Sunday 24 July 2011

Rainy Day Creation

Saturday
Every so often I get the urge to be creative. I love knitting but don’t have the patience to make anything that takes more than a couple of days so jumpers etc. are out of the question. The forecast for Friday was a bit damp so it was time to get the needles out. A girl can NEVER have too many hats so on Thursday evening I started searching the internet for a suitable pattern. I found THIS but it’s an American pattern so I needed to convert it before I could begin and it took me about an hour to sort out a suitable pattern I could work to. I had some double knitting wool in my stash that I wanted to use up but the pattern was for ‘heavy weight worsted yarn’ which is the US equivalent to our Aran. By knitting up a tension square I worked out how many stitches I’d need and then started on straight needles rather than the American circular needles. I’ve tried a few times using circular needles but just can’t get the hang of them. It doesn’t seem right to me to just keep knitting round and round, rather than knitting one row then purling the next, to get stocking stitch.  The body of the hat was fairly easy to reproduce, although I changed the fairisle pattern to make it stand out a bit more against the background.  The main problem I had was knitting the crown as the instructions for circular needles and then going onto double points didn’t translate easily onto straight needles.  I tried 3 times, pulling it back again each time, until I got it right but I’m rather proud of the result.


I’ve written my version of the pattern down, so if anyone would like a copy please let me know and I’ll email it to you. I think it really needs a fleece lining but the weather's improved a lot today and it's too hot to be inside sewing, that can wait until the next bad spell.

Sunday
The heavy rain on Friday caused the river to rise and this morning we were 4 inches higher up the pontoon than last night. The influx of fresh water has flushed out the marina a bit which can only be a good thing. This is a basin with only one narrow entrance/exit and the water gets a bit stagnant and being a dead end it also get full of floating weeds.

The weather has been fantastic today. Roger watched the German Grand Prix  (well done Lewis!! ) and then this afternoon we went to Luddington Village Fete.  We parked on the village green in front of amazing thatched houses and then it was like going back in time. It was a proper old fashioned fete, with tombola, skittles, fairground organ, display of vintage cars, penny slot machines, splat the rat, wellie throwing and the biggest raffle you have ever seen. Throughout the afternoon there were children's races, a football tournament and a tug of war between the local young farmers and the Polish farm workers. It was very busy and they raised a lot of money for the local Cancer Charity.

Fairground Organ


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