When Knitting give you lemons

 I was trying for a hot water bottle cover in Fair Isle.  The purple was old Shetland (though unlabelled) stuff, quite harsh.  The white was a new cone from good old J&S, and must have been a little thicker than previously.  The pattern was stacked snowflakes or windflowers.  Tension was 8 on the Kitmaster, and it was like rolling a boulder uphill, with frequent jams.  So I gave up.  The piece of fabric that came off the machine was like cardboard, with several dropped stithces.  As Shetland wool is so "sticky", I couldn't be bothered to wind each colour back.  Then had the idea of seeing if I could sew it onto a thin cork backing as coasters.  It worked.  Bit rough round the edges, but hey, it's "lemonade".  Tried one piece on felt, but that flexes a little.  Looking for the flet (and tidying up my haberdashery trays in the process), I came across a "deep" plastic coaster still in its packet.  By this time I had very little good areas left on the original piece.  It is too thick to let the backing fit neatly inthe frame, so it had to be a sellotape job.

Knitting on, regardless

 It is rare that I post about the mental benefits of knitting.  But after a couple of weeks of chest infection, leg pain, dental woes, the only thing that I could do, and remains unchanged, is my ability to knit.  Every spare moment.  I never think I achieve much, but last week I did a talk to a knitting grop and was allowed to takes some sales.  Looking at that table piled high with items, it seems I do get through a fair bit!  Mind you, the sods didn't buy a single thing.  They all had a good look and probably turned them over and thought "I could knit that for a fraction of the price". Go ahead, girls, be my guest.  The talk was meant to inspire you.

I am currently opening my mind to new ideas.  Must overall be interesting to do, fairly quick to execute (bearing in mind the minumum wage for knitting!), practical use of materials, be the continuation of a tradition, and look good enough to entice people to buy.  Needless to say, my mind is a total blank.

... and neither will other people!

 It would appear that other people like my hot water bottles, as five sold in the first two weeks at the museum shop and I have been asked to supply more.  The tweedy ones seem more popular than the purple, which has surprised me, as in the socks and handwarmers purple always sells out first.  I saw some Shetland ones on the Net (no pattern apart from a couple of stripes) which are selling at 50% more than we are charging.  Somebody must be buying them.

Buying the naked bottles on line was more difficult than it should have been.  At least 30 minutes trawling through "you are buying the cover only" etc.  Or the photo looks like a full size 2L bottle then in the descsription turns out to be a 500L handwarmer.  I did get a bargain few, and that firm even sent me a 15% discount off my next order.  Tried another order - they've now disappeared from the website!  They must have been on clearance the first time round.  So I gave up and went back to my local shop who have bottles with spotted covers (lurid green fleece, but what the heck) for a very reasonable £5.  Thought I had cleared his shelves, but he showed me another two boxes full, which should keep me going until sales drop off.  And, amusingly, a couple of friends in my Wednesday gossip group want the disgarded spotted covers, which I am happy to give them.

We won't be cold this winter

 

The key to buying keyrings online ..

 ... is that the slly advertisers call a keyring two pieces, the fastening bit and the ring where you hang the keys.  So a box of "36 pieces" is actually only 18 keyrings to normal people i.e. me.  Yes, they did picture the full contents of the box along side it,but who actually counts that?  Anyway, I wanted them for mni socks.  Made on the Knitmaster, 16 sts wide leg of 12 rows, foot of 8 rows, turned heels and toe and grafted.

Another heatwave!

 ... and too hot to knit.

Here's a snowman toilet roll cover I finished earlier.

After the heatwave, after the flood

Too hot to knit, then as soon as the weather cooled down, a burst inlet pipe in the kitchen brought all knitting to a halt for a couple of days.

I have been "playing" with a Reader, Hand & Co machine for a few weeks, on and off (mostly off).  This machine has an extra pattern dsik attached to the side, and twin feed for yarn, extra cam for the needle path. There only seems to be the one setting though It came to me in a very parlous state, totally seized, with the knitting attached.  It took the combined efforts of the gang (bribed by cake) to get it apart and the needles out, then yourse truly attacked it with more than one can of WD40.  Today was re-assembly day.  The gang was again bribed by cake as the full machine is too heavy for me to lift.