Photos of our progress

Sian invented a hat back in the early days: And fellow Pirate John turned up one day with a beautiful chunky black scarf he made..

This was back when the Knitting Society was still just a hope and a dream but young Hanna is wearing the first wearables I made- red fingerless gloves in lovely soft kimono silk (which i thought a disgracefully misleading name cause it was only 5% silk huh) She had apparantly discovered another wardrobe leading into Narnia and was shivering in there despite the scorching weather..










I discovered I have a delicious wool shop near me called Wool- and as you can see I was very happy. Aileen the owner has a good ebay shop too- you can buy things on auction and i could pick them up at her shop for you to save on p&p. The shop has knitting workshops too- to make christmas decorations and such.




Progress is no longer being made on my
entrelac scarf but it was growing impressively
for a while:

Hippy shopping..

www.hippyshopper.tv is the green equivalent to my gadget fix shinyshiny.tv and it showed me two super cool things today. One was a new site that's being launched www.swapaskill.com which I see as part of how the internet is helping a whole self-reliance, and old-fashioned craft/ skill, revolution- I'm not sure on how it will all work but basically people will barter their skills so we won't have to call an extortionate plumber or IT man, but maybe will find065 someone a couple of streets down who'll do it in exchange for Spanish lessons.. It sounds all lovely and communal as opposed to our spendthrift selfish world.

I didn't hear Ben Bradshaw tell everyone to rip off supermarket excess packaging at the till but it sounds like a hilarious and great idea- very guerilla. And the guy is the Environment Secretary so you couldn't be thrown out- but the embarrassment of annoying people might be harsh enough as this guardian article shows..
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/waste/story/0,,1948065,00.html

The Last Knit

A warning to all obsessives..

Innocent Smoothie Supergran

Did you ever wish you had the chance to do a Blue Peter challenge? The kind where they have a light up machiney thing that measures how many painted matchboxes you sent in..? You know you know what I mean.

Well take a look at this:
it's a hatometer
We need to make little woolly hats for their Innocent Smoothie bottles- and in December they'll start selling them. http://www.innocentdrinks.co.uk/supergran/
They'll give 50p to Age concern for every hatted bottle they sell and the grannies are making the greatest hats and keep making Hat of the Week. These are this week's Hat(s) of the Week.
It's too much to hope we could reach that honour already when we're only just grasping the concept of hats - but maybe next year...


Just check out the supergran flickr group http://www.flickr.com/groups/supergran2006/pool/ see what they made.. Anyway we can do these at uni and I'll post them off if you want.

Confessions part 2

A not so graphic story. Only I was in my Syntactic Theory class for once and feeling sadly lost, and because knitting club was in the afternoon, I decided not to fret and just wind up yarn. (Syntactic theory comes at 10am and, with the best will in the world, it's rare i manage to make it before half-past, which borders on the wrong side of disgracefully late. The lecturer is very sweet and offers us chocolate and tells us not to worry but the class is still the only one i really shouldn't miss and unfailingly do. )

So yeah I was winding wool and accepting but not understanding the lecture, when the worst happened: I dropped the ball and it rolled rolled rolled down the steps of the theatre, under i don't know how many tiers of seats. Of course I exagerrate- the worst would have been if Prof Borjars saw it roll- but it was bad enough.

My brain woke up and rescued me though: I still had the end string in my hand- I could just wind it all up again- the yarn could climb back from under those chairs back into my hand. It was a clean theatre :p

I began winding again for dear life (while the lecturer coincidentally/ psychic-ly wondered if we were listening or knitting and told anectdotes about students knitting in lectures.) And then a big ugly Ugg boot stamped on the yarn and stubbornly interrupted the flow. I tugged I yanked I twisted to no avail. The wearer of the blasted boot was in front of me but somehow i didn't like to point out the yarn to her. So I carried on tugging and twisting and whenever she shifted her foot I'd take the chance and wind furiously before the boot descended once more. It was a close call but a last minute freeflow saved me.

:) Sorry to whoever might end up with that ball- I'm not sure which it is. One of the blue ones.
I do have some standards though- yesterday I dropped a ball on the bus which was all wet and icky, and didn't even attempt a rescue but cheerfully abandoned it to its fate.

Confessions

I don't know how to begin- it's one thing to insist that knitting is cool and not geeky (though geeks can also be cool) but there are some things which even I cannot defend.

Don't laugh now but I have a phobia of knitting needles. Of pointy things in relation to eyeballs in general but knitting needles in particular. Ever since the 999 episode freaked out my poor child's brain with the story a young girl, maybe 12, who was jolted by her bouncing brother a.t an unfortunate stage of the knitting process. The result was gouging. I can put it no plainer. Horror stories of DIY abortions don't help much either.. But I'm facing my fears manfully and if a fleeting vision of needles-in-eyes occur I resolutely banish it and carry on purling with barely a shudder..

I half want to skip the intro to our shiny new blog and to the overwhelming world of knitblogs. Maybe later.. While setting up the blog I discovered http://manchizzle.blogspot.com/ a blog about manc blogs and culture and it led me to http://www.indiequarter.com/blog/index.php which seems like a gathering of the crafty folk of Manchester. I'll link all the sites I know and love but to start off with I'm just going to put up some pics of us knitting at uni: