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.

Bradford-on-Avon Holiday 2014: the crafty stuff

It's nearly a month since we went on holiday, but I'm just getting caught up now!

This is the crafty post, I'm planning to do other ones about other things we did on holiday too.

We visited the Kaffe Fassett exhibition at the American Museum in Britain. Although photography was allowed inside the exhibition, it wasn't entirely clear whether not publishing the photos includes blogging or not, so I'm playing safe and only putting up pics taken outside, where the site had been decorated with knitting too.

The exhibition itself was fun, and a great opportunity to get up close to many of Kaffe's works. In the same building there was an exhibition called "New world, old maps",  which featured a lot of historic maps, and was a good place to park the OH whilst I went round the Kaffe stuff.

We didn't have long after that, but did manage a very quick whizz round the permanent museum displays, which cover various aspects of US history. Could have done with longer there, but we'd arranged to meet up with a friend so had to move quickly!

There were some lovely shops in Wiltshire and Somerset, and this is what I bought. I'm on a yarn diet at the moment, but I had a couple of things that I was looking out for, and which I succeeded in finding! First up was six balls of Rowan Purelife British Sheep Breeds chunky wool, to make an Owls sweater with. I bought this at Great British Yarns in Bath, which is a lovely shop that I visited last year as well.

Also in Bath is a little patching and quilting shop, Country Threads, which I loved wandering around admiring the fabric.

I bought some tiny buttons here, for the Owls sweater, plus some sheep buttons because they're cool!

Just round the corner from Country Threads is Wool.

At this one I bought another ball of Rico baby classic DK, to help with using up the bits of balls of this I have left over. And a couple of things of sock reinforcing thread, also useful for sewing things together.

Meanwhile, where we were staying, in Bradford-on-Avon, there was a lovely yarn shop called Jumble Jelly.

At this one I bought some Eucalan wool wash, some stitch markers (which have no joins in the loop, as I have had trouble with some slipping stitches when knitting with 4ply) and some fun badges to decorate my knitting bag with.

Garden at the beginning of November

Hmm, slight problem. I now don't see the house/garden in daylight on week days. This was my attempt at Garden on the first of November using the flash. But you can't see much out there.

[Incidentally, when the clocks went back last weekend - I remember the days when this was Wildly Exciting because if you were having a sleepover you had an extra hour in which to watch videos. Now that I am ancient it means an extra hour of sleep.]

And the garden this weekend. So we're still in the first week of November, anyway. Again, not a lot has changed. We're having unseasonally warm weather - it's still been in the high teens temperature- wise most of the week, and is only going to be dropping to 14-16°C this week. No sign of a frost yet and it's November! The leaves haven't really changed colour that much either, they've just fallen off, so it hasn't been much of an Autumn. There were leaves all over the lawn earlier that day, but the OH cleared them all off before he took the picture!

We have been doing exciting things in the garden though. We got rid of this HUGE buddleia and two yew trees as they were stopping anything growing around them and were a bit too close to the house. The buddleia must have been planted by the previous owners of the house and hadn't been pruned back in goodness knows how long, so, although it flowered, it flowered at about roof height, which isn't great for seeing the flowers or the butterflies!

Amazing what a difference it makes! I've planted three pyracanthas (in red, orange and yellow) there, and the Silver Hedghog Holly we bought on my birthday instead, plus moved the ceanothus over to that side of the garden too as it had got too big for its original place. I've also planted lots of daffodils, tulips and crocuses here too. The idea is for the pyracanthas to grow up the wall, providing lots of berries for the birds to eat through the winter.

 The ceanothus was bigger than me. We bought it on honeymoon and it was a tiny little thing in a pot, which easily fitted in the footwell in the car then. It would fill the entire car now!

That seems to have taken up most of the weekends recently. It's surprising how fast the time goes when you're outside gardening.

This week I also paid a visit one evening to the Women's Library, in the East End, for a talk and tour. It's a really interesting place and well worth a visit or a look at their website. Their current exhibition is "All work and low pay - the story of women and work".

I also paid a quick visit to Carlyle's House, which is now shut for the winter, but I got to see behind the scenes! ;-) It was most fun and I'm planning a trip back there when it re-opens next year. I have actually been meaning to visit it since 2006, when I read "The Carlyles at home" (published by Persephone Books) but have never managed to get myself organised to go.

One of my nephew's slipper socks is now finished, I'll post a picture later this week when I can do a knitting update!