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.

Garden at the beginning of May 2015

And what a difference a month makes! The garden has grown a huge amount during April, must have been the unseasonally warm weather, plus a few showers. The raised bed is filling up with not much soil visible now (great from a weeding perspective!).

The Aubrieta along the edge is flowering well. These were a multi-pack of different coloured varieties, which look really pretty next to each other. There was a variegated one, but I don't think it was as robust as the others, as it seems to have vanished!

The next few photos were taken towards the end of April, as I didn't want to miss out on having the tulips included. These have come up again after I planted a multi-pack of different purple varieties about 18 months ago.

The strawberries are flowering, so hopefully we'll have some fruit soon. For the OH rather than me, as I can't eat them!

The espalier apple was slightly later than the standard apple to blossom, which is what we expected. It's pretty covered now though! I can't remember this much blossom in previous years, so hopefully this will a be a year of lots of apples?

And the two Dicentras have grown huge this year, with loads of flowers on them!

How is your garden looking?

Zooming along

Probably because I haven't done a knitting update for a while, I seem to have a lot of FOs to show off. I'm particularly pleased with my Harvest Moon cardigan, which is really comfy to wear (I love the pockets, even if they were a bit fiddly to knit) and which I really enjoyed knitting. The pattern is Harvest Moon by Heidi Mirrmaier, and I used 11.4 balls (570g) of Rowan Amy Butler Belle Organic Aran on 4mm needles. The yarn is 50% wool and 50% cotton and lovely to knit.

This is it prior to blocking!

I've also finished a couple of baby cardigans for friend's babies' birthdays. These are the Baby Vertebrae pattern by Kelly Brooker (whose Puerperium cardigan I also love). The yarn I've used is Patons Fab DK, an acrylic which doesn't feel acrylicy, and you can get a 12 - 18 month size out of one 100g ball! This colourway is Violet Print, and I got it from John Lewis at Nottingham. It's come out a lot more purple/brown than I thought it would from the ball.

This colourway is called "Fruity", although I think "Neon" would be a better description. This one was from Love Knitting using a discount code.

Remember this Beyond Puerperium I knitted back in November? Here's a picture of the recipient wearing it!

And, of course, after all that knitting, I needed a new project. I'd just seen Tabitha's Heart Design's Samwise Gamgee socks pattern, so decided to make a start on a pair of those, combined with some Katia Olé sock yarn from my stash. 

So, I haven't done a stash in/out update for a while, and I've got through a lot this month (I only count totals for yarn used in a finished item in the month it's finished). There is another secret project which I also got done this month which is included in the totals.  So far this year:

January: In 0m Out 820.7m

February: In 388m Out 406m
March: In 274.3 Out 1703.7m
April:  In 424.3 Out 1644.2m

So, I have acquired some yarn so far this year, but for projects that are presents. That is 1086.6m acquired, but I have knitted/destashed a total of 4574.6m, and every month has seen more used up than acquired! So, so far this year, I have used up 3488m more than I acquired. Which is good as I have trips to Iknit and Iknit Fandango planned during May, so my totals may not look quite so good soon!

Days out: Fledborough Viaduct

This wasn't really a day out, but I'd gone to visit Mum over the Easter weekend and we decided to go for a walk to the viaduct close to a local village. Fledborough Viaduct is on a now defunct railway line (once the Lancashire, Derbyshire & East Coast railway), and is now part of National Cycle Route 647. We planned to use a footpath nearby to walk under the viaduct and then loop back round.

The viaduct itself is absolutely huge, and runs for a very long way across the fields even before it crosses the Trent.

This is what was Fledborough Station, now overgrown and with just a station sign and a seat left. The path on what was the track is good and clearly marked and would be great for both walking and cycling.

We walked along the edge of a field and still the viaduct stretched into the distance.

The sheep were very interested in what we were doing, although they ran away if they thought we were too close to their lambs! One of them seemed to have quadruplets!

Unfortunately the footpath got a little, erm, wet, further on, so we had to take a different route.

But that meant we saw a toad!

Our walk ended back where we had started, where we'd parked the car outside St Gregory's Church in Fledborough. The church is huge and echoey, and disused. It's now run by the Churches Conservation Trust, so is open every day to visitors. I couldn't quite see where the original congregation would have come from as there only seemed to be three houses in the village, plus a few farms further away, and the church really is huge!

Have you been on any walks recently?