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.