete with Georgie!).

Credit: Homebug's photostream

Then there's open shelving. I like the idea of them having visible brackets and not floating shelves. But I'd prefer solid unpainted wood preferably recycled. Martin hates that idea. He wants new wood. Bleurch. No character. This house suffers from a lack of character as it is. 

[sigh] I'm not really looking forward to this refit. I think it's going to turn into a battleground.