My First Coat

 I've never had a grown up coat, one of those smart long ones. And now I have!

It's a nice relaxed fit so that I can wear big jumpers underneath it and, having taken my daughter's advice and gone for a 'petite' size - by which they mean 'short', the sleeves are the right length without having to roll them up.

I'd never have managed to buy it without Rose's help. I'd seen it in my newspaper and it was surprisingly cheap for Marks and Spencer but, as we no longer have a branch here, I couldn't check the colour or fit. Rose went into her Marks in Oxford, tried one on and took photos to send me. She then ordered it for me in the size we decided would fit. Ordering clothes (and especially returning them if they don't fit) is too complicated for my Covid brain so I don't often do it.

I'm really pleased with my new coat and, having worn charity shop jackets for decades, it feels very smart. However, it turns out that it's not actually my first proper coat.

Here I am in 1967 at the age of six with my brother Stephen. Note my alice band - remember those? - and Stephen's traditional plaster on his knee. Those were the days when boys wore shorts up until they were about ten or eleven. The photo was taken in Hamble-Le-Rice (isn't that a great name?) on one of our days out. Here I am wearing my coat again, this time somewhere you probably recognise. I'm glad to see that Stephen's knee is better.

Stonehenge

I seem to have had a bit of a run of buying things for around £70 lately. First there was the coat and then I invested in this wonderful Piano Lamp.

I haven't been able to play the piano for several years because of not being able to read the music. Then it dawned on me that I could ask the optician to prescribe me a pair of fixed vision glasses just for the piano. It took a couple of tries to get the distance right, what with not having a piano to hand in the consulting room, but we got there in the end. The frames are the same as my normal glasses so the piano ones live on the piano (and have an elastic band round one arm too) so that they don't get muddled.

The glasses have meant that I can read the music but I realised that I also needed stronger light, hence the new lamp. It's very bright and also adjustable with a dimmer switch. The picture above was taken in the evening when it was the only light on in the room. The black lamps are intended for modern black pianos but I think it goes well with my old 1920s upright.

Of course, my playing is very rusty so I'm starting with some simple studies by Burgmuller. I never had these as a child learning to play; my violin teacher told me about them. My only experience of studies were the Demnitz ones for Clarinet which weren't exactly exciting. The Burgmuller ones are proper tunes and lovely to play.

My other £70 purchase was this big pile of magazines.

I've been filling in the gaps in my collection of 'New Stitches' magazines for a long time, mostly buying individual copies as and when they come up. I was enquiring from a seller on ebay about combining a couple of small lots when she said that she had lots more to sell. She kindly sorted out all these magazines, 58 in all, to fill in quite a few of my gaps. They arrived in two heavy boxes and will keep me busy for quite a while. Doesn't that cat on the cover in the middle look like Tolly cat?

I particularly like these magazines because they have a range of projects and masterclasses covering lots of different needlecrafts rather than just cross stitch. I think I now have about 80 issues left to find (out of 261). I don't have any of the latest ones though, Issues 213 - 261 and I've never seen them for sale. I expect they'll turn up one day, all together.

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.

Woven Stars

It may have taken me much longer than usual but I've managed to design another pattern. What's more, it's not a scarf this time.

These little Woven Stars are quickly knitted from scraps of yarn. They're made up of two identical triangles, one woven through the other and there are only five rows to knit for each triangle.

You can vary the size by using different weights of yarn. Most of my stars were knitted with DK weight yarn but I also tried a few in thin sock yarn.

I wanted to get this pattern finished as I thought it might be a useful resource for all the knitters making things to sell for charity. As my copyright notice says at the end of each pattern, I don't allow things made from my patterns to be sold for profit but I'm always happy when people use them to support a favourite charity. If you do this, Id love to hear about it.

I have to say, knitting small things in bright colours makes taking photos so much easier. I can never resist the urge to re-arrange them into pretty patterns.

In the absence of a Christmas tree to hang on, I plodded out into my wet and muddy garden to hang them on the ivy for a picture too.

The cats supervised the garden photo shoot, intrigued by what the human was doing now. We are a constant mystery to each other. 

I enjoyed knitting these little stars which is more than I can say for the other Christmas knitting I'm doing at the moment. I'm working on a Christmas version of my Woodland Wreath  - not a new design as I'm using existing patterns. I'd forgotten just how dull it was knitting all those leaves. So far, I've knitted two sets to represent the honeysuckle and the ivy in my garden.

The yellow embroidery is my attempt at the ivy flowers and took me ages to get right. I must have cut out hundreds of french knots before realising that less is more in this case. Next are the holly leaves. I've knitted those but not the berries to go with them. Then there's the mistletoe ... It will be nice to get on to something that isn't a leaf.

I hope that you're enjoying your Christmas knitting and that you have time to add in a woven star or two.

Christmas is ...

... a time for giving

Christmas 1966

... a time for decorations

... sometimes a time for snow

1963

... and always a time for family

 

1992

In the middle of all the last minute preparations I try to pause to remember Christmases past and to look to the future. At this time of year I always think about my first Christmas as a single parent with a five year old and a toddler and I make a donation to Gingerbread, the charity that supports single parent families. Back in the early 1990s single parent families were still seen as 'not proper families' and I think that, all to often, this is still the case. 

So, to all those celebrating Christmas on your own with children this year, I wish you a very Merry Christmas ... oh and try to take some pictures. It took me ages to find one with both children in (and sitting still).

My apologies to those in the above pictures but it's a Christmas tradition to embarrass your nearest and dearest with old photos. And in case you're wondering, that's me with my new doll's house and also in the snow.

Teddy Bear's Picnic

Did you know that 10th July is Teddy Bear's Picnic Day? Well no, nor did I until I had a message from Carl at Bijou Basin Ranch in Colorado, asking if they could use one of my patterns in some kits they were selling to mark the occasion. Bijou Basin is a family owned Yak ranch which sells high quality Yak fibre and yarns. I've never knitted with Yak wool but I'm assured that it is soft and warm.

The pattern they are using is my Teddy Bear Stripes, although their bears will be knitted in one colour. Here's my original teddy bear (striped and otherwise) ...

... and here is the sample bear, knitted with the Yak wool ...

Isn't he lovely? He looks very cuddly. If you would like to buy a kit to knit your own teddy bear, you can order one from Bijou Basin for $25. They are kindly donating a percentage of the price to the charity I support. the Children's Liver Disease Foundation, for which I am very grateful. You can read more about the kit, including helpful tips on knitting your bear on the Bijou Basin Blog and share photos of your finished bears on their Ravelry Group. You've got to love a group that has 'For the Love of all things Yak' under the title, haven't you?

From Colorado Yaks to an English Dance Band in the 1930s ...

Big Yellow Friday

Today is Big Yellow Friday, the annual big fundraising day for the Children's Liver Disease Foundation. This is the charity I have been supporting through my knitting and crochet designs right from the beginning. With the help of many lovely people, I have raised over £15,000 so far for this very worthwhile cause.

Two children in the UK are diagnosed with a liver disease every day. The causes are unknown, there is no cure and these diseases are life threatening. Treatment involves a lifetime of care and medication, often including one or more transplants. The CLDF raises funds for vital research and supports the whole family of a child with liver disease, including after the death of a child.

I chose this charity to support because of Alex, my friend's son who was born with biliary atresia nearly nineteen years ago. Alex has had the 'normal' childhood of someone with a liver disease - lots of medication and a school career interrupted with regular stays in hospital - but is now in his first year at University. I know that CDLF have given his whole family a great deal of support over the years, as they do for so many.

You can donate to the CLDF on their Website or via my Fundraising Page. Any amount, however small, is gratefully received. Together we can really make a difference.

I thought I would leave you with Harry's story ...

Let's start with some knitting ...

Although I plan to talk about lots of other stuff in this blog, I thought I would start with the bread and butter of my life – the knitting.

I’ve been designing knitting patterns and publishing them on Ravelry for quite a few years now. If you visit my designer page you’ll see there are hundreds of free patterns to download, ranging from blanket, scarves and shawls to toys and the purely decorative (what do you mean, you don’t want to knit a rainbow?). There are also quite a few crochet patterns but ‘Frankie’s Knitted and Crochet Stuff’ is a bit of a mouthful.

Instead of charging for my patterns I ask that people consider making a donation to the Children’s Liver Disease Foundation which is a small charity that funds research and supports children and their families. Every day two children in the UK are diagnosed with a liver disease, making it more common than childhood leukaemia. Most liver diseases are life-threatening, the causes are unknown and there is no cure. Treatment involves a lifetime of care and medication which can include liver transplants. So far generous knitters and crocheters (is that a word?) have helped me to raise over £14,000 for this very good cause.

So, back to the knitting. This year I'm publishing a series of patterns as a sort of knitted calendar, in the form of mini quilts. Here's the first month's pattern.

This is the January Quilt. A friendly looking snowman, complete with jacket and a battered hat.


Each little quilt is only about the size of a postcard and, as you can see, they can be hung on a mini hanger. I've added a button down sleeve to the back so that the quilt can be changed at the start of each month.

The next quilt is all ready to go and will be published on 1st February.


This would be a good time to mention my Ravelry Group where you'll find lots of friendly people, comparing notes as they work on their patterns and generally chatting. Some are going to turn their little quilts into bigger projects - perhaps blankets with the addition of some plain blocks - but lots of people are still at the 'I want to do this, just need to find the yarn and the time' stage.

I also made a fabric mini quilt from my original sketch which I've sent to my daughter. Whether or not she gets another one each month remains to be seen.

Is it just me or does this snowman have a bit of an evil look? 

By the way, the little clips holding the quilt on to the frame are Clover Mini Wonder Clips. I got mine at Cotton Patch. I had been planning to use mini wooden clothes pegs but they were too big.

So, that's my first blog post. Is there anyone out there reading it?