30 September: Suffolk

OK, the summer's properly over now - we're back from our holiday.

We went here -

And here -

We kept a lookout for Crocs when we were walking round the town and inspecting the old Cattle Market building site, as well as when we were eating ice creams in the Abbey gardens, but didn't see any.

There was a trip to Cambridge to see DD's new house, and while we were there we visited the Botanic Garden, where we saw this lovely tree -

DH said he felt like a child in a sweet shop, there were so many beautiful places to go. We spent a magic afternoon at Dunwich Heath (no, we didn't spot any Dartford Warblers, but we spotted several serious bird-watchers), and we walked in this woodland -


Sutton Hoo was another brilliant place, but unfortunately the burial mounds look like a rather dull bumpy field, and we were too busy looking at the exhibition to take any photos. (We did photograph some interesting Norfolk Horned sheep that were grazing by the burial mounds - well, interesting to us.)

At the end of the week strong winds, heavy rain and high tides caused some problems along the coast, but they also made some dramatic waves -

And there was very little knitting done! Mainly because the project I took with me didn't work out well, and I unravelled it. And now we're back home I want to get on with some spinning.

21 September: There now follows....

A short intermission. Nuts, drinks, and ice creams may be available in the foyer. Some adverts for businesses only five minutes from this theatre may appear somewhat scratchily.

If you must, you can watch bbc3 till I get back - but remember not to post about it unless you want hundreds ( and I mean hundreds) of curious people, possibly many of them unwashed, peering into the recesses of your blog, and moving right along there without even saying "hi".

There may be holiday photos.

Should be back next weekend. Missing you already.....

20 September: Tagged

Granny J from over at Walking Prescott (that's Prescott, Arizona, not John) tagged me a couple of days ago.

The game is to list something relevant to your life for each letter of your middle name, or for those without a middle name, for each letter of a preferred middle name.

I rather enjoy word games, and after some thought, out came the Thesaurus. Well, you know how that diverts the attention for a few hours......

Not wishing to use my middle name, I ran my eye over the family tree, spotting various grandmothers and other foremothers, looking for something

Simple
Apt
Right
And
Honest

It might be

Mostly
Antisocial
Usually
Dodging
Entanglement

or

Always
Guessing
Never
Entirely
Seeing

but it turns out to be

Just
Another
Normal
Eccentric.

18 September: Season of .. inkle?

Well, while all those hundreds of bbc3 people have been tramping through the blog, arriving, peering round, sniffing, and leaving swiftly, life has been going on as normal Chez Stitchwort.

Knitting has continued - you can see a sock for DH in the basket on the table, behind the inkle (no idea why it's called an inkle, it just is) I have been weaving -

Here is a closer photo -

The trouble with this sort of weaving is that it's predictable (you have to choose warps before you start), and rather boring (no surprises as you go along), so I find the appeal limited. Perhaps tablet weaving might be more interesting.

-------------------------------------

We are getting to that time of year when one poem's opening line is done to death.

It would be interesting to think of some alternatives. My suggestion might be -

Season of boots
And laundry hung indoors.

Any more suggestions?

15 September: Fame?

Well, thanks to bbc3, the stats have gone through the roof.

30 hits already this morning before 8 o'clock, and we all know that nobody reads blogs on Saturday. No comments left, though.

Looks like they sniffed out bob the bolder.

(Update at 2.15 p.m. - up to 65 visitors now, leaving no traces though. I would never have thought bbc3's website attracted that many people, and from so far across the globe.)

(Update at 8.45 p.m. - now 117 visitors, and still not a word of comment left. Is that a light carbon footprint?)

13 September: Another little trip

Although I have lived in County Durham for 25 years, there are still local places of interest I have never been to. Two more visited this week in one little outing.

A few miles from Bishop Auckland is the small village of Escomb - its claim to fame is its Saxon church. Well, it's called "Saxon", but the Saxons were never this far north - it was the Angles who settled in this area.

The date of the original building of the church is unknown, but it must have been after the Romans left in about 410 A.D., as the church is made of second-hand (sorry, re-cycled) Roman stone blocks. Other similar churches in Northumbria can be dated to about 675, and Escomb is thought to be earlier than that.

This is a picture of the outside -


The porch, added in the 12th century, has a 17th century sundial above the door, while on the wall of the church, just above the apex of the porch gable end in the photo, is an Anglo-Saxon sundial; there is a snake decoration above it, and it is thought to be the oldest sundial in the country.

The small windows are original, with larger ones being added in the 13th century and the late 18th/early 19th century. Some of the stones in the walls have Roman inscriptions on them, and high on the North wall is a small raised rosette, which is thought to be a pre-Christian sacrificial stone.

Inside, the walls are mostly whitewashed, though a patch high on one wall shows traces of very old painting. There is also part of a painted design on the underside of the chancel arch, perhaps from the 12th century. The chancel arch itself may well be a complete Roman arch.

Behind the altar is a cross which may be older than the church.


In the wall to one side of the altar is a medieval piscina, and at the west end of the church is a font at least 700 years old, and probably more. Both these stone vessels used to drain into the floor of the church, to prevent the holy water from being stolen and used for witchcraft!

When I arrived, the church was locked, and as I was looking round the circular churchyard - indicative of Celtic Christianity - a lady arrived to sweep and dust (as a notice on the gate tells the visitor, the key can be obtained from her house if the church is locked). She seemed pleased to show off the details of the church, including pointing out where the bats roost in the roof and where the vicar had cemented cobbles into the floor to prevent any more being stolen.

It's a lovely simple little place, and the circular churchyard, full of worn and tilting headstones and tall trees, was peaceful.

------------------------------

As the stones to build the church had come from the Roman fort of Vinovia at Binchester, just a few miles away on the other side of the River Wear, it seemed a good idea to go and have a look round that too.

Approached up a steep and narrow lane, and through the grounds of a boarded up derelict nursing home (which had a long previous history), the site is small and low-key. There's no cafe, but a small car park, a Portaloo, and a bright flowerbed lead you to the hut where a ticket is obtained for a very modest £1 (that's the OAP price - adults pay £2.25).

The baths are supposed to be the best preserved military baths in the country, and are protected from the elements by a large barn . This is a view of the main warm room -

The floor is original Roman concrete, and the lower level, where the hot air circulated, is all original too. The figure in the corner startled me, but he's not original, just a plaster replica.

The layout is easy to see, with warm and hot rooms and cold plunge baths. To one side is another barn set up as a school study area - I did not take advantage of the box of clothes marked "dressing up".

Only a very small part of the fort has been excavated, and as you stand on the boardwalk you can clearly see how the commandant's quarters with the bath-house stood right next to the road -

This is part of the Roman Dere Street, which ran from York to Scotland - on the left is the gutter and on the right are kerb stones. You could almost hear the rattle of cart wheels.

The outline of the ramparts is still visible in the neighbouring field, now the home of some handsome cattle and big fine sheep. Bucolic now, but once a busy army base.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

11 September: Cleanliness is next to something or other

Last night there was an interesting programme on TV (for a change), called "How dirty can I get?"

For those of you who dashed into the kitchen straight after Nigella's bit, in order to curry scallops (oh dear, scallops need to be ordered a week in advance), mash some beans in garlic (can't have food tasting of itself when there's coriander or garlic about), or whip up a melted marshmallow (yuk) - it involved a woman, and a peripheral man, not washing themselves or their clothes for 6 weeks.

Partly triggered by concern over the number of chemicals in washing products and cosmetics, the scheme was rather a confusion between basic washing and applying cosmetics and lotions for other purposes. One of the aims was to see if her hair would "self clean" after a few weeks, and to illustrate that she went to visit Matthew Parris, who says he hasn't washed his hair for years. Actually I would suspect that he washes it with water, but not with shampoo, which is quite a different matter, but it wasn't specified. When my hair was really short, it was washed with water only, and that was fine.

There was lots of armpit sniffing, and extremely graphic problems with the man's underparts, plus visits to people living in tents in the woods (and of course doing what bears do in the woods - in the woods), and the production of a "perfume" to match her body odour; amusingly, this was taken to be inspected by a number of perfume experts, of whom only one correctly identified it.

One person in a laboratory stated that breast cancer is much more often found in the area near the armpit, and chemicals in deodorants were suspected as the cause. There were allegations about ingredients in many skin creams and cosmetics, and the 'cocktail effect' of them. This was all very unsettling or alarmist, depending on your point of view - but who would pay for research to find out?

The results of the whole experiment were not very clearly stated, but it seemed that neither participant had an unusually high number of bacteria on their skin. But the woman said that she felt healthier - her skin certainly looked better than at the start.

But there's a big difference between basic hygiene and the use of oceans of lotions.

Keeping your body, teeth, clothes, and home fairly clean (without getting obsessive about it) seems a sensible thing to do, but using dozens of preparations on your skin seems like asking for trouble. There has never seemed to be any point in scrupulously removing all trace of natural oil from your skin, then putting some greasy artificial stuff back on it. You may gather that I am not a fan of face creams or cosmetics - they make me want to wash.

Apropos washing, though - at 7 a.m. on Sunday morning, one of our neighbours was power-washing his block paved drive. He appeared to be doing it all day, and was still out there with the gear in the evening. As this is the man who washes his cars very thoroughly every weekend at least once, perhaps it wasn't surprising. Well, everyone needs a hobby, and at least it gets him out of the house, and away from her indoors. Anyway, now they are parking the cars on the pavement, presumably so as not to get the nice clean drive dirty.

Oh, and on the news, Our Leader seemed to want us to believe that pay rises to public servants are the cause of inflation - it has nothing to do with big pay rises or gigantic bonuses in the private sector.

Is is me?

9 September: Catching up

StatCounter tells me that visitor numbers have dropped - apart from those perennial searches for Fred Knittle and string bag patterns.

So, while everyone else is away, here are some fresh delights, just for you.

The purple jersey (wonderful phrase for the Middlesbrough or Liverpool accents) is finished, though it wasn't dry for the knitting and spinning workshop on Saturday. Here's a picture -

And a close up of the neck - a few rows of garter stitch instead of the hood - and the button fastening. There was just one orphan button in the box that was the right size and colour.

The workshop was exhausting, and I came home with a sore throat. A couple of participants learnt new things, but perhaps not as much as I did.

And I haven't yet mentioned the new CD from the Young@Heart Chorus; it's called mostly live, and it's available for very reasonable cost from www.youngatheartchorus.com. Among the tracks are a studio version of Fix You by Fred Knittle, and excellent versions of Every Breath You Take, Forever Young, Ruby Tuesday, and, my current favourite (sorry, Fred) - Jealous Guy; I like this version better than any other I've heard.

There, that should give the stats a bit of a boost.

4 September: Hamsterley Forest

We took our cameras for a walk in Hamsterley Forest. We saw lots of wood ant nests, and a spider's funnel web, as well as deer footprints (that probably isn't the correct technical term) in the mud. There was a bit of this deciduous woodland -


And some of this conifer plantation -

And lots of bilberries and bracken along paths like this -

And even one of these -

But there were lots and lots of flowers, and most of them were in pink-to-purple shades. There were heather, knapweed, rosebay willowherb, burdock, thistles, and foxgloves. We also saw a few ox eye daisies, buttercups, ragwort, some harebells and silverweed, a patch of eyebright, and a single viper's bugloss (isn't that such a wonderful name!).

There was also a small area of these orchids - probably common spotted -

And as the camera was focussed on this scabious, a bee arrived -


Some red clover had large flowers -

And there were some umbellifers with intact seedheads -

We had a lovely walk, and were home in time for tea.

2 September: Work in progress

I was a bit shocked to see Jane's photo of her progress on the top-down hoodie. I hadn't realised the true colour of her wool! So mine is much more of a copy-cat than I ever intended; please take it as a case of "imitation is the sincerest from of flattery".

Here it is so far, firstly indoors -

And out on the bench -

The wool is 2 strands together, so I have been able to blur the joins of the different balls a bit by alternating the threads; the pinker stuff is towards the top, and the darker towards the hem. The sleeves may get browner towards the cuffs. And it's not going to have a hood, probably just a bit of garter stitch round the neck.

Even though I swatched, the size is not quite as expected - it has worked up smaller. Perhaps it will "relax" (i.e. stretch a bit) when blocked. Perhaps I should swatch more carefully.

30 August: Misplaced shopping

Something just reminded me that I once went into a store to buy a pair of socks, and came out having bought a sofa.

Have you ever made a diverted purchase?

28 August: Technology and BFL

Over the weekend I had only limited access to the computer, as DH was playing with his new family history programme. He followed the instructions to transfer information to his iPod, and failed. I had a go, following the instructions very carefully, and failed. There had to be a way to do it, and after a lot of mucking about, he found it; but it was nothing like the directions in the manual - actually much easier!

Anyway, back to the wool. Last week I dyed some Blue Faced Leicester yarn that I had spun earlier. The aim was to get purple skeins, with a variety of shades within the purple. So I used purple and lavender dyes, plus several blues and reds, using slightly different proportions in each mixture, and using different mixtures on each skein. Some skeins were steamed, and some were done in the microwave. Here they are cooling off.

They took ages to dry, and then they were twisted into tidy hanks. They looked good laid out on the kitchen table.

They looked good out on the garden bench.


And they looked good wound into balls.

I saw an interesting jersey pattern on another blog, so I got a copy. Swatching revealed that I had one 80 cm circular needle in the size required, so a swift dash to the shops for another , and I was ready to start knitting.

It's a top-down pattern, something I've never tried before, but it's really easy to follow, and the wool is knitting up beautifully. There was a moment of panic when I thought that I might not have enough balls of wool, as the first two were going down very rapidly, so I hastily hunted out some more BFL, some of it white and some of it oatmeal coloured, and dyed 5 more skeins, which came out slightly different again. As I am using two threads together, I can switch from one ball to another and blend the different shades together.

It is very exciting seeing the colours blend together, and I spent much of yesterday working on it. It may be possible to finish it this week, which would be handy, as I can then concentrate on preparing for a workshop I am supposed to be leading at the end of next week. I've never done anything like that before, so I hope expectations will not be high. After all, I'm not an expert knitter, only an explorer knitter.

24 August: Raby Castle (and socks)

Yesterday was a lovely day, so I had a little trip out. Raby Castle is not far away, and I have never been to the castle or the gardens. Sadly, the kiosk attendant didn't challenge my request for an OAP ticket.

In fact, the gardens were pleasant, but a little bit dull. This was the fanciest part, with a view across the little valley to the castle.


The deer in the park were obligingly posing for photographs. The wall in the background of this picture is the outside of the gardens, and there are wonderful fruit trees trained on it, all loaded with pears and apples.


Huge old trees stand in the park - this chestnut has very textured bark.


Part of the moat has water, fed by a small stream. Plenty of ducks live on it, and the deer and cattle trample parts of the bank when they go to drink. I didn't photograph the cattle, as they were not only enormous, but also horned, and were lying quietly in the sunshine - no need to upset them.


There was an extra charge to go into the castle, and a look at the guide book in the gift shop convinced me that I didn't want to go in. Visitors were strolling about on the south-facing terrace which overlooks the lake , and round the west facing entrance to the inner courtyard - I waited till they had moved on before I took this picture from across the moat -

It would perhaps have been more enjoyable in company, although most of the couples I saw there were sitting dourly reading the paper (some of them just in the car park!). I took my own picnic, as had most other people, although the stables tea-room seemed to be doing a good trade. The shop had the usual selection of fancy key-fobs, expensive mugs, and strange music CDs. For a change, the toilets were unvisited, but I did have a look round the adventure playground, partly to see if the grandchildren might enjoy it on a future visit, and partly to see if there were any swings I could play on. No swings, and the death slide was in use.

The latest pair of socks - yes, I'm bored of socks, but there was this ball of Socka wool I bought at the Woolfest, which needed to be knitted up. Lovely subtle colours, sufficiently subdued for DH. Wonder how he got that scrape on his shin?

20 August: Weekend playtime

Read 4 weather forecasts and get 4 different stories. Look out of the window and you do just as well as the Met. Office. Long ago and far away I worked at the Met. Office for a few months, but that's another story.

Anyway, on Saturday we went for a walk that had been postponed from earlier because of a small optical disaster - DH's only pair of specs disintegrated and he had no spare pair. Now equipped with 2 new pairs of specs, he was ready for an expedition. As the rain was coming from the west, we went east, and managed to have our walk mainly in the dry.

We chose to re-visit one of the old railway lines which is now a footpath and cycle way. Last time we were there we met nobody. This time it was quite busy, with cyclists, walkers and several joggers.

After passing through pleasant woodland, far too gloomy to photograph on a cloudy day, we came to the new(ish) bridge over the A689.


A car park has been made near this bridge, and there is access to different routes.


A bit further along we sat on a couple of handy rocks and ate our sandwiches. As the rain seemed to be approaching, we started back, but by the time we'd got our hats and hoods in place, it stopped again. Didn't even need to resort to the magic overtrousers!

And so we returned to the old station, now a visitor centre and tea-room. From being an old railway line walk, this is now a major cycle route, so the car park has been transformed into a "Country Park", an old railway carriage has been converted into a classroom, and there is even a planetarium - we didn't investigate that, as it seemed to be closed.


Then on Sunday it rained all day.

So I got out the dyes and set to work on the 14 skeins of Blue Faced Leicester wool that I have spun recently. Instead of dyeing each skein a completely different colour, this time the aim was to have a range of purple colours. After steaming one batch on the cooker and putting a second batch over the pan, I decided to do the remainder in the microwave. Then I let everything cool down thoroughly before rinsing, then washing and rinsing again.

Previous dyeing efforts have turned out not to be colour-fast, with lots of dye washing out. In an attempt to improve this with the latest lot, all skeins were soaked in vinegar water before dyeing. And although the rinse water was clear at the end of the exercise, the newspaper on the floor where they are hanging up to dry in the conservatory has several coloured marks on it. Ah well, now I have to wait until the skeins dry. A photo may follow.

17 August: The cloak of invisibility - and a string bag

They say that old women become invisible; it obviously extends to their cars.

While going to this morning's selected supermarket, a drive of perhaps 10 minutes at 50 to 60 m.p.h., great big silver 4x4s rolled gently and slowly out in front of me, then failed to get a move on, TWICE.

Fortunately, not only are my brakes good, I am a much better driver than either of these two cretins, and I didn't crash into them, flash my lights, or even swear (at least aloud).

Moving on, I'm afraid back to the string bags, here is the Mark 3 version -


This one is knitted from dishcloth cotton, in garter stitch, every 3rd row with the yarn wrapped twice around the needle, the extra turn being dropped on the next row. Here's a close up -


It would have been better knitted in the round, to avoid a seam affecting the stretchiness of the fabric. A row of bigger holes round the top for the drawstrings would be an improvement too.

For other string bags, click on the "string bag" label at the bottom of the post, or in the sidebar. Let me know about your own string bags.

15 August: Treasure trove

Some time ago, I was unable to resist this book in the local Oxfam bookshop.


There is no date of publication in it, though it must be 1920s, judging from the shape of the lass who gets measured -


But really I bought it because you never know when you might need a pattern for combination undergarments or directoire knickers.

13 August: Another one finished

The little character I've been knitting is finished. And here it is, relaxing in the garden -

And here with one I made earlier, whose name is Jo Jaffa.

You will observe that the feet are properly knitted socks, the mouth is made from a sock heel shaping, the top of the head is shaped as a sock toe would be, the eyes are buttons, and the hands are properly constructed glove/mittens. Boredom set in after the first one, and as the eyes aren't identical either, why should the hands match?

But the poor creature doesn't yet have a name to call its own. (There is already a doll in the house called "Who Shall Remain Nameless".)

It needs to be something gender neutral - ideas please.....

11 August: Photos as promised

You probably don't really need to see knitted dishcloths, but here are the knitted boxes that have been felted in the washing machine -

The two dark ones, top right, are a nesting pair. So far I haven't made the smallest size, as the middle size, about 4.5 inches square, seems to be the most useful. (Very Buddhist.) They are posing for their photo-call on the garden bench, as the two at the front were still damp from the wash.

And here is part of the knitted creature - a section of the body in the stripe pattern described yesterday. Well, actually, not quite in the pattern described, as it went a bit haywire with the balls of variegated wool being close in some colours. So let's just call it a random stripe pattern now, eh?


This stripe with slip stitch looks as if it might be promising for socks, should any more be required. The sock drawer is fairly full at present, and the low boredom threshold has been passed as far as socks are concerned for the time being.

Perhaps a Mark 3 string bag?

10 August: New books

This week I have been mostly knitting dishcloths.

On account of having recently bought "Mason Dixon Knitting"; also been galloping through some rather thick stuff I spun ages ago, knitting boxes to felt in the washing machine.

Then when I was in Durham last Saturday I bought "Stupid Sock Creatures" - how to make odd looking creatures out of old socks. Why wait for old socks? Why not start from scratch and knit the shape you want to start with?

So today there has been much fiddling about with scraps of wool, small-scale knitting in the round, and rather a lot of cursing and unravelling.

Perhaps I shouldn't have even tried merging two tubes of knitting together into one when one tube had the start of a complicated intarsia design in it - a first attempt at intarsia, too. I still don't quite understand how I made a Mobius loop out of it .....

Anyway, having abandoned the intarsia for the time being, in its place, just beyond the now smooth join of the two tubes, is a four-colour, one row stripe pattern that goes A B C A D B A C D A B C etc, at the same time slipping every 7th stitch in an on-going fashion up the tube.

Of course you can all picture that precisely from my description.

I'll try and photograph it tomorrow.

7 August: Home life, continued

We could do with some rain.

No, really, the ground here is baked hard and solid. So of course did I decided to weed on Sunday for the first time for months. (My secret is to fill the borders with so many plants that there isn't any room for the weeds - and I have kept on top of weeds in previous years, and it does reduce the seeding.)

Since I removed an under-performing rose, lacerating my hands in the fashion usual whenever I go near a rose, the other plants in that bit of border have done much better, particularly these - dark-leaved hebe and ligularia -


Love that colour combination!

There was no space to plant out sweet peas with sticks, so they got tucked into odd spots where I hoped they would climb up nearby plants. Now there are a few of them peeping out here and there.


And here's another in my occasional *underfoot* series - a couple of self-sown nasturtiums growing in the leaf litter, with added rose petals.


And just in case you thought I'd been neglecting the knitting, here's the latest in the sock saga -


The hunt continues for the perfect fibre for hand-spun sock yarn. This is Blue Faced Leicester blended with tencel; both fibres dyed before carding together for spinning. I have them on at the moment (it's a bit what they call fresher today), and will see how they wash and wear. The previous BFL and soy mix seems to be wearing better than the shetland and bamboo, but this blend might be good.