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.

Time

  I've been juggling things around a bit. When I first started reading people's blogs and blogging myself (my first post, a fuzzy photo of some Adriafil Stars yarn, seems to have been towards the end of May 2005), way back in the dim and distant past of five years ago (where did that time go?!) I used to read blogs over breakfast before setting off on an endless journey to the back of beyond, not to return for several days. Now, seven house moves, one job, two ex-boyfriends, lots of books and an enormous quantity of knitting later life is a bit different. I go to work on the train. I rarely get up in enough time to catch the train without running around like a mad thing. I no longer read blogs over breakfast. I used to write my blog on Sunday afternoons, but now I do things like gardening then instead.

  And I miss reading blogs. I hate missing out on what people are doing, especially as I've been fortunate enough to meet many of the people whose blogs I read. My latest approach is to try reading blogs during my lunch hour. I used to go for a walk then, but the latest house move has ensured I now spend 50 minutes a day walking to and from the station, so there's no need to be energetic at lunchtime too. It doesn't work if I've run out to the Post Office during lunch, or gone to get some shopping, or gone into town to meet the OH for lunch. I've been through the usual slightly existential melt-downs about whether to carry on blogging etc and reached the conclusion that I enjoy blogging, and I enjoy reading other people's blogs, and I still want that to be part of my life. Soooo, here we go....

Knitting-wise I've finished the body of Thermal, and have been knitting away on the first sleeve. I started off with the smallest size sleeve, as the body is the smallest size, but the sleeve seemed really tight, so this is progress so far two sizes up from that. It fits, but still quite snuggly, and I'm not sure if I'll have enough yarn to do both sleeves this length. I'm considering starting the second sleeve, but casting on more stitches and making it more of a 3/4 length, then trying on the first sleeve and the 3/4 one and seeing which I like best. I've had a look on Ravelry but haven't found anyone else having sleeve problems.

I am beginning to get slightly bored with the stitch pattern...

Staines Knitting Group is going from strength to strength. We now have 27 members on Ravelry and, although we've never had more than 8 people at the pub at any one meeting, it seems to be very popular and we're now meeting 5 or 6 times a month (we're having a weekly meeting, plus a once-a-month Sunday afternoon one). Sarah has even been teaching Cat, the barmaid, to knit.

I'm amazed at the difference it makes to the week, I spend all of Tuesday looking forward to getting to the pub to meet up with the others. It makes the first two days of the week at work a lot easier to get through with knitting group to look forward to.

House-wise we have finished unpacking! Just don't open any cupboards... I have put all my stash in my old wardrobe, so it's all in one place, the first time ever I've had it in one place!

 We've been busy with the garden too. The OH has been attacking the lawn with moss killer with a vengeance. I've been emptying the old containers (left behind by the previous owner) and refilling with new compost and planting things. The previous owner was quite elderly so I'm not sure when the containers were last looked at, but the soil inside was extremely compacted - I ended up bashing a hand fork in with a mallet to loosen the soil a bit!

I did these three first. One has now been planted with Aubretia, the other two with fuchsias I got from a special offer in the Guardian. They do slightly mad, "order 5 plants get 300 more free!!" type offers. But it seemed a good way of filling some containers. Only the fuchsias have arrived so far, but I've got lavender, penstemons and a hydrangea on the way too.

Think that's all for now!