A Tale of Two Cowls

No prizes for guessing what this post will be about

I have a bad habit of knitting items that are completely inappropriate for the season I’m in. Last year in May I knitted a hooded scarf out of Rowan Cocoon. So this year, to give myself a break from all the stuff I’m working on which is all pretty much sock weight yarn, I thought it might be nice to knit a couple of things from bulky yarn.

First up, is the Cowl of Sheepy Goodness.

This loosely based on the GAP-tastic Cowl pattern and I was inspired to knit it by seeing a friend’s actual GAP cowl which looked very warm and snuggly.

I bought three balls of Rowan Purelife Sheepbreeds Chunky in this lovely natural BFL shade – which has the most awesome sheepy smell. I ended up only using two balls as I thought it would block to be wide enough – unfortunately it’s not quite worked out that way.

Annoyingly, the two balls have resulted in a cowl that weighs only 189g – not 200g – bit annoying to pay £8 a ball for yarn that turns out to be underweight – shame on you Rowan! I’m also not too happy with it generally as an FO. I wish I used a smaller needle as I’m not a fan of the overall gauge and handle of the FO. I do also wish I’d used more yarn to make it a bit wider.

When doubled up though it’s nice and warm:

Just strange as I thought it’s one that would work quite well on me, but I honestly don’t think it suits me too much. Very odd. Need to decide what to do with it. Would anyone be interested in a trade for some yarn?

Anyhoooo – next up is my Happy Solitude Cowl:

I love this project – it’s a Veera Valimaki (she of Stripe Study and Colour Affection fame) pattern – the first of hers that I’ve knitted and hopefully not the last. It’s a super deep and snuggly cowl and with the buttons it’s quite versatile.

Just a word on the buttons before we go further. I’ve used some awesome Injabulo buttons which I think work perfectly. As usual, I was paralysed with indecision when it came to picking them, so many thanks to the lovely Gwen at Baa Ram Ewe who selected them for me.

They also help make the project quite unisex, I think – which is just as well as I had to get Trev to pose for most of the pictures so I could get the shots I want

Let’s start off with a moody shot:

Some more pics:

It’s a lovely chunky cabled pattern that’s fully reversible. I did make mine a teeny bit longer – a length of 23″ instead of 19″ before doing the end rows of garter stitch. This meant I did an additional 2 repeats of the short rows and another 8 rows in pattern to make up the extra length.

It can be a bit of a challenging pattern to keep track of – as the short rows mean you’re often working different pattern rows on each cabled section. Here are my notes from Rav on how to keep track:

To keep track as I knitted, I kept a piece of paper by me on which I drew three columns and each column referred to one of the cables.

Once you start to do the short rows, it can be quite hard to keep track without writing it down. My columns looked a bit like this:

29 5 29
30 6 30
31 7 31
32 8 32

When doing the short rows, after I’ve done one side and have made my way to the other side, it would be like this:

^ ^ 25
^ ^ 26

to:

^ ^ 25
^ ^ 26
^ 3 27

to:

25 ^ 25
^ ^ 26
^ 3 27

Moving to:

25 ^ 25
26 ^ 26
27 3 27
28 4 28

by the end of the short row repeat.

I hope that makes sense! As you start to do it, I promise it works out – just make sure you have pen and paper handy to keep track.

So very pleased with this one – just not so much with the other, which is disappointing. I love the way I can properly snuggle inside this big grey one and almost disappear inside it if I like. Going to be great for winter. The pics don’t really show the colour properly – it’s actually a very dark grey – not the light grey-brown it looks like.

But really nice to finish something – feels like ages since I last did and this is meant to be a blog about knitting after all!

Our Back Yard

I wrote last August about some work that we’d done to put a little herb garden in the shared communal space at the front of the house together with putting a few bits in the yard to add a bit of colour. Our little herb garden looked like this:

Unfortunately, due to the lack of light that the bed received and the massive amount of rain we’ve had, pretty much everything out the front died. I even managed to pretty much kill the mint (although looking at the roots in the pot you could see it was getting ready to make a comeback) which is a bit of an achievement.

So we wandered over to the local nursery to buy some replacements and busied ourselves at the weekend getting everything settled in. We also took advantage of a special deal at Aldi and bought a Japanese Acer that they had on offer for a tenner. Bargain!

Here’s what our back yard looked like when we first moved in:

And here’s what it looks like now – like someone cares about it!

The big ceramic pots and bench are on permanent loan from my parents, but I think they work pretty well. But we’ve got plenty going on now…

There’s two different types of lavender – Hidcote and French (stoechas):

We had these items in the little boxes from last year, but they’re really flourishing now:

Same for last year’s ivy:

New old-fashioned mint – hopefully I won’t completely massacre this one:

A nice bushy rosemary plant:

A nice little window-box with some summery/mediterranean herbs – Oregano, chives, flat-leaved parsley and curly-leaved parsley:

This is the only thing that survived from out the front – the bay plant. It’s looking a bit sad but hopefully some sunshine and warmth will fix it up:

Sage and oregano:

We’re going to give coriander a go:

The chilli plant Ali gave us is doing well – we’ve got three little chillies going on:

And our bargain Aldi acer:

Trev then got behind the camera and took a few little arty shots:

Really looking forward to seeing how everything does in our little sun-trap of a yard. Fingers crossed we’ll end up with some good herbage going on. Most things are already looking a little happier with some good compost, a watering and some feed. It was great fun to properly get our hands dirty and tidy things up. Really enjoyed it. Looking forward to getting more done on the allotment too and getting stuck in here. If I manage to keep this lot alive, then I may potentially have inherited my family’s green fingers after all.

Sir Gerrington

Time to introduce you to another new family member!

We finally took the plunge and got ourselves another cat. After Kooky died in January it just didn’t feel the same without a cat in the house. We contacted a locate cat charity, had the home visit done and had a look at some of the kitties looking for new homes.

We saw an older male cat, possibly around 7 or 8 who had lived outside all his life. He was currently sheltering in a garden, in some kennels provided by the cat charity, but still living outside on a combination of his wits and food being provided by the lady who owned the garden.

We went to visit this cat – sat with him outside for a couple of hours and he seemed to like us. Less than a week later, he came to live with us. I present to you, Gerry:

He’s a little white and ginger cat – a bit skinny, but we’re hoping we can fatten him up a bit with some soft living and good food. You get a little clue from the picture but something’s a bit odd with his mouth – he’s lost a lot of teeth during the course of his life and has a weird little lopsided smile.

He’s already started to learn where the sunny spots in the house are:

He also loves to snuggle:

The first night he really struggled to settle and went around meowing constantly – wanting reassurance and company. Eventually he decided he was ready to lie down and sleep – on my side. He drifted off with his paws and head nestled by my neck, snoring softly. The second and third nights he got quieter and quieter and he’s now as silent as a mouse during the nights – snoozing normally on one of us.

He’s also taken well to learning how to use the litter tray. First couple of days weren’t great and we still have the odd accident, but he’s not doing badly. Where I’d love to see him to better is for him to decide that his scratching posts are preferable to my furniture and carpets, but you can’t have everything right?

It’s been so lovely to see him settle and and I can’t wait to see how he looks in a few more weeks once he’s a bit more settled!

Sebastian Update

Well it’s been almost a month since we bought little Sebastian home, so I thought I’d give a little bit of an update on him!

He’s doing well – growing a bit and is now nicely settled in to his case, which we recently took the opportunity to tart up a bit!

The cage originally looked a bit like this:

Bit boring – got some good tubes etc going on, but not a whole lot.

Now…

Since he doesn’t use the house to sleep in (he makes a bed for himself under the platform behind the pipe in the corner, and stores food in the other corner) we decided to move the house and put some more stuff up there for him to play with and eat. He particularly seems to enjoy that long hay roll and often hides in there to eat snacks.

There’s also a crazy hanging thing that features nuts and wood… he climbs up this thing and dangles from the nuts with his teeth… he’s a bit mad. Then we have the little folding sticks, which at the moment are a little bridge for him to climb on or hide under and finally a teeny little rush ball for him to push around and nibble.

So hopefully lots to keep his interest and to keep his teeth under control.

Little dude is so cute – still doesn’t like being handled too much, but we’re making good progress and he’s more comfortable with being stroked etc now which is good. I wonder if getting him at a slightly older age is making it a bit harder for him to socialise? Poor dude.

But so cute!

Here’s a great picture of him stuffing his face:

Nice to have a hamster in the house again

Allotment

On Saturday while I was teaching my learn to spindle spin class (5 newbies aspinnerated, yay!) Trev wandered off to the allotment treasurer’s house, paid our rent for the year and collected our key. So yesterday we took the short walk over to our allotment and started trying to wrap our head around the scale of what is ahead of us. It’s funny how you wait for one for two years and then when you get it, you feel totally unprepared!

I give you, our own little 75 square yards:

And here’s the view from the top, looking down:

You can see that it’s not completely overgrown, although it’s not great. We started to pick up some of the bits of rubbish that were just laying about and placing them in that big old plastic tub thing, which we may end up using as some sort of water storage unit. I’m amazed at some of the stuff on there… I mean seriously, what sort of numpty puts polystyrene in the ground???

So seeing it like that, makes it a little overwhelming! Having said that, Trev is keen to get cracking on turning it to usable space. Our current plan is to mark out where we want our beds to be, and start digging those over – removing any weeds and composting them. While we will be a little limited on what we can plan this year, we can at least set all of the fruit and permanent items, e.g. asparagus, giving us a little bit of a headstart on next year.

We’re also trying to plan what size shed to get. We’re resigned to not having room for a greenhouse (we’ll get a teeny one and keep it in the back yard), so a shed is super important, along with a bit of guttering to collect water so we don’t have to make endless trips to the taps and back.

Fingers crossed today we’ll spend finalising our plan and then during the week when I’m back at work Trev can get digging. It is become clear that not having a car might be a bit of a pain… makes transporting things like compost, or material to build our beds with a bit of a challenge. My Dad has already volunteered to come up for shed-building weekend, but that’s going to be a little way off at the moment!

It’s exciting!

Making Monday – Maritime

For the first time in YONKS I have a Making Monday post to share. Go me!

For the first time in even longer than that, I actually started and finished a spinning project in less than a month – despite ignoring it for a good two weeks at least. Check me out. Back on a semi-recent post I showed you my progress on the May fibre club shipment from The Thylacine – grey Corriedale in a colour called Maritime:

I’d spun up a good two thirds in no time at all and was ready to start on the final third:

Of course, the final third took forever for some unknown reason and I didn’t start plying until the day before yesterday. Once I got started and got into a rhythm, it went quickly as it always does. A good bath and reskeining later, we’ve ended up with:

My camera hates taking pictures of blues and strong greens, but I think the above is fairly accurate. I was aiming for somewhere between a DK and aran weight and have hit that spot on, with a yarn of about 9-10 WPI, that I think will knit up as a aran weight due to the density. (Unless I’m spinning supported or using long draw, my yarn is always much denser than commercial.)

Got a total of 95g worth of yarn, and somewhere around 155 yards in total.

With having spun this up as a fractal three ply, I’m hoping it will softly stripe when knitted up. At the moment thinking handwarmers/fingerless gloves in a very simple/plain pattern to let the yarn shine. Here’s just a quick note on how I separated the fibre for a fractal 3 ply:

For a 3 ply, this involves splitting the top into thirds (I split mine into three horizontal thirds, as the colour repeats allowed me to do this evenly). I kept one third as is, split one into two pieces lengthwise and the third into four pieces lengthwise.

I won’t actually know until I knit it up whether my fractal spin has been successful, but I guess it will be a nice surprise when I eventually get around to it! I’m always surprised too at how different the finished yarn looks – overall it feels a lot darker to me than the original fibre did – with a lot less grey visible, but that’ll work well for whatever I make for Trev with it.

What are you making this Monday?

Biubiu Spring/Summer Review

The most awesome of clothing sites for the larger busted lady, Biubiu recently started launching their new spring/summer collection. This is being brought out with several items at a time with more still being released as the weeks go by. Being the Biubiu fiend I am however, I couldn’t wait for it all to come out before choosing six items to snap up to come up and live with me.

A couple of people who know me are surprised by a few items in my selection – because I have gone for PRINTS. Of course there’s still some solid tops in dark, very Azzy-approved colours, but there are some shockers in here.

Of my six items, four were tops and two were dresses. With them all being made from stretchy fabrics, I went for the size 40 B/BB – which is the equivalent of a size 12 waist but with extra room for the bust.

These first three tops were also reviewed by the lovely Sophia Jenner on a recent blog post and particularly for the item first up, helped me make the decision to buy as we seem to share similar colouring and a not too-dissimilar shape.

Blue Lagoon:

This is a lovely sort of tie-dye floral print top. Like Sophia, I found the fit on this to be a little bit tighter than the Porto tops I own, but nothing too scandalous. I wore it for my last day at work last week and got a number of compliments, which was nice. Definitely one of my favourite tops – the sleeve cuffs are very slightly elasticated to help them stay in place, which I thought I’d find annoying but actually quite like.

Gotham City:

A top like this is a great compromise for me. YES it’s black, but it’s also a print. So I get the chance to be a bit more interesting without feeling too flamboyant. This is probably my favourite of the tops – I love the neckline – it’s not too low so it’s nice and modest and great for work/going out. This also has the same elasticated cuff thing going on and I find the V shape under the bust to be very flattering.

I actually wore this top yesterday to a conference where I was presenting – there’s a couple of hilarious pictures of me looking SUPER SERIOUS as we start presenting:

I’m pleased to say I got more compliments on my outfit than I did on my presentation – but that doesn’t bother me. This top looked awesome teamed with a trouser suit but would be equally at home with jeans.

Midnight Infinity:

Now on to some items that resemble wardrobe staples for me! Buying this top in the navy as well as the black has made me realise that I should wear more navy and dark blues. They’re not as severe on me as black can be, but still tend to give a flattering look.

These tops are very similar in style to the Porto, but I love the ruching that they feature – quite flattering on those of us with less than perfect stomachs…

(Please excuse the back fat!)

Onyxs Infinity:

Same again, but black. Even WORSE back fat here… I do apologise!

Messina Dress:

And now on to dresses. The two I’ve picked are nice and long (so I don’t have to bare my knees, yay!) and will hopefully get lots of wear this summer with tights and nice flat shoes. The Messina is a lovely navy dress with dots galore. It also has a little waist tie that I’ve not included here as one of the little loops on the side of my dress is broken – plus I prefer it without the band anyway! The neckline here is lovely and modest – no concerns about any unwanted cleavage flashing.

Valparaiso Dress:

Last and by no means least, my favourite of the lot. This dress has a lovely length, long sleeves and a nice band under the bust to help highlight the waist. I know the print looks sightly lopsided in my pictures, but that’s definitely user error rather than a problem with the dress itself:

The neckline on this one is a bit more risque, but can easily be worn with a light cami underneath. I do adore the print though – the combinations of blues (very me) and yellows (very not me) on the black background I think works really well and I’m looking forward to being able to wear this one out and about more.

So there we have it! That’s six items from the new collection reviewed. I’ve still got about another six that I’d like to get (a selection of newly released tops and some fitted dresses) and hopefully I’ll be able to order those before long and provide another update.

Just thought I’d share a quick note on cost as well. Another great perk of Biubiu is the pricing, which I think is very reasonable. The Gotham City and Blue Lagoon tops were £21 each, the Infinity tops £26 each. The Messina dress was also only £26 and Valparaiso a touch over £31. Considering what I’d pay on the high street for similar items that wouldn’t fit as well, I’m really pleased.

The quality is excellent and the only potential negative point is the cost of shipping – which was £18 for this many items. But that’s not Biubiu’s fault and their being based in Poland means there are no customs fees to pay for anyone living in the UK. So in the end I think it all evens out.

Please go and check them out! You’ll love them

P.S. If you go and like their Facebook page, you can get a 5% discount on your order!