Flibbertygibbet

No work Wednesday

Got as far as the gym this am, then realised that the 'My head hurts because I am up early' pounding wasn't going away.  So came home and thought a nap would sort it.  Woke up at 2pm. Can't imagine getting much done today. That's probably not a bad thing.

I am trying to decide what to make for White Mischief.  I have a black corset and need a skirt.  I've got lots of silk and taffeta in my stash, in green with white spots, rose pink, black, metallic green.  It seems I've been working up to costumes for quite some time.

Something like this:

Vena Cava has lots of historical patterns.  Of course it takes a lot of fabric, and might just add a lot of bustle to my already substantial ahem 'natural bustle'.







Then there's this skirt from Vollers.  However I would have a go at making it myself as it's rather far outside my budget.  At £225 I would expect exquisite fabric and detailing. Not that I'll be able to replicate that myself but then again I won't spend that kind of money on it either.







Or then there's something like this one from Fairy Goth Mother.  Such fun!  Also would be perfect in the emerald green with white polka dots fabrics that I've got.  Lucy has kindly offered to lend me her petticoat for the night if I go down this route because I can't see me managing to get a petticoat made too. 

I think it will be the second or third options.  Any thoughts??


And just to add:  whether as a meeting point before WM or not, I want to visit here...

Whoops, just realised I didn't enable comments - the new Typepad is driving me a little mad... enabled now1

All the fun

of Carter's Steam Fair at Paradise Gardens.  Made it down there on Saturday in the sunshine, anticipating the downpours on Sunday.

I have a thing about merry-go-rounds, or 'gallopers' as they are called in Carters.  Apparently all the horses are named after members of the Carter family which I find quaint, endearing and slightly freaky all at the same time.


There were plenty of non-fairground attractions. The Central School of Speech and Drama Costume Archives exhibition showed some of their treasures.


The tea dance tent - infectious music, enthusiastic audience participation.

 
Even the staff quarters at this amazing fair are authentically retro.


A rather unusual artist called Paka, who was hilarious.  At one point he nearly barbequed a small dog at the front of the crowd. (Yes.  Those are real flames.)

Followed by Eurovision on Saturday, baking and guests on Sunday, then Hot Breath Karaoke (I'm kind of sorry I missed their Eurovision event because it looked priceless) at the Lauriston, stumbling distance home.  I love my 'hood. 

How do you spell 'Ewwww'?

 Ting, you shouldn't read this...


Ok so I am playing around with Typepad's new settings.  Now you can see in huge detail just how much I don't like my socks.  I was ok with the first one as the weirdly-dyed one because it's spiralling in a just-about-acceptable way.  This is Purl's custom colours Lorna's Laces and more fool me for not saying "um, why does it sort of fade out rather than cutting from white to purple..." when I got it in my hands in the shop - but you know how it goes, the overwhelming 'Woo-hooo I'm yarn-shopping in New York' feeling...and hell, if you get the same dyelots you're streets ahead... actually looking at the Rav stash pictures, I don't think you can see it in the hank.


Has anyone else had any problems with this?  The second one isn't even spiralling (see above, it's sort of turning into Tetris gone wrong) but I think it's not worth ripping back. Also even though they are the same dyelot, the colour is weaker on the second sock.  Bah.  The knitting girls reckon I should email Purl about it (and ask them to have someone knit the socks in the same yarn to the same point and post them back, thanks).

Getting back into sewing a little bit and have some plans for dress-making over the bank holiday weekend as long as the fabric I ordered arrives, to make something to wear to this.

Tingles, happy Lucy's birthday...it turned out to be harder than I thought to make a "blue or maybe purple but not red or green" sock bag, seems that there is a void in my stash in the colour blue ... I am sure I will be able to rectify this when I go to San Francisco.  Britex and Rare Device are on the 'must visit' list at the moment. 


There's lot of news in our little circle at the moment - as someone remarked last night, over the past month there's been [a] death, then [impending] births and now news of a marriage to come.  We're all still sad about the first, and thrilled to bits about the latter announcements.  People are writing books, starring in plays, generally taking over the world. I am constantly impressed. 

So what have you got planned for the long weekend? 

Randomness

A little while ago the lovely Emerald tagged me for a well know meme that I may well have done before but I thought it would be interesting to do it again, without checking back first. See if I am at all capable of being random or if I'm thoroughly set in my ways. The challenge is to share seven random or weird facts.

1. 1. I like painted toenails but not fingernails (weird)
2. My lucky numbers are 1 and 7 (random)
3. I have a short attention span for hobbies, which leads to 'all the gear no idea' - letterpress anyone? That reminds me, I nearly went to a tatting course today. Lucky escape really. (random)
4. I'm still trying to fight my longing for flock wallpaper but it's becoming more difficult (weird)
5. I'm more cautious that I'd ideally wish to be (random)
6. The not being able to ride a bike thing is really starting to bug me (random) but I'm still unwilling to do anything to remedy it (weird)
7. Lately I've developed a thing for pictures/paintings/rubberstamps of deer (random and weird)

I am tagging some people I know, some I don't know. As always, won't be offended if you don't participate. Usual rules, link to your tagees, tell them they've been tagged,

Kathleen - v talented lady
Julie from Little Cotton Rabbits - she's the Typepad featured blog this week, hurrah!
Sweet Jessie - lovely photographs
Flissy - she hasn't blogged so recently but I think that's because she's busy making lovely things for her Blythe dolls
Abi from Make It Up - one of my favourite people, and uber talented Tree Fall - more lovely stuff
Jessica - always shares the best stuff on her blog

Focus

I've learned a lot of things about myself over the past few years, though not nearly enough. One thing, which I've probably mentioned before, is that I don't work well without a deadline. I procrastinate, and yesterday I procrastiknitted. That has meant that a spontaneous lunch invitation for today, that I was inclined to decline but now would like to accept, is probably not going to happen because I have a freelance job hanging over my head that's due for Tuesday. (Monday is a holiday here). A neat lesson.

I've been trying to get a little more focus into my life, but even deciding on the list of priorities has been tiring: a constantly leapfrogging list of sorting out work/life balance: do creative things that make me happy; work out how to manage my ever problematic finances; write more of the book; get healthy - lose a couple of stone (put like that it sounds so easily, like I'm carrying two large boulders in my pockets and simply need to put them down somewhere) and regain my yoga flexibility and some stamina; see friends; get out and meet new people rather than coming home knackered and being fit for nothing. Fit for nothing sort of sums it all up at the moment.

So in the way of addressing these issues, yesterday I slept until almost 1pm and then knitted a lot.

The sleeping thing was vital - three days at a trade show coupled with weeks of prep for said show had left me entirely drained. My boss told me to leave at 2pm but I ended up faffing about town, killing time until I was going to a friend's house for dinner; still I appreciated the gesture. All I wanted to do yesterday was something creative, and the girls keep telling me that I should knit something for myself for a change. So I decided to CO a number of projects to keep me interested. Will that really work?

Hence:

Garter rib socks from the Charlene Schurch book, in Purl's custom colour Lorna's Laces. Interesting colour blending - the dyeing isn't as clear as usual so instead of defined purple to white, it seems to fade to blue sometimes and that's causing the strange blue spiral. I think I like it. These have been on the go for about a week. Using the beautiful Lantern Moon needles from Robynn, because I felt the need to use precious yarn and the most luxurious needles to finally do something for myself. Finally.

These are the knitted-bar-the-afterthought-heel socks that I was doing for my granny, then realised that while Blue Sky Alpaca silk does indeed a luxurious bedsock make, it's also very big and baggy and I should have really thought that out a bit more. So I frogged those and returned the yarn to the stash.

In other knitting housekeeping, I finally finished those wristwarmers for the January birthdays.

I started on something from the Kim Hargreaves book, Cherish which is a shrug in Big Wool. I have definitely done something funny on the bottom edge. But that knitted up in a couple of hours so I guess I can bear to frog it and redo if necessary. Will blunder on with the sleeves and fronts and then redo the back as and when.

And the final 'for me' project is the cabled shrug from the Debbie Bliss Pure Silk book. I think I cast this on eight times. About seven attempts during the afternoon, and I'd keep screwing something up along the way and get to the end of the first row to find two stitches too many or too few waiting for me at the end of the needle. For some reason at 1am I thought 'ooh yes, let's pick that up again' and like magic it worked, as did row 2. I decided to quit while I was ahead - also because the next bit of the pattern somehow seemed to have been written in Swahili. Maybe it will be back in English today. This is as far as I got:

*****

Every once in a while, when you're trying to figure out everything from life plans to knitting patterns, something happens to remind you that you should stress less and live more because who knows what's going to happen. One of our knitting girls is gravely ill and while I've been mired in work I haven't keep up with her husband's blog. I didn't realise how rapidly things were progressing. The latest update from this morning is that he doesn't think that she will leave the hospital, and that these may be her final days. Understandably he doesn't think having crowds of people descend on the hospital is a good idea. Instead he says:

"If you want to do something for us today, then speak to a parent, partner, child or friend and tell them that you love them, as I will do to her, whether she hears me or not."

Though it's not really 'me', I'm working up to saying this to my friends and loved ones. You always assume that people know how much they mean to you. But that's probably not the case?

*****

Sadly Tash passed away a couple of hours later. We raised a glass at a local pub, which is coincidentally where they had their wedding reception; then went down to spend some time with her husband, her dad and her friends. Lots of laughter and good memories shared, and then we all cried all the way home in the taxi. A beautiful, bright, funny woman and we didn't have enough time with her. Miss you Tash. xxxx