Amore (love in the Italian language)

You know Mr FF and I don't do Valentines, I just looked back at my post last year when Mr FF was more concerned about the state of his much loved car then he was about creating any romance. However, this year I did knit him a pair of Valentine socks in Regia world colour, I got the idea ages ago from Josiekitten. They are of course the colours of the Italian flag and he seems very pleased with them, I heard him on the phone telling a business colleague about his gift. Usually I can manage to knit him socks whilst sitting beside him, he never notices what I'm doing, but these were far too obvious and had to be made in complete secrecy. Now I'm not sure which he loves best, me, his car or Italy.

Let me leave you with a belated Valentine's gift, one of my favourite Italian songs, I love Italy too.

It's raining wool

The little cardigan is finished, knitted in Patons merino dk which was a pleasure to use, it turned out slightly smaller than the pattern but a few adjustments sorted that and took just 200 g. I love cables and there was just the right amount here, it will be finished with a zip up the front when Pam has taken it off to the nearest haberdashers to find a suitable one, hopefully she will stitch it in. I've said before that I don't like sewing up my knitting but since I mastered mattress stitch it suddenly seems much easier and gives a really good result.See now neat this side seam is, well neat compared to my usual efforts.

As Pam provided the yarn this project made no difference to the stash calculations, however I received this week as gift a lovely bag of yarn from someone who knew I could use it.300 g of Sunbeam St Ives 4ply, a yarn I've found previously in charity shops, great for socks with 75% wool content, probably enough for 3 pairs in a manly shade of grey with flecks of various other colours in there.300 g of Stylecraft pure wool dk, made in Scotland and a lovely pinky purple that I'm sure will suit Amelia.
Finally, and my favourite 450 g of Wensleydale Longwool 4 ply from the Sheep Shop in Leyburn, spun in Yorkshire, a pretty peachy shade that would probably make a couple of gorgeous shawls or scarves or maybe something pretty for me. There is even a woven sheepy label to stitch into the finished article.

All great quality yarns, not a scrap of acrylic and because I didn't buy them myself no guilt involved at all. My lovely self perpetuating stash, I'm such a lucky girl.

Speaking up (aka Time for a Rant)

It's been a fairly quiet week, a time when enthusiasm for the New Year New Me has faded but still too early for real signs of spring. The weather has been horrible, a sprinkling of snow, high winds and torrential rain. Lots of time spent knitting in front of the stove interspersed with a bit of dorissing including my infrequent duty of knocking down the cobwebs in the double height atrium using the step ladder and a feather duster on the end of a long cane, so that's the spring cleaning done.

Mr FF and I have both agreed that this year we are not taking any nonsense (except from each other of course), that we won't support unfairness, bad practice or business that doesn't provide good service and that we will give credit where it is deserved. For example

We are still without central heating, or indeed a boiler, and coping really well. When our 20 year old, usually reliable and fuel efficient boiler started to leak water just before Christmas. Mr FF in something of a panic because of all the problems caused by the very cold weather ordered a new condensing boiler that we put into the store until our plumber could connect it up. However because of the condensing function our existing flue arrangement won't work and Mr FF received such appalling customer service from the manufacturers, basically they didn't have a clue what we should do in our slightly more complex than usual situation, that after 4 weeks he sent the bloomin thing back and got a full refund. We had such bad reports about this new and enforced type of boiler (apparently you need permission to use a non-condensing one) that we are looking at alternatives, including the possibility of an air source heat pump that would be so eco friendly but not necessarily suitable for our current system. It would mean that we could no longer operate the back boiler on our stove that provides so much hot water and runs the radiator in the hall. It's either an expensive environmental system or an infrequently used conventional boiler and stick with our lovely stove and back boiler. Apart from in really cold weather, we never use the central heating, we have the stove burning 24 hours a day, Mr FF has a small thermostatically controlled electric oil filled radiator in his office and we have one in our bedroom if required. Otherwise we are using our own calories and wool jumpers each to keep us toasty.

This week Mr FF received by email a ticket for a business event he is attending in a few weeks. The ticket was an A4 sheet, black background with a white image of some structure, venue details and the ticket number. Mr FF replied saying it would probably use all the ink in his printer, to which the company running the event responded that they would happily print it out for him and post it. At this stage I suggested that he needed to get his message across a bit stronger, that the whole ethos was wrong and so he did, not only suggesting that the expectation of each delegate producing an ink heavy paper ticket was wrong, but that emailing such a thing in large scale format was wasteful. The ticket was a 2 Mb file, sent to a minimum 200 delegates and stored on sender and recipients systems and possibly also backed up, this could amount to 1600 Mb (equivalent to 50,000 average size letters), half of which may be stored in specially built data warehousing that uses energy to build and maintain. He received a reply thanking him for pointing all this out, the company had not previously considered the impact on the environment and they would be taking it on board. They also agreed that since delegates had already enrolled for the event there was no need at all for tickets and that they could simply provide identification at the registration.

I walked out of TK Maxx sticking my intended purchase on the nearest rail because there was a queue of about 10 people and only one till open, such a place doesn't deserve my money.

I've written to thank a mail order firm that provided me with a (1/3rd) more expensive item at the same price when the sale article I ordered was out of stock, despatching it by special delivery again at no extra cost so that I received it next day. The lovely cardigan is back to full price now, I paid £69 for my grey one.

I had a call from a guy saying our Sky box warranty had run out and he could renew it over the phone for us taking either the full amount or setting up installments. I asked him what we usually did, he said last year we paid the full amount. I then explained that we'd never had a Sky warranty, that we consider warranties a complete rip off and that he wasn't telling the truth, he was soon off the phone. I know call centre people have to make a living but blatant dishonesty surely isn't the way, his friendly confident tone could easily mislead people.

A friend once told me that sometimes getting your message across can be like throwing mud at a wall, you throw an awful lot and not much sticks, but a little bit of it does. I intend to throw lots this year.

This weekend I've mostly been good

What a nice weekend, so far -

I took a bag of stuff to the charity shops and brought nothing back.

I made my marmalade, 12 jars now in stock.

I enjoyed a film evening at Pam's when we watched the funny and visually delicious Heartbreaker, starring the fortunate Vanessa Paradis. She made me want to move to Monaco, buy a beautiful silk dressing gown, lose a lot of weight and take up with Johnny Depp, actually I've always wanted to do the latter, OK the latter two, and I do have a silk dressing gown that is quite glam but a size 14 not 6.I finished another pair of Regia socks for the market stall (there is a clue to my downfall behind the sock). Mr FF spotted them, liked them very much and asked if he could have them, I do have enough of this yarn because I got quite a few orders for this colour combination so he could be lucky.
I took possession of 8 balls of Merino.Note no mention of purchase (yet) as this is a commission to knit the Smiling Jacket from Louisa Harding's Miss Bea's Rainy Day. Such a great little pattern book that I've used quite a lot, I'm currently on a campaign to get the kids I know into hand knits so there could be more. Amelia by the way was apparently delighted with her little cardigan, showing it off and hugging it round her, bless.
Finally, own up time. I've failed in my stash reduction efforts because Kemps decided to reduce their organic cotton and I bought 8 balls for £1.50 each. I did think when I placed the online order that I might use up more sock wool before the parcel arrived, but oh no efficient as ever it was here in a flash.The colour is borage which I had imagined from the website would be bluer than it is but still a really nice shade. So now the scores are Stash 5 Jen 4 (we are talking 100 gs here), must try harder, must knit faster, must stop speaking too soon.

Stash 1 Jen 2

Could this be the year that I use more yarn than I buy, certainly doing well so far. I completed my first socks of 2011 in Italy and now have these. The pattern is from one of my Christmas presents (could this also be the year I keep mentioning the C word) Favourite Socks from Interweave. The yarn is Aruncania Ranco Multi which I've used before to knit plain socks. I think the yarn works better with some pattern and this Undulating Rib by Ann Budd was just what I was looking for, interesting and easy to memorise.I have bought just one ball of sock wool this year, I can't show you because it's a surprise. I count this as a huge success and feel it justifies my scathing comments on other blogs where chums have already started their stash enhancement. I'm having another market stall just before Easter which is spurring me on to knit socks, already cast on the next pair not that I need much encouragement, and hopefully will reduce my considerable store of sock wool, until I weaken that is.

Knitting now, well not now, it's finished

I mentioned a while back that I was knitting Amelia a little cardigan from Debbie Bliss's Family Knits book. A tiny garment really but it has taken me ages, I had to force myself to finish it with the reward that once the main knitting was done I could start a sock. But when the knitting was finished I was really not much more than halfway there as all the ends had to be stitched in, don't you just hate that job. I sat through El Cid and one of the Indiana Jones films whilst sewing in the same way that I'll watch mundane telly while I do the ironing, that's how bad it was and how long it took. Finally done, I can't say I enjoyed working on this but it is very pretty, lets hope Amelia appreciates it. It was originally intended for her birthday last October, then moved on to a Christmas gift but now I'm just grateful she hasn't grown into a teenager while I've been stalling. Luckily it is size 2 to 3 years and she is about 16 months.

I seemed to forget when I embarked on this project that I'm not that keen on colour work.It's a long time since I made this Kaffe Fassett cardigan from a Rowan magazine, I do recall now that I had to force myself to knit at least a couple of rows every day. I think the euphoria of finishing it and truly loving it wiped away all memories of the toil involved. Now I'm going back to socks, socks that only need two ends sewing in, one top one bottom, yarn that can change colour all by itself. Hallelujah for the inventors of double pointed needles and self patterning wool.

Christmas past Christmas presents

Christmas is long gone and this will be my last festive post for a long time, honest, but I thought you might be wondering how Mr FF and I managed our £5 gift exchange this year since we hardly got out because of the snow.

I only gave Mr FF two gifts but they were both very well received, a pair of socks I knitted from some charity shop wool that wasn't particularly interesting so I added a bit of cable to a rib pattern and a cd of songs in Italian we have both been enjoying so maybe a bit more of the language will penetrate.Mr FF did surprisingly well, giving me a couple of charity shop paperbacks, from our village market a handmade candle, some delicous dark chocolate drops that are really meant for cooking but are being munched, a handful of vanilla scented tea lights and finally a little Converse boot charm. I also wanted to show you the two gorgeous tea towels I received from my friend Barb in the USA, though we have never met she knows me so well and has a wonderful knack of sending just the right thing, in the past a lovely sock pattern book and now these. I don't know if she realised how partial I am to a pretty tea towel, these are crackers and so me, thanks Barb.The snow has finally gone and the rain has arrived but it's nice to be able to look out onto green instead of white and anticipate spring though I have been thinking about next Christmas and how I should get organised, knit more gifts and try to spend the whole of my £5 budget next time.