Ania M

We just got back from the Herstmonceux Medieval Festival . My new tent arrived in time last week, so we spent a dry weekend, despite the intermittent drizzle. We had to pitch the back edge on a slope to stay in line with our neighbours, so we ended up half sleeping on a slope, which is why the tent looks a bit skewed in the pic, but it was very capacious and comfortable nonetheless 🙂 Sadly, I will have to sell the tent on, since it is octagonal and not entirely suitable for my purposes – I can’t lay out my reading and stock tables properly unless they stick outside and given the weather recently, this is not a good thing. It is a shame as it is a nice tent – it is about 14′ across but the canvas folds up into a couple of compact bags and I can pick up all the poles together easily. Drop me a note if you, or anyone you know might be interested in buying it.

Medieval Tent

Medieval Gothic Chair

Also for sale, or rather, available to order, are Gothic chairs as shown above. My DH managed to get this one finished in time for Herstmonceux and we found ourselves speculating about introducing a fee for all the people who sat in it to have their picture taken over the weekend 😉 We have plans for a variation with a shorter back and also a two-seater storage bench in the same style. Watch this space or drop me a note if you are interested.

I have rather been bitten by the knitting bug lately. My travels in search of intersting patterns to add to my ever-growing library have led me to some really weird, wonderful and totally bizarre knits. Just as a few examples, controversial knitter Rachael Matthews, responsible for Knitler the Knazi (though reports of a book of knitted dictators would seem to be somewhat exaggerated and just something whipped up by the media to get comments from the outraged), has also come up with such bizarre knitted objects as a penis and a grenade. Of course, there was also the recent storm about Mazz’s knitted Daleks and Ood that caused the BBC to foam at the mouth over copyright, but being highly entertained by the idea, some diligent searching on my part unearthed the Extermiknit pattern. You can also knit mushrooms, a Witch’s hat, a Vlad the Impaler hat and all manner of things limited, it seems, only by your imagination. I look forward to hearing about the strangest knitted object you have come across – post them here 🙂

I’ve just taken some pictures of the fairy wings I made for my daughter recently. They have little pink and lilac seed beads knitted in, but you can’t see them in the picture. She loves them, as you can see, although she does finds the mohair around her neck itchy, so I’ll have to see if I can rinse them in something to help with that. Suggestions welcome 🙂

Knitted Fairy Wings

Finished Bamboo Silk socks

I also just finished the red bamboo silk slouch socks today. I’d put them aside for quite a while and finally picked them up again earlier this week. I’m really pleased with them and they feel really comfortable. These were knitted toe-up, but on balance, I think I prefer top-down, simply because you get a nicer finish on the cuff, but perhaps I should just see if I can find a springier cast-off method. Again, suggestions welcome 🙂

So, I picked up my gorgeous new tent on Friday and after a lot of sweat and quite a bit of help, managed to get it up. I was delighted with it – looked fantastic, roomy, cool pennant – and then… it rained 🙁 Oh dear, it started to drip and judging by the wet patches on the roof the canvas was clearly inadequately waterproofed. I’m gutted – the tent is going back and I have had to buy another as there is not enough time to get this one replaced, but I will commission one like this at some point.

The event itself was good fun and we spent a most enjoyable weekend under canvas, despite the rain. Both days got off to a gloriously sunny start and I’d hoped that it would remain dry and there would be a breeze to dry out the tent before we packed up on the Sunday. I wasn’t prepared for the challenge of 25mph winds that blew up though. At one point we were holding onto the tent poles to stop the canvas taking off, but at least it dried the canvas out. They do say “Be careful what you wish for”:D

Well I’ve singularly failed in my resolution to keep up with my newsletters this year 🙁 I should have one out this week, but I think on balance I may just switch to blogging and send out the odd newsflash.

More like an Exocet! Time has flown by at supersonic speed the last couple of months, largely because I have been so incredibly busy I suspect. So what have I been up to that has kept me so busy? Mainly finishing outfits for a faerie wedding – bride, groom and best man.

You can see more pics of the day via the link from my homepage http://aniam.co.uk

There always seems to be far more finishing that I expect – the frogging on the groom’s coat was all hand made and hand stitched on and as for hand finishing the hems on the full-skirted frock coats, well, I won’t even go there. It was all worth the effort though 🙂

In addition to all that, I have also been blogging for Violet Green, doing their April Sock Club, though I must admit that time rather got away from me and the final sock pics didn’t quite get there in April 🙁

Time is pressing once more and I have plenty more to do, but I will post again soon 🙂

April is just flying by, I’m up to my eyes and ears in work and it is the school holidays. Argh!

I’m taking the day off tomorrow to take the children to Chessington as a treat for my daughter, who has her 5th birthday on Friday.

Sometimes I find a few spare moments and a quiet corner to indulge in some knitting. A friend introduced me to the joys of knitting socks last year – they are small and quick to make, thus extremely portable, more likely to be finished rather than ending up on the unfinished projects pile and gratifyingly wonderful to wear 😀

I have a very low boredom threshold and socks are just perfect for me, allowing me to indulge in my favourite type of textural knitting techniques without years of repetition to finish a project. (I do have a celtic cable jumper that has been on the go for about 7 years). I’ve never been interested in colour based patterns, but love texture and lace patterns. This is my third pair of socks using Violet Green‘s wonderful wool (this one is the gorgeously soft Supermerino/Bamboo/Silk) and my first toe-up pattern using a staggered Fern design with narrow cables (modified from the Rapunzel pattern) made on 3.75mm DPNs, so a very quick knit indeed.  See what you think:

Finished Bamboo Silk socks

I’ve never managed to get the hang of leaving things alone when they are done, so this site is a constant cycle of development and (it is to be hoped) improvement. Having just introduced this blog, the next task is to get my new gallery pages up to show off all my commission work. The problem is that I just can’t seem to decide how best to organise the pictures at the moment, so I keep arranging and rearranging them. I’ll get there one day 😀

Well, I’ve finally found a moment to get the blog up and running, so you can look forward to regular bursts of verbal outpourings 😉

I just about managed to get my February newsletter out on Friday night, before it became March and not aided by my PC deciding to crash for no apparent reason before I had saved it. Fortunately, most of the content was sufficiently fresh in my mind to enable me to rewrite it without too much delay, but that is part of the reason that the newsletter is a little briefer (and possibly more terse) than usual.

I’ve just returned from a manic weekend, which involved a round trip via Glastonbury, Birmingham and London. I drove through some 15 counties by my reckoning, 14 of them today, so I am exhausted. A most enjoyable weekend, though, as it involved seeing good friends, the entire family, some shopping (a bit of business) and two Sunday lunches.