Xmas Curses

It's that time of year again. Yes I know Hallowe'en hasn't been and gone yet but apparently everyone needs to give us horribly gendered and ageist present recommendations! Yay for us!

Amazon thinks Mums like perfume, clothing accessories and easy listening. Dads just love bestselling electronics (illustrated with a Kindle - obviously a man thing), golf gear and whisky. Grandpas are the real losers, poor bastards, they get Crossword solvers, aftershave and socks. At least Grandmas get mystery books to enliven the umbrellas and foot care products. Umbrellas? Because every Grandma needs more than one. Stylin' it Granny needs one for every outfit.

Apparently as a Wife I like romantic comedy (you can fuck right off), earrings (ok, maybe, depending) and straighteners (er, no) and my Dear Husband would like a compact camera (only if he's allowed to take pictures of my arse with it), multi-tools (admittedly convenient for impromptu torture) and watches (er, no. Why does he need one when he has a mobile phone with the time on it? Who gives fuck if Pierce Brosnan is advertising it? Who the hell's Pierce Brosnan anyway?).

Hang on a moment...  it looks like Husband and Dad with their electronics are having a whole lot more spent on them than Wife And Mum. You bastards. Of course Grandma and Grandad can make do with stuff from the pound shop. They're old.

Fuck easy listening and romantic comedy. But not mystery books, they rock.

***

Please excuse me while I find a wall to beat my head against for a short while.

A Day Trip. Another One.

This weekend Mara and I went to the Knitting and Stitching show with her new squeeze. MrK would have been bored out of his skull before we even got there but Mr. New Squeeze was interested and helpful and cheerful throughout. I may have to send MrK over for lessons. (Only joking. I don't really consider the inability to happily spend 6-7 hours at a knitting expo a flaw requiring correction.)

I managed to stay within budget by the clever tactic of leaving my card in the car and only having cash with me. This was my yarn haul:

Colour! Hurrah! I'm wondering what on earth to do with the gorgeous lace-weight silk in the bottom right that won't result in clown barf. Maybe I should keep the skein as pet yarn and just admire its lovely colours and stroke it occasionally, rather than knitting with it.

I also got a clever device called an umbrella swift which will take some, if not all, of the swearing out of winding yarn from the skein into a ball. For the non-yarnies among my readers a skein is what you see in the picture above where the yarn is twisted into a rope and round upon itself. When opened out that's like big loops of yarn and needs to be wound into a ball before it can be knit up. This process is not conducive to calm or air clear of F%&$!!!, at least not for me. The fancier the yarn the less likely it is to come already wound into balls like the one in the centre of the pic.

I need to buy a new yarn storage box. Again. Damn.

Lanesplitter skirt

I've finally finished my lovely red Lanesplitter skirt:

I'm really pleased with it, although it makes my little belly stick out a bit. Meh. I've made a fairly significant modification in my addition of the wide elastic waistband. The pattern says that you should pick up stitches from the top edge and knit a casing for elastic. I hate elastic casings with a passion - they are so monumentally unflattering even in a thin woven fabric. In a hand knit? Double yuck.

So I bought some extra wide elastic and measured round me so that it would be snug and a little bit cinchy (but not too much - I want to have space for pie and beer!) and cut it with a little bit extra so if I needed to undo it and expand it by half an inch or so later there would be space. I sewed it up on my sewing machine using a wide and short zig zag stitch:

 

Then I seamed the skirt using bodged mattress stitch. At this point I tried on my elastic waistband and my skirt to check there was nothing going horribly wrong. There wasn't. Hurrah! I then turned the skirt inside out and placed the elastic inside at the top edge. I decided against using my sewing machine on such a chunky, fuzzy and bumpy knit fabric so carefully handstitched the elastic to the skirt, easing the skirt to fit the smaller waistband as I went. I pinned it before sewing to keep the easing nice and even.

And that's it. Finished!

Although it's pictured here with the waistband on display I think I'll wear it mostly with a longer top. My waistband means I can wear it with a tight top if I want without having the wodge of a knitted casing at my waist. Now I want the autumn weather to return (we're having unseasonally warm weather here) so I can wear it with tights, my brown knee boots and a nice jumper or blouse. Or maybe combat boots... hmm... I'm off for a wardrobe rummage!

Cobweb

Not quite sure that it's there

This ethereal lace

Insubstantial like air

Just a touch on the face

Three jumpers in potentia

Last week I was browsing ebay, as I sometimes do when bored out of my skull. Clicking 'watch' on shoes and clothes and yarn I like but will probably never come back and buy. If I wanted it that much I'd bid on it right there and then, wouldn't I? I clicked through to my watch list and spotted something I'd put on there months ago from a yarn store, now on sale. So I got over 2000 metres of cherry red Aran weight Araucania Nature Wool for about thirty quid. Then Mara and I went into our local yarn store and, oh look they're having a sale here too, and so I got 12 balls of black Rowan Classic Cashsoft Aran and 9 of maroon Rowan Classic Extra Fine Merino DK too. Oops. The cash card breathed in sharply, but it coped.

I have an ancient black hooded cardigan I was planning on knitting a replacement for, but there isn't really enough of the black for that so my new hoodie will be BRIGHT CHERRY RED and I think I will knit myself a sexy jumper by Ysolda Teague which has been queued for ages from the black. As for the maroon... inspiration will strike no doubt but it's beautifully soft and squishy and a very 'me' colour (and machine washable!).

It's funny, this yarn purchase has pulled me out of a knitting slump. I have things to knit, things I want to knit, things I want to own and therefore need to knit, but there was nothing exciting me. But buying yet more yarn I don't really need has given me a spark. Why does that happen? Is it some symptom of the materialistic culture I've internalised?

Holiday!

Last week MrK and I trundled off to Wales where my family had hired a cottage for the week. This cottage:

What do you mean 'what cottage?' The one snuggled in under the pine trees in the middle of the picture. That cottage. Behind the cottage can be seen the Glyderau, a group of mountains we conquered later in the week. Well, we didn't conquer them really, we got to the summit of one and between looking at wild flowers, collecting pretty stones, looking at the view, taking pictures, stopping to eat rhubarb&custards, not to mention my Dad's dodgy knees on the downwards path it took us about twice as long as it would take a group with good knees and bugger all interest in their surroundings. But what's the point of going up Glyder Fawr if you can't stop to collect quartz crystals and laugh at sheep on the way up?

My sister's an outdoors instructor. She's good at this stuff and kindly loaded her car up with five kayaks so we could all go kayaking and we spent two happy mornings drifting about on lakes saying 'why am I going in a circle AGAIN?' It was great fun. Pics later maybe if I can get them off my Sis who has a funky waterproof camera. I have to say - Kayaking gear is not the most flattering fashion wear ever although somehow MrK managed to look like a mafia hit man in a kayak. I understand how he looks like a mafia hit man any time he wears a DJ, but in a kayak? That's skill.

Between the mountains and the lakes we even had a little time to wander through the Gwydyr Forest:

In short we had a lovely time and I managed to finish MrK's socks on our very first evening there thanks to getting some serious knitting in during his share of the driving.

They're a mite short in the foot. He has broad and relatively short feet which make footprints exactly like yeti footprints and I overdid the shortness slightly, but not to an uncomfortable degree so he can put up with it. Also nothing, NOTHING would persuade me to work with that yarn again.

Hurrah for family holidays and socks!

Works In Progress

I have multiple knitting projects on the go at the moment. Some are mere moments away from completion, were I a speedy, dedicated and skilled knitter. If only.

My lanesplitter skirt....

... is about an hour from having the knitting done. An hour if I drink tea and chat and generally don't knit very much. Of course then there'll be elastic to wrangle. I've an idea for how to make it more flattering than knitting a casing up from the edge as the pattern calls for. Watch this space.

My boot socks for MrK are past the heel on the second sock. So at the rate I knit socks they're unlikely to be finished for our family walking holiday next week.

I might finish them while we're away assuming my Dad doesn't ply me with so much beer I'm incapable the whole time and it's a fair bet he will. Also: unexpected problem with using vintage yarn for these bastards? Lots of places where one of the three plies is broken. Or the yarn is just broken. Or there's a knot. So there are lots of ends to work away. Grrrr.....

The purple neckwarmer is more than half done, and the shawl has a row added now and again and is moving as fast as I'd expect something with lace to move when it's me in control of the needles. But what about Blue Love?

Erm... what indeed. I struggled through the left boob with lots of swearing and honestly can't be fucked to continue at the moment. I suspect (hope?) I'll finish it off sometime over the winter. It feels harsh to complain about a pattern that's free but... just... *sigh* I hope I can remember the alterations I made and the ways I fudged it so the fronts match just a little.Ha ha ha ha ha.

Oh and there's my Sunset Scarf:

I work on this now and again when I want to knit something pretty and fun but not difficult with lovely yarn. It's about a foot long now and I don't honestly care when I finish it. 2015 is fine by me.

Sigh...

This makes me sad ...

Particularly the bit

Unmarried and a virgin at 30, Proctor has struggled with her sexual identity since puberty, believing her same-sex thoughts are a sin. Last year, she says, she was masturbating almost daily, sometimes twice a day. To rehabilitate herself, she became an active member of Dirty Girls Ministries and started driving two hours to attend a 12-step program for sex addicts called Heart to Heart.

One day maybe we'll live in a world where people aren't made to feel crushing self revulsion for just being who they are. I live in hope.

Pink and Purple

In August Project Spectrummers are concentrating on pink and purple and I thought I'd gather together some pictures of pink and purple flowers from the year so far. Although I'm not a fan of pink in many situations, the garden is one place I really enjoy it and I'm sure you've figured out that purple is one of my favourite colours (it does battle for the podium with red).

Purple Passion

August is Purple in Project Spectrum land and look what I happen to have on the needles:

Top is a chunky neckwarmer in the merino/alpaca/silk mix I got from Fibre East. The stitch is ric rac rib which is enjoyable and simple enough to be TV knitting.

Below that is my very first lace shawl, Centifolia. The pattern calls for a heavy lace-weight but I'm doing it in my yummy Zauberball sock yarn. I think it's a pretty good pattern for a first lace shawl thanks to all the stockinette stitch in the pattern but blimey it gives me a headache... nearly 400 stitches per row at its widest point. The pattern is floral in its pink incarnation in the magazine (Knit issue 40) but I reckon it will be a bit gothy and batwinglike in this rich purple-black colour so I'm calling it my Purple Pointy Gotherina Shawlette.

Both are for me of course (mwah ha ha) although I have a sneaking suspicion my darling sister will like the neckwarmer despite her general allergy to knitwear. If she does and it doesn't make her itch, I might give it to her. But let's face it I probably won't.

Spotted!

It's a rare and shy creature, previously thought mythical. A Lesser Purple Spangled Skirt.

For an extremely simple skirt with two seams, two darts and a zip, it's been a bit of a challenge and I'm still not entirely happy with the fit at the waist but it looks nice with my blue blouse anyway so overall I'm pleased.

I really enjoyed embellishing it with buttons and topstitching thread. It's lined so the inside is nice and neat, although foolishly I didn't finish the bottom edge of the lining so I've got my fingers crossed it won't start unravelling on me! I didn't bother because I intended to zig-zag all round the hem with decorative thread, but now it's done I think I like it best just the way it is.

Hmm Purse Empty...

... Bag full of Yarn. How did that happen?

Hey Fibre East stole my money! They seem to have left some treats in its place though so maybe they're good fibre fairies. Mara and Ann had similar experiences with the fibre fairies. This was my haul...

Some pure silk dk with no label but it's a stunning colour so we can forgive it:

  A purpley-bluey laceweight from Sparkleduck (love the name! very nice lady too):

Two gorgeous skeins of Teeswater wool from Higher Gills Farm, one four ply in shades reminiscent of stormy skies, and one autumnal Aran weight:

And two skeins of super chunky merino in purple shades from Spinning A Yarn which I balled up in the way home in Mara's car.

It was a great day out with plenty for fibre lovers of all shades. Whether you're someone who takes the raw fleece from the full-of-poo stage right through to beautiful garment or, like me, who prefers someone else to have done all the really hard work and just knit. Spinning, weaving, dyeing, felting, crochet and knitting were all well represented. There was a play tent for spinners, sheep shearing with sheep to pet, displays from various organisations, plenty to buy and yummy food. We'll be going back next year.

P.S Sorry about the lack of cute pictures of sheep. I forgot my camera and the ones I took on Mara's blackberry which she kindly emailed me were all fuzzy (user error not camera error).

Awesome Hat!

Yesterday I finally finished the slouchy hat pattern I test knitted for Mara:

I'm really pleased with how it came out and the yarn (Rowan Cocoon) is perfect for the pattern with its sheen and halo. I think Mara should be really proud of herself - an excellent first pattern. I'm willing to bet there'll be more pattern treasures incoming from her direction... Hurrah!

For a little while this hat felt cursed; I had to restart several times, all due to daft knitter sydrome. First I realised 8mm needles for the body of the hat were too small for my extra tight gauge and had to restart on 9mm. Then I forgot to change up needle size after the rim and had to restart again. Then I missed out a couple of rows between the increases. Then the double pointed needles I ordered (as I was on a cable needle and would need the needles for the crown) were wrong. Twice. But now it's done! Yay!

I was a bit unsure about this style of hat on me but I rather like it. I might knit another less slouchy one for variety as it was a quick and straightforward but fun knit which would certainly bear repeating.

***
Post edited to change Mara's link over to her new blog.

Quietly does it

You may or may not have noticed I've been a bit quiet lately*. This is partly because I've been putting lots of time into my gardening blog Sproutling Writes and reading other gardening blogs and consequently somewhat neglecting the crafty/pagan/life blogs I follow. I expect this is a trend which will continue with me posting here every week or so, and more often over at Sproutling. So I'm not going to disappear completely, worry ye not (see you can stop hyperventilating in fear now) but I will be a little less frequent with my posts. I'll try to make up for it by making my posts noisier or more offensive or something.

All this blog wrangling has eaten into crafty time too and while my skirt is nearly there, and the hat coming along nicely after a couple of false starts (full story of both later) they have definitely slowed down, even beyond my normal tortoise like pace. It's like that episode of Red Dwarf with wierd time pockets. Gardening blog life seems to happen at zip speed. Craft life at snail speed.

Look! A cat!

Arthur says my readership is far too intelligent to be bribed into staying with cat pictures. I would suggest intelligence isn't a defence against cat bribery, especially when the cat in question is our lovely Rincewind.


*I think someone stole my brain. It took me several attempts to spell 'quietly'. Some of which didn't involve putting a 'u' after the 'q'. Damn zombies.

Hat-tastic!

Mara has asked me to test knit her very first pattern! It's a gorgeous slouchy hat with very clever details.

I'm knitting it in Rowan's Cocoon in the emerald colourway. Wierdly I had no suitable chunky stash and was awfully tempted by Fyberspates Scrumptious Chunky. Fyberspates seem to have brought out Scrumptious in pretty much every yarn weight available which is just evil because it means fighting off the Scrumptious temptation every time I start a new project. Evil. However I'm glad I plumped for the Cocoon (which was 10% off at Get Knitted)  as it's a very pretty colour and beautifully soft. It's fluffier than I expected from the photos on the web but has a sheen which will show off Mara's carefully designed stitches nicely.

My knitting mojo had fallen into the summer slump but the hat seems to have brought it back to life ... Yay! Funky hat in chunky designed by my friend! Excuse to buy pretty yarn! Hurrah!

Metallica, Knitting, Sandals and a bunch of Pagans.

Yesterday Mr K and I went crawling through heavy traffic to Ipswich accompanied by the gentle crooning of Metallica:











I was knitting in time to the beat. Rock on baby, keeping the faith! Yeah.


I'm doing something I swore I'd never do; knitting socks for MrK. He has sock wrecking heels made of granite. I swear he's part golem. His heels have +5 versus socks and wear down pumice stones. But he did that whole puppy dog eyed thing because I've never knitted him anything. So they're going to be his walking boot socks, only to be worn with cheap, crappy socks underneath. And I might force him to learn to darn.



 We went to Ipswich to do a bit of shopping and pop in on the Ipswich pagan crew who were having a Pagan Heritage exhibition. It was lovely to see them all, there were some good squishy hugs from my Kindred and others. There were stories from my favourite storyteller too. And cake. Huzzah! Thoroughly good show chaps.


The shopping mostly involved shoes.

Shoe buying is a serious pain in the arse for me. I have size 3 feet. Well, actually I have European size 35 feet, which most UK suppliers would call 2 1/2. Most shoe shops interpretation of 'size 3' is EU36. And don't say 'can't you buy kids' shoes?'. It makes me want to poke people in the eye and tell them to fuck off. How many children's shoes have you seen that a grown woman would want to wear? Um.... yeah, exactly.

Fortunately Clarks 'size 3' is EU 35.5 which can be passable depending on the style. I've had to go on a sandal hunt recently as all my lovely flat sandals have started to give me back/ankle/knee pain. Unfortunately even Clarks often don't fully stock in size 3. As soon as I say 'can I try these in a 3?' I see the assistant get that glazed, apologetic look and they say 'I'll go and look' in a distinctly unhopeful tone of voice. BUT fourth shoe shop, second Clark's store I found the extra-mega-comfy sandals in the foreground. Thank the gods.

The shoes in the background were on a sale rail and begged to be rescued. They'll need insoles if I'm not wearing them with handknit socks, but hey, they're pretty (and a much better ox-blood red in real life than in the pic) and they'll rock with my Lanesplitter skirt once it's finished.

After all that MrK treated me to Pizza Express. He's a star.

Fractured Faces

I've recently been realising that my online presence is distinctly fractured. This might reflect certain aspect of my Real Life (TM), but that's not what I want to address here.

I have my facebook in my real name, with my real life friends and family. Plus a handful of people I barely knew from school. You know how it is.

There's Maytheweed in whose guise I write this blog, inhabit a couple of forums (though somewhat intermittently recently) and I would say is my general 'online persona' in that she's actually most like ME. Not shinied up too much for family or professional reasons. Ok of course I'm writing, therefore I'm 'creating' rather than being entirely spontaneous but I'm not a hugely spontaneous person. Maytheweed is me. Maybe a little braver than me in real life. But still me.

There's another blog I run, which is professional and has an associated (recently acquired) twitter account. It's still me, but professional me. No swearing (ok maybe the occasional 'bloody' or 'bugger' but nothing I wouldn't say in front of my boss), no complaining about my boss, no sweaty Pagan porn. Ok so there's no sweaty Pagan porn here either. But here I could. If I wanted to. It's ok I won't. Probably.

So along comes Pinterest. It looks interesting. But you can only sign in with a Facebook or Twitter account. WTF? WT sweet crispy F? My Facebook is personal, it's the real me, the family and friends edition (no contact details though, I'm not that daft) and so, no offence, I don't want to connect it to my Maytheweed blog. I could create a special Maytheweed facebook I guess. But why? And again I could create a whole seperate Twitter account, even though personally, I really don't see the fucking point of Twitter, except as a promo tool. 140 characters of poorly edited shite mostly, I fear.

So perhaps there are too many different 'mes' online which perhaps is a reflection of too many different 'mes' in Real Life (TM). Oh dear. Existential angst ahoy. Or not existential actually because I'm pretty damn sure I exist. It's just there seem to be more than one of me. Arseburgers. Now I confused.

Have you got more than one online self? More than one real-life self? And how the feck do you reconcile them?

I think I'd better go look for sweaty Pagan porn. It's about all I'm capable of right now.

Picky, picky, picky!

Peter over at Male Pattern Boldness asked what we never skimp or compromise on. He was asking in the context of sewing but I ignored that and answered:

"Bacon. It's got to be dry cured, and smoked back for preference. That and beer. Otherwise, pretty much everything else  "

And then I realised I'm wrong because I'm a picky bitch. I like nice food and nice things, and although it's not true that I won't compromise, I definitely have preferences. Strong preferences. Take incense, which I mentioned a couple of posts back... the only stick incense I've found acceptable is Nag Champa (the real deal, I've had fake once and it was nasty) otherwise it's loose incense, and even then quality can be hugely variable. That 50p baggy of 'Frankincense'? Smelt like burning tyres. And don't get me started on beer.

I am lucky to be able to afford to make these choices. I occasionally have access to great quality meat, properly hung, so the colourless stuff from the supermarket tastes like Quorn by comparison. My Dad's homebrew is the ale of the gods, so the piss they serve in many pubs and bars might as well be lemonade. I've tried high quality Frankincense so the cheap stick incense smells like dangerously nasty dope to me. I am so very lucky (priviledged even) to be in the position where I know the difference. And if it comes down to it, I'd rather have good meat once a month than anemic MRM every day, or one pint of my Dad's homebrew rather than a keg of Stella Artois (aka Piss).


Sewing and knitting are introducing me to new areas of gorgeousness too. Cashmere, silk, merino, baby alpaca... these things were not in my vocabulary a little while ago (ok maybe silk was, but mostly as an unobtainable pretty). Having said that, one of my favourite yarns is Marble Chunky which is 100% acrylic so I'm not a dyed-in-the-wool yarn snob just yet. I have also recently discovered the joys of A Good Bra and Good Shoes and am gradually learning about well-fitting clothes. This could either be a very expensive journey, or one on which I learn to make all my own clothes and exist on a 'capsule wardrobe' (the horror!)

Although I often frame these choices as being about what's so nasty about the 'cheap and nasty' option it's actually about what is good about the option I like. Ok, so Stella = Piss is good for a laugh, but really I don't avoid Stella because of anything at all about Stella. I choose Fursty Ferret, or my Dad's homebrew or Wychcraft because they're really feckin' tasty and I like that in a beer. I chose that alpace/silk mix because it's deliciously soft, not because there's anything wrong with the other options. I like butter because I like butter, not because I dislike margarine (though I do). Other people like marge, Stella and polyester (the freaks). That's cool. More butter, steak and homebrew for me!

Ooh you tease!

You know that purple skirt I was making? Well it's ceased to be disappointing and is going quite well. Slowly, but well.

I love buttons as embellishment. They're somehow spangly and ordinary at the same time.

Hopefully it will be finished by this weekend!

Probably the Best Radio Show Ever

I have to apologise to you if you're not British. I have a horrible feeling you have to exist in this world without the joy that is Radio 4's Infinite Monkey Cage . It's a science discussion programme with extra added comedy and it rocks. They gather together scientists, comedians and scientists who are comedians or comedians trained as scientists and discuss something. This week's topic was the future of space travel and managed to be both profound and hilarious at the same time. If you are British and are even vaguely interested in science and/or have a sense of humour I can't recommend it enough. In fact if you're not British I'd go over there and try to download it just in case I'm wrong.

Green Spiders and Elven Goblets

I've been carting my camera around to catch some greenness for Project Spectrum and came across this little beauty:

Unfortunately it was very difficult to capture and this was the best I could manage. It was a gorgeous clear apple green with a bright red spot on its rear, which didn't come out in the picture. I don't know what kind of spider it is, some kind of crab spider I think.

The Tulip Tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) at my workplace is in flower at the moment:

In Lothlorien Galadriel sips mead from goblets like these flowers. I'm sure of it.

Medieval Fayre-ee Tales

Yesterday afternoon I wandered down to the Medieval Fair we have annually in Colchester, the Oyster Fayre. I forgot my camera, as per bloody usual. It's lots of fun - some serious re-enactmentyness, some random hippyness plus real ale. Can't go wrong really. This year I was by myself and went for just the afternoon so didn't see as much of the puppetry, mumming, falconry, archery etc as some years although I did peruse the stalls fairly thoroughly (no surprise there, then). I had my runes read for a laugh and recieved food for thought.


Pan's Pantry, my favourite incense suppliers were there and I bought some of the aptly named 'God's Smile' incense. I love this stuff. A few years back I discovered the joy of loose incense, thanks to their stall at Oyster Fayre and am now an incense snob as well as a beer snob. To be honest I find the loose incense rather less convenient than sticks, so don't use it as much as I'd like and have a box full of baggies of loose incenses. It's not a small box either. I'd take a picture but frankly it's a bit embarrassing and the box is a pain to move out into the light.

I was pointed to the stall of Viking Kristall by a friend I bumped into who had succumbed to some seriously beautiful viking silver jewellery. I managed to avoid the charms of the silver and fell for the bronze instead:

The spear heads are beautiful, speaking of war and weaponry and yet their leaf shapes recall nature too. The spear is the special weapon of Odin, and yet also the weapon of the common soldier. Cast over the heads of the enemy it began battles in Odin's name. And yet there's the leaf there too. I love that juxtaposition, though I know it was probably not intended by the maker. It feels very Heathen to me.

Dignity? Pff

You can keep your 'feline dignity'. I got a sunbeam on my belly.

Pink! It's someone's new obsession.

Who the fuck though I have no idea. Someone in marketing stuff somewhere. Maybe it's just me - is there a rise in the amount of self-consciously 'girly' crap being sold?

 

Don't get me wrong, there are places I love pink; roses in the garden for example. I just hate it when it, and it's pastelly brethren are used for some kind of sugary sweet pseudo-femininity marketing bullshit:

"Oh yeah like we need to sell more screwdrivers but like I think we need a new market"

"How about marketing them to women I mean women need to mend their cars and put up shelves too now that they've emasculated all the menfolk. Bitches."

"Uh yeah but how do we market to women?"

"Make them in pink!"

Yeah I buy stuff because it's pink and sparkly, not because I need a decent screwdriver. Fuck you screwdriver marketing people. Pink wellington boots is another one that gets me. Ok market pink wellies for those dumb enough to not make the connection pink + mud = unattractive, but when it gets to the point I can't buy any wellies that don't have pink or lilac trim, that's when someone needs to keep away from me and my NOT PINK screwdriver set.

Have you seen the baby-yarn section in a yarn shop recently? Pastels. Wall-to-MFing-wall. What happened to primary colours for the sprogs? And recently I walked round the corner into the kids section of a well-known clothing retailer to find it was all sugary sweet PINK. I may have said a bad word loudly. There was a time I envied kids because they got the coolest clothes in the best colours. Apparently my childhood with it's bright red dungarees, blue t-shirt and yellow wellies was in someway not rigid enough in its training for gender roles. Must be why I'm not a simpering fucking moron then. And why MrK is making the tea, the poor emasculated bastard.

Green Peas

It's June and that means Project Spectrum moves along to green so I pottered out into the garden with my camera and found the very green story of a pea pod...

 First there is a beautiful flower...

... then a beautiful plump green pod...
















... and then some greedy so-and-so scoffs the peas and discards the pod. How rude!















I'm afraid in my garden the peas rarely make it as far as the kitchen, they're munched right there and then in the garden. If MrK is lucky he gets some, but mostly not.

Arthur got a new home ...

... and I got a crafty nook!

All thanks to the joys of modern technology. This cramped corner used to contain my PC and MrK's was roughly where I stood to take the photo. Our poor guests used to crash on a nasty old futon at the other end of the room. Well, now we're a 0 PC/2 laptop household there is no need for permanent desks in an 'office'. Ridcully the cat thinks it's ace that I can update the blog from the sofa, he doesn't care his presence makes occasional typos and misclicks.

MrK and I have spent the day sorting out the junk and hoovering like mad (if dust is mostly skin cells it's a wonder we haven't disappeared). I commandeered the bookcase and dining table and after much rummaging some kind of order was brought to crafty chaos.

You know going through my stuff has made me realise my habit of buying extra bias binding 'in case' and always getting thread to match fabric I'm stashing might need reviewing. Also my yarn and fabric stashes really aren't that big. They're quite restrained really. Look - on the right, my fabric stash only fills one and a half sections of bookcase (ignoring the bags and bags of scraps, fat quarters and old clothes I'd like to hack about). And the two boxes on top are yarn; theyre quite big boxes I'll admit but I've just been to my MIL's place and I reckon she could stuff all the mattresses in their four bedroom house with yarn and still have some left. So two boxes is pretty good.

Oh and I spent almost all of yesterday on my skirt which is going much better now, hurrah!