One Local Summer Week 4 - epic fail

I can only blame not being at home for most of the week. After saying I'd go to the farm shops on Tuesday, too, I realised that I was driving past them all before 9am, so that was useless.

I did try, yesterday, to go to the Hicks Gate Farm Shop, as signposted from the roundabout - but it is most definitely not there anymore. It's just an overgrown cracked tarmac road to nowhere. And today we were going to go and Pick Our Own at Chew Valley farm, but it was a bit overcast and I had to mark about 400 GCSE responses today so it left very little time for actually, like, having a life.

GCSE marking is over on Thursday, Hurrah! Apparently I am accurate enough to have earned consideration for team leader. I knew it would all pay off eventually...although it has been absolutely beastly this year.

Just discovered I made a serious mistake with Marianne this week. I have not had much time to work on it, due to the marking, and I was determined to put a few rows on it during the year 9 conference....this culminated in me knitting during the presentation finals in the lecture threatre, which I didn't feel guilty about because none of my kids got through (they was robbed!). Anyway, one of the groups decided to turn out the lights, as I was part way through a row, and I must have had brain freeze or something because when they came back on, I started knitting again - only on a different row of the lacework. I righted myself without even noticing my mistake by the time I got onto the back piece, but 6 repeats of the lacework on the right front are not right, and because it was partway through and not the whole of the right front, I don't even have the right number of stitches anymore. It's a mess! Thankfully, the variegation in the yarn and the fluffiness mean that it doesn't really seem to notice, though I guess I won't be able to tell until I am a few rows past it.

There's nothing to be done. It won't take ripping back, and while I considered dropping the stitches back to fix them, that way lies insanity and blindness. It really just means that the diamonds in that section are somewhat oversized, but on the whole I don't think it will be too obvious a mistake.

I bet Rachel won't even give me a look :p

Trivial and mundane things

I have been very pleasantly surprised this evening by a film which I thought would be pants. In fact, I remember when it came out, I saw a trailer and, in spite of the fact it falls into my guilty secret genre (teen school flicks) I thought, "Good grief, what an utter pile of shite that is going to be." The film in question, the Girl Next Door, actually turned out to be hugely entertaining, in spite of the fact they moreorless stole the entire plot from Risky Business (which I also like a lot) - right down to the very expensive mantelpiece adornment. There was no dancing-in-pants-and-socks scene, but there is a bit where the main character is forced to run naked down a suburban street.

Having perused the reviews on imdb I see I'm not alone. This makes me feel better for liking it. It really was very funny. And really that Timothy Olyphant should do more acting in things I am likely to see because he is very funny.

I went to the farmers' market up the road from me today. I wasn't especially hopeful - I think there is only one thing that is farmed in the local area and that's the sort of illegal thing you need a heat lamp and a lot of tin foil for - but there was a good selection of stuff. They even had pickled eggs in malt vinegar which you almost never see. I know, BLEUCH. I can't see the sense in taking a delicious fresh egg, boiling the crap out of it and then immersing it in vinegar for a few months. I think they are like kebabs, and you only see them in bars because you would only ever eat one after a lot of alcohol. Mr Z has educated me otherwise, though. He will only eat the kind in malt vinegar....hence my excitement at the find today.

I also got some very pink rhubarb, some very tender asparagus, some very tasty sausages, and some goats cheese....from a very creepy woman. She was creepy. She may have spent too much time in her dairy. She seemed like she belonged in an episode of the League of Gentlemen. I had to keep reminding myself that they were Gloucestershire farmers and I'm used to Wiltshire ones. Perhaps the farms in Gloucestershire are more isolated.

Anyway, the reason for the detailed description of today's shopping is because I have decided to take part in One Local Summer. I heard about it through a group on Ravelry. Basically, I have to cook one meal a week from all locally-grown ingredients, excluding oil, salt, pepper and spices. I decided this would be a snap, what with all those farm shops I drive past on the way home from work and the endless supply of eggs from the teaching assistant at work. I sort of forgot that the summer extends past July 25th, and therefore, for 5 weeks of the challenge, I won't be driving past anything if I can help it. And may well not have a kitchen for a large portion of those 5 weeks.

Oh, I'm overjoyed at the prospect of ripping out the kitchen and replacing it. Really. I can't wait. I wish we could start tomorrow. I wish we could win the lottery and go and lie on a beach in the Maldives for 3 weeks while a small army of builders, carpenters, plumbers and kitchen fitters did the whole thing for us.

So, back to OLS. I may have to get quite creative with my meals for the 5 weeks I won't be at work. Breakfast counts as a meal, right?

I have finished my massive swatch for Marianne in glorious acrylic. I am at a bit of a loss with what to do with it now, tbh. I might use it as a face cloth, though it seems a bit indulgent to use a lace face cloth, even if it is made from something that costs £1 for 200g.



Everything inside the black lines is what I made up. I'm really glad I knitted the whole pattern out because I realised I had made several mistakes which would have been impossible to fix if I'd been using the Baby Kid, and I would have been really pissed off with myself because at least two of them were really stupid mistakes. At one point I'd lined up two YOs next to each other - hence the two rather large holes visible to the trained eye.

In places it looks a bit strange but then, the increase sections will only account for
a small portion of the actual garment and I don't think it will be noticable...and one of the reason for the strangeness towards the bottom is because I made a huge mess of knitting the pattern for a couple of rows and that's just idiocy,not the pattern. Now I just have to work the numbers and figure out how many stitches I need to cast on. This is easily the most prep I've ever done for a pattern, it had better be worth it.

I got a new phone this week. I am very pleased with it - it's very shiny and I have the most garish blue and purple background pattern. I rang up T-Mobile all ready to play it tough because I didn't want to pay £80 for the upgrade (first upgrade in 2 and a half years, there's no way I'm forking out for it!) However, the woman on the phone was extremely helpful; she switched my tariff to something which should be costing me half what I'm paying (in reality, it seems to be about the same...but I am at least getting more for it...I'll see what the bill says when it comes in) and she gave me the phone for free, and then she gave me a month's free trial of the web'n'walk.

Oh, clever T-Mobile dealer. It's only been 3 days and I'm already hooked. It was enough to push me into finally using that Google calendar I kept meaning to fill in (I am absolutely useless with diaries). I can upload pictures direct to here (hence the posts below - Mr Z worked out how to do this before I did). Facebook and I need never be parted again. It's very exciting. That free month is going to pass before I even notice it, isn't it?

One final thing. I was playing YouTube tag tonight and found this and it made me laugh a lot. Mr Z and I developed an appreciation for country music last summer. It's good honest lyrics like "I wanna see the other half of your butterfly tattoo" and "I don't give a darn bout what other people think, waddya think about that?" which sold us. It helped that one of the biggest songs on country radio last summer featured Mr Z's name in the title. Every new song was like a gift waiting to be listened to with incredulity. It amazes me that some of them even get written, so mundane and trivial is their subject matter. But they are mostly fun.

It may all be worth it

I have finished a swatch in the actual yarn, ready for making measurements and applying them to my chart. Mmm, look how pretty...


It's funny, you know, because even though, if you asked me what my favourite colour is, I'd dither around red and purple, judging from all the knitting I do it's quite obviously blue.

I had to get up early today to go to the dentist. I dutifully flossed last night and everything (this does occur fairly regularly, though not every day)....I don't really understand why I make my teeth cleaner to go and get them cleaned - it's a bit like cleaning the house for your cleaner.

I'm going to get a cleaner. I don't care what Mr Z says. There needs to be somebody in this house armed with a duster who actually cares about the state of the skirting boards, and that person is not me.

Anyway. Dentist. Got up really early...8.30am, for crying out loud, and it's the holidays! ... was there before the dentist opened. Dentist receptionist unable to find my name in the book, and then I realised my appointment isn't until Thursday. Boo. Two more days of fretting about impending toothache. The dentist is what I imagine when I have something else that hurts. "Doesn't hurt as bad as toothache, doesn't hurt as bad as toothache" is my mantra for whatever waxings or pluckings or sports injuries (ha!) that might be occurring. This is no good to me when it's toothache I'm trying to ignore. Truthfully, the only thing that keeps me flossing and gagging on that vile mouthwash, the only thing that gets me over the sink with a brush when I'm too tired to even see myself in the mirror, is the fear of a root canal on the NHS, and I'm much too left-wing to pay for private dental care.

Well, I'm too cheap if we're being honest about it.

Now, I need to go and select which pair of shoes will be accompanying me to the Sex and the City Longwell Green premiere tomorrow night.

Obsession, thy name is lacework chart

Three hours later...


I was so pissed off with it by the end that I went downstairs and made cupcakes and tidied the hall. I can't even look at a knitting needle until tomorrow at the earliest.

I hope it works. I intend to swatch the pattern in something squeaky and cheap before I go near the Baby Kid. At least that chart is for both front portions plus the back, with all increases included - so it is the only one I'll be needing.

I made some good cupcakes. They are chocolate with a peanut butter filling (how very American) and a chocolate frosting. They are from this blog I like to read when I am desirous of cake.

Is there blood coming out of my ears?

It should sound about right that, for my first lacework project, I picked a pattern by Rowan (and thus short on the explicit pattern notes/charts/any help whatsoever), which has only been knitted a handful of times by anybody on Ravelry and is therefore short on project notes and discussions; and that I picked to knit this in a completely different yarn weight, which knits up to a different gauge; and that I should wish to modify said pattern to avoid seaming because I am lazy; and that, as well as all this, I should decide not to be fettered by Rowan's puny sizing and instead rewrite the pattern for my measurements and to my gauge.

Really, you know this is going to end in tears. To add insult to injury, when I tried to unravel my gauge swatch and the yarn snapped, I realised there can be no errors, unless I want to end up binning that entire km of baby kid I was winding in the swift pictures.

It's not beyond me. Absolutely not. I got an A in GCSE maths, I can totally count the stitches in my swatch and rewrite the pattern. I could probably even do it in my head.

Here is the problem, though - there are increases for side seam shaping which affect the lacework pattern, and I can't for the life of me work out how to incorporate them without messing up the rest of the lacework. I did my usual trick of emailing/essaging anybody I could find who had knitted it and seeing what would come back, and the first response suggested charting it. What a great idea! I thought - what else are inclement Bank Holiday Mondays for?

(Incidentally, this is the most inclement one I can remember in ages. I actually had to get the hammock in before it blew away.)

Here is how far I got...


I can't make it right. I just can't. How can I increase a stitch at one end, and decrease it next time round, replacing it with an increase at the other end....and not shift the whole lace pattern over one?

And how do I knit the increase next time round?

Seriously. Blood. Ears. Dripping.