A Ta-Dah!

Hello folks.  

At last, pictures of my Fabulous Stripy Cardi.  The pattern is Mon Petit Gilet Raye by Isabelle Milleret,  the yarn, Drops Alpaca and the stripes, Drops Delight.

This cardi was started in *Ahem* March 2014 and finished in May 2016.  It was started, altered and ripped back, thrown in the naughty corner and finally pulled out and finished.  

As the weather has got chillier I wore it the other evening and realised I hadn't shown it off yet.  Both the yarns are wonderfully soft and cosy warm and I am loving wearing it.

I made mine longer than the pattern and added extra increases to the yolk which upon reflection, I don't think I'll do again.  

I sewed in a piece of stabilising velvet ribbon in the back of the neck to stop it pulling down too much.

 I've just cast another on, this time in blues and grey.  Should be a quicker job this time but could be famous last words!

Have a fun week............Clicky Needles

Well, I wasn't expecting that.

I woke up this morning not feeling all that great.  I suffer from acid reflux and it payed me a visit last night.  Hugely painful (stomach acid burning your oesophagus) and really annoying in the early hours when you are trying to sleep. 
I was (grumpily) idly looking at Facebook this morning and saw a sewing machine for sale in Stroud.  It had been used once to hem some curtains so was effectively new.  I messaged the lady selling it and got it for £45.  It should be £65 new.

It is so much lighter then my 30 year old Toyota and has a few more stitches. 

I love that you can see the bobbin, so you know when it will run out, you can just drop the bobbin in the case, it has measurements on the base plate and you can convert it from a flat bed to free arm.  All things my Toyota lacks.

Of course, I had to try it out.  I got out some patchwork pieces I have had for years.  I'm sure they will be recognised by some of you.  My very first job I had when I left school was just off Cheltenham Promenade where the Laura Ashley shop was.  I used to spend my lunchtimes in there looking at rolls and rolls of fabric without the funds to pay for it!  I used to buy row ends and odd bits of fabric from the bargain bin and I think the patchwork pack came from it too. 
This is from the Sweet Pea range; I preferred the yellow shades but you could get it in pink too.  It was ubiquitous and eventually fell out of fashion.

 What better thing to test out the new machine?  It is lovely to use and I'm very impressed with it.  My Toyota isn't going anywhere however.   I'm planning to make a double sided piece of patchwork as a mat for the machine to sit on.

At the moment it is living on the desk in Miss Clicky's room.  She has moved out in the last few weeks and has gone to Gloucester with her boyfriend.  It is quieter, and a little less untidy in Clicky Needles towers now.  
So there we are, I wasn't expecting to be owning a new sewing machine today, things didn't turn out quite so bad, after all.

Summer Holidays are Done

Hello Folks!

Firstly I have to say say thanks for your wonderful comments on my Afmaeli jumper.  I'm just waiting for winter now!    

Mr Clicky and me have been to France and of course, this means lots of time (when not driving) for knitting.  The first thing I made was a little crochet basket from Nutscene Twine, the sort you buy in the garden centre.  This was a quick little make finished by the time we got on the train at the Channel Tunnel.

I made this to go into our bathroom sink unit, every time I opened the door to get my toiletries out they all fell over and it was driving me bonkers so I thought a basket would do the job.  Sadly I ran out of string or I would have been making more.

The weather when we are at our our house was hot.  35 degree hot.  Lovely if you are sightseeing, sitting and relaxing.  We were indoors and painting.  This is the view from our attic bedroom looking up to Le Mont Saint-Cyr.

We did allow ourselves a trip up to the top when we finished work one evening and looked down over Southern Burgundy.    Our village, Montmelard, is on the right.

When I zoom you can see the village with our hamlet just below.  Our house is the first one of the terrace  on the right with the highest roof. 

Turns out we're on the map on top of the mountain too!

I mentioned that I was getting my sewing machine out to do some repairs to trousers and things.  One thing I was tasked with was mending Master Clicky's cricket pads.    He said that velcro had 'stopped working' and when the tried to run in them they fell off.  I wasn't too sure what he meant but on inspection sure enough the sticky bit of the velcro was no longer sticky.  I popped into Sew and Sew in Stroud and bought more, sewing it on was ok

until the needle got right into the pad.  I woman handled it through and I'm pleased to report that they now stay on when he is running.

With the sewing machine out I made a car bin with some of Mr Clicky's old jeans.   I had thought sewing the denim would be tricky but with a new denim needle it was a piece of cake.

The strap to go around the headrest is made from some bits of the waist band.  A bit rough it does the job!

Well that's me for now, back to school for the kids tomorrow, the staff have already been in last week.  Bye bye summer holidays I have enjoyed you, especially staying up late watching the Olympics.

See you soon......Clicky Needles.

Afmaeli Ta-Dah!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello Folks!

Drum roll please...........

The finished pictures of my Afmaeli jumper..  

I am so in love with this jumper. 

 I love the yarn ~ Drops Nepal ~ Wool/Alpaca Mix. 

 I love the pattern.  

I love the fit ~ the way that it clings in the right places even though there's no waist shaping.

I love that it's cosy, if a bit too hot right now.

I love the colours.

I love construction.

I love everything about it. 

It is the best jumper that I have ever made.

I'm also quite pleased with the pics which I took on my phone with a selfie stick!

And now lots of pics, I'm sorry but I can't resist.

Maisie loves it too, she's wearing it right now.

Me and Mr Clicky are off to France again so I'll see you next week.
Have a super week, whatever you get up to.
Clicky Needles.

Two Projects Finished and a Cast On.

Hello Folks!

Me and Mr Clicky are back from France working on our little house.  We were scraping and sanding very nasty, very old, hairy paint from the stairs and then we filled the holes that were hidden by the hairy paint.  Tedious stuff.

The car knitting was successful and my Linus on the Line Shawl came on leaps and bounds.   I drove to Eurotunnel so my first bit of knitting was on the train in the tunnel.   

I relaxed in the evening with a glass of fizz after a day of hairy paint scraping and the balls seemed to get smaller at last.  The good news is that I cast it off queuing to come back into U.K. at Eurotunnel again.

When we arrived back I finished the last bit of neck ribbing on my Afmaeli sweater too.  I've sewn all those ends in and it's blocking right now.

With those two projects finished I've now cast on Aventine, a shawl from the lovely folks at Baa Ram Ewe.  The pattern comes from a book by Carole Feller all in their beautiful Dovestone yarn.   It has buttons that fasten at the the back of the neck so it won't fall off ~ have a look on the link.  My yarn sadly isn't Dovestone but Jaeger Matchmaker, which was given to me by my lovely knitting pal Romain, I'm not complaining though, it's a lovely soft merino and it's grey.  What's not to like?

Today I'm getting my sewing machine out, I've got lots of fixing and mending to do.  It's the "Muuuum I've got a hole in my pocket" sort of sewing, although I might make something lovely too.

Have a wonderful day whatever you do.

See you soon.............Clicky Needles.

Holidays

The first week of the summer holidays has been a good one for me.  The last week at school was chaotic and stressful and I'm glad it's finished.  

Miss and Master Clicky went to a Greek Island with my brother and his family, leaving Mr Clicky and me at home.  I have pottered about, had some late lie-ins and we've gone out and about a few times, to the cinema to see Star Trek Beyond ~ absolutely amazing.   They arrived back late last night, bronzed and with lots of washing.  Two people, I discovered don't produce much washing at all.  Four, lots.

My Afmaeli sweater has come on.  I got to the very exciting bit of joining the body and arms and working on the yolk.  I am still loving this yarn and pattern and I've made such good progress I've started the ribbing at the neck in the cream.  Unfortunately I've run out of yarn!  

 I did a quick order to Wool Warehouse and whilst waiting for it to come started sewing in the ends.  I'm giving you a sneaky peak at the back, not showing the front until the proper Ta-Dah! which shouldn't be that long because....

my new ball arrived in the post this morning.  It's a different dye lot but I'm not concerned.  It even came in a dinky Wool Warehouse organza bag, I've only had H U G E bags before. :-) 

 Me and Mr Clicky are off to France to work on our little house tomorrow.  That leaves my Midwinter Yarns Linus on the Line shawl being the perfect car knitting.  Nothing like long rows to eat up those miles and miles of French motorway.

That's me for now, in France we're preparing walls and hopefully painting them too, but experience has taught us no job is ever as quick as it should be.

Have a great week, I'll see you next weekend.

Clicky Needles.

Tate Modern

Hello there.

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to go to Tate Modern on a school trip.  I say lucky, but I was not looking forward to this trip.  The thought of a three hour coach journey both ways from Gloucestershire to London and three hours in The Tate with a bunch of 10 and 11 year olds was not appealing.  As it turned out we had a lovely driver and the kids had brought games/colouring/cards to keep them occupied on the journey.  We had an early start 7.30am instead of 8.45am but it still only took 20 minutes before someone asked if they could eat their lunch.  When we reached the M40 flyover (Westway) the coach echoed with excited voices checking out the expensive shiny cars in the multi-storey car showrooms.  "I can see a Porsche!" "Look at that Lamborghini!"

We were dropped on the South Bank, walked past Shakespeare's Globe and were soon at what used to be Bankside Power Station.  When it finished generating power in 1981 it stood empty until 1993 when it became Tate Modern.

 

We grouped in the massive Turbine Hall ~ you can get 7 double decker busses on top of each other here.

This is The Turbine Hall from the glowy box thing viewing balcony you can see half way up.

One girl in my group said her Gran had told her look for Henri Matisse's The Snail.    It was the first thing we ran into.  What I hadn't appreciated was it was BIG.  2.7m by 2.8m. Wall sized.

One of Monet's Waterlilies, this was also wall sized.

It felt quite drab with it's greens and blues rather than the pinks and purples of some of his other work, but none the less impressive.  I loved seeing this.

We found some Mondrians ~ normal sized and

Picasso's Weeping Woman, she is certainly full of angst.  

One of Antony Gormley's statues.

We crossed the bridge over The Turbine Hall

looked down on a tree sculpture by Ai Weiwei, a Chinese artist, made from lots of different types of trees  

into the new building only just opened.

I'm not sure who this was by but I really liked it ~ the grey bits perhaps.

Of course, not everything seemed like art to me and several times the kids came up to me and said "I don't get that."  "Me neither," I'd reply and we'd laugh and carry on.   The children got a lot from the visit, stopping, staring and really talking about what they saw, which I suppose is what it's all about.

Some things however, seemed pleasing to me, Stack By Tony Cragg for instance.  Dunno why, I just like it.

I couldn't work out what this town was made of, until one of the boys in my group told me it was couscous, he'd seen it on the news.  It's a model of Ghardaia, a town in Algeria.

It was made by museum staff and chefs with couscous and salt to stiffen it following the instructions of Kader Attia, a French-Algerian artist.  I liked this too, but art? I don't know.

Our 3 hours were soon up and we walked back to the bus.  The wobbly  Millennium Bridge

and The Shard, the tallest building in the UK.

Our lovely bus driver took us on a bit of a tour on the way back past 10 Downing Street, Houses of Parliament, Parliament Square, Buckingham Palace gardens and Oxford Street.  Commentary provided on the PA system by one of the teachers, who was stupefied to see a gold, yes gold, Land Rover Evoque in Sloane Square.  The boys at the back of the bus were impressed.

It was a long but very enjoyable day.  If you get the chance to go, do.  Go with an open mind, you're not going to like it all, some things are downright weird, but that's ok.  Worth it for the Monet alone for me.  I might go back, but without the gaggle of kids next time!

See you soon..............Clicky Needles.