Rainbow Gnomes

A couple of weeks ago I had the bright idea of designing a little knitted gnome for Christmas. That'll be quick and easy I thought. Obviously, I was wrong. The actual designing took me a whole day which was far too long for me to work at one time and left me with a temperature again and a ridiculously bad night. 

I (well, actually my son and daughter) have now instituted a timer system where I set a timer for half an hour before doing something that I know makes me ill - anything requiring concentration, especially involving the computer.

So ... I had knitted one little green gnome and was quite pleased with him.

I think he has quite a lot of character, considering he's basically a pear shaped piece of knitting with a few added bits and bobs. He's a few inches tall and fits nicely in your hand.

Of course, I couldn't stop there could I? I thought how much nicer it would be to have a whole set of brightly coloured gnomes so, after a lot of production line knitting, meet my parade of Rainbow Gnomes.

I absolutely love these. I have resisted the temptation to decorate my new craft room for Christmas but don't the gnomes look nice lined up on the mantelpiece in there? Here they are, complete with the lights I've put in the grate.

As normal, the pattern for the Rainbow Gnomes can be downloaded free from my ravelry store. The gnomes are worked in the round and stuffed as you go with a combination of bean bags and toy stuffing. The beard, nose and hat brim are knitted separately and sewn on and the whole thing is finished off with a little jingle bell on the top of the hat. There's still time to knit one for Christmas and I look forward to seeing lots of brightly coloured gnomes popping up online.

Apart from the gnomes, I did manage to hang up one of my Christmas embroideries next to my new (as yet, empty) desk.

Those short needles are the ones I use most. The pot they're in was painted by my Mum; there's a poppy on the other side too.

The other decorations up there are these wonderful snowflakes on the door that my daughter's partner sent me when she came to visit at the weekend. He cuts the most incredible original designs each year.

One particularly detailed one was designed with my two cats in mind as it features all the things they would like to catch.

There are birds and fish and the wiggly things round the edge are feathers on a string (of course they are!) Aren't they wonderful?

My timer is ticking down so I need to stop now. I haven't forgotten about the tour of the knitting shelves; I just need to take the photos on a day when it's not as dingy as it's been lately.

In the meantime, have fun with some knitted gnomes.

Pretty Things

Progress on my  new craft room has been rather slow for most of this month - a combination of me not being well enough to do much and waiting for my IKEA order to arrive. Actually, it was mostly waiting for everything to be in stock ... Anyway, I now have a house full of large, heavy boxes. 

Just room to walk down the hall (there are more boxes lining the back hall and another pile in the front room).

To backtrack though ... while waiting for the furniture, I turned my mind to prettying things up a bit. Having evicted my sheet music from a tall set of basket shelves, it was moved upstairs to be home to my Stylecraft Special which, as many of you will know, is my basic go-to yarn when it comes to designing. The idea was to put a different colour in each of the baskets, a plan which turned out to be trickier than you'd think.

There are yellowy greens, bluey greens, bluey purples ... you get the idea. I ended up with nine baskets of bright colours and two half boxes left over. These are going to hold the neutral and pastel shades with space on top for multiples (mostly for works in progress).

Then of course I wanted colourful labels for the baskets and decided that the obvious thing was to knit them using the yarn itself.

I used the six stitch stars from my Stacking Stars pattern and added a button to the middle of each. It took me longer to choose the buttons than the yarn (of course it did). The little red suitcase on the top of the baskets holds my Stylecraft colour pegs.

It's been tricky planning designs with most of my yarn inaccessible so having the Stylecraft sorted has been a great help. At the moment I'm knitting a series of little rainbow coloured gnomes which I'm hoping to get published in time for Christmas.

I made the mistake of designing and knitting this first one all in one day, something I used to do easily but which is definitely not a good idea now I'm ill. I kept thinking "I'll just sort out this bit of shaping and then stop", something I regretted when I was awake half the night with a temperature! I'm rather pleased with my little gnome though.

As well as playing with my Stylecraft, I've also been painting the top of  my old kitchen table which had become rather tatty over the years.

Doesn't it look nice? The plan is for this to be in the middle of the room but, at the moment, it's squeezed up against the fireplace so as to leave plenty of room for furniture building. Which leads me neatly on to the next pretty thing ...

Two sets of LED lights with the white battery packs hidden behind scrunched up black bin bags. It was quite a fiddle to arrange them so that I could still get at the on / off switches but I'm really pleased with the effect. They make the room seem more cosy straight away; I can almost forget I'm wearing three jumpers to keep the cold at bay.

While I think of it, do you remember me telling you about the old lamp that I restored earlier this year? It was one of my parents' wedding presents; you can read about its history in this post. They had it on top of my Mum's old workbox, made for her by her father out of old packing cases.

Now that those basket shelves have been moved, there's room for the workbox and lamp in the front room. It lights up that corner beautifully.

It's standing on a crochet mat I made when I was about 16 - yes, I was a very cool teenager - which is a bit stained; has anyone got any tips on cleaning it? I tried the gel version of Vanish on it but to no effect.

I've got a couple more things to show you in the craft room, one small and the other not so small. The small thing is my new craft trolley from Hobbycraft.

I'm very impressed with this. It's sturdy, easy to put together and has nice deep shelves. It's also very reasonably priced. You can buy all sorts of add-ons for it too but I'm resisting the temptation to do that until I know what will be most useful.

The other thing I've achieved - just over the last week or so - is to fill that great big IKEA Kallax unit that my son and daughter moved upstairs for me. The arrival of piles of Kuggis boxes with my new furniture meant that I could finally start moving the rest of my knitting stuff into its new home.

Excuse the blurry photo; I'd changed the focus setting on my camera inadvertently.

These boxes are brilliant. They come in different sizes, all with set in lids so that you can stack them together; on the top of one of the big ones you can fit two medium sized ones or four small ones. I've also found that the lids can be used as trays - very handy. I think these are going to be really useful for all sorts of craft bits and bobs but, so far, I've been using them for yarn. 

Isn't that an exciting photo? If you like, I could do a shelf by shelf tour of it next time. Basically, the yarn that the moths like is in strong plastic zipped bags in the white boxes. I've also made little lavender sachets using mini organza bags to put in each bag as an added deterrent. The acrylic yarn is in the big baskets and the red fabric bins. The shelves also hold all my crochet books and hooks and quite a few of my knitting books. It was nice to be able to go through them and decide which ones needed to be where.

You can see another new thing in that photo too, my new little white table. This is the smallest of the  IKEA Lack tables and cost all of £7! At the other side of the photo you can just see my yellow bag hanging on the door handle. Now that I regularly plod up and down two flights of steep stairs, this is essential for carrying all sorts of stuff so that I still have a hand free to hold on with. Carrying things makes me breathless, even if they're not heavy but it's better if they're in a bag. 

If I've got on to minutiae like my going upstairs bag, it's probably time to stop but I just want to show you one last thing. As you know, I've been enjoying decorating my bedroom mantelpiece each season with my seasonal cross stitch samplers at the centre. Yesterday, I laced and framed the last one but then realised that I couldn't get at any of the suitably wintry decorations to go with it. So, for the time being, it sits in glorious isolation on the craft room mantelpiece.

Winter Sampler

A Christmas Pattern

Do you remember when I used to publish a series of festive patterns every December as a sort of advent calendar? Since being ill I haven't managed to do this (they're an awful lot of work) but ...

Two years ago, I decided to knit myself a Christmas wreath, based on my Woodland Wreath but with a few different leaves and decorations. I had no intention of publishing it as a pattern but I've had so many people requesting it that, this year, I've puzzled over my very sketchy notes, done a bit of re-knitting and now it's all ready to go.

The first pattern is available now on Ravelry and explains about the wreath I used and how to cover it with knitting. Then, in December, there will be five more patterns, each of which will have instructions for two sets of leaves or decorations. I haven't decided how to space out the publication of those patterns yet - one a day, every other day - what do you think? 

In other news (apologies for those who are getting bored with my endless craft room saga), lots of progress has been made. Having had two fit and able people here this weekend, the room now has actual furniture in it. Remember those 53 baskets full of fabric?

They don't look quite so daunting now they're on shelves, do they? There are a few that didn't fit but I'm pleased with how many we got on to these two sets of shelves. If you look closely, you'll see that the baskets are labelled with tatty yellow post-its. I have plans to replace these with pretty labels at some point. In the meantime, I've added a few of Mum's angel ornaments.

I made her the one with the long red hair and the other one is one of 'Sonia's angels', a friend Mum met at craft shows. She had several angels from her; here's another one ...

While taking this photo, I took another one of the light switch which is just next to the shelves. Does anyone remember these?

Yes, that's a Bakelite switch on a wooden mount. I have these in every room but, don't worry, it's modern wiring behind them. 

While I was faffing around with angels, my son and daughter were doing the heavy work. In case you were wondering, yes, it is possible to take apart a 5 x 5 Kallax unit, carry it up two flights of stairs and then re-assemble it.

To be fair, they did have a willing helper in Tolly the cat. He often has that puzzled look; the world is a mystery to him.

Tolly definitely knows the room exists now. No sooner had they moved in a comfortable chair for me, than he settled himself down.

The other cat, Linnet, still hasn't found the room. She's a very suspicious cat and and is wary of anything new, just in case it turns out to be a portal to the vets.

As well as these shelf units, they moved a table up from my bedroom and a set of basket shelves up from the front room. What with these and the table that's in pieces on the top landing waiting for me to sand and paint it, other rooms ended up with piles of stuff and nowhere to put it. 

So, after more bookcase moving, I now have things temporarily stored in the back room downstairs.

Lots of this stuff is destined for the craft room once I have more storage but, in the meantime, I can still use this room. I've even got space for photography (hence the big lights). 

One of the joys of living in an old house is that there's barely a straight line in the place. Did I say joys? There wasn't a lot of joy when I made floor length curtains for the bay window in the front room - there's a six inch difference between one side and the other, calling for gradually lengthening hems. 

Anyway, look at these two bookcases ...

They have to be propped up at one side so that the books and files don't fall over but, as you can see, the heights don't exactly match. And yes, those shelves are set the same distances  apart.

We're now working on an IKEA order for a desk and lots more shelves. I've been having ideas for prettying up the new room too. How about patchwork curtains? I think I might know where I can lay my hands on some fabric!

53 Baskets

I have finally finished decorating my new craft room - every surface has been painted or polished and even the floor has had a fresh coat of varnish.

One of the messiest jobs was re-blacking and polishing the fireplace but it looks very smart now.

I have tried and tired to work out what furniture to get for the room but just can't get my head found it. This sort of thinking is too complicated for my Covid brain. So ... I have done this ...

Each of these pieces of folded sheets of newspaper, cut and stuck together, represents a different set of shelves or table or whatever. Some of them I already have and some are things that I could buy. My daughter is coming to help me this weekend and we're going to arrange them around the room in different combinations to help me see what will fit where.

One of the things I need to store in this room is my Mum's large collection of quilting fabric. And when I say large ...

This is just some of it, squeezed on to the top landing while I was still painting. It's taken me weeks and weeks to go through it all and decide what to keep and how to fit it into as many of Mum's baskets as possible. There has been an awful lot of folding and ironing. Which is where the title of this post comes in. This is what 53 baskets of fabric looks like.

I keep telling myself that Mum fitted all this into a craft room less than half the size of mine but it does look an awful lot on the floor like that. There are baskets full of scraps on the top landing too; I'm going to cut these into useable shapes and strips gradually before they're allowed into the room.

I have the two sets of shelves that Mum stored the baskets on and we're hoping to re-assemble them and get them in the room this weekend. Anything bigger than a small bookcase has to be taken apart to get it up my narrow staircases and then put back together again upstairs.

The only other things in the room so far are two chairs. 

One is an old kitchen chair that must be over fifty years old; we certainly had it when I was little. As you can see, it's got somewhat paint spattered over the years; every so often I re-cover the seat with new fabric. The other one is my tatty old black office chair - very comfortable but not really me.

So, armed with my trusty staple gun and two pieces of Mum's fabric, I turned them into pretty chairs, worthy of a new room.

The back cushion on the office chair was very simple to do. I just used a metal paint scraper to poke all the excess fabric in between the two layer of the plastic frame. I started off with a big square of fabric and didn't even bother cutting it to shape.

I'll report back once we've started putting furniture in the room. It will be nice to be able to actually use it eventually. The thing about creating a craft room is it doesn't leave you any time to actually do your crafts ...

Making Progress Slowly

I thought it was about time I showed you how I've been getting on with decorating my Room of Requirement or craft room. I've been working on it every day for well over a month now. Because of the extreme fatigue of Long Covid, I can only do a small amount of painting a day and that then wipes me out for the rest of the day, making everything else that much harder. Gradually, bit by bit, it's looking better though.

This is what the room looked like when we'd cleared most of the furniture ... 

It's a big, rectangular room, right across the width of my Victorian terraced house. The fireplace is on one of the shorter walls and this shows the other side of the room.

As you can see, it was painted red with the woodwork in a buttery cream. I wanted to paint it white to bring in the light as there's only one, not very big window. But first I had to deal with the holes in the very old walls. This bit was a particular favourite ...

Before I filled this one, you could see through to the bricks. Once all that was done, I could start painting. As soon as I started on the ceiling, the original cream paint suddenly looked yellow. It's as if a heavy smoker had lived there for years - remember when all ceilings turned that colour?

Painting the ceiling was particularly horrible as I had to do one coat on the whole thing at a time and it was very hard work. I had to keep sitting down to get my breath back and then couldn't really do anything for the rest of the day. I got it done though.

The walls were more manageable as I could do one coat on one wall per day. Mind you, as you can imagine, it took a lot of coats to cover that red. This is what it looked like after the first coat on the long, window wall.

Despite using a good quality paint from Brewers, it took four coats and weeks of painting to get the walls done. The room looked bigger and brighter though.

After all that white, I was glad to move on to a bit of colour. I decided on a bright pastel blue for the skirting boards and door and, again, I split the painting up into small manageable sections. First I tackled the skirting boards, one coat on one side of the room per day. Several weeks later, they were done.

It was at this point that I realised how much my work influences everything. When I was looking at the paint chart for the sort of blue I wanted, I had in mind something like the Stylecraft Special Aster, one of my favourite shades. Remembering this, I went and found a ball of Aster to compare it ...

... who needs paint charts when you have yarn? 

Next was the door frame ...

... and, finally, the door.

This old door is seriously warped and, in all the time we've lived here, has never closed properly. It had long since lost its handle and we just shut it by pushing it until it stuck. It dawned on me that it might be time to do something about this so my builder, Paul, planed down the top and fitted a new handle. It's still warped but at least it shuts now (if you pull it hard) and the old push lock still works. 

These little locks are on lots of the doors and I'm rather fond of them. I need to touch up that black metal paint though.

The window and radiator are going to be painted to match the walls and, at the moment, I'm working on the window. This, like all the windows at the front of the house is on its last legs, being held together with nails and over a century's worth of paint. I'm hoping they'll last a few more years, by which time I might be able to afford new ones. Custom made wooden sash windows don't come cheap. 

I can't say I'm enjoying painting this window. Apart from anything else, I find the noise from the traffic below makes my head hurt. It's not a particularly busy road and I'm at the top of a three storey house but I think my Covid brain finds it hard to block out unnecessary sounds. It'll be better once I'm on to the frame and can mostly keep the window closed.

Meanwhile I've been having a major sort of all my craft stuff which, as you can imagine, is a huge task. Just sorting the yarn is taking ages and then there's all my Mum's quilting fabric ... My daughter came for the weekend recently and she and my son helped me with all the things I couldn't get at or which were too heavy for me. It's a lot easier sorting stuff when you don't have to actually move it around the house. Carrying things makes me breathless and so does walking upstairs.

I'm gradually assembling piles of craft stuff and books - mostly on the middle floor - with post-it labels on top with the name of the craft. The plan is that it will be easier to choose storage furniture once I know exactly what I need to store. The trick with major sorting like this is just to concentrate on 'Keep, Not Keep?' to start with (Rose has threatened to have this tattooed on the back of my hand to remind me) and I've found it surprisingly easy to get rid of things.

I've been keeping a tally and, so far, I have given away 158 craft books and 28 bags of mixed yarn and other craft stuff. Most of the books have gone to my local craft swap shop Orinoco, although Rose is selling some on ebay with all the proceeds going directly to the UK charity Blood Cancer. She started doing this with some of Mum's better quilt books that we didn't want. You can raise more money with harder to find books that way and it also means that they go to people who really want them. So far, we've raised over £100 like this* and books have gone to quilters from Poole to Orkney and lots of places in between. There are no ebay fees to pay if the money goes directly to charity.

It's probably just as well that I'm not well enough to do the walking that I was managing earlier in the year as all this doesn't leave me much time for anything else. I have a queue of patterns waiting to be written up and lots of designs that are stalled. it doesn't help that, every time I want a pair of needles, I have to find them in a sorted pile.

It looks like I'm finally going to be able to publish my Christmas Wreath pattern this year though.

I knitted this just for myself two years ago, not intending to turn it into a pattern but then people kept asking for it ... I've had to do a certain amount of reverse engineering to work out how I knitted some of the things but I've managed to write up draft patterns without re-knitting the whole thing which was more than I could face. There will be six patterns in all: the first one deals with covering the wreath and each of the other five patterns will have instructions for two sets of decorations. It should be ready by the end of next month.

This has also been ready to write up for weeks and weeks too ...

This is my mosaic crochet blanket and I'm very excited about it. It's going to be a long pattern though with lots and lots of photos (and a chart once I've worked out whether it's going to be useful or not). I enjoyed making it so much that I've started on a smaller one, using up the left over colours from this one. I've adapted the original pattern to make smaller stars with a sort of Art Deco feel to them - I think that must be those framing lines.

There's always another exciting project to start isn't there?

* Rose has just added up how much we've raised so far and it's actually £183.28.