Social crafting & a little summer

Posted on July 26, 2024 by The Little Room of Rachell

There’s nothing quite like social crafting. You sit yourself down in a new group, get your craft kit out and instantly you’re asked what you’re making, is there a pattern, or is it your own, oh and what’s the yarn? Then allsorts of topics just flow, you join in as little, or as much as you want and before you know it you’ve drunk your coffee, crocheted a small pile of circles and two hours have vanished!

This week I’ve gone to two crafty meet ups, one leading to the other, and topics have ranged from Jeremy Clarkson‘s new pub, his finding of knickers on the site, dogging (!) Rashes under boobs, muslin cloth, block deodorants, traffic issues, local festivals, roadworks, politics, ID, living in Yorkshire, the north and south of England a personal comparison, air fryers, gin, husbands reluctantly making their own lunch: “But what will I have?!” (mentioned by the older women, the younger were slightly agog. How about: “Anything you fancy making darling?”) and much, much more. Craft is probably about 3% of the range of topics covered. There is always much laughter.

When I first started visiting yarn groups, maybe 12 years ago, crocheters were in the minority. There might be me and perhaps one other, unless I felt I needed to bow to the general trend and took knitting. The morning after an evening spent in a pub or cafe I would realise my knitting was always a complete mess, because I couldn’t concentrate on any kind of pattern, chat and sip coffee or alcohol at the same time. Naïvely I once took some lace knitting to a meet up in Oxford. Never again! I find crochet much more free flowing.

At the first craft group I went to this week seven were crocheting, three knitting and one was sewing up some knitting. At the second I would say it was about the same; more were crocheting than knitting of the fifteen. Unfortunately the one who was sewing up on Tuesday came to the other group as well and was re-sewing because she had made a mistake. But it looked like a gorgeous little jumper in variegated shades of green. It will be perfect when it’s finally done.

You see we’ve had a bit more summer this week. I snapped these photos on a 3 mile loop of field paths one evening.

As we were halfway through the walk chatting away I suddenly realised there was quite a loud noise in the field behind. Peeping through a gap in the hedge I saw a combine harvester was cutting the meadow grasses to make hay. It’s been much better, drier weather lately. At last!

It’s the first time I’ve grown mangetout and I can’t believe how many I’m picking every day. I hate to say it, it sounds a little miserable, but I’m getting a bit fed up of eating them now! I didn’t realise they would produce so many. Our lovely neighbour watered our garden when we were on holiday and so I took her some. It’s time to pass them around I think!

The peas are ready and absolutely delicious. We had roast chicken and lots of summer veg on Sunday, the peas were sweet and beautiful. They only took one minute to steam, along with homegrown cavolo nero and mange-tout.

The beetroot are nearly ready to pick as well.

As for book talk this week I’m still listening to Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, it’s making me laugh out loud now. I’m also listening to

Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle by Clare Hunter. This was mentioned on another blog recently and I thought I’d give the audiobook a try. It’s on Spotify premium. It’s really interesting so far and I like the Scottish narrator a lot. I recognise Siobhan Redmond’s voice from a medical drama I used to watch on TV.

I’m reading an advance copy of Jenny Colgan’s new book Close Knit, which has knitting and quite a funny knitting circle (more social crafting!) up in the highlands of Scotland. It’s out here very soon.

~~~

What have you been up to in the last week? Making? Reading? Growing anything? Any good recommendations for TV? Tell me a few things please!

Ana Lucia shawl finished. Still circling

Posted on July 18, 2024 by The Little Room of Rachell

I left my Ana Lucia Shaw on the blocking mats when we went on holiday and actually have only just got round to unpinning it today!

The lengthy pinning hasn’t done it any harm luckily, and I’m really pleased with it. To be absolutely honest I started crocheting the shawl simply because I liked the pattern. I don’t wear triangular shawls, preferring cowls or scarves, and didn’t think that I would ever actually wear it. But it didn’t matter, it’s all about the crochet sometimes, isn’t it? You can easily gift or donate a make after all. To my surprise I can imagine it keeping me really warm and snuggly on a cold day. With a winter coat I think would look really nice.

It’s a keeper!

Started in 2019 I think it’s my longest ever project to complete (not counting the knitted stripy blanket which will probably take years to finish because it’s not interesting enough to pick up too often.) In the meantime the Katia silver paint yarn was discontinued, I think probably due to the sparkly plastic content. Whoops. I just had enough to crochet the pattern, although I probably would have repeated some rows if I had the yarn. Luckily it’s just right to wear.

If you fancy making one you can pay for the pattern, or access the free pattern on a link here on Ravelry. It’s designed by Wilma Westenberg, who has heaps and heaps of shawl patterns available.

I don’t think this is going to be the last triangular shawl I’ll crochet as there has been something really satisfying about the triangular start and lengthening rows of interesting stitches.

I’ve had an unusually social week. It’s always all at once, isn’t it?

Monday I went out for lunch with family. Well, technically I just had dessert (Eton Mess. I couldn’t resist the fresh summer fruits, meringue and cream) then met up with three friends for a drink and pizza at a pub, then we went to the theatre to see Uncanny: I know What I Saw. Have you heard the podcast? Seen the TV episodes? Read the book? I really recommend all, but suggest starting with the podcast. It’s best to listen to it in order because Danny refers to previous episodes and gives updates.

Tuesday I went back to a yarn group which I haven’t been to for ages. It was good to catch up. It’s one of those easy-going weekly groups where people come and go. You can just drop in whenever you want. There were six crocheters, two knitters and one drawing on fabric to make bunting for her rustic farm style wedding in August. I thought you might like to know the stats, I would.

Last night, Wednesday, I went to bookclub where we discussed Rebecca. I didn’t actually reread it because I’ve read it a couple of times, seen the play by Kneehigh Theatre Company and the Netflix film adaptation. Actually I realised I probably should have done, because I had forgotten crucial little bits and pieces of the story. But there’s so many books to read and you don’t necessarily want to reread something for the third time. Maybe I will in the winter when I fancy a slightly dark and atmospheric tale?

Later there are plans for a 3 mile field path walk and a tuna, butterbean and artichoke salad for dinner. Then more chapters of Sally Page’s forthcoming novel: The Secrets of Flowers. Tomorrow night I’ll be snoring in front of the tv!

~~~~

What about you? Any finished makes, have you been out and about lately? And, what’s for dinner?!

Trailed by voices

Posted on March 20, 2024 by The Little Room of Rachell

My second time at the craft group in a very relaxed café, lots of chat and a few hours that flew. Very good mocha too!

I paused and took a progress pic of the five circles I’d crocheted and thought I probably had better stop. I was surrounded by mostly crocheters, I think only one at the other end was knitting. I was so enjoying chatting and hooking that my hands found themselves getting busy again. In a way it’s good, because I’m seeing my hand therapist on Friday and can report how sore it now feels. This once would not have counted as a lot of crochet…

Describing my book group and this new craft group to a friend this morning, when we were driving along, I realise that I’ve now met two women who own and ride horses in the last couple of weeks. Maybe it’s not that interesting, but as they are from completely different groups and locations it’s tickled me.

The other day I was rather horrified that my new ball of Hayfield Spirit DK came vacuum packed flat in the post. I had noticed the generously cheap postage but didn’t realise some yarn sellers are now vacuum packing orders. I thought the wool content would be completely ruined, the fibres squashed into submission. Well, actually after springing out of the pack, the ball plumped up quite nicely and doesn’t feel any thinner at all than the previously non-vacuum packed. Have you had any yarn arrive packaged like this? Do you feel it made any difference to the quality of the wool?

This week I’m reading and also listening to Weyward by Emilia Hart and enjoying it very much.

‘Wearing together the stories of three extraordinary women across five centuries, Emilia Hart’s Weyward is an enthralling novel of female resilience and the transformative power of the natural world.’ From GoodReads.

I’m also listening to Robert Webb’s How Not to be a Boy which ties into Caitlin Moran’s What about Men? And also part of Elizabeth Day’s Friendholic, both of which I mentioned last week. Robert’s writing is excellent. I really like the way he portrays himself and his family, making conscious choices to be fair and empathic about all (barring the dull grammar school science teacher!) Robert has a great voice for narrating audio (he’s known for being an actor and comedian, part of the Mitchell and Webb duo, in case his name is unfamiliar.)

I’ve realised that recently where audiobooks are concerned I’m doing the thing that lots of crafters do, only I’m doing it with audiobooks. I’ve started many, listening to some of it, then moving on to try a next, listening to more of the first and then bouncing back to the next, and then starting another, and then…. I used to have to commit to one book using a credit from Audible. I’d listen to the book, then wait until the next month brought a new credit to spend. With the Audible plus catalogue (3 months membership for 99p offer I could not refuse the other day) and Spotify premium including 15 hours a month of audiobooks or podcasts, I am now absolutely spoilt for choice. I have given up book monogamy for hopping around like a wild thing!

Instagram seems to be full of people at the moment unravelling, or frogging, crochet and knitting like billio! (iPhone does not like this antiquated slang.) I don’t really know whether it’s a chain reaction to someone prominent doing it, or spring cleaning approaching, but my feed is full of people posting photos of unfinished items, then either filming something being unravelled, or agonising over whether they should unravel it, or carry on. They say it’s not very fun to crochet / knit and maybe they could use the yarn for something else, but they’ve got so far in the making that it seems a shame. What do we think? Can we advise? Impossible to answer! But I’ve tried. I generally take the middle line and say surely it’s got to be fun? It’s a hobby, not work. And do you want / need to use whatever it is at the end? If you don’t think you will, then unravel it by all means. But then often find myself adding a caveat: it’s such a lovely piece of work, can you add a border and turn it into a baby blanket?! Anyway, what I suppose I’m thinking as I dictate this to my iPhone is that I will stop starting anymore new audiobooks and finish a few in the next week.

Spring has suddenly sprung here in my part of England: daffodils, pink blossom, white blossom, forsythia everywhere, beautiful magnolia trees in bloom and an array of spring flowers. It suddenly arrived and gosh it’s welcome!

~~~

Linking with Kat and the gang for Unraveled Wednesday, sharing what we’re making and reading this week. What are you making and reading at the mo?

Mustard, I’m looking at you

Posted on March 13, 2024 by The Little Room of Rachell

I’ve been crocheting granny circles again. Mid-morning Saturday, Spotify Radar playlist on the speaker, new music to play and colourful yarn to crochet, while Someone read his book. I really love the mustard yellow one. It draws my eye again and again.

It was time again for my friend Lucy and I to pick our next recipe book of the month. Here’s why it started last month. This time I found myself messaging her to say: ‘The recipe book of the month thing – I found myself really hoping you’d say no 5 because I’d wanted it to be At my Table by Nigella, so yesterday I decided that’s my recipe book of the month. Watched 1st ep last night as all on iplayer.’

I’ve chosen a few things to make already. It won’t be hard at all. I really like Nigella. I made her Stem ginger, walnut & carrot cake on Sunday. It’s so good that I’m ditching one of my other recipes.

I chose number 47 for Lucy, sticking to my resolution to give her a harder number to count in return for hers last month, not that I’m petty, ha! And got a ‘Whoop whoop!’ Number 47 brought her counting along the bookshelf to Fresh India by Meera Sodha. I’m pleased too, because I bought the ebook when it was a 99p KDD and so will follow what she makes with interest.

Later another message: ‘I had shedloads of pages marked in this one, just went into the living room and Theo has taken them all out.’

I laughed.

And then: ‘And I had to say thanks because he was really proud he’d been so helpful.’

Theo (of the Patchwork blanket) is coming up for 3 years now. A cheeky little tinker.

Today I met up with my absolutely lovely cousin, I mean I’ve got lots of cousins and they’re mostly all absolutely lovely (!) but she is one of my top favourites. Her brother says we’re more like sisters than cousins, which makes me feel very warm and fuzzy. We’re both lovers of wandering around charity shops, this time she donated and I bought. She gave some jigsaw puzzles, including one I bought from another charity shop when we were slowly coming out of the lockdown restrictions. There were still plenty of hours to fill when social spaces and such were still not fully open, and groups weren’t meeting. I completed the outside and then lost interest. 1000 pieces might have been 500 (700?) too many when it had been decades since I’d done a jigsaw. At last I admitted defeat, and wanted to claim back the end of the dining room table, so passed it on.

During our wander I found this beautiful looking book. When I read Nina Stibbe’s Went to London, took the dog she mentioned the author Cathy Rentzenbrink lots because they’re good friends. It also grabbed me because of the recommendation on the front: ‘I loved this book… I’m so desperate for you all to share in its wonder, Elizabeth Day.’ It made me smile because at the moment I’m addicted to Elizabeth’s audiobook Friendaholic. I’m probably one of the very few people who have never listened to Elizabeth’s hugely successful How to Fail podcast. I recently heard her for the first time on the bonus episode of the Ghost Story podcast and her articulacy, intelligence and my sense of her general likableness made an impression. Friendaholic is astonishingly honest and open. She makes me laugh out loud, but then I find myself welling up. I love her narration too. If you like a very proper English accent (I’m looking at you America) then you will love her voice. I’m going to look for some of her fiction as well.

Dear Reader cost me the non princely sum of £1! I’ll let you know my thoughts later on.

~~~~

What are you making and reading this week? Have you also seen someone you love to spend time with lately?

Linking with Kat and the gang again for Unravelled Wednesday.

Circles & rectangles

Posted on February 7, 2024 by The Little Room of Rachell

I’ve picked up my bag of granny circles to add a few more lately. I love this as it’s not a project or such with a plan in mind; it’s just crocheting an occasional circle when I want to sit and do something quietly. I’m using the remnants of Hayfield Spirit yarn which I used to crochet my two Bobble Cowls. Here’s the first cowl which I’m wearing a lot. I’m kind of hoping that one day someone says wow where did you get that cowl? And I can say “Well, actually I made it.” Still waiting!

I’ve been playing around with methods for using continuous joining, I’ve used the method before where you complete one round of the first motif and then start to join the others, but continuous joining means you do not break the yarn at all. You could stop and start adding motifs as you go over a long period of time, or plan the exact placement and do it that way. I think I’ll have to plan the placement because I don’t know what colours I’m going to end up with in the end. I also need to decide what they’re going to be. But there’s absolutely no hurry for that.

For the continuous joining method I’ve had to scratch my head and turn it to one side and then the other because most illustrating the direction of crochet (actually 99%) for the joining have been for right-handers. But I’ve saved a picture and flipped the mirror image. You have to become good at this kind of thing as a left-hander.

Anyway, it’s so far it’s an experiment to see how I liked them turned into hexagons and a try at perfecting the JAYGO. The beauty of circles is that you can crochet to enclose them within squares, triangles, rectangles or hexagons or…

I’ve decided for my Wednesday post that I’m going to try to feature printed books which I’m reading. I’ve always got Kindle books and audiobooks on the go, for a long time I have rarely read printed novels, but am enjoying the novelty of having a physical item to photograph, rather than screenshot.

I’m reading Maggie O’Farrell‘s latest for my next Bookclub meeting. We voted on half a dozen books and this came out top. I was delighted. (When I joined the BC last December the choice had already been made: Christmas Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella. I put that down after a dozen pages. Absolutely not for me!) I love O’Farrell’s writing. I read her debut in 2000 and have read everything, apart from The Distance Between us, as it’s been published. I shall definitely seek out a copy and read that too.

I’m probably only a quarter of the way into The Marriage Portrait and I’m already gripped by the revealing of the main character’s childhood and family life. It’s based upon a real life young Italian: Lucrezia, Duchess of Ferrara who died in 1561 from illness aged sixteen, but rumours abounded that it was at the hand of her husband. Lucrezia is written as an intriguing character, the story begins from her point of view as a little girl, to showing her as young married girl of fifteen experiencing a strong sense that she is soon to be murdered. The story is, so far, interwoven with flashbacks to her growing up in a busy household, the third daughter of a Grand Duke. It’s a little like Hamnet in that you know the ending before you begin. But do you? I am intrigued. I’m already recommending it to others!

Last night I joined a second book club; an online version with my friend Lucy. She used to, before having her baby, choose a recipe book every month and cook a new recipe a week from it. Then she would often decide whether to keep or pass on the cookbook. She says it floundered because she let her husband pick the alternate month’s books, but he never got round to it. So I wondered, would she like to do it again, with me?

“Oh yes, that’s genius! Plus then I get to hear all about the books you have…”

I regularly cook new recipes, but after years of aiming, and mostly achieving, to make something new every week, realise I often neglect my own bookshelves and mostly use those I’ve seen online. It’s just easier and fast, particularly when I’m doing an online grocery order. I’ve got hundreds of recipes bookmarked on my iPhone and iPad, emailed to myself, linked to on WhatsApp messages (one reason why I can’t delete years worth of threads with some foody friends) collections on Pinterest, Instagram, BBC Good Food site, Olive magazine site and probably a dozen more sources. It’s a shame as I have a mini library of my own.

So, we got on and counted our cookbooks. It took a while. I left out those only focusing on cakes, desserts, a chocolate cookbook, preserving books and bread books.

“I suppose I can’t pick a cake or desserts book, or can I?!”

“You totally could!”

But I decided it was too dangerous, and maybe too narrow a category, so left those out.

We shared our total number to be included (50+ for me and 80+ for her. I know. It’s a lot isn’t it?) Then messaged each other a random number. She chose number 42 for me and so counting left to right along my bookshelves I came up with Thomasina Miers Mexican cookbook. One of my sister-in-laws gave me this several years ago. I know I haven’t used it enough, so was really pleased that it’s my first pick. Lucy had to count along her shelves to number 27 (I didn’t make her count nearly as many she made me. Next time I’m picking somewhere in the sixties or seventies, evil laughter… ) I’m ashamed to admit that mine took three goes to get to the right number. I just wanted to check and it went from The Bean Book to a Thai recipe collection, which Someone was quite excited about (Thai, definitely not the beans!) then to Mexican.

A thought – join in if you would like to? Send me the total number of your cookbooks and I’ll pick one, or pal up with a friend. I’d love it if you’d share a photo of the cookbook on your blog, Instagram, or Facebook and tell me / us about your recipes as you go?

We’ve already decided to choose our next on or around 6th March. Now I’ve got to choose something to make this weekend. ¡Arriba, arriba! Mexican here we come!

~~~

Linking with Kat and the gang for Unravelled Wednesday again. Sharing what we’re making and reading.

Rainbowy

Posted on February 16, 2023 by The Little Room of Rachell

I was merrily bobbling along the other day and paused to check everything over, because occasionally one bobble will be out of step If I’ve lost concentration at any point listening to a podcast. Then while pausing I realised that it was probably long enough. A quick measure and it was over 60 cm. Suddenly it was done! Well, nearly. I’ve crocheted one row of doubles along the top edge and then I have to do a row of reverse doubles, aka crab stitch, to finish off. And then repeat on the other edge. I’m really pleased with this, mainly because of the beautiful Hayfield Spirit autumn yarn. But also because I love bobbles. It’s been so cool to see the lovely colours appear. Works really well with the pattern doesn’t it?