Linnet

I'm starting off the new year with some sad news. My lovely black and white cat Linnet died at the start of this month. I had her for nine years after she was rescued from terrible conditions and I thought I'd share her story here.

Here she is when I first met her at the cat shelter back in 2016. She was very frightened of people and would 'freeze' if you came within touching distance of her. She was found in a house with 16 cats, all of them related to each other. She had only ever been carried by the scruff of her neck and, having had a litter of kittens, the owner kept her in a rabbit hutch to stop her having more. When rescued, both her nose and paws were torn where she had tried to dig herself out.

It seemed unlikely that anyone would choose to give such a traumatised cat a home but I thought maybe I could help her. Years ago I took in a feral cat who had been hit by a car and had a broken leg and she turned into a very loving pet so that gave me confidence.

Needless to say, Linnet wasn't impressed by coming to live in my house. Here she is on the first day, trying to squeeze herself into a small space to hide from me ...

Once I'd gone to bed though she found a much better hiding place. I have an old fashioned bath on legs and she took up residence under there, only coming out when I was asleep or out of the house. For about three weeks I had to lie on the bathroom floor if I wanted to see her (which was very difficult if she looked the other way so that her white parts were hidden). I took to sitting on the floor up there regularly and talking to her and, one evening, she ventured out for a stroke. That was very exciting but she still wouldn't come with me into the rest of the house.

Then this happened ...

Before meeting Linnet I'd gone to the shelter determined to choose a kitten and, having discussed it with the staff there, decided to also adopt a kitten in the hope that it would help to socialise Linnet. I collected  Tolly when Linnet had already been with me about a month; the delay was partly because he was too young to leave his mother but also to make sure that Linnet would be the top cat in the cat hierarchy here.

Anyway, as soon as she realised another cat had moved in, Linnet decided it was time to come downstairs and see what was going on and, from then on, she moved around the house freely. She was still very wary of me; I was sometimes allowed to stroke her but only if I kept at arms length. The kitten was obviously more of a known quantity to her and they were soon playing together (after a fashion).

It wasn't long before they were sleeping together on the settee, although Tolly has never really mastered the whole 'curling up tidily like a proper car' thing.

He wasn't very good at washing his face either but, luckily, Linnet was on hand to help ...

This is a much  more recent photo and is typical of how Linnet would be sleeping nicely somewhere, only to be joined by Tolly who was twice her size once fully grown, sprawling alongside and sometimes on top of her.

It took Linnet years to learn to sit on peoples' laps. I think Tolly helped here because she could see him doing it. For quite a while though she would only stand on my lap, purring away but not quite being brave enough to sit down. Instead, she would curl up next to me like this ...

I learned to automatically leave her a space to the side of me whenever I sat down. It probably took her more than three years to become a lap cat but she got there in the end. She was always a tiny cat but when they both decided to sit on me, it was a bit of a squash, especially as Tolly never did learn to share space nicely.

You'd think that was just one cat on my lap, wouldn't you? But if you look from the side ..

... there's Linnet, as close to me as she can get. In the last few years she became even more friendly and would come and sit with me wherever I was. She always had a fondness for cramped spaces though - echoes of that rabbit hutch perhaps?

One of the best things was seeing how much Linnet loved being in the garden in the summer. I don't think she'd ever been outside before and she was very wary when I first opened the back door for them.

It wasn't long though before she was spending hours sunning herself in the garden. Here she is in the long grass in 2020 ...

... and in one of her many 'nests' over the years.

This next one is from last summer where she's guarding the pots for me (mostly from Tolly who likes to bite leaves).

She may have been tiny but Linnet was definitely top cat in the neighbourhood and many bigger cats (and several dogs) learnt not to mess with her. Meanwhile, Tolly would copy whatever she did and go where she went (as long as it didn't involve fighting - he's a real coward). 

The downside of her love of the great outdoors was that she was also a natural hunter. She brought in countless mice and birds, the biggest was a blackbird. I don't know how she got that through the cat flap. One evening she even came in with a live bat! Needless to say, Tolly isn't a hunter. He did once catch a mouse but then dropped it and it ran away. 

It's always sad when a pet dies but I'm glad to have given Linnet a good life after such a difficult start. And I still have Tolly. He's rather confused by her absence and is definitely more clingy. He's taken to sleeping up on my bed now that she isn't there to curl up with. When she was feeling ill, Linnet would hide on the floor of the airing cupboard and, since her death, Tolly has taken to curling up there too. Being a bigger and stronger cat though, he can get up to the shelves where there are nice clean towels for him to lie on. It's probably the warmest place in the house in this cold weather.

And here's one last picture of Linnet, helping me make my patchwork curtains.

Just In Time

I seem to have been absent from my blog for rather a long time. Oh dear. It's all the fault of the Long Covid which is living up to its name, getting on for five years now.

Anyway, I am still here and still working on new patterns, albeit rather slowly. Lately I've been concentrating on this one ...

Having designed bunting for Spring and Autumn, I was tempted to do a special one for Christmas too. I haven't forgotten about Summer and Winter; I shall do those at some point. All my bunting designs have a row of letter flags spelling out the season and another row of flags decorated with appropriate knitted motifs.

Can you spot the problem here? All the other seasons have six letters (unless you're American of course) but Christmas is nine letters long. That means an awful lot more knitting and designing. I couldn't bring myself to design Xmas Bunting though; it's really not the same.

Another problem was choosing my colour palette. For the other designs I've used two shades of three different colours. This time I decided I needed three shades of three colours which, of course, all had to go together nicely and preferably look at least a little bit festive. After much worry and confusion I finally came up with three shades of red, green and gold and then this happened ...

Stylecraft only went and brought out twenty new colours of my favourite range of yarn. I use their Stylecraft Special DK a lot, especially for this sort of pattern where you need little bits of lots of good colours. I keep some of every colour in stock and buy new shades as they come out. But twenty? All at once? So I decided to order ten to start with  and then get the rest next time. I went for the brightest colours, partly because I was starting to wonder if there might be a better red and green in there for my bunting (which I was already half way through knitting but never mind).

From left to right and top to bottom, these ones are:

Poppy, Leaf, Nigella, Cinder Rose, Jade.    

Aquamarine, Milky Tea, Pink Rhubarb, Mistletoe and Periwinkle.

There are some great names in there, aren't there? I think I might have to make something with Cinder Rose or Pink Rhubarb, just for the names. 

Back to business though. The two that I had my eye on for my bunting were these two.

Leaf is a soft shade of green which fills in a gap in the range of greens in the range and as for Poppy ... I have been waiting for a paler red for years. After Lipstick, the next reds are really quite violently bright. I've tended to use Pomegranate instead which, although it's a pink, goes well with the Lipstick.

See what I mean?

These were my original colour choices for the Christmas Bunting ...

... and here they are with Poppy replacing Pomegranate and Leaf instead of the bright Grass Green ...

I thought the second one was better so, ignoring the bright green flags I'd already knitted, I knitted some more.

It was plain sailing after that for a bit as knitting the letters is quite straightforward and new ones don't take long to design. 

The decorations for the plain flags weren't quite so easy. I made myself design and make one a day and, believe it or not, every single one took three to four hours to do. Yes, even the little presents which are just folded squares of knitting!

I tried just to use my set of nine original colours for the decorations with a few exceptions, notably black for faces and an orange for the snowman's carrot nose. By the way, it turns out that a carrot nose has to be positioned just so or it doesn't look right. Guess how I know that?

I also made an effort not to use too many extra things that people might not have like beads and buttons which means that there are a lot of french knots used, mostly for the baubles on the Christmas Tree. I like french knots.

As you can see though, I did use a sequin for the star on the top of the tree - one failed attempt at embroidering a tiny star sent me straight to the sequin box.

The decoration I was dreading most was the mini stocking (or three mini stockings as it turned out). I can knit stockings in the round easily enough but making a flat one was a bit daunting. In the end it wasn't too bad. I tend to try lots of complicated methods before finally realising that something simple is what's wanted and that's what happened here. Four short rows for the heel with no wraps and turns and it was sorted.

Once all the knitting was finally done, I just had to find long thin dowels to hang the bunting from. Did I say 'just'? For the seasonal ones, you only need 90 cm lengths of dowel so that's easy enough; for this one I needed lengths of over a metre and the next length I could buy was 2.4 metres! There was no way I was going to be able to carry two 2.4 dowels home without poking someone's eye out or breaking them - not to mention the fact that I can't breathe properly if I carry anything difficult or heavy. Luckily, my brother came to the rescue and went to the shop for me (B & Q, in case you're wondering).

With the writing on the top dowel and the pictures on the bottom, the whole thing is about 140 cm wide which still fits on a chimney breast (or it would if I could be bothered to hang it up). The dowels are tied together on the back of the bunting to keep everything in place. You may or may not be able to see the ties in this picture.

I've spent the last couple of weeks writing, proofreading, proofreading again ... and I've just managed to get the pattern ready to publish before Christmas. As normal, you can download it for free from my ravelry shop. Something to put on your list for next Christmas perhaps?

Now that's done I can turn my attention to some of my long-neglected projects. I'm getting on with a garter stitch lace scarf that I started months ago and the last of my Ten Stitch Rectangle samples is on the blocking board so that pattern will be done next month I hope.

I've also been working on some other Christmas crafts but, for obvious reasons, I can't show you those yet. This year I decided it was time to make my own crackers which it took me ages to work out how to do; it'll be easier next year though. 

I'll tell you what's in them after Christmas. I also made some Christmas hats to go with them (they're too bulky to fit in the crackers). The paper ones you normally get are too small and they tear; these ones should last.

The pattern is a free one from Waves and Wild and it comes in sizes ranging from baby up to large adult. I adapted the method after the first one to make it easier to sew. The two key secrets to success are a good interfacing - I used Vilene H250 - and sewing the zigzag seam twice to strengthen those points when it comes to turning the hats right side out. This was a revelation to me and definitely a trick I shall remember for the future.

I also made my Christmas cards, this year using scraps of fabric and the Crumb quilting method. 

I shall definitely be using this technique again. Such pretty fabric made up of strips pulled out of my scrap basket (okay, baskets - who's counting?). Then there was the afternoon I made a ridiculous number of gift tags from card, felt and stickers.

In case you're wondering just how many people I give Christmas presents to, I often give several small presents, rather than one big one. Since having my craft stuff organised, it's so much easier to find things for little projects like this. 

It is starting to look festive here now, no thanks to me though. My daughter came to my rescue and put up my decorations for me (and has promised to take them down again afterwards too). I really couldn't manage it this year. 

I think I told you about our relatively recent family tradition of making advent jigsaws for each other so that you have a section of it to put together every day. Mine is such a lovely picture this year and it's also got all sorts of unusual shaped pieces which makes it fun to do. It's really coming together now.

I hope I'll be back here again before Christmas but who knows? If not, I wish you all a very happy and peaceful Christmas with lots of knitting / crochet / sewing time.

Christmas Bunting

600 Patterns

According to ravelry, I have published 599 knitting and crochet patterns in the 16 years that I've been doing this malarky. To be fair, they count all the individual patterns of my partwork patterns but still ... it seems an awful lot. Once I realised this, I decided that pattern number 600 had to be something typically Frankie so I pushed aside my pile of finished stuff waiting to be written up and set to thinking.

I decided that it needed to be a bit unusual so that ruled out blankets, scarves and shawls (which are normally the most popular patterns) and, that decided, I thought it would have to use plastic canvas. Over the years, plastic canvas has been my ally when it comes to making knitted versions of three dimensional things - houses, boxes, all sorts of containers - it gives a firm structure to what is basically a floppy fabric.

At this point my eyes rested on these ...

I love little card suitcases and use various ones to store some of my many crafty bits and bobs. How difficult could it be to reproduce these in knitting? Pretty difficult actually. I've spent the last couple of months working on this problem, on and off. Very early in the day I abandoned the idea of a set of different size cases (not impossible but far too much work) but, even then, every single stage of this design had to be worked and re-worked two or three times. I got this far twice before even deciding on the stitch pattern to use.

I started off with stocking stitch, then a combination of moss stitch and stocking stitch (the box on the left) before finally deciding on slip stitch rib for both the inside and outside. As normal, this was a case of me going round the houses before coming back to the simple solution that was staring me in the face. I'd used this stitch pattern for containers before so why didn't I think of it in the first place? This sort of thing happens again and again when I'm designing.

See what I mean? Square Nesting Boxes and Round Nesting Boxes both use this stitch, they're both boxes that need to hold their shape and, as you can see, I knitted ten of them so you think I'd have got to this realisation a bit sooner wouldn't you?

Not that it was all plain sailing once I'd decided on the stitch pattern though. The front of the suitcase had to be curved. This was quite straightforward to design for the bottom of the case. Make a template, use it to shape the plastic canvas and then shape the knitting to match (sort of).

The problem came when I had to work out the curve for the lid. It took me ages (and a lot of trial and error) before I got the size of this curve right. Obviously, the lid had to be bigger than the bottom but the question of how much bigger to allow for the thickness of two lots of knitting (one of which you haven't actually knitted yet) is very difficult. I got there in the end though.

Those sides were another problem. Again, it was a question of working out the length of a curved piece of plastic that had to fit round the edge of another piece of plastic that had been covered with knitting, while also allowing for the sides to be covered too. In case you're wondering why the colour of the suitcase keeps changing, that's because I had to knit one to work out the pattern (the green one) and then knit it all again in pink so that I could take step by step photos. Stopping to do this the first time when I'm making so many mistakes is just too much hassle.

All the time I'd been working on this, I'd been considering how to make the fastening. The little metal toggles that close the card suitcases are lovely but I wasn't sure they'd work on my little knitted version and, anyway, they'd be difficult for people to find. The simplest solution seemed to be a big press stud and I designed a very nifty little black tab with a press stud underneath and a a knitted 'button' on top ... only to find that it didn't actually work because the plastic canvas wasn't firm enough to be able to press it closed. I was not happy.

After ignoring the thing for days, I went back to it, took the fastening apart and added two buttons and an I cord loop, another example of the simple ideas often being the best.

After all that, the handle turned out to be easy. It's just a narrow strip of plastic, covered with knitting and sewn on to the front. Once it was held securely in place, I found that I could bend the plastic to a more natural looking curve.

Having knitted two little suitcases and taken umpteen photos, I turned my mind to what you could put in them. I toyed briefly with the idea of deigning a mini doll to live in one, complete with a wardrobe of clothes before calming down and filing that away for another day. In the end I just found various knitting accessories to go in one of the cases for a photo. Amongst them was a little needle book, one of the many I've knitted over the years from an early pattern of mine. Looking it up, I found that it was actually my second pattern, published in 2008 so it seemed rather nice to refer to that in pattern number 600. 

As you can imagine though, this early pattern left a lot to be desired so I decided it was time to re-write and take some new photos. You can find the new version on ravlery.

Needle Book

This set me looking for other old patterns that I could link to this one and I found a couple more.

That's my Pincushion pattern from 2010 and the little triangular purse is one of my Magic Pockets which I designed six years later. I've updated both of those patterns too, mostly just taking some better photos (although I did experiment with a diagram for the magic pockets which may have made the construction clearer ... or not).

I put some stitch markers in that little yellow pocket. The suitcase also holds a pair of snips and a tape measure and there's still room for more. I can see me using one of those to hold a little sewing project too, maybe some paper piecing or a small cross stitch kit.

Which reminds me, I haven't told you how big these little cases are. They measure roughly 15 cm deep, 10 cm wide and 7 cm tall, here's one next to my pencil pot to give you an idea of scale.

Now that I've got pattern number 600 sorted at last, I can turn my attention to number 601 - but which one in the queue to choose? I shall have to have another think ...

Mini Suitcase