Plodding On

Plodding on seems an apt title for my life at the moment. I'm trying to walk a little each day which adds to my general fatigue and the struggle to balance the little I am able to do without being ill and the things I would like to do. My current fun symptom is feeling sick. I have to do everything in half hour chunks or I start feeling sick and, if I ignore it, it just gets worse. Ah well ...

I find that the knitting I want to do at the moment involves lots of mindless repetition which means that I'm doing a lot of playing around with my basic Ten Stitch technique. 

This round cushion started life as a hat but was too big so it morphed into a cushion. I found a 30 cm diameter cushion pad in a charity shop that turned out to be just the right size. It's nearly but not quite knitted in one piece. The final circle is knitted separately and then sewn in place but the last round or so before that is worked with the pad in place which was rather strange. I ended up turning the cushion rather than the needles at the end of rows.

I thought how much easier it would be to knit a square ten stitch cushion cover so I've started one of those too.

The, of course, I had to have another go at the hat ...

Only time - and a lot of knitting and re-knitting - will tell if this one is going to work. I'm also plodding away at a ten stitch rug which is going to be one of the samples for my upcoming Ten Stitch Rectangle pattern.

I think I'm on the last round now. The idea is to show three different projects, each with different proportions to illustrate the formula for working any size rectangle. I've already knitted a long thin table runner.

Once the rug is finished I'll knit a table mat which will be much nearer a square and I think that'll be enough. Then I've just got to work out how to explain it all.

Once I've got the rectangle pattern done I want to get on with my Ten Stitch Oval. So far, I've only worked out the basic technique (which is fairly complicated) and knitted a sample.

I want to approach this in the same way as the rectangle, working a couple of different projects to illustrate the basic principle.

I've also been writing up a crochet shawl that I made last summer which, again, is a variation on a technique I've used before.

My Lazy Vee Shawl is worked  in a v stitch pattern from the top down using two colours, one plain and one variegated. The colours change every row but you don't need to cut the yarns which is why it's a 'lazy' technique. This is another good use for using King Cole Bramble which is my favourite variegated DK yarn.

My first project with this technique was my Lazy Vee Blanket which I crocheted again last year for a new baby, using Bramble as my coloured yarn.

I've also designed a Lazy Vee Scarf which turned out to be a very good way of toning down a somewhat bright variegated yarn.

I may have exhausted the possibilities of this particular technique now but who knows? The only other thing I've knitted lately is a pair of  Baby Boots for my new Great-Niece, Elsie Louise who was born at the end of January.

Another old pattern that I need to re-write and update.

I have been enjoying working slowly on some small cross stitch projects too. The first finish of the year was this lovely snowstorm beaded decoration kit which was in  my Christmas stocking.

It's one of a series of snowstorm kits by Mill Hill. It's worked on perforated paper; you do the cross stitch first and then add the beads with either half or full cross stitch depending on the size of the beads. I added a beaded chain to hang it by and then backed it with felt to hide all the messy ends.

Then, this week, I finished the first of the ornaments I'm making from this magazine which was also in my stocking at Christmas. Father Christmas did particularly well on the cross stitch front I think.

It took me ages to finish this one. The cross stitch was straightforward but putting it together was a pain. The only other stitching I've done is a little bit of Hardanger for a birthday card; I love Hardanger and plan to do more this year.

Oh yes, and I've started another one of my 3D beaded projects. Can you guess what it's going to be?

Obviously, it's going to be a little toadstool house, another pattern from ThreadABead. For anyone in Wales, ThreadABead are opening an actual, physical shop in Conwy this year. Can you imagine seeing those wonderful designs in real life? Which reminds me, Petite Properties, the designers of beautiful miniature dolls houses, are starting their own digital magazine this year, something I am eagerly awaiting. I wrote about my tiny house project here a few years ago. This year I'm determined to finish furnishing my little house and perhaps start another one.

One of the many things that I miss being able to do now is going to the theatre at Stratford with my son. We were gradually seeing all of Shakepeare's plays at the RSC but then Covid hit and I can no longer drive or cope with watching a long play in person. I can watch the plays on DVD because I can always stop them if I feel sick.

Anyway, I worked out the other week how many of the plays I didn't see and was surprised that, out of nearly 40 plays, I only missed eleven. My plan is to watch those on DVD when the RSC film those productions. I may have to wait a while for Henry VIII though which is rarely performed. My son has started going again on his own and, last week, I gave him a list of old programmes and books that I would like. He came back with four of the programmes I wanted and also got us each a copy of this book.

It's a very heavy book that the RSC published about ten years ago and which I thought was out of print. The RSC shop had a few copies reduced to £25 so we got a bargain. It has ten Elizabethan plays, most of which Shakespeare didn't have a hand in but it gives a good idea of what else was on the stage at the time. There are very good introductions to each play, extra essays and a really interesting section where actors or directors who have been involved in past productions talk about the plays.

Anyway, Jack and I were looking through our books together when we had the idea of reading them together. We're going to take one play a month, starting in March and read the play and all the essays about them and then talk about them together. The first one is Arden of Faversham which was inspired by a real life murder in Kent in 1551. If we stick to this, we should be ready to start reading through all the Shakespeare plays in 2025.

One more thing I've finished which may not look much but is a huge achievement for me is this 1,000 piece puzzle which I started over Christmas. For the past two months I've struggled with this. I've lost pieces (several times) and re-done the edge of the sky more times than I care to count but yesterday I put in the last piece.

It's an Otter House jigsaw; they have some lovely ones and they also come in smaller boxes than most puzzles, making them easier to store. Next I'm going to start on what will become my daughter's advent puzzle next Christmas. Let's hope it doesn't take me the rest of the year to finish it!

New Year, New Room

As regular readers will know, I am slowly (very slowly) sorting out my messy house and making it my own. This involves a lot of decorating, shifting of furniture and huge amounts of stuff going to charity shops. At some point it's going to look emptier surely? 

I say that I'm doing it but I couldn't manage without my two adult children who do all the heavy stuff as well as any thinking or planning that's too much for my covid affected brain. We started at the top of the house - there are three storeys - and plan to work our way down. In 2022 we turned my son's old bedroom into my craft room and last year we started work on my daughter's old room which was to become my new bedroom. There was quite a lot of sorting to do before I could even start on the painting.

Although I can manage painting I can only do one coat on one wall per day so it takes a very long time to re-decorate a room. My daughter painted the ceiling for me as even one coat of that was too much for me to do. Then I had to have help with cutting the fabric to make my new curtains - complicated thinking - and again when it came to hanging them and measuring the hems but, by the end of the year, the room was ready for its furniture.

As it's the smallest of the bedrooms I decided to get a new, slightly smaller bed to give me a bit more floor space. After an awful lot of measuring and debating the pros and cons of this, I ended up with this.

It's a small double bed which means that it's six inches narrower than a standard double (4', rather than 4'6") and I also decided to have it six inches shorter. You'd be surprised what a difference that makes to the room while still giving me (and the cats) plenty of room to sleep. I bought the bed and mattress from Bed Guru who make beds and mattresses in custom sizes.

Once the bed was sorted we just had to move in my chest of drawers and clothes rail which were the two other essential pieces of furniture. This wasn't as simple as it sounds. Moving furniture between floors in this narrow, steep house nearly always involves taking it apart and putting it back together again. Luckily, we had Tolly cat to help us at every stage.

Tolly exploring the frame of the chest of drawers.

Choosing a new rug and working out where to put things took weeks but finally, about a week ago, the room was ready for me to move in.

I chose a shaggy cream rug from Dunelm which arrived a few days ago and makes the room much cosier. Tolly isn't sure about it as his paws sink into it which he hasn't encountered indoors before; I suspect he thinks it's grass. Linnet meanwhile (who is a very suspicious cat) contents herself with collecting me from the bedroom door in the mornings. It's taken her a year to start venturing into my craft room and even then I have to stay in one place if she comes in or she immediately leaves the room. 

My new bedroom is much quieter as it's at the back of the house, away from the road and I'm enjoying finding things to go in it. I'm making it a much more old-fashioned room than my super modern, white craft room - in fact, it's really my childhood bedroom. Or the bedroom I would have liked if we'd had more room. 

That's my old dolls house on the chest of drawers which became my daughter's when she was little but has now come back to me. I still have some of my original furniture and am planning to find other pieces from about the same era to bring it back to life. Neville, the dog on wheels was a birthday present about ten years ago; I never had one as a child but we did have a wonderful wooden horse on wheels.

This is my brother Stephen with it in the late 1950s and here's a close up of it in colour ...

I would love to find one like this to replace our old one but I haven't even been able to discover the make. If anyone recognises this old horse I'd love to hear from you.

Anyway, back to  my new room. There are some other old friends in this corner.

The built in shelves hold my children's picture book collection (bought as an adult) and the biggest of the three bears is my old teddy bear. His name is Monkey (don't ask) and he's very threadbare and worn. Always a good sign with an old bear as it shows that it's been loved. The other two old bears came from antique shops.

The most exciting part of the room so far though is the bookcase on the other side of the bed.

This is one of the shallow bookcases I made for my children when they were little; it's less than six inches deep. Have you ever noticed how so-called 'bookcases' are mostly too deep for actual books? Anyway, this one fitted perfectly into this space and I've filled it (mostly) with childhood books and treasures. Let's look a bit closer ...

The wooden mushroom on top of the bookcase is my new bedside light. There's only one plug socket in this room and it's nowhere near the bed (another of the joys of old houses) so this is a rechargeable lamp.

Nearly all the books on this bookcase are my original childhood ones, with one small and one big exception. The small exception is the second volume of 'Tales From Shakespeare' (the green one) which I bought to match volume one which was a prize from primary school in 1971. Next to those books are my old poetry books and my A A Milne's. I've had the tin kaleidoscope as long as I can remember and played with it a lot. Colours and patterns - very much my sort of thing.

My daughter made me the felt toadstool from a kit and it's sitting on my Mum's Milly Molly Mandy books from the 1940s. I absolutely loved the book of verses by Mabel Lucie Attwell which I was given by my godparents for Christmas in 1962. Attwell had an interesting life as I found when reading the biography of her written by Chris Beetles.

The little kewpie doll was actually my daughter's but she gave her to me to replace one that I had when I was little and I think she goes well with the Attwell style. At the end of this top shelf are the Ladybird Books I had as a child. I've written before about how important these books were to me in a time before colourful picture books. You can read more about them here. 

The second shelf is mostly full with my old story books, including the 'What Katy Did' series which I've recently been reading. Thanks to someone on my ravelry group, I've recently discovered that there were five books all together so I've now go the other two as ebooks. Other favourites on this shelf were Little Women, The Little White Horse, The Borrowers series and the Mary Plain books. Again, I discovered Mary Plain through reading my Mum's old childhood copies.

The blue hardback near the end of the shelf is a copy of The Singing Tree by Kate Seredy which I may have stolen from the library. I loved it so much even though (or perhaps because) the setting was quite strange to me at the time that I couldn't bear to part with it. 

Before moving on to the next shelf, I must tell you about the two little hedgehogs at the other end of this shelf. They are old hedgehog toys from the 1960s which my daughter bought me to go with Georgie, my hedgehog nightie case who I got for my seventh birthday and still have. All of them were made by Merrythought.

Two more shelves to look at. The third shelf has my Enid Blyton books and the rest of my childhood story books. I'm gradually re-reading these and have particularly enjoyed those by Jenifer Wayne which I think are all out of print now.

In the middle are my small collection of Polish Peg Dolls. The one in the red cloak was mine as a child, I bought the other two in recent years as I thought it was about time she had some company. There's something rather special about these little dolls I think.

The bottom shelf is where we get to the big exception about this being my childhood books. The half dozen or so at the start of the shelf were mine and I read and re-read them. They were all originally my Mum's and most of them were school prizes. They boasted exciting titles like Jane Runs Away From School and 'Bracken Had a Secret'. I can't remember now what the secret was; I shall have to re-read that one. My absolute favourite though was Queen of the Abbey Girls which I didn't realise for years was just one of a huge series of Abbey Girls books by Elsie Oxenham. As you can see, I've gradually added to my collection over the years, starting in the 1970s ... and I still haven't got a complete set. I think I might have to read them all in order this year, some of them for the first time. Does anyone else know these books?

One more thing to show you before I go - a corner of cuddly toys. With a lot of measuring, cutting and sticking, I managed to contrive some basic cardboard shelves out of an old box to house a few toys in the corner next to this bookcase.

I found the two old  toy dogs separately at Brackley Antiques, the source of many of my treasures when I was able to travel. The rabbit standing next to them is my brother's old toy who he christened 'Bottle'. He also had a penguin called 'Gate'; as you might gather, our Mum believed in letting us name our own toys. Bottle had to have a new body sewn for him by me years ago, hence the clothes.

The pretty toys on the top of these shelves are Emily Button and her friends Bobble the Cat and Mousey the Mouse. These were sold by Marks & Spencer here in the UK about ten years ago which is when I bought mine. They no longer sell them but you can find them secondhand quite easily. I love their pastel patchwork style.

And now I must stop. I hope you've enjoyed a look round my new room.