Fashion on the Ration

Last weekend I went off into London for the day, to meet up with some fellow knitting Archers Listeners for some knitting, lunch and a trip to the Fashion on the Ration exhibition at the Imperial War Museum. I have a rather low opinion of the Imperial War Museum at the moment, due to their plans to close their research library (very bad idea), and then to keep it open but with limited hours and charging for use (bad idea) but the exhibition sounded interesting, and I wanted to meet up with the others again.

I wasn't very good at taking photographs during the day, but there are a lot more, including of the exhibition itself, on Whitehart's blog. We initially met up at Iknit, near Waterloo, for some browsing, shopping and knitting.

Before moving onto the Four Corners Cafe for some lunch, then heading to the exhibition. I thought the exhibition was a good size. It took about 45 minutes to go round, so there was enough to see, without being overwhelming. There was a nice mixture of dresses, men's clothing and uniforms on display, supported by archival sources (including letters, posters and ephemera), film and sound clips. I really enjoyed it, I just wish I'd thought to take some photos inside! I really liked the Utility dresses, and thought it was very sensible way of ensuring good quality clothing that would last, but without using vast amounts of scarce materials.

Of course, a trip to a yarn shop meant that I did some yarn shopping. I'd spotted this cute elephant cardigan on Ravelry, but it was unavailable to buy online due to the VAT mess, and was a yarn shop only purchase. Fortunately Iknit does those, so I could buy it there. I'm intending to make this for the niece that's on the way later this year, so I purchased some Baby Cashmerino that will go with some that's already in my stash so that I could get started on it.

Last week I also acquired another skein of Madeline Tosh Sock, in a colourway that will go with the existing Sugar Plum colourway I have in my stash. This one came via ebay, where I'd got a search set up looking for this in particular. I'm intending to use these for a Byatt shawl.
The new colourway is called "Midnight Rendezvous"

And as you can see, it should look nice with the other skein!

I'll do an update on stash enhancement amounts at the end of the month! Oh dear, Iknit Fandango this coming week... But at least my purchases so far have been for definite projects which will mostly be started asap.

Birthday!

Coincidentally I've taken the week off work, and it just happened to have my birthday in it! The OH has had a week off too, and we have been catching up on stuff at home, having a new wall built and things like that.

My birthday itself was cool, we went out for a meal the night before, as I had knitting group the evening of my birthday (you know, priorities).

We had a trip to the garden centre to buy spiky plants to plant along a boundary wall. This is me with the spikiest holly I have ever seen, it's called "Ilex Ferox" for good reason. Although it's English name is the rather cute "Silver Hedgehog Holly". It's to go with the (female) holly we've already got as this one is male.

And birthday presents! The OH bought me the slow cooking recipe book as I've had it out of the library for about 3 months now. And I asked for the other recipe book, the Dairy book of home cookery (as delivered by the milkman), as I used to use the previous edition of it, which belonged to my Mum, all the time.

My great aunts sent me the Archers Addicts map of Ambridge, which used to belong to my Gran, so it's come full circle now. I'm finding it very useful for the back story for some of the characters as I've been listening for about six years.

And a skein of Manos Wool Clasica and some homemade bath teabags from my brother and SIL (although I suspect she made them as I can't imagine my brother doing that!).

And, of course, lots of cards from friends around the world - thank you!

I've spent some time this week sorting out photos and catching up with blog reading. So there might be some more posts from me fairly soon.

Accolading

Yesterday I left the OH reading his paper and headed off into London.

to meet several people from the Archers Listeners forum on Ravelry at a pub for knitting/crochet and some lunch.

 followed by a trip to the Finborough theatre nearby, to see a play called "Accolade". The reason for all this? Well, way back in January, there was supposed to be an event that would Shake Ambridge To The Core (it became known as SATTC on Twitter, which confused some non-Archers people who got it mixed up with Sex and the City). It turned out to be Nigel Pargetter falling off the roof of Lower Loxley and being killed. Thus removing probably the best loved member of the cast from the programme (for people who are already  totally lost, the Archers is an incredibly long-running radio soap on BBC radio 4. You should listen to it.).

Anyway, Archers fans all over the world (yes, you can hear it on iplayer) couldn't believe that the Evil BBC and particularly the Spectacularly Evil Vanessa Whitburn, the Editor, had killed off Nigel. Much grumbling ensued on the forum, and some people even gave up listening. But then someone discovered that Graham Seed, who played Nigel, was appearing in a play called Accolade, at a tiny little theatre near Earls Court. One thing led to another, and several of us from the forum ended up buying tickets and greensideknits organised for us to meet up for lunch beforehand.

The play was great, incredibly contemporary, we could hardly believe it hadn't been put on since the 50s! At one point the female lead does some knitting and I'm glad she can't have been aware that about a fifth of the audience were knitters, as she really wasn't very good(!).

And the best bit of all, we lay in wait in the wine bar downstairs after the play, and met Nigel Graham Seed himself!

We were slightly gobsmacked, I think, to get a chance to speak to him and hand over a card, but he was very charming (despite us taking his time away from meeting his friends and insisting on having a photo!).

It was a lovely day, and I really enjoyed meeting up with some more knitters, who all felt like friends straight away!
I also really enjoyed the theatre, it was a tiny, very intimate venue, only seating about 50 and the furthest back people were only about 3 metres from the actors. I'm already thinking about a trip back to see something else.

Ambridge knitting circle

You may remember, back in the dim and distant days before our wedding, the absolutely fantabulous evening when we went to the pub for knitting group, only to be presented with a knitted cake (from Staines knitting group) and a blanket, made by the Ambridge knitting circle. Yes, I know this was a million years ago now, we have after all now been married for a  whole nearly 7 weeks.

And I promised that I would post pictures of the blanket in all its glory up on here, only it's taken me a while to do it.

This is it on Monkey's bed. I should probably provide some background. The Archers is a totally wonderful radio soap that has been running for at least 1000 years on BBC radio 4 (to which I am also addicted). It's meant to be an everyday story of countryfolk, or rather that's what it used to be. Now it's apparently a contemporary drama in a rural setting. (?!?!) Anyway. At some point in my life that I now can't remember I started listening to it. And quickly became addicted. Then I joined Ravelry and discovered that there wasn't an Archers group on there, so way back in August 2007 I set up the Archers Listeners group. The group has grown to 378 members and is friendly and nice (we haven't got any rules or anything similar and everyone trundles along very happily even though people have some very different views about life).

Following a discussion about a hypothetical Ambridge Knitting Circle on the group some of the others got together in secret online and set up AKC1 knitters on Ravelry, to organise knitting a blanket for our wedding. And this is the result:

These squares are: Interwoven (plots), Lakey Hill with sheep, wedding heart and Jimmy Prentice's ploughed field.

Then: Openwork Daisy, Grange farm turkeys (from Gobble dishcloth by Elaine Fitzpatrick), "Softie" square and Cupid's bow and arrow (although I think someone posted on the list that it was the Archers too?)

Then below is: Waters of the Am, Bee stitch in local mohair/wool (Jill's bees), Ambridge cricket and the single wicket and Solid square (often lacking in Ambridge).



Then we have: "Puss-cat" (Lilian), Wheatsheaf pattern, the Flower and Produce and Tricolour square (Blossom Hill Cottage).

And: Two colour star stitch in local mohair/wool, in memory of Phil, twining vines (Lower Loxley), tractor, Double hearts

A pint of Shires, Peony - spring in Ambridge, field of daisies (for Daisy) and ploughed field.

honeycomb stitch, in local mohair/wool (Jill's bees), the diverted footpath (theme idea by Dollydolittle), Granny in the middle (take your pick!) and Adam's strawberries.

St Stephen's church (Alan & Usha), Traditional Granny (Jill), textural tractor and "Tiger" (Matt).

And Tying the knot, Tom's sausages, St Stephen's church (and Phil: organ pipes pattern), centred square (if we only had more of these in the Archers!).

And the final row! Hayfield, the twists and turns of village life.

Twisted granny (Vicky), The Bull at Ambridge - pub sign.

Opposites attract cable (Kathy and Kenton). And Daisy motif for Daisy.



Isn't it incredible?! The makers of the squares are: adminannie, brigidhj, dollydolittle, doodles, dwynwen, foggyknitter, greensideknits, hotterthan, Kristoemily, lilyofthevalley, thefrog and Wibbo, all of whom can be found on Ravelry. They also each included a postcard from where they live. Thank you to all of them!

And the whole thing was co-ordinated by greensideknits, who also put it all together, dyed the yarn for the borders and knitted them!

Totally overwhelmed

Last Tuesday I had one of the more overwhelming evenings of my life. I already knew I'd got a special parcel on its way to me (it got as far as our front door on Monday and was retrieved from Staines post office on Saturday. No pics or further details yet as it is Something For Wearing At The Wedding and therefore cannot be revealed as the OH reads this blog). The others at knitting group had requested that I brought the OH along to last week's meeting, which I duly did, thinking that maybe they had a wedding card for us or something.

The "something" was right - look at this. A whole knitted wedding cake!! Isn't it cool?! The detail is absolutely amazing, right down to my hairdo and our wedding rings. And the flowers are in our wedding colour scheme. An enormous amount of work has gone into it as there are loads of little bits that had to be sewn together. So the OH makes his debut appearance on my blog in knitted format!

The pattern is apparently the Alan Dart wedding cake, but heavily adapted - look, ours has two tiers!

Then, just when I was getting totally overwhelmed and little over-emotional Wannaknit handed us a parcel passed on from Greensideknits in London.

Some members of the Archers Listeners group on Ravelry, had got in touch with each other and decided to form the "Ambridge Knitting Circle" (complete with its own secret Ravelry group!) and make us a wedding blanket! Each of the squares is something to do with the Archers, or related to us, and they have come from all over the place, been assembled by Greensideknits, who also knitted the borders using her own hand-dyed yarn (which, it turns out, is in the same colour as the bridesmaids dresses!), everyone supplied a postcard from where they live and there's also a little book with all the postcards in and an explanation of all the squares! Isn't it cool?!

So, again, totally overwhelming. I am planning to blog about all the squares properly and explain what they are, but I think that's going to have to wait until after the wedding now...

Thank you to everyone for the amazing gifts!

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, the Archers is a totally addictive soap on radio 4. I've only been listening to it for five or so years, but it quickly became addictive.