Simple is Best

Forget-Me-Not and Wild Strawberry

It's May, it's finally stopped raining and the garden is a riot of big bright plants bursting out to meet the sun, overgrown and in need of some discipline.  Where to begin - energy levels low.  At my feet a little vignette of simple flowers.  Uplifting.

Vintage Slip Stitch Pattern

From Needlework Illustrated 1950

I still haven't been able to sit down to serious knitting.  It's weeks and weeks now.  I cast on, look at the stitches and feel slightly icky. There is so much going on that I don't seem to be able to make myself sit still and concentrate.  So, in times like these - I swatch.

Slip Stitch With No Name

And what better to swatch than a slip stitch.  I'm still into green and white (or off-white) and thought this pattern  from 1950 looked interesting.  The original is in grey and white according to the instructions.  The original pattern was in something called Dewhursts 'Tuffle' - a cotton  yarn.  This may be in Barbara Walker or Mary Thomas somewhere and when I have a few minutes I'll see if I can find a name for it.

There is an error in the instructions and I had to figure it out.  I may be wrong with the change I have made, but I quite like the effect anyway.  That's the beauty of slip stitch.

Multiple of 2 plus 1

Rows 1-4 (green) stocking stitch
Change to white
Row 5   K1 (slip 1, keep yarn at back of work, k.1) to end
Row 6   K1 (yarn forward, slip 1, yarn back,  k1) to end
Change to green
Row 7   Slip1 (k.1, slip1 keeping yarn at the back of the work) to end.
Row 8   Slip 1(yarn back, k.1, yarn forward, slip 1) to end
Row 9 and 10   K1(slip 1, k1) to end, always keeping yarn to wrong side of work.


The error in the original pattern is in row 7 where it says,
Slip 1 (k1 keeping yarn to back of work) to end.

That doesn't make any sense, so I put in my version.

Look on the Bright Side

Approximately fifty of the photos in my blog were corrupted. I still don't know why, but it was something to do with the Blogger upgrade.  I had to reload them all.  What a pain.  Still, I managed to capture a couple of the more interesting effects.  I'm wondering about swatching these.

Dolly wash

Lace on the line

My sister has collected dolls all her life.  When we were small and occasionally even now she will do a dolly wash and sort out all their clothes.  I've never been into dolls in quite the same way, but I do my version of a dolly wash occasionally which involves opening up my cupboard of lace oddments I've picked up in various sales and doing a bit of a laundry day.  That's my dolly wash.

Now here's a funny thing (peculiar, not ha-ha)

This was a mossy log - now looks like a fast train

This was an old post from early May with a photo of various plants growing on and around a mossy log.  Something weird has happened to it.  It was ok when I posted it, but just browsing back through photos in old posts, I see it has become corrupted somehow.   And I think I deleted the original photo.  Typical.

But I thought, waste not, want not.  It does present an interesting colour exercise

...And I've just discovered that the upgrade of Blogger has corrupted a lot of my old photos.  Wonderful.