Hello Stranger

I can't believe it's been 3 weeks since I blogged!  Where did the time go?

So, what have I been up to?  In chronological order, I've: sung in a concert; helped run a games convention; found some RPG-playing knitters and co-foundered The Order of the Pointy Sticks ("greetings fellow Minions!"); driven to/from Scotland to attend DH's best friend's father's funeral; rehearsed for a concert in France; watched England play Switzerland at Wembley; gardened a bit; spent the day with a friend from the Motley Fool who was en-route to Portugal; visited the BBC; and knitted a lot.  I'll give you some potted highlights.

The Concert

On Saturday 21st May, my choir performed Purcell's Funeral Music for Queen Mary; Holst's Choral Fantasia, Rutter's Psalm 150 and the Rutter Gloria.  Although the Rutter was lovely ("Utterly Rutterly" according to our conductor), a lot of the concert was music to slit your wrists by: sorrowful, heartfelt and full of pain.  Perfect music for Goths.  This is particularly true of the Choral Fantasia, which I keep referring to as "A hymn for the damned".

Given that I was mourning one death and expecting another, I found the drum and brass intro to the Purcell to be especially painful.  If you need a choir and brass ensemble for a funeral, let me know.... In the meantime, we leave on concert tour on Thursday.  We're off to Nancy to sing Faure's Requiem with the Choeur Nancy Ducale on Saturday night.

The Games Convention and the Order of the Pointy Sticks

Shadow-Con is two days of RPG's, mayhem and dice which drives DH to distraction DH organises every Spring Bank Holiday Weekend, aided and abetted by a group of press-ganged willing volunteers.  This year was more fraught than normal because BF was already in Scotland, having dashed up when his dad took a turn for the worse, and thus could not do his usual share of the workload (printing tickets, manning the front desk, buying some of the stuff for the Tuck Shop, setting up on the Friday night and operating the heart of the sun a.k.a. the coal-fired barbecue we use on the Saturday night of the Con).  DH shouldered most of it.

My usual chores are manning the Tuck Shop, ordering and fetching the meat for the barbecue and doing the Saturday morning bacon butty run.  This year, I spent several hours re-creating the tickets (unobtainable because the file/template is on BF's computer), shopped for Tuck Shop and barbecue (I was comparison shopping for the barbecue when I found the Arnott's BBQ Shapes)  helped set up on the Friday night, ordered outdoor lighting for the barbecue.  My reward:  I got to listen to the cricket when I was in the Tuck Shop and I got to play in a couple of games for free.

I was on duty in the Tuck Shop on the Saturday, and knitting on my latest sock, when I discovered TWO MORE crafters:  a knitter and a crochetter.  I'd already outed a third in a Cthulhu game about 9 months ago, and before Saturday was over the four of us girls were talking patterns, comparing projects and swapping Ravelry IDs.  By close of play on Sunday, we'd formed The Order of the Pointy Sticks and started trying to arrange meet ups.  After ten years of wishing, Ladies and Gentlemen, I've found a knitting group.

Lots and lots of knitting

The body and sleeves of the Willow sweater are done.

After weeks of easy motoring, I'm now working on the yoke.   It's a complex, cabled pattern, knitted sideways, that isn't charted. I don't think it can be because of the numerous short rows. This is the first time in ages, I've had to work cables from the written pattern and it's hard. I'm sure it requires far more concentration than working from a chart.  If anyone knows how to chart short rows, please let me know, I've got 8 repeats of 45 rows of this. 

In the meantime, I needed something more mindless to knit while playing RPG's on Sundays, so I cast on the Three Hour Sweater  in Rowan's RYC Cotton Jeans from my stash.  The colourway is Blue Wash.  This pattern is famous/infamous on Ravelry:  it's a vintage, 1930's sweater knitted on big needles to fit a vintage size 16 (supposedly a modern US size 8).  The gauge is 4 stitches to the inch.  The needle sizes given in the pattern are obviously modern add-ons - 1930's Americans didn't use the metric system. 

 

 (I'm knitting it in the round instead of flat.)  Most knitters have had to modify it to fit their size, including me - my modifications can be found here.   So far, it's taken me about 8 hours.

And, finally, here are my latest socks for DH in Lang's Jawoll Magic. 

Simple, plain vanilla, mindless socks. Yay!

 - Pam

I had a colb

I've got a code -- a code --
   A bost udpleased code;
I caddod sig a sog of sprig,
   I caddod bake ad ode.
For inspirashud will nod cub:
   I'be feelig very blue;
Oh, would that I was -- 
   Ah --
      Ah --
         Ah -- h --
               Kish -- SHOO-O-O!!

(extract from K'shoo by C J Dennis (1876-1938)

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Hello, did you miss me?  I was out of Blogland for a while due to a combination of things -  a head cold (a classic "URTI" [upper respiratory tract infection]),and  the games convention "Conception".


This year's convention was pretty much like last year's but I forgot to re-read the list of things to bring along, so, yet again, no garlic crusher.  Must also remember tinfoil next time.

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Learned  the hard way that beer/alcohol and some cold medications don't mix.  In a vain attempt to stop my nose running/sneezing, I doped myself up on "cold and flu" tablets as well as using one of those nasal sprays.  I felt fine until after the second or third half of bitter when I returned from the bar to find DH occupying warming my seat.  He offered to stand and I said "No, it's fine.  I'll stand up for a while".  Two minutes later, my head was swimming and I felt like I was going to faint.

I didn't make it to the end of the quiz that night.  And I didn't touch another drop of alcohol until Friday evening, when I'd stopped taking the meds.

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Best quote of the convention:

Middle-aged gamer complaining to his friend:  “Why do I get the option of “adult entertainment” when all I want to watch is sport? Why can’t I have sport?”

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Best t-shirt slogan:-

 

sold by Pagan Angel.   Yes, I bought one.

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Convention Knitting:

As usual, I knitted my way though the convention.  I finished my first project before I played in my first game:

Pattern: Weekender Beret by Woolly Wormhead, from the latest issue of Yarn Forward magazine.
Yarn:  1 skein of Rowan Cocoon, in the Mountain colourway.  A lovely, silky soft yarn to knit with.
Sticks:  6mm circulars.
Next time:   I don't think I got gauge.  This is certainly less slouchy than the one in the magazine photos, but I may also have not made the main section deep enough (I was so eager to cast off and wear this).  Or maybe I made the wrong size, since my head measurement came half way between the medium and the large.

My second project is a pair of Sodera socks, designed by Vilma Vuori.  (The pattern is available as a free, Ravelry download, here).  I don't have any photos yet, although I have finally finished the first sock, nearly a week after the end of the convention. 

Main things to note are that, in my cold-cure addled brain, I couldn't visualise how the instructions for the "plain German heel" would work, so applied Knot Another Hat's  toe-up sock formula for the heel instead.   Now, of course, the instructions make perfect sense.

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DH passed another birthday while we were at Conception.  Here he is modelling his birthday present from me:

And a better shot of the hat:

 

Pattern:  Montreal Tuque by Veronik Avery.  From her Knitting Classic Style.

Yarn:  Wensleydale Longwool Sheepshop's DK.  Used less than 1 ball.

Needles:  3.5mm circular using magic loop.

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I think that's all for now.

- Pam

Conception 2009

THURSDAY 29TH JANUARY 2009

I'm spending most of the week at a games convention, Conception 2009, together with the crowd from the games club DH runs. The Con started yesterday and runs until Sunday. So far, I’ve played two sessions of Cthulhu and I’m booked into five more. Both my characters have survived – no mean feat in this environment.

There is wi-fi here, but at £5/hour or £25 for the week, I’m trying to avoid logging in. I can’t justify the £25 – it would just be a wasteful luxury (either that or one of the other members of our party would attempt to monopolise my laptop and I’m damned if I’m paying out for them to play internet games). I think I’ll just do one £5 session either tomorrow or Saturday.

Bringing the laptop was my idea. As well as its role in character generation for one of the games, it’s acting as an entertainment centre – the backup of my MP3 player is on it and the speakers are reasonable.

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NOTE TO SELF:

Next year when we come to the Con, remember to pack the following:-

1. - kitchen timer
2. - tea towels
3. - oven gloves
4. - the garlic crusher
5. - a chopping board – the chalet only comes with one and a second would be handy
6. - my main dice bag! (Fortunately, I have my travelling dice in my handbag.)

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FRIDAY 30th JANUARY 2009

For the first time in the history of RPGs, a knitting needle has been in anger! My character had "knitting needle" as an offensive weapon at 40% skill level. In the heat of battle, with no other weapons left, she drew out a needle and stabbed an attacker through the head for 9 points of damage. Almost, but not quite killing the attacker.

Later, the GM tells me that he designed the character with me in mind.

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DH has been using the laptop to generate certificates for games the club is running ("Most heroic death" ... that sort of thing). We've lost count of the number of times someone has asked whether it is a netbook, then "wowwed" over its features. If Acer needed salesmen, we've done a really good job this weekend.

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THE VENUE

The venue is one of your typical British holiday camps. Not quite “Hi Dee Hi”, but an obvious descendent. Picture a hundred acre, partially wooded site, populated by “chalets” (mobile homes to you Americans), with a communal bar and banqueting suite. Every possible inch of the communal areas is occupied by gamers; even the bar has been overrun by LARPers.

This is my third year and DH’s 6^th or 7^th. Each year, the chalet we’ve hired has had a different layout but universally they seem to be well designed. Far more thought has gone into their layout than your average British home: the open plan kitchens are bigger, with more food preparation space; each chalet has three or four double bedrooms with built in wardrobes and at least two bathrooms (one en-suite); the L-shaped living rooms can host a dinner party at the dining table without requiring the other furniture to be moved out of the way, and the sitting area is large enough to seat everyone for coffee afterwards. How ironic when you consider how much these buildings are sneered at.

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THE KNITTING

As far as I can tell, I'm the only knitter at the Con. I'm knitting a pair of the Herringbone Rib Socks which featured in the Winter 2008 edition of Interweave Knits. Here is the picture from Interweave:

I'm using Wendy's Happy, a 75% bamboo yarn, in the Scorpio 2505 colourway.

I've had a love-hate relationship with this pattern over the last few weeks. (I started the socks I'm working on about 3 weeks ago.) It is easy to learn but not easy in execution - if you drop a stitch or make a mistake and need to go back and correct it, it's hell on earth. On both socks, I made different mistakes that required tinking back, and the tinking was harder than knitting them up in the first place. This is not a pattern for your knitting autopilot - you constantly have to watch what is happening on your needles. The stitch pattern is fiddly in the extreme. It's also slow. Two years ago, over the course of the Con, I knitted DH a pair of socks in 4-ply sock yarn; last year, in two days, I knitted a pair in Regia 6-Faedig (DK weight, I believe). This year, I've managed one and a half socks, in five days of almost constant knitting.

I hated it for almost all of the first sock. Interweave says, "This versatile unisex pattern may well become one of the go-to sock patterns in your repertoire". If you'd asked me four days ago, my response would have been a sarcastic "Yeah, right. You've got to be kidding!".

And yet..... The results are stunning. The stitch pattern shows up the varigations in the yarn beautifully. And even the fiddliness stops being irritating after a while. Will I knit it again? Yes.

- Pam