Wee Peggy

Here's my Wee Peggy wheel.

I did mention a while ago that I was going to sell it, and that I would let you know - well, the time is now.  So if you are at all interested, please get in touch, and I can tell you more.  It is listed on eBay at the moment, with the auction due to finish on Sunday evening.

This is a nice little wheel - it is one of the originals,  made in 1984 by J Rappard in New Zealand.

I shall be sorry to see it go - it has been my first wheel, after all - but one does have to move on.


Now, knitting.

I find myself, yet again, knitting something that I can neither show nor discuss.  It is, of course, for Rowan, and it is, of course, rather gorgeous.

The knitting is very enjoyable - lovely yarn, beautiful colours, and an interesting stitch pattern.  But this situation does not make for interesting blog posts.  My deadline is the end of this month, but I shall be getting it finished as soon as I can.


In conclusion, I should just say that my rather prolonged silence here does not mean that anything is wrong - quite the contrary, in fact.

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while will know that I have been dealing with a pain condition for a few years now, about which the least said the better, really.  Over the last couple of months I've been getting used to a new combination of meds which has turned out to be really helpful, but has also turned out to have the side effects of making me rather absentminded and forgetful - and that's putting it mildly.  Perhaps I should just say, rather spaced out.   As you can perhaps imagine, this hasn't been conducive to coherent thinking or writing, or indeed very much writing at all really, hence the long silences.

Fortunately, these side effects seem to have been temporary, and I think I'm about back to normal now.  However if you should notice me being rather more incoherent than usual, please feel free to blame it on the meds. ;)

Sunday on the water

It is so lovely to be out on the water regularly again.  We still cannot quite believe it - the boat has spent so much time with the engine out of order over the last eighteen months that it had begun to feel like an expensive encumbrance, instead of something to be enjoyed.  But this weekend we have indeed been enjoying it.

It really does feel like spring now.  After the long winter everything seems to have suddenly burst into bloom together, there are swathes of primroses and carpets of celandines, clumps of violets in the hedgerows, and everywhere there are the starry spikes of ramsons - and that's something else to which we always look forward.

Wild garlic leaves - or ramsons.  In this case, soon to be lunch, together with scrambled eggs and a bit of smoked salmon.  And very nice it was, too.

Not a lot of knitting content this time.  I have finished a pair of socks.  That's it.  I think the yarn was Trekking XXL, I cannot possibly remember the shade number.

And, because I was asked - here is a picture of Jess, who is not really a pup any more.  She's three years old now.  Time goes by so fast....

More knitting content next time, I hope.

Done!

There has been quite a lot of knitting happening here over the last several weeks - both here, and, as you may gather from the photographs, on the narrowboat.  We had several hours out on the water the other day, it was lovely.  And as I can't show pictures of my knitting, I can at least show pictures of the waterway.

I don't think there was ever any real doubt about whether I would meet the deadline, to be honest.  But nevertheless there is always a certain degree of tension inherent with such things, which isn't necessarily a bad thing for a short space of time, but can become a little too much when it goes on for too long.

So what happened is that I finished all the first lot of squares in good time, together with the other project, and posted them off.  And then I was offered some more to do, and accepted.  So that meant another deadline.

The upshot of all this is that I have knitted sixty squares. Plus, of course, that extra project.  And that, for me, has been quite enough squares, just for the moment.  Please do not mistake me here - this is as nothing, compared to the level of work that the designer has done.  I happen to know that over the last four days alone she has knitted no less than thirty four squares.  I don't know how she is able to even speak coherently, I really don't.

 Anyway, for me it has been sixty squares.  They have all been different, all worked using intarsia, and all worked with Rowan yarns.  Each and every one of them has been a separate and beautiful little gem.  I just wish I could show them!  But that will have to wait until the book is published.

I cannot really say much more about this.  I can say that the book is co-authored by a designer who is from the Rowan 'stable' - I have no idea when it is due to be released - I can say that when it is released, I think it is going to be popular, because it is such a good idea - and there you have it, I think!

One thing that I have particularly enjoyed about this project is being able to knit with some Rowan yarns that have been new to me, and I shall have more to say about this soon.

Ten days

I have a deadline.  And I have rather a lot of knitting to do.

This is not really unusual.  When one knits for other people, there do tend to be deadlines involved.  Sometimes they are a bit variable - sometimes they are rather less so.  I do try to treat them all in the same way, as if they were graven in stone.  This one has no leeway whatsoever.  Yes, I know, mixed metaphors again.  It seems that I can't help it.

If I have a deadline, this means that I must post the finished item the day before, by Special Delivery which guarantees that the package will arrive the following day - and don't get me started on that one, because it doesn't always happen.  But that's another story entirely. 

Anyway, I have to post the day before the deadline.  And that means that my final knitting day, the very last day on which a stitch may be knitted, an end may be sewn in, an item may be blocked - that is the day before the posting day.  So there is the day of the deadline - there is the posting day - and there is the last knitting day. 

Counting from today, up to the last knitting day, I have ten days.

I am just a little bit behind schedule at the moment. (Yes, I have a schedule.) Life gets in the way, you see.  If I could just sit and knit, there would be no difficulty with this at all.  But there is laundry to be done, a little dog who wants to be walked - and I like to go for a walk, as well - and meals to be cooked, and so on and so forth.

I still cannot show you what I am knitting, not yet.  Nor can I tell you anything about it.  I can tell you that I am knitting squares, which isn't really very informative, and I'm sorry about that but there it is.  They are lovely squares, and they are all different.  I am really enjoying making them.  The yarns are such a pleasure - do I need to say Rowan? - and the colours!  The combinations are just beautiful.   

So, at the moment I have twenty two squares remaining to knit.  Plus one Thing, for which I do not yet have the pattern.  And I have ten days.

I think I had better get on with it.

Caeli furor aequinoctialis

It is a long time since I first came across this lovely phrase, sitting in my school desk back at Northern Grammar School for Girls in Portsmouth.  I think it would have been 1968, probably, and I'd have been about 12.    It is Catullus, of course - who else produces such sonorous phrases? - Catullus 46, if memory serves, which I think it actually might, in this case.

I came across it again the other day, vide Jean's Knitting, and was just as enchanted as I was when I first encountered it.

The equinox itself has of course now come and gone, and the supposed 'raging of the equinoctial sky', which wasn't really very much to write home about after all, has come and gone as well.

Today it is just raining a bit, and I am off out with Jess in a bit, after I've been to the post office.  I do wish the postman would knock at the door these days, when there is a parcel, instead of just dropping a little card through the letterbox and walking away - it is apparent that he hasn't brought the parcel out in his van with him at all - but perhaps I should refrain from saying any more.  I shall instead go to the sorting office and see what it is.  Perhaps it is a very large parcel, too large for his van, but somehow I doubt this.

I do wish I could show some pictures of what I am knitting at the moment, because it is such fun, and so pretty as well.  I am making squares, I can tell you that - colourwork squares, using all sorts of different Rowan yarns, and it feels just like playing with a paintbox.  And having said that, it is far too many years since I did such a thing.

The nicest surprise, I think, is Anchor Artiste Metallic.  It is so soft! - lovely to work with, and a well-behaved fabric.  So if you should encounter a pattern that requires this yarn, don't hesitate.  It's a good yarn.

Off out the door now....

By Jove she's got it!

Regarding Feedly, the penny has finally dropped.

(And GBS would shudder, probably.)  Never mind.  I have it all sorted out now.

Feedly is an app. That is what it all comes down to.  And I have a laptop, not a clever phone or a tablet or anything like that.  It is a somewhat elderly laptop - we were trying to work it out the other day, and we think it is eleven years old now.  But it works, and it works very well for everything that I want it to do, although it is a bit slow to load some rather 'busy' pages these days, and it is quite happy as long as I don't ask it to do too many things at the same time.

Where was I?  Ah yes, Feedly.  Which is, let me repeat, an app.  These days I use Chrome.  Not Internet Explorer, at the very thought of which I shudder - if you are still using it, I urge you to stop immediately.  Well, not quite immediately, obviously.  Please finish reading this, first.  Not Firefox either, although it is very much better than IE.  But Chrome, which is streets better than either of the aforementioned.  And Chrome supports apps.

And lest you think that I really have knowledge of such things, I will tell you at this point that I know this not on my own account, but from what my clever son tells me.  He is a software engineer who writes extremely specialist code nowadays, and I completely do not understand what he does.  However when he advises me to do (or not do) something computer-related, I pay attention, and act upon what he tells me.

It is very strange for me to think now that my very first job was as a computer programmer, using Fortran, back in the 70's before I went off to university.  Yes, before uni, not after - just through the summer holidays, after I left school.  I learnt Fortran from reading a computer manual.  It did have the advantage of letting me skip the (usually) requisite first year computing course, at least - I attended the first couple of lectures, realised that I really had covered all this and a good bit more besides, had a word with the lecturer, who asked some questions and arranged for me to sit the final exam the next day, which I passed with flying colours, and that was the end of my computing studies.

That was back in the days when a computer was as big as a bungalow and lived at the end of a telephone line and had to be talked to via a card sorter and paper tape.  One of the chaps in the lab could read the paper tape without having to put it through the reader, a dark art indeed.

I think that perhaps I ought to retitle this post 'Getting Sidetracked'.

Feedly!

Is An App!  (At least, it is for Chrome.)

The homepage of Chrome, which browser I recommend to you all, shows nice big clear sensible icons for various apps, some of which are put there automatically by Chrome because they are so standard, and some of which arrive automatically when you add them.  On my homepage, for instance, I see there is Gmail, Google Search, and YouTube.  Also - ahem - there might be Angry Birds, which we will not discuss.

Also, as I'm sure you will have guessed, on my homepage is the icon for Feedly.   It was only right in the middle of the page, right under my nose, all the time.

Where I was going wrong was bookmarking it.  No bookmarking required - at least, not for Chrome.  Go to Feedly.com and get yourself the version for your browser, and off you go.  And if you haven't yet got Chrome, have a look around online and sort that out for yourself first.  It is, of course, free. And so is Feedly.

Feedly is very good indeed, by the way.  Do I dare to say it is better than Google Reader?  I think that I do.

It is all very intuitive and simple to use.  For instance, if the post is long, and you've scrolled down reading it, and you've come to the end - you might find yourself thinking, hmm, I want to go back to the top and read that first bit again - and there is a little thing to click to take you back to the top of the page!  and another to click to move to the next item! - they've thought of everything, it seems.  So far, at least.

It is excellent.

Knitting? - another day, I promise.  I am knitting, lots of interesting things actually.   And I want to talk about darning, too.  Thankyou so much for the comments, I knew I couldn't be alone! - and yes, shirt collars and sheets too.

This has turned out to be a somewhat eclectic post, has it not?  I wasn't expecting that when I started writing this morning.

Hmmm

More about blogs this morning.

I do follow a lot of blogs, more than 80 at last count, although most of those people don't post every day, or even every week. Some of them are in my sidebar, down there on the right hand side.  Many more of them are not, and I really must update that list.  If your blog isn't visible in my list, please accept my apologies, and please don't think I'm ignoring you.  I'm just usually knitting.  Also, I'm lazy.

Anyway.  Google Reader has been my standby for a while now.  It keeps track of all the blogs to which I subscribe. I have one little icon on my bookmark toolbar and all I have to do is click there - and instantly, there I have a list of all the new posts which are waiting to be read.  Lovely!

Except that Google are going to throw it in the bin.

They've given us quite a lot of notice - 1st July 2013 will be the date of its demise.

What to use instead?  I asked Google yesterday, as one does nowadays, and the consensus of opinion seemed to be that Feedly was the way to go.

So off I went, and yesterday everything seemed to be fine.  I worked out how to go from just seeing the first few sentences of a post, to seeing the whole of a post - I worked out how to mark a post as read, when it was a short post and there was no scrolling down to be done - and I worked out how to move through the list.  All very intuitive and user friendly. This was a keeper.  I bookmarked my Feedly Homepage. Good!

Today, not so good.  Feedly just keeps telling me 'synchronizing feedly v. 14.0.468. Please wait..'

Grrrrr.  What am I doing wrong?  Help!


Also - darning?  Anybody?  Is it only me?