A Little Bit Of Blocking

I don't know what is wrong with me. I ought to be writing a post most days, there is certainly lots to write about, but I just don't seem to have the time. My excuse is going to be that I have been knitting like mad over the last few weeks in an effort to make all the things that I want to give as Christmas presents. I've even managed to find time to knit a few commissions, a hat and mittens for one of my knitting group friends who is too busy to knit herself because she has started to make beautiful knitting project bags and is inundated with orders, and a lace scarf for her daughter to give to her Mum (she couldn't knit herself because Mum would have seen it and know it was for her).

It is this scarf that caused me to dream up the title for this post. The blocking concerned is not writer's block, but the blocking that is required to get a piece of knitting to its proper size and shape. You should really block all knitting before you start joining seams and doing the finishing touches, but I have never done that, because I know that I knit to tension and I am sure that the various pieces of any garment that I make will fit together easily.

But when it comes to lace knitting then blocking is essential. This is generally because you knit lace on much larger needles than would be expected for the thickness of the yarn. The resultant knitting usually curls around itself and has no real shape whatsoever. In order to block something you have to first soak it for some time so that every fibre of the yarn gets wetted, then you drain the water out of the bowl and squeeze out the excess water from the item to be blocked, first by squeezing it with your hands making sure that it is a squeezing action and not a wringing one, and then wrapping it in an absorbent towel to get rid of as much water as possible.

The scarf that I had to block this morning was knitted in a lovely yarn made from kid mohair and silk. The yarn is a delight to knit with but as anyone who is familiar with mohair will know the yarn has lots of fibres protruding from the yarn; it's these that give mohair its tremendous warmth capability. I put the scarf into the bowl of tepid water and it just floated on the top of it. The water just wasn't getting into the fabric at all. It took a good five minutes of prodding and poking to make sure that every stitch of the scarf had absorbed the water. Half an hour later with the scarf damp and creased from the squeezing action it was time to get the blocking wires and pins out and lay the scarf out on a couple of towels, pull it to shape, then insert the wires and add a few pins to make sure that it was kept stretched to shape while it dried.

Eight hours later I took the pins and wires out and lifted the scarf from the towels. I held up a beautiful scarf with its lace pattern clearly visible and the points at each end of the scarf firmly shaped. It will be going to knitting group with me tomorrow so that I can hand it over to the person who commissioned me to make it.

I have another scarf on the floor now. This one is a far more elaborate lace design and is made from a yarn that is a mix of baby alpaca, cashmere and silk. This one absorbed the water far more readily but I was surprised to find that the water had changed colour when I came to drain it away. Then I remembered that the yarn is from a company that uses natural dyes and so a certain amount of colour should be expected to come out of the yarn when it is first wetted.

This scarf was a little easier to apply the wires to because of the eyelets that are a few stitches in from the edge on all four sides. I'm hoping that it will be dry in the morning and I can block another scarf before I head off for knitting group. I have five scarves and I shawl to block in total and the shawl will require me to move all the furniture around in my room so as to ensure that I have a large enough area on which to lay it out.

I think that in future I will block each item as soon as it is completed so as to not have this blocking frenzy that I am going to have to endure over the next week. But at least it is keeping me busy and I don't have time to think about how difficult the next few weeks are going to be for me.

Burning The Candle At Both Ends

It has been three weeks since I last blogged. Every morning I wake up and say to myself that I must write something today but never do. It is perhaps in part because I don't think that anything very exciting has happened to me, but more realistically the reason is that I seem to have been burning the candle at both ends.

I have been frantically knitting during every spare moment to complete the things that are to be Christmas presents. The big pieces are now finished and awaiting blocking, and just a few small items still need to be done. Hopefully they can be completed fairly quickly, but I have been commissioned to knit a few other items so they have to take precedence. The consequence of all this is that I seem to be constantly searching for more hours in the day while getting more and more tired as each day passes. In fact, I have been so busy that I haven't had time to be depressed.

Thursday evenings are taken up with teaching my crochet class. Two groups of students have now completed the course and gone out into the world with new skills and an enthusiasm to continue improving. Another course has been squeezed in before Christmas and like the previous two is completely sold out. It just goes to show that there is a real desire by people to learn the old skills of knitting and crochet because the knitting courses are regularly full too.

I'm going to have a few weeks break from teaching after the New Year so that I can spend some time with the Thursday knitters, something that I miss out on when I am teaching, but a fourth course should begin about the middle of January. The break will also mean that I can do some knitting for myself for a change. I need some new woollies, so I shall be knitting myself a cardigan and a sweater to remedy this situation.

Last week I was asked to move from the building that I have been living in since July to one just around the corner from it. So the bags had to be packed (I couldn't believe how much yarn I had accumulated in my stash) and I moved into my new (temporary) accommodation. I now have a much larger room, my own bathroom, and fantastic kitchen facilities shared with the other residents in the house. I see little of my neighbours, who are all male, nor do I hear much of them when they are in.

Yesterday I decided that I would have a go at making a cake. I'm not a spectacular cook, but I can be quite innovative when I want to be and being someone who really doesn't like Christmas cake because I just don't like currants, sultanas and raisins, I have been mentally developing a cake recipe for some weeks now that would be a tasty replacement for the more traditional cake.
The end result was a quite dark coloured cake (that was the dark brown sugar rather than it being burned) which was filled with glacé cherries, chunks of dark chocolate, walnut pieces, cranberries (okay, so these were dried but I plumped them up again by putting them in saucepan with the juice of two oranges and one lemon and lemon zest and orange rind). I had a slice (or two) last night and while the cake is definitely not repulsive it still needs a little work on the recipe but I think I know what to do to improve it and I will be experimenting with the recipe again in a couple of weeks to hopefully produce something that is a bit closer to what I was trying to achieve. I think that I had better write down the recipe so that I know what I am tweaking as further test cakes are made.

So. having sat in bed with my laptop on my knees, I don't really have any excuses for not writing on a more regular basis again, and that is what I propose to do. I shall write a post before I get up in the morning and woe betide me if I make an excuse not to do so

Not Enough Hours In The Day

I can't believe that it is nearly three weeks since I wrote a post for this blog. I seem to have been so busy that there are not enough hours in the day for me to do all the things that I both want and need to do.

My first crochet course has been completed and everybody enjoyed themselves including the solitary gentleman who had been booked onto the course by his wife an avid knitter. we certainly had a good time because as 8.30 arrived each week nobody could believe that we had been in the classroom for two hours; the time having flown so quickly. The best thing about as far as I was concerned was that I seem to have included the right amount of work in each class so when the second course, which is also fully booked, begins on Thursday evening I won't have any preparatory work to do; everything is ready for me to pack in my bag on a Thursday morning ready for when I set off to the shop in the afternoon. A third course has already been put up on the website and is starting to fill up so it seems that we have found a real gap in the market.

At the hostel where I am living my handwriting skills have been put to use writing the Christmas cards that will be given to each of the residents of the various hostels/bedsits that the company has in the area. I've also written all the Christmas cards for the professionals and suppliers and later this week I will be given the list of staff for whom Christmas cards are required. I haven't even thought ab0out writing my own Christmas cards but as I am going to send handmade cards I can't do anything about it until I have bought the bits to make the cards. That is a job for this weekend.

However, while the cards are not made and written, the presents are nearing completion. I have made lots of scarves, mittens, and some shawls so everybody is getting something handmade this Christmas. I have one scarf that will be finished tonight and one more to make. I should be able to get that started this evening and then work at it during knitting group tomorrow evening. It's a pattern that I have already completed twice and it is a lovely one to make with lots of beautiful lacework on it. I'm hoping that this scarf will be finished this weekend or the beginning of next week so that I can concentrate on knitting a couple of jumpers for myself; and with the way that it has got so cold over the last few days I am definitely going to need them.

This afternoon I went to visit the building site that is my new home. Some of the flats on the top floor are approaching completion and hopefully the rest will be completed in the next month. Once all the flats have had their kitchens and bathrooms completed and it is just a case of furniture to be moved in, I can go and visit again with a view to picking which flat I want. I'm going to have to sit down in a week or so and make a list of things that I want to buy to make whichever flat I choose into my home.

I have so many things going on in my life these days that I have had to buy myself a new Filofax to keep a check on everything. I have a diary that is filling up by the day and it doesn't seem to be letting up. I can honestly say that I have not been this busy since I had to give up work and I think that I am going to have to start thinking about what I am going to do in the New Year. Hopefully things will have calmed down a bit and I can think about getting back to studying with the Open University. I have to admit that I do miss the studying and it would be nice to get back into it again.

Tonight's The Night

Tonight sees the start of my first crochet class. My bag is packed with two different lots of knitting (neither of them very taxing) that I will work on this afternoon until it is time for the class to begin, and my batch of samples so that the lovely ladies (I am assuming that they are all ladies although more gentlemen are starting to knit and crochet) can see what the same series of rows produce when using the different stitches.

I didn't sleep very well last night so after having a cup of tea and some toast for breakfast, I climbed back into bed and slept for another couple of hours. Then it was time for a lovely long shower and I'm now sitting waiting for lunch to be served. One thing is certain about this hostel; the staff are determined that no-one will go hungry. There is always a cooked breakfast of some sort for those who want it (I usually stick to a couple of slices of toast and the staff all know of my love of a toasted crust so that is what I get most mornings), a hot lunch (today's is chicken curry and rice), a hot evening meal (beef hotpot tonight, although I will miss that but if I wanted they would put some aside for me to heat up when I get back from knitting group) and sandwiches at 8pm and 10pm.

I'll let you know how things go with the class.

News Flash!

My crochet class which begins on Thursday is full. I must sit down and finish the samples tonight (there's just one left to do for the first class) and if I get the chance tomorrow I will do a few differnt shapes to show what can be achieved.

Now I can start to get really nervous.

Housing News

Last week I had a proposition made to me. It was something that I couldn't talk to anyone else about because it needed to be approved by "Head Office" before it could become general knowledge. I was asked to think about the proposition, and today I was asked if I had come to a decision. I have, and because "Head Office" have approved it, I can tell you all about it.

As you know I have been living in a hostel for the last few months. I had hoped to have moved into rented accommodation but because I was so depressed the mental health team that look after me felt that it would not be a good idea to contemplate such a move until my mood had stabilized and I was able to cope with things a bit better. The lovely lady who has management responsibility for a number of properties that the company has in this part of London (each facility has its own manager, but she oversees all of them) asked me to consider moving into a property that is being refurbished to provide 27 bedsits for people with mental health problems and acting as caretaker of the facility. There would be professional help Monday to Friday 8am to 6pm and the facilities for me to summon help if needed after these hours.

And what do I get out of this? Free accommodation. Yes, that's right; I get a little flat of my own and don't have to pay for it. Could things actually be going right for a change?

New Horizons

I've had a busy weekend turning hanks of wool into usable balls for knitting. I am going to knit a garment for a change and it was necessary to spend a few hours getting the lovely yarn ready for me to begin knitting. It was all in preparation for knitting a jumper for myself and requires eight different colours to produce a very striking effect. I can't wait to get started on it now but I have a few Christmas presents to finish before I move on to this project.

I have also spend quite a few hours making samples of crochet stitches ready for the course that I am going to start teaching on Thursday. I still have a few samples to create and then I must take some photographs of them so as to create a couple of handouts for the students.

Nervousness is starting to creep in because this is a new string to my bow. I learnt to crochet when I was in my teens and have created some really stunning work over the years, but I have never really taught a class to crochet before. I have my lesson plans drawn up guiding me about what we hope to achieve during each of the three lessons but I know that there is a big difference between what you think can be achieved in a couple of hours and what happens in reality.

My prize money has all been spent now on things for myself. There were two hanks of silk in magical colours which will be turned into scarves and shawls; a book of Andean inspired knits which I would probably never have bought ordinarily, but the prize money made it possible and there are a couple of things in the book that I hope to be knitting in the not to distant future; a set of blocking wires to aid me in blocking out the shawls and scarves that I make (much easier to use a few wires than hundreds of pins); a beautiful folder which allows me, with the aid of some magnets, to more easily follow the complicated charts which are needed for knitting lace; and a beautiful set of wooden needles in a lovely fabric case that matches the folder.

With all this going in my life, depression seems to have finally taken a back seat again. Life is still not easy, but I no longer go to sleep at night dreading tomorrow and what it will bring. I am starting to make plans again and actually carrying some of them out, but there is still some way to go before I can say that this period of depression is behind me. I have set myself a few goals for this week, including applying for a new passport, and I am definitely thinking about going to Canada some time over the winter or perhaps a trip to South Africa to visit my aunt who is also my Godmother. Perhaps the sun of South Africa would be more welcoming than the snow of Canada, but we will have to wait and see how things go over the next month.

Connected

After several months of sporadic Internet access requiring me to make my way to the library with my laptop to make use of the library's free wi-fi access, I have this afternoon bought myself a dongle and can blog whenever I want to again. This means that I shall be able to pass news on as soon as it happens and keep you up to date with my goings on.

When I had to leave the house and move into respite care, I had to start paying for this accommodation. Unfortunately, the sum that I have to pay on a weekly basis actually meant that I had little or no money to spend on things for myself. That is now no longer a problem as I decided to dip into some of the money that I invested after my husband died and now have a little spare cash, hence the purchase of the dongle and my return to the Internet.

I have lots to write about, some of which will appear under the "Tackling the Mental Health Minefield" banner as it relates to that area. This time it will not be about my being in hospital but about some of the other areas that those with mental health problems will find themselves interacting with.

This has been one of my shorter posts, but it is now time for me to head off to the dining room for my evening meal. Something like normal blogging will be back from tomorrow. You have no idea how happy saying that has made me.

Some Good News At Last!

I hate not having instant Internet access because it means that sometimes it can take a great deal of willpower to load my laptop into its bag and get on a bus to make a trip to the library to use the free wi-fi access there. My blog has been a great comfort to me over the last couple of years and has proved to be a beneficial means of me pouring out my innermost thoughts instead of keeping them bottled up inside and I hate not being able to just sit down at the computer and write a post when the urge comes upon me.

Mental illness can make one selfish; it is so easy to think that you are the only person in the world feeling as you do, but sitting down and writing about those feelings and the darkness within, allows you to meet other sufferers in cyberspace and together you can work through the difficult times. I have always been heartened by the comments that I receive and have only ever rejected one comment (apart from those that the writer has asked me not to publish) because I truly believe in free speech and allowing other people to have their say. But if you were to look through all the comments that I have received over the last two years you would probably find that they have been nothing but supportive and for that I can never fully express my gratitude to those who bother to read the blog and to comment on it.

When I had to move out of my home I was already in a very depressed state. Life was crowding in on me and suicidal thoughts were invading my brain increasingly. Having a long period of respite care has made a difference to how I have been able to recover. My consultant psychiatrist decided to make a change to some of my medication and having the support of the staff at my respite accommodation when I was going through the difficult period of weaning myself from one drug and building up to a therapeutic dose of the new one meant that I had support on the bad days.

Over the last couple of weeks I have noticed that I am beginning to feel significantly better than I did a couple of months ago. I have lots of knitting projects on the go and have already shown you some of the lovely items that I have made recently. On Wednesday I received the news that I was runner-up in the 'accessories' section of the design competition which brought with it a voucher for £100 of goods from I Knit. It suddenly made worthwhile all the time that I had spent on knitting sample socks and creating and then adjusting the charts until I got exactly what I wanted. My book of knitting patterns now seems a reality because as well as the six sock patterns that I have already created, I have several ideas for lace scarves and I am looking forward to trying to create the charts for them in the new year.

I have already spent almost three-quarters of my prize money on some beautiful yarn, a book, and a few other items that I probably wouldn't have bought for myself if I hadn't had this windfall. The yarn is the most beautiful silk laceweight yarn in two exciting colourways. this yarn is definitely going to be used for items for myself so I can now start looking for patterns to knit with them or try creating something for myself.

Wednesday also brought another bit of good news. I Knit already offers regular knitting courses for beginners and over recent weeks there have been increasing requests for a beginners' crochet course and I have been asked to be the tutor for it. With a provisional start date for the course pencilled in for 21st October, I am going to have to devote some time this weekend in working some samples for the course so that I can show the students the different stitches and what can be achieved with them.

With a bit of luck I may soon be blogging on a more regular basis and will be keep you up to date with my adventures. thank you for staying with me during this difficult period and I promise you lots of news and photographs of my works of art in the weeks and months to come.

Busy Fingers

The last few months have been pretty horrific in one way or another, but even during my darkest periods I have tried to keep myself busy. In my last post I included a photograph of the socks that I was entering in the design competition and I appreciate all the lovely comments that you sent about them. The competition was supposed to have been judged at the knitting exhibition weekend, but due to various problems the judging didn't take place. However, I am assured that the competition entries will be judged in the next few days and hopefully I will soon find out whether I have won a prize or not.

I have mentioned before that I learnt how to do Sudoku puzzles while I was in hospital last year and I have spent some of my time working my way through two books of these puzzles (one with 350 individual puzzles and the other 500). I still have problems completing them all because of the way that my brain seems to turn to mush when I am faced with numbers but I must be getting better at working them out because I can now complete almost all the easy ones at the first attempt, the medium ones are completed more often than not, and I have even managed to complete the occasional hard puzzles, something that would have been impossible this time last year.

But doing these puzzles requires a fair level of concentration, and as other sufferers will know, when you really severely depressed, a long period of concentration is something very difficult to manage. However, knitting tends to take care of this for me. I have several projects on the go at any one time, so there might be a couple of lace projects (one large, one small, and requiring differing levels of concentration), and a couple of other small projects such as socks or hats (things that require little concentration above keeping a check on the number of rows that have been completed).

This being the case, I have succeeded in completing a number of projects over the last couple of months and I thought that you might like to see some of the things that I have made.

This shawl was completed over a weekend; I think that it was the novelty of knitting with not only much thicker yarn and needles than I have been using in recent months but also it was such an easy pattern to follow. The yarn itself is Manos del Uruguay's Silk Blend (a blend of merino wool and silk) and not only are the colourways in this yarn fabulous, it is also a very economical yarn to knit with, especially when one considers that it is produced by small cooperatives in

Uruguay.

This photograph shows the three parts that the shawl is knitted in. At the top is the triangle that forms the basis of the shawl, then a border is worked on two sides of the triangle and the shawl is finished with a lace edging which is knitted sideways and joined to the shawl on alternate rows. It sounds very complicated and when I first started tackling lace knitting I didn't think that I would be able to follow the instructions even though I had years of knitting experience but now I think nothing of it and just get the needles out and get on with it.

This shawl has been knitted in 100% silk and is as light as a feather. Well perhaps not quite as light as a feather, but it seems to weigh nothing at all having taken approximately 900 metres of yarn to complete and it weighs in just a few grams short of 100 grams. This is the first triangular shawl that I have knitted that has not been started from either the top or the bottom. Instead it is worked from one side, increasing as you work towards the middle and then the stitch count decreasing back to nothing as you get to the other side. The resultant shawl has very long points at the sides which make it a very delicate shawl to throw across one's shoulders.

I have also knitted a lace scarf in this same yarn, but haven't as yet taken a photograph of it.

I think that I mentioned that I received some special yarn as a birthday present from a couple of my friends at the knitting group. I knew as soon as I saw it what I would make with it and the photograph below shows two of the three items that will form part of my winter wardrobe.

A matching scarf is on the needles at the moment and will probably be completed when I am trying to knit and watch television at the same time. The yarn is from one of my favourite American dyers, Cheryl Potter at Cherry Tree Hill, and is really a sock yarn, but it is far too beautiful to use for socks that will be hidden inside shoes so using it for winter warmers seemed the perfect solution.

My needles are full of work as usual although even for me I have rather a lot of projects on the go. I am almost halfway to completing a poncho which is being created by adapting a shawl pattern (I'm nothing if not adventurous when it comes to what I try), I have started a waistcoat using a new knitting technique (it's knitted in one piece and uses special casting off techniques to ensure that there is no sewing up at the end of the knitting process and as you know I really hate sewing things together after I have knitted them), then there is the scarf to match my hat and mittens, a lace scarf that it going to be a Christmas present for a friend, a pair of fingerless mittens which will also be a Christmas present, a really fantastic shawl in the most incredible chocolate brown silk, and a beautiful kingfisher blue stole which has required me to try two new techniques for the first time. On top of all that, I am really dying to have a go at starting a shawl which will probably take me best part of a year to complete and which is to be knitted in yarn that it is barely thicker than the cotton you use to sew a button on a shirt.

There is also a definite possibility that I may be doing some teaching of both knitting and crocheting in the coming months too. And I have been asked to become a 'service user' representative (how I hate that term) at various meetings between the local council and the companies that provide hostels and supported housing for people with mental health problems. Many of the users of these services are impaired mentally through the use of alcohol and/or drugs, and it seems that I am considered 'normal' and not 'routinely negative' about the services that are provided. I'm beginning to wonder how I am going to fit it all in.