Friday 4 May 2007

Gimme Your Stuff

Just came across this at A Journey to Middle England's blog.


Gimme Your Stuff



Sounds like swap bot only you get to swap with an actual person rather than an anon login so less chance of those crummy no sends. I can send...

  • UK knitting/crochet/craft magazines
  • Zines
  • Yarn & Craft supplies
  • Fabric and buttons
  • English sweets
  • Other food
  • Clothes
  • Any london tourist type things (soft toy beefeaters, plastic models of tower bridge etc)

In return I'd love to receive

  • Non-UK/Interweave/Vogue knitting and craft mags
  • Japanese craft books (does anyone not want to receive these? They are so cool)
  • Yarn and knitting supplies
  • Buttons
  • Sweets, especially chocolate!
  • Funky underwear type pants

Updated Oct 2007: Japanese craft mags gone.

Ugh

Am rather jetlagged. Am confused now about when I 'should' be tired and when I shouldn't and so ended up going to bed at 8.30 last night which I don't think makes any sense at all. Has also been playing havoc with my knitting, although I did finally manage to get to the NWKtog in golders green on wed night. It was really good to see everyone again so once again I'm resolving to go every week to stay in touch with enlightened thinkers on such topics as stash acquisition!

My photos are still half on this machine and half on another so no new york review yet but I do have a couple of pics I can share. One of the bummers about travelling alone is that you can't as easily lounge around because there's no one to chat to. So during my down time i tended to veg in starbucks and other such cultural places of learning and watch the world go by. In one of these places I was fortunate enough to see this, completely at random.

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Yes, that is a young man with I heart Byrne written on the back of his t-shirt. The next few minutes involved me twisting and leaning one way and another in my chair trying to figure out if they all had them but no, it did seem to be just him. I wanted to go over and ask him what it was for but then considered the repurcussions of a lonely middle aged woman with several bags full of what appears to be wool accosting a young man and accusing him of being in love with her and then demanding to know where he buys his clothes. So I gave it a miss and now I guess I will never know. But I'll be keeping my eye out in starbucks around the world from now on.

Another thing I saw a scary amount of while wondering the streets was things like this.

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Yes, dogs in tutus. And other unlikely outfits. I thought it might be a one off but then noticed that every pet shop (and there were quite a few) seemed to have a selection of doggie outfits, and then I remembered books such as this...

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And realised why there were so many of them. It seems people really do make their dogs wear things like this. I had a friend who's mum decided it was only ok for her brother to pull her hair if she wore pigtails. I can't help thinking that it is OK to, not exactly kick, but to somehow put the boot in if a dog is dressed in one of these outfits. But then I suppose you should really get to kick the owner, rather than the poor dog.

Feel I am waffling a bit so will now reveal a bit of a secret which is that I am currently knitting up a frenzy on a secret off-blog project which I hope will explain why there isn't much knitting content around here at the moment. To make up for this I have been creating various things to do with the podcast, episode 6 of which is due this weekend. Over here you can find a pattern for a string bag which I talked about in episode 5 and also a new addition....
The Stashtimator. Oh yes. This little device calculates your knit speed in mph and your stash pension - which is how long your current stash would take you to knit if you didn't buy anymore. I'm rather pleased with it and in the next podcast I will be sharing my totals. Share if you dare! If you're subscribed through itunes you'll already have had the pdf pattern but you can download the excel file here.


Also, I am truly on a yarn diet. I have been over at Wendy Knits and am signing up to her 'knit from your stash' until Ally Pally.

Tuesday 1 May 2007

The Byrne is back

Hello again peeps. I'm back again on british soil with the fruits of my hardcore shopping /sight seeing expedition laid out at my feet. Only not quite because Pooch gets irate about that sort of thing. Not that I should consider this when Pooch has behaved so dispicably in my absence. I mean, look at this...
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This was a healthy plant when I left. I'm hoping it will perk up. Am talking softly to it and slowly feeding it water.

So....New York, eh? I'm going to dedicate a couple of other posts to KNY (knitnewyork) at a later date and to my specific experiences but less us for now glory in what I brought back. Now I had saved up for this and was expecting to do a fair bit of economy-boosting but I amazed even myself. I truly believe even my lovely sister would be in awe of my achievements. Here is a shot of the booty.
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That is my not insignificant coffee table completely slathered with gubbins. I'm not going to list it all because it's embarrasing to realise quite how much I did buy but there are skirts, tops, presents for Pooch, baby t-shirts, the amazingly yummy apple jacks cereal and the list goes on. But, I hear you ask, where is the knitting goodness? Can it be that Bernard has wimped out?

As if. Stand by.

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Yeah, I did go a bit mad. I anticipated you'd want a better look so get ready for your close up....

Bottom right we have some beaded and sequined loveliness.
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Tilly thomas aqua green silk with sequins, 2 balls of glass beaded whiteness, buttons and some lovely cascade in the red quatro colourway. I picked up some of this last year and really liked working with it. At the top of the picture is a norwiegen sock yarn which took my fancy. Next is bottom middle
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Berrocco cotton twist in three shades for a secret little project I have up my sleeve and some natural indigo dyed organic wool for my SP.
Bottom left
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and we have some cherry tree hill. OK, 4 skeins, plus some lovely laceweight wool in blue and grey. This is my first laceweight purchase and indicates the way my little mind is working - I feel the future definitely holds lace, people. Also two skeins of koigu to finish off my crochet spiral tank top I started about a year ago. Top left
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we have 4 balls of knit one crochet too cotton in lurvely blues and greens, 2 balls of diaketo (a japanese brand) and a big skein of blue heron loveliness too. Also a tonne of stitch holders and other bits, some of which are also for my SP. Top middle brings us...
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... 4 pairs of scissors, all from a chinese superstore on Broadway that I would have loved to get lots of beautiful china from. The ones in the pink snail creature are my favourite and are great because when I take the scissors out he looks sad, which makes me uncomfortable, so I have to put them back in. Could it finally be that I will not lose a pair of scissors within 24 hours of purchase?? The red and brown wool is aussi wool and bottom left is more sock wool by a company called zitron. There are some nice mags there too including CRAFT which I had deliberately gone out looking for. I'm impressed and will probably subscribe. I wish I could have found MAKE too but that one proved more elusive. And finally,
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a knitter is no good without her needles. I finally got my lantern moons (ebony), some lovely rosewood ones and ...... some square ones! Yep. 3.75mm apparently although I'm yet to test the tension. I just had to give them a go though. And there's just one more thing to highlight, because it is so cute!
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This is a 4.5cm stitch holder. Isn't it sweet!

So I'm posting this...um...post, now because I am confident Pooch is on the tube by now. And so he won't realise how much stuff I bought until he reads this blog, which might not be for ages as he rarely checks in now we're better at communicating face to face. Ha. Cunning = Bernard.

So I will post in more detail during the rest of this week about which stores I went to and what they were like and all of that. Plus if I owe you an email hang on another day or two as I've got tonnes in my hotmail account and will get to those this week too.