Yikes!

To my horror, I saw several blog updates popping up on my blogroll that had pictures of jars overflowing with orts and titles that said “August Tusal”. Surely, surely, a month has not passed by already? What, I wonder, have I been doing with my time, that I can’t recall what I did in the past month? I’ve been reading (and listening to) Harry Potter and I’ve been mothering [poor Pelle is having a rough time of it at his new school. Not as rough as I’d expected, but still, he demands a lot of attention and cuddles, which, of course, I am happy to provide :o)], and I’ve been entertaining my dear friend Harmien, and I’ve been knitting and hooking and stitching too. Well, time flies when you’re having fun, they say, and I suppose it’s true. On to the stitching and knitting, then.
 

First of all, I want to say that my love for Sarah Harris is growing every day. Her colours are so unexpected and amazing, bright and subdued at the same time. That sounds odd, doesn’t it? Well, have a look and judge for yourself. Screaming bright Pinks that I’d never even used before, next to the beautifullest, most subtle shades of pearly grays and pastels, with some browns thrown in:

Even though I have not left many comments in the past couple of weeks, I have been visiting blogs and your gorgeous work inspired me to pick up my own WIPs and UFOs. Such as Beatrix Potter. Bea hadn’t seen the light of day since... let me check... March 28th 2009, but whilst watching the delightful film Miss Potter the other day, I was inspired to pick up her books and enjoy the delightful stories with their pretty drawings in sweet colours, which in turn, made me pick up the sampler.

I’m using the entire collection of DMC linen threads for this sampler, one over two on white 32 count linen. Yum.

Hooking has occurred, especially on those evenings when I was too tired to pick up needle, thread, scissors, lap stand, chart, telephone, iPod and plant myself in my stitching chair. Amazing how fast crochet goes, compared with stitching. This blanket is now so large, that it covers my legs when I’m working on it. Yay!

Colour-wise, I suppose you could say I’m using Sarah Harris as my inspiration: just throw together all the colours you can find, basically. It doesn’t have to be a pretty blanket, as far as I’m concerned. Just very, very colourful.

Hooking is especially fast when you compare it with fair isle knitting. And yes, a little of that has been happening too in this house:

This was intended as a sock but, as usual, it is too tight to get past my ankles, so I’m turning it into an arm warmer. I’ve got quite a collection of those now :o)) (and yes, I know some people looking at these pictures will probably think that my garden is in serious need of some de-weeding, but my motto is: weeds are only weeds when they’re in the wrong place, and weeds are never in the wrong place in my garden. I love weeds. They’re incredibly versatile, useful, some of them are tasty, some of them make great skin-care products or cough medicine or any other medicine for that matter, and when you let them grow the way they are meant to, they can be incredibly beautiful. So there.)

Oh, before I forget!

Orts. A great many of them. Well, I’m impressed, anyway.

Yours inspiredly,
Annemarie.

The granny, the bike and the poodle

My dear darling honeybuns, may I present this month’s orts jar:

I was taking a lovely long walk through the beautiful woods this afternoon, and to my astonishment and glee found the forest floor littered with these babies. Ahhhh, Fall is upon us! I thought I’d take them home, put them in my orts jar, and put my orts in a wee wine glass. Well, I say orts but in fact, it’s just one ort, and it’s not a real ort but a bit of thread that stuck out of a newly purchased pillowette.
Does this count as a Tusal update? Please? Pretty please? I really tried to do some stitching, but then everytime I sat down with needle and thread - and lap stand, and chart:

* I had to finish a translation
* I fell ill with a drrrreadful head cold and a chest infection
* Pelle turned 7:
* I had to cart Pelle (and his cousin) around in our new cargo bike. (Pelle can’t ride a bike himself due to him being... Pelle. But he loves to go for long bike rides. Therefore the ex (who is now loaded) thought it would be nice to get Pelle the cargo bike for his birthday):* I decided I needed to start a second Giant granny square blanket:
* I decided I needed handmade gifts for Pelle’s teachers in the shape of hand-knit socks:
This is the first of 8 socks I need to finish before 18 August. Something tells me I’m not going to make it. I would abandon the project had I not already asked the teachers for their favourite colours and shoe sizes. What on earth would I say if they asked me what I needed that information for? That I just go around asking people’s shoe sizes because I’m a shoe size fetishist? No. I’m afraid I’m just going to have to knit the damned socks.

Ooooooh, I’ve been to the hair dresser’s today, and I look all different. Well, I think so anyway. I don’t like to fuss with my hair, you see, and lately I found that I had to do an awful lot of unwanted fussing to straighten my hair in order for my short bob to look good. Only my hair isn’t naturally straight. In fact, my hair is so far from naturally straight that every time I thought I’d successfully ironed it into submission after hours of pottering about with potions, conditioners, anti-frizz, straightening irons and blow dryers, the mirror told me Mission Short Straight Bob had failed. So I decided to embrace the poodle in me and go for a matching poodle-‘do.
Excuse the freaky looking cat. He was intrigued by the flashing red light of the self-timer.

Well, again I’ve managed to write a post about absolutely nothing anyone could ever be vaguely interested in. My apologies. Next time... more of the same, I fear :o)

Yours poodley-doodley,
Annemarie.

I'm Your Witch Hooker

Don't bother googling my blog title. The results are surprisingly disappointing. Before you click the 'un-follow this blog' button, have a look at the following picture before you jump to any conclusions. This is what makes me a witchy hooker: You see, I've been dipping my toe in witchy waters for a good while now, and I find them remarkably soothing and cleansing. Balmy. Invigorating. Witchcraft is what I've been studying these last couple of months and witchcraft is what's keeping me away from blogging and blog reading. As you all know, I've experimented with dyeing my own fabric using herbs and spices, and slowly but surely I've expanded my witchy ways to other areas (most of which I won't bother you with). So here you see the ingredients for some lovely tea (great for colds and coughs. And boy, did that come in handy in this household!); a tincture of common chickweed for sensitive skin, to put in the bath water, and a balm to put on sunburnt or itchy skin, containing common chickweed, nettle and lavender. Looks rather impressive, doesn't it?

Anyway, enough of the witchy stuff. I hope I haven't scared anyone away. Really, it's not my intention to dwell on this on my blog, but since many people share at least a tiny bit of their religious views on their blogs, I thought I'd share my way of life with you all, just this once.

And now for the part you've all been waiting for: the hooker side of me. I needed something simple to do, after my stitching mojo fled the scene and my knitting mojo received a severe blow after a nasty encounter with a fair isle sock. And what is simpler than hooking? Nothing, honeybuns. Absolutely nothing. Well, breathing. Possibly. Except when you have the 'flu, because breathing isn't all that easy when you have the 'flu.

Whey-hey, look at this!!! Sixty-four squares done, and the end is not in sight yet! And a new start:

I had a sudden urge for sweet spring-like pastel colours. It looks like a delicious ice cream cone, doesn't it? Well, I think so anyway... But what about my orts jar? Because that is why you're all here, isn't it? My TuSal update! Right? Right. Honestly, I don't know where these orts came from, because I can't remember having done any stitching at all. Maybe Pelle...? If I fill the orts jar with hooky orts, though, my TuSal update is the most impressive one to date! As well as the most colourful and fulfilling one :o)

I do believe I feel a tiny little stitching bug crawling up my body. Now if only it could settle in my heart or my brain (or whichever body part your stitching mojo starts), we may see some stitching in the near future.

There is a Dutch saying. 'To be long of fabric', and it means 'long-winded'. I think it applies to this blog post. My apologies, dear readers, but that's what you get when you only update your blog once a month. Sigh... must do something about that...
Yours witchily,
Annemarie.

Old Birds

Okay, that was a longer absence than I had hoped, but here I am with another finish. I know, I shock myself too. This is one of my all time favourites, which is odd, because when I got the kit I didn’t think I would do ten stitches on it, seeing as it’s all grays and greens and I don’t like stitching with grays and greens. Also, I think the project just screams eighties at high volume, but I don’t care. I love it, and here it is:

A project I like to call The Birds by Edith Hansen for Fremme, stitched with Danish Flower Thread on white linen. Excusez the crappiness of the picture, but the birds are already at the framer’s, so I can’t do better than this at the moment. Believe me when I say it’s beautiful.
If anyone should be interested in the chart, leave a comment, and I’ll send it to you. The chart looks used, but that’s because it actually was used. It’s still in good shape and above all, legible. If there’s more than one taker, I’ll do a draw.

Apart from finishing up The Birds, I’ve been knitting away on my knee sock - and with my size legs, it takes a good while to finish one - and crocheting away on my lovely, delicious, gorgeous, warm and snugly blanket. I’m adding squares as I go along, because if I would have to do all of that at the end, there would not be a blanket. Just a whooole lot of squares. My heartfelt thanks to Glenna the Great, by the way, for solving the conundrum of the squares. 1680 possible colour combinations... Who would have thought? Not me. I got as far as 480, and I thought that was a LOT. You’re a marvel, woman, as well as a heroine AND an inspirational stitcher :o)

I’m also making a weighted vest (or at least, trying to) for Pelle. He’s not been doing so well lately. He misses his Opa dreadfully, and he’s in a new group at his medical daycare centre - a group with ten or eleven children who are even wilder than he is. As some of you may know, Pelle is what everybody so politically correctly calls a 'special child' (as opposed to all the other children in the world, who are not special at all, I suppose. Honest to God, I don't know why I can't just say he's retarded, because that's what he is, and I don't love him any less for it. Nor would it make me feel worse if someone were to say to my face he's retarded, whereas I get really uncomfortable when people call him 'special'). Sorry, I'll get off my soap box now. Anyway, they are testing him for autism, and while I know he’s not a raging autist, so to speak, he certainly has his Rain Man-like qualities (doing sizeable jigsaw puzzles wrong side up and what have you). Anyway, I’ve heard that a weighted vest might help him to focus more on himself and less on his surroundings and to help him calm down a bit. Let’s hope it has some positive effects on him. Meanwhile, I, for my part, have a bit of a hard time coping with it all, too, so I guess that’s why I’m branching out with my crafting activities - just to keep my mind off of things. It’s either that or hit the sauce, and although the second option really appeals to me, I understand it’s generally frowned upon to go that road. Anyway, if you wonder why I’m quiet, or if you don’t like my foray into foreign crafting territory, at least you know what the cause for all this is :o)

Don't forget to tell me if you would like a chance to win the Fremme chart!

Yours wanderingly,
Annemarie.