Foxiness galore

It’s official: I have no taste. You came here in droves to tell me that the sock I was knitting looked lovely in its sewage-ness, so I plodded on and finished it. Alas, I forgot to take a picture because I was in such a dreadful hurry because I finish-finished something else and am on the point of finishing another something else and I'm so insanely busy with all of this crafting and gift-making that I hardly have time to breathe! Okay, let's go. Last things first. Look what I discovered in my UFO drawer:

Isn’t it fabby? I remember putting it away some... ohhhhh, six years ago, because I ran out of DMC 523 (which is, of course, a perfectly good reason to stick something in a drawer and never take it out until you find it by accident and fall in love with it all over again). Since recovering it from the dreaded UFO drawer, I’ve already filled in most of the grass and I have high hopes of being able to show you a finish pretty soon.

Now what do you think I found when I unfolded the fabric?

Squeeeeee! A finish!

From 2005. It is in serious need of framing, don’t you think?

***

Next Thursday will be Pelle’s last day at his medical daycare centre. On the 22nd of August he will be going to a proper school - well, a proper school for children who are not right in the head, obviously, but still, a proper school. I’m sure you will hear much more about it when the new school year is underway. Knowing my wee one, he’s not going to enjoy the first couple of months very much. Anyway, as a sort of thank-you-and-goodbye-gift, I’m knitting the infernal socks for the teachers, but I also wanted something special for the lady who accompanies the kids in the school bus, Erika. She is the loveliest woman ever, she’s 71 years old (!) and she’s very special to Pelle and to me. She never wears a coat or anything, because that’s too much hassle with al those children who need so much help getting in and out of the bus, but she loves to wear thick sweaters with cowls, in order to keep warm in the winter. Last year, I started a cowl for myself, and it was very nearly finished. It just happened to have all of Erika’s favourite colours in it (judging from the clothes she wears), and so I finished it this morning, with the intention of giving it to her. I must admit I’m totally and completely and madly head over heels in love with it, as it’s versatile, warm, soft, non-scratchy, it’s huge and it’s just... I’m crying over here... too gorgeous to give away, but I’m going to anyway. As my face currently looks like the cats used me as a scratching post, I’ve hired the services of a body double... well, a face double, really. Meet Tante Trui (or Aunt Gertrude in English):

Lovely, no?

Keep your fingers crossed that next week Ill be able to show you that stitchy finish!

Yours industriously,
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.

Dish & Disclosure

So, yes, I'm working on Fremme's Blue Lady. The Pistols. I got the urge, suddenly, and every stitcher knows that you can't fight the urge. Sometimes it's a fake urge, though. In case of a fake urge, I think I need to work on the Blue Lady, but as soon as I thread my needle I realise the time isn't right after all. This time, the time was definitely right. Heidi was wondering how far along I am, so I took a pic of me showing the Blue Lady. I'm an average sized female, by the way (apart from the calves, obviously), so you may get some idea of her size.

As you can see, I've slowly started making my way down. This serves two purposes: (a) it allows me to check if I won't run out of fabric once I get to the bottom - no matter how many times I checked, re-checked, counted and re-counted before I started, I'm never completely comfortable until I know exactly where a piece ends; and (b) if you feast your eyes on the total picture of the blue babe in my sidebar, you will see that she is standing on a carpet of flowers, featuring about seven million of these exact same squares:

Working all of this right at the very end, all in one go, will most probably finally wipe that inane smile off my face that I always carry when I work on the Blue Lady.

Shall I tell you a little secret? It's a very embarrassing secret, so I'm not sure that I should tell you, but I'm going to anyway. I'm never going to finish the Blue Lady. Never ever. Because yesterday evening I had this premonition that once I put the final stitch into her, I'll be finished too. This is not a joke, I swear. And just to be on the safe side (my premonitions are eerily accurate most of the time), I just won't finish her. Maybe I'll purposely NOT stitch one of the flowery squares, just so that she will never be really finished.
As I suspected, there weren't that many takers for Spring, Birds and Branches by Fremme, but enough to warrant an official drawing by my adorable little man. And since you were all so enthused about my Polish pottery, I took the opportunity to sneak a piece into the picture :o)

The Drawing...


The opening...
Congratulations, Giovanna! Be a dear and send your snail mail address to amcdevries AT gmail DOT com, and I'll send the birdies on their way to Italy.

Well, that's it from me for today. I hope you're enjoying a wonderful week. It's rather springlike here, and since it's a halfday for Pelle today, I think a long ramble through the woods is in order :o)

Yours bluely, but in a good way,
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.