Cosplay

Today is World Book Day and, as an avid reader, I heartily approve of anything that encourages kids to read and be excited by books. However, in my household, there is very little encouragement needed, as my eldest child would read every single waking minute if she could, and the younger one was up late enough last night reading Tintin comics that I had to collect her early from school because she was so tired.

Last week, Devil got invited to go to a special Book Day event on the Southbank, and she got to choose the character she wanted to portray. Coincidentally enough, she is in the midst of a full on Rick Riordan love fest, that has recently seen her conning her grandfather into buying her a 550 page "early birthday present" by said author which she then finished in less then 24 hours. So naturally, Annabeth Chase was her costume of choice.

Cue clueless Mum: "What does Annabeth wear?"
(insert long suffering eye roll of doom): "Mum...she wears skinny jeans, trainers and a Camp Half Blood t shirt."

long pause

"She also carries a dagger."

I decided (wisely) to leave the dagger part of the costume to those in the family with greater facility with wood and metal (i.e. Dad), and bent my efforts to a Camp Half Blood t shirt.

Step 1: find orange t shirt. No problem - thank you H&M boys section.

Step 2: get Camp Half Blood logo onto shirt.

Now, here's where things get a bit tricky. My drawing skills are pretty minimal, as a number of magazine editors who have reviewed my design proposals will testify. And the logo required is pretty specific. So off to the Great Google I went. Thankfully, with out too much trouble, I was able to discover a lovely Youtube video (complete with link to a print out for the logo) that showed how to make your own Camp Half Blood t shirt in a few easy steps.



Fairly straightforward, right? Get freezer paper, make stencil from print out, iron on to shirt, color in with Sharpie, peel off freezer paper and off you go. Except there's one little problem...Reynolds Freezer Paper is not widely available in the UK. At least not in the time frame we were talking about. So...

I found a couple of websites that insisted you could use plastic carrier bags to replace the waxy layer on the paper, but had no luck whatsoever with that tactic. Things were starting to degenerate into panic (on my part) until I remembered the rolls of contact paper that I'd gotten at the beginning of the school year for covering books. Bingo!

print out, contact paper and greaseproof paper

I covered the logo with the contact paper, and stuck it to the greaseproof paper to keep it all together. Out came the X-acto knife.

Many minutes later, there was a stencil and a t shirt ready to go.

Then I peeled the contact paper/stencil off of the greaseproof paper and stuck it to the shirt. The greaseproof bit went inside the shirt to keep the ink from soaking through.

let the coloring commence!

Devil wanted to help, but eventually lost interest.

We could have cut out the inserts for all the letters, but it was easier to just leave the centers un-inked.

And finally, we were done!

Behold, the fearless and super-tough Annabeth Chase:

She was totally thrilled, I was totally thrilled at how it came out, and she wore it for three days straight (including to the event on Monday). This might be my most popular costume yet. And all it took was a marker...

The State of the Boo

Dear Boo,

This past Friday was your seventh (!) birthday, and your first ever sleepover. Well, first sleepover at our house, that is. You had three friends come over after school, and the four of you plus your big sister proceeded to spend the next 8 hours alternately: 1) presenting a true-to-the-movies recreation of the Harry Potter series (complete with arguements over who was going to be Hermione and who was going to be Voldemort). You, predictably enough, were Hedwig and you capered around flapping your arms and hooting; 2) eating your way through vast quantities of food - for five reasonably normal sized children of your age, you can put away a remarkable amount of cheese pizza. And carrot sticks. And broccoli. And Tangtastic Haribos. And chocolate cake...; 3) having drama-filled relationship meltdowns and makings-up over a time course that would make a soap opera star's head spin.

It was a lovely party, and I think everyone had a good time, except when I had to camp out in your room at 11:00 pm and tell two of you little gabbers to "Stop. Talking. Now." in a very serious tone of voice every 3.5 minutes until you actually shut up and went to sleep. The next day was punctuated by having a lovely time until everyone else went home and then stomping off upstairs in high dudgeon over...something? Your sister found you passed out on the guest bed a little while later, and mid-afternoon when you finally woke up, you were back to your usual sunny self.

It's been quite a year for you m'dear - you are in the oldest class at your school, and you have handled the increasing pressure of next school assessments with nary a blip. I think it helps that you only did one assessment, because your parents have chosen logistical ease over all else and are sending you off to the same school as Devil. I have discovered though this process that you have fewer inhibitions around strange adults when your parents are absent; the faculty member that interviewed you described you as "quite a character". Apparently that is a good thing (sometimes it's really hard to tell with the Brits...), and I'll be happily popping you on the bus alongside your sister next autumn.

You continue to attack the world with fearlessness and curiosity, as evidenced by your recent "mastery" of alpine skiing. I put mastery in quotes because, although you are now competent to ride up on a lift and schuss down ski slopes in a variety of colors, your concern with anything other then pure speed (i.e. turning, stopping, not killing anyone...) is perhaps a bit lacking. In one notable exception over half term, you decided to use the banks of snow on the edge of the trail to slow yourself down. Imagine your surprise when this tactic resulted in you jamming the tip of one of your skis into the bank, popping it loose and launching yourself over the side of the trail into the unknown. Thankfully, I skied over to find you lying on your back, laughing like a loon. Good thing you have rubber bones kiddo...hope they hold on long enough to get you to the Winter Olympics in 2030.

As always, it is a pleasure being you mother 95% of the time (Monday mornings could take a long walk off a short pier and never come back, but I think most people feel that way). I love you so very, very much, and I can't wait to see what adventures you get into next.

Love,
Mummy

My weekend unraveled

So, I spent this past weekend ensconced in the sweetgeorgia booth at Unravel at Farnham Maltings. This is my second experience with this particular show, and I enjoyed it just as much this year as last year, although in a very different way.

I've never worked a show booth before, and as someone much more comfortable talking to people via characters on a screen then in real life, I was a little bit apprehensive. But armed with much caffeine (thank you Woking train station),

I ventured forth to vend. Once again, there was strategic and appropriate yarn bombing of the streets of Farnham,

and when I reached the Maltings, there was Alli, in a gorgeously set up and ridiculously colorful sweetgeorgia booth.


There was yarn, there was (absolutely luscious) fiber, there were kits and samples and gorgeous colors everywhere.

This was how the booth looked first thing Saturday morning, including Alli's gorgeous (and just finished!) version of Bear's Rainbow Blanket, done in all 53 semisolid colorways of sweetgeorgia yarn.

Here we are right before the doors opened, ready for customers!

Saturday was madness - nonstop people, nonstop yarn and absolutely fantastic conversations. Despite my concerns about (gasp) having to talk to strangers ZOMGWTFBBQ!!!!, everyone we chatted with was lovely and friendly and enthusiastic and just having such a good time. It was fabulous.

Sunday started off very busy too, and I was a bit worried about how long our stock was going to last.  But after an initial rush, it calmed down a bit, which was good because that meant that I got to finish my Unravel sweater. Finally...

Here it is in all its unblocked glory (although the ends are woven in). Seconds after this photo was taken (at about 2:30 on Sunday afternoon), I headed over to the Textile Garden booth and came away with buttons for (ehem) four sweaters. Including two sets that might work for this one. Stay tuned for a final post-op as soon as I get some ribbon and sew the damn buttons on.

The other exciting thing that we had were the UK exclusive Soakboxes, including a pattern by Boo Knits - the Mimosa Shawl. Which means that now I can share photos of the sample I knitted for the booth.


This is a lovely, fast, fun and straightforward pattern which works up very quickly in SG Merino Silk Fine, a heavy fingering/sportweight yarn. I did mine in Melon, which is a new color for spring, and it's just glorious.



There are a limited number of these Soakboxes available, so keep an eye out at Unwind Brighton this summer if you'd like to snag one. They may also be available at the Purlescence open house coming up in a couple of weeks on 8th March.

Did I get anything at Unravel? Well, I lusted after the SG fiber, but managed to restrain myself. However, we were next to Rachel Coopey's booth and she had a crate full of baa ram ewe Titus on her booth. I finally broke down after the umpteenth time I saw someone pick up the last skein of the Bramley Baths colorway and had a mini-panic attack, thinking to myself "How dare she touch my yarn???!!!" And of course, it needed a friend..

I think these two are going to become Catkin at some point before next winter. But in the immediate future, my two color knitting time is going to be consumed by the Porpoise Fur two color Shawl SAL/KAL - if you're feeling bereft that the Ravellenic Games are over, you should come join us!

Sometimes you just have to chain ply

I'm a big proponent of not having hard and fast rules when it comes to spinning, particularly when talking about color. There's no spinning police that decree how you must spin your variegated top or your naturally colored batt - part of the joy and the fun of spinning colored fiber is seeing how those colors blend and play together in the finished yarn. Sometimes you might have a particular goal in mind, other times not. That's just part of the adventure.

When I sat down to spin up some Quantum Dots samples for this month's Phat Fiber box, I did what I usually do - a 2 ply and a 3-ply. Given that this is a gradient colorway, chain plying seemed like the way to go for the 3-ply, but I was interested in seeing how the 2-ply would come out. My expectation was that it would still be pretty good, if not as clearly colored as the chain ply. Boy was I wrong...

Quantum Dots 2-ply (ugh) and chain ply (hooray!)

So...let's start with the successful part of the experiment: the chain plied sample is, not unexpectedly, a good way to spin this wildly variegated gradient fiber. The rainbow spectrum shines through with the long color repeats being maintained from single to plied yarn. Another option for obtaining this effect would be to split the top lengthwise down the middle and to spin two singles to ply together, matching the colors as you go. You might get a bit of overlap or mixing of the colors at the transition points, but the general color progression would be maintained pretty effectively.

Ick

Now for the unsuccessful part of the sampling process: hello 2-ply mud! I took one length of the repeat and split it in half across the midpoint, so I ended up with one piece of top running from red to yellow-green, and the other running from green to dark blue. I spun the singles from the same ends, ie red to yellow and green to blue, and then plied them the same direction. The result is a fantastic example of what happens when you mix colors that are opposite to each other on the color wheel - you get muddy, boring, bleh yarn.

If I'd done this experiment with a more tonal gradient, the 2-ply probably would have worked much better. But given the highly contrasting hues and values in this top, a straight 2-ply without manipulating the colors appropriately is not the way to go.

So the take-home message? it's a good idea to think about how your colors are going to blend together in your final yarn if you're trying to do a 2-ply. Another important note: the more plies you have in your final yarn, the more blending you'll see of the colors. So if you're looking to get a uniform yarn (no matter what kind of top you start with), do more plies. If you want to kepe the colors more separate and distinct, fewer plies is the way to go.

Happy spinning!

Rachel

Knitting Olympics

ETA: Thanks to the wonders of Twitter, I have discovered the fabulousness of a number of designers who are donating some of their pattern sales to various organizations supporting the human rights of LGBT people around the world. Bristol Ivy has a post that says everything I wanted to say below, only better. And she's got a list of the designers, so go check out their designs, get some new patterns for the Games and support

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The Ravellenic Games begin today, and I am feeling remarkably blah about the whole thing. If you haven't heard of this event, it is a crafting challenge that coincides with the Olympics (both Winter and Summer). Crafters set themselves a goal project that can be started once the Opening Ceremonies begin, but has to be completed by the end of the Closing Ceremonies.

The first year that I participated in (what was then known as) The Knitting Olympics, I set out to knit my first lace shawl. It was incredibly exciting and fun, and a great challenge to take the headlong plunge in to lace that I'd been so leery of. I got maybe halfway through it over the course of the games, so no medal for me.

In 2010, I tried again (this time with vast quantities of Fair Isle), but again - no medal. And this year?

This year I have a lot of thoughts about the Olympics, but none of them are particularly happy. I am not happy about where they are being held for a number of reasons. I'm shocked by the fact that not only are these going to be the most expensive Olympic Games in history, but some of the venues aren't even finished. And I'm sad because the last Olympics were so wonderful (as they were held in London) that I guess I'm feeling a bit of a hangover from lack of Olympic spirit. Most importantly I am bitterly, bitterly disturbed and disappointed that a number of the athletes attending these games would be targeted and tormented and persecuted and potentially killed if they were honest about their lives and their identities. And while I think President Obama naming openly gay athletes to the delegation representing him at the Olympics is a nice gesture, it falls way below the level of protest that needs to happen.

So...I'm not doing a Ravellenic Games project. I have some absolutely fantastic "Mind the Gap" sportweight yarn from Trailing Clouds that might become a hat or some fingerless mitts (in the rainbow spirit of things).



I have a sweater's lot of handspun Portuguese Merino/Targhee that I have plans for but haven't done anything about. I have an Unravel sweater to finish. There are also upcoming design commissions that I have to do, so it's not like there's NOT going to be any knitting around, it just won't be Olympic knitting.

All this has left me with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, and absolutely zero excitement about watching the Olympics. No matter how amazing the event, and how much I love skiing and biathlon and a host of other winter sports, the fact that there is so much just plain wrong with the Sochi games is pretty much sabotaging my enthusiasm. It's really, really too bad.