Ruby's Button Tin

Saturday and Sunday ... soon be Monday

The weekend goes so quickly, and it's back to work before you know it.  But before then there's still more crafty work to pack in.  I finished a few half completed pieces of felt food yesterday.  I forget how much I like work with felt, having done so much knitting & needlepoint lately. 

The colours are so vivid, and not fraying means it such an easy medium to sew with.  I'm now completing some Jaffa Cakes!!  (Mmmm, wish I had the real thing to hand, but I'm trying to cut back on snacking.  My tum is starting to resemble Pooh Bear's.) 

In the evening when the light got too bad for sewing (my poor old eyes don't cope well with artificial lighting when it comes to stitching tiny, weeny stitches) I swapped to a few more purl & plain rows.  The scarf is growing .... row by row. 

I did that while watching 'X Factor'.  Cringe-tastic!!  The self delusion of some people who auditioned is extraordinary.  They're so convinced they're going to be a star, and look crushed when the blindingly obvious ('you've got a terrible singing voice') is explained to them. 
You can tell autumn's on the way when the TV schedule changes and the big shows like this crank into gear.  I'll watch for a week or two.  It might be car-crash TV ... but it's my guilty secret!

Not a very crafty start to the week ...

I'm trying to get somewhere with this needlepoint pattern, but as yet it doesn't seem to have got enough zing to it.  Sometimes you just have to keep going.  A lot of patterns look uninspiring when you're halfway thought but come right in the end.  This one - with the coloured rectangles on a white background - isn't vibrant enough, and I'm wondering if the white is the problem.  I wanted a neutral background, but white can be deadening. 

I'll carry on till I'm finished, then back it with a lively fabric and see what the cushion's like when completed. 

 

When you make up your own patterns you have to accept that some work better than others, it's trial and error.  Occasionally you make things you adore, sometimes you make things you kinda like, and other times ... hmm, well ... those end up being cat cushions or tucked away out of sight.  Oh well, on to other matters ...

 

 

 

 

 

I've been sorting out some of my works-in-progress too, and there are plenty of those.  I started some knitted bunting a while ago, and need to get that completed.  Does everyone have stacks more ideas than time to complete them? 

Yarn storming ... phew! Nobody saw me ...

I went out for a Sunday morning cycle today, armed with a bag of knitted cozies and the idea of attaching at least one to something.  Then I behaved like a complete wuss and almost lost my nerve.  Everytime I delved in my bag for a cozy or a cable tie, a jogger/dogwalker/cyclist appeared.  Who knew there were so many neon lycra clad cyclists around on an overcast Sunday morning!  I keep telling myself to just ignore them and attach my knitting anyway.  So what if they see me ... they'll just think I'm a nutty old bag, an eccentric Englishwoman ... but I haven't reached that point yet and still want to yarnstorm anonymously.  But at last I found a quiet couple of minutes and attached this little fella to a glossy black post.  I think this second photo is so funny.

Somehow the left side of the picture has distorted so it looks as though the railings are bendy. 

I don't know how those graffiti sprayers work up the nerve to produce some of the elaborate sprayworks they do.  (I'm not talking about the idiots who just write f**k in huge letters, but the proper artists who have a lot of talent.)  Do they go out at night?  Or just get up very, very early in the morning?  Cos that doesn't sound like any teenager I know!

Well, well ... how did that get there?

I sneakily tied a little piece of knitting to the pipe on a water tank at the allotments the other evening.  Strange but true!! 

Here it is - with some lovely hollyhocks in the background.  I wonder if anyone else has noticed it yet.

 

Another view of the knitted cozy.  

On the home front I'm knitting a scarf - this on a beautifully warm sunny day!  But by the time I get it finished it'll be autumnal.  I'm not sure how to make up the scarf - whether to back it with a silky fabric or to fold it lengthways and have a narrow skinny scarf.  In the meantime I'm just enjoying using every colour of wool I can get my hands on. 

 

 

Sea coral, Nirvana and Rick Astley ... and yarn storming. What a mix

I'm still knitting my weird version of sea coral.  So far the pieces are quite small so I want to scale up and make some bigger versions.  Can't find any patterns for coral or sea anemones online, knitted ones at least, there are lots of crochet forms, so I'm just coming up with my own.  

 

 

 

Really lovely wool - those sumptuous Rowan silks and mohairs are so expensive, but luckily a lot of charity shops have odd balls of interesting colours and textures.  I might also try some genteel begging at my next book group meeting and see if any donations can be found!

  Apart from knitting, I've been doing my usual internet browsing, and have something weird to

recommend.  If you go to www.tinyurl.com/mnharb you get the strangest thing.  It's a mash-up of Nirvana 'Smells like teen spirit' and Rick Astley singing 'Never gonna give you up'.  It's so funny.  Bizarre but oddly compelling. 

Finally ... yesterday I checked on a couple of yarn cozies I stuck up a week or two ago.  (Losing track of time!!)  One I'd attached to some railings has gone, so whether a council cleaner disposed of it or a knitting collector nabbed it I don't know.  But the other cozy was still there, sitting proudly on top of a fence post.  It looks really good with the rusty colour of the post and the greenery in the background.  I'm so happy it's still in place! 

 

Midweek rainy morning

It feels like an Autumnal morning, gloomy and rainy, but it's only August!  C'mon Summer, let's see the sunshine again.  Yesterday it was a case of dodging the showers.  I wasn't too successful and got soaked, but I did squelch my way into a charity shop where I picked up this nice jug.

 

Not sure what I'll use it for, but I knew I'd regret it if I didn't buy it. 

 

 

 

 

 

In the evening I got stuck into knitting coral.  Yup, coral.  Nope, I don't know why either ... actually I do know why.  I'm very, very probably taking part in this year's Front Room Art Trail, so I need to be thinking about what 'artistic' venture I'll be showing off.  I've seen some amazing photographs on Flicker and subversiveyarn's website of knitted & crocheted coral reefs, and I want to have a go.  I've got this so-far vague-ish idea of an underwater scene, with blue netting or satiny material as backing, then on top knitted and felt pieces of underwater creatures, shells etc.  It's not too clear yet, so it may not happen. 

 

 

 

My work basket with assorted experiments. 

 

Knitting again??!?!

I don't know why, but I'm just obsessed with knitting right now.  Sometimes crafts grab you and won't let go.  Every so often I'll have a splurge on needlepoint, then a few months of fanatical patchwork, but now it's knitting.                      

 

 

 

As you can see ...

 

 

I was leafing through this book (Derek Jarman's Garden) and came across a fabulous close up of a gorgeous pinky mauve poppy.  So I'm starting to experiment with knitting one. Why?  Dunno.  It's the knitting madness.  You start looking at apples and red peppers and thinking 'how would I knit that?'.  As well as looking at boring lamp posts and thinking 'Hmm, imagine that covered in knitting'.  Do you think there are pills to treat this condition? 

Could it be catching?

Treats and more nattering about knitting

I treated myself to a couple of goodies the other day.  One was Knit1, a lovely magazine with some really interesting patterns and features in it, including ones on Freddie Robins and Diva Zappa.  It always feels very indulgent to spend money on magazines - this one was £4.95, but you need a treat now and again, don't you? 

The other goodie I bought was a book of Julie Arkell's work.  She's such an inspiring artist, and her work appears simple and naive but it's actually rather sophisticated - and definately beautiful.  I'm looking forward to putting aside some time to read the book thoroughly.

 

I've also been knitting some odds and ends like this little piece with plain and purl rows of stripes. 

There're 3 buttons to fasten this around an unsuspecting lamp post or street sign post.  Just gotta be sneaky and fix it in place ...

 

 

Is that a cabbage I see before me?

I bought 'Knitorama' about 6 months ago, Rachael Matthews zany book of '25 Great & Glam Things to Knit'.  If you haven't come across it, the book features such fab projects as knitted fried egg earmuffs, ham sandwiches, even a knitted hand grenade.  I rustled up a couple of knitted cabbages, and have been wondering what to do with 'em ever since!                                                                 

Here you can just about make out a mini cabbage nestling among the rocket and thyme on the windowsill. 

 

Anyway, with my new interest in 'yarn bombing' I had an idea: I'm going to attach them to the noticeboard at the allotments where I've got my plot.  I thought that was an appropriate home for them.  Allotments always look eccentric anyway, with their bathtubs for rainwater and cobbled together sheds and bird scarers that consist of CDs strung on lines of string.  I reckon my cabbages should fit in beautifully!

Nattering about knitting ...

I've been thinking for ages about a knitting project I'd like to do, and finally the idea's coming together.  I love the whole 'urban knitting' movement, 'yarn bombing', 'guerilla knitting' or whatever you care to call it.  Also, I love knitting but it's more the process of knitting than the end result I like.  It's the stitches, the choice of colours and different textures.  I like making simple shapes like rectangles or long strips of wildly clashing yarns.

So anyway, I've decided to be a big, brave girlie and put some knitting out there in the urban landscape.  Probably as part of the Totterdown art trail which happens in - I think - November this year.  I took part last year, selling felt food softies, but fancy doing something a bit different this time.

 

So I've been knitting pieces with button fastenings to wrap around fence posts or traffic sign posts.  Here are some that I've draped around my arm to show you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

And here's another piece. 

I want to attach labels to these pieces, and I really like the idea of the label having a piece of text written on it - a paragraph from a novel or a poem.  I want to just pick pieces at random from various authors, from different genres, so people move from one knitted cosy to another reading the labels.  So one might have an excerpt from a Georgette Heyer novel attached to it, another might have a bit from Dickens, another could use a quote from Agatha Christie. 

Well, that's the plan so far.  Let's see how I get on!!