About a month ago, we took the girls on a ”treat” trip to London. During the day, that freezing cold day, one of the girls left their woolie hats on a cable car. Not having my yarn stash and needles with me, we bought her a hat of her choice to keep her warm.
Well, she had a warm head the rest of that day, and the next: but then the next, the bobble fell off: the next, the top popped open and unravelled!
I’ve just spent a bit of time with my dpns (double pointed needles for those not in the know) and I’ve made it as good as new – well actually, better than new as it won’t fall apart in three days.
Mending the hat reminded me that just yesterday I was helping a friend with something so different to the mass produced, made in far off places hat that I had in my hands.
Suzanna James is an amazing knitwear designer, she spends time and energy ensuring that the yarns she uses are ethically sourced and then hand knits or crochets beautiful things from them. This last week I’ve had the joy of crocheting some berets for her latest show, I’ve never worked with such beautiful yarn – alpaca in natural tones.
I don’t know how much longer they took me to make than it would have taken a machine to do so, but I do know that they will not fall apart in the first week.
If you are up in the Brick Lane vicinity, have a peep at her work.
This year was a bumper crop for the tree and his customer had more than enough again so kindly said that we could have them. So for a couple of weeks the Medlars were sat on a tray in the kitchen bletting away and I was treated to wafts of Christmas smells each time I walked by the ripening fruit.
My husband went for a slightly off piste walk with the dog the other day, and came across a treasure trove of mushrooms. Not having picked these before he came home and checked a book and the net. Having seen that as long as we don’t pick any smaller than 15cm wide we were pretty safe, off we went the next day with a couple of good friends and the kids to see what we could find.
– all four got eaten by the slugs. I planted a second lot of four – they too got eaten by the slugs. No glut last year! Organic allotmenteering at its worst.
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