Tuesday 22 March 2011

scarf to...to...to...hmmm...

I've been trawling the charity shops like I always do and found a cheery scarf whose colours evoke for me boiled sweets by the seaside...[bad for the teeth but hey, we were young, we knew no better...] It had to be bought, and so it was.



It duly got shredded (well, cut into long strips). And the strips stitched together. A large crochet hook was located deep in the bottom of stitching craft paraphanelia box no.59 [third from the right, second shelf down].

Google was fired up and my almost annual search for how to perform those basic crochet stitches unleashed.




I was beginning to wonder whether I'd have enough of the strippaged yarn to make anything useful (cos, y'know, it's all about usefulness round here ;-) ) when, lo and behold, deep in to-be-upcycled-sometime-this-century stash box no. 33 [extreme left, bottom shelf] what did I find but another candy-striped scarf bought in a different charity shop sometime last year and utterly neglected, nay erased from the memory banks entirely.


A silver lining in the cloud of the hideous forgetfullness that forms the very core of my being these days.


Still not sure what it might end up being, but I do love it...

Monday 14 March 2011

brooklyn meets canary meets the boyfriend (hat)...



OMG...O...M...G...

how many months was that? flew by...in the twinkling of an eye...and the meanderings of a bleak London winter full of lurgeys and Too Much Day Job...(TMDJ by far!)

anyway, here we are again...I won't even apologise for my absence, or promise to do better next time...will just enjoy the fact that I've found a window and I have some bloggable photos on my laptop, all at the same time...

so, I've got this lovely friend called Bert (you may remember him, Bert the Baker from a previous post... what? just the last one? no way...it was AAAAGGGES ago...) and Bert needed a new scarf. He mentioned this to me and all the little cogs in my rusty old brain whorred and whirred and finally engaged upon the notion of making him just such an item for Xmas (ok, so it's a historical post, forgive me...some day I'll catch up with myself again...maybe). Apart from anything else it presented itself as a charming opportunity to try out some beloved noro yarn in the form of a lovely Brooklyn Tweed inspired stripey scarf. (BtB loves stripes)

Shock Horror though, the man started talking about needing a new scarf a bit TOO much. And looking at them in shops and craft fairs a bit TOO much. Yours truly began to get anxious, and worried. And wondered how to avoid having her present (non-original as it was) undermined by coming second to a new SHOP BOUGHT item (the HIDEOUSNESS!)... until the obvious solution presented itself : send him an anonymous warning note.

Of course!

One happy evening of cutting and sticking later (I may be 42 but the simple pleasures never fail me) the job was done and winging its way courtesy of her Majesty's most Royal Mail to deepest East London (where he lived at the time - I wasn't just randomly sending it to East London, oh no, I'm waaay cleverer than that)

And a couple more happy evenings of knitting and purling later (well, many hours on buses, trains, sofas, hard chairs and soft if I'm honest, my knitting ain't a speed sport) the scarf was born.


BtB loved it. And hadn't even bought himself a new scarf in the meantime. RESULT!



Later I added a small linen robot button and loop so he could fasten it tight (on super chilly mornings)


the addition of the button turned everything green...it was like magic*

and made him a matching hat, which I call Brooklyn meets Boyfriend as it's an amalgamation of the Brooklyn Tweed inspired noro striping and Stephanie's Boyfriend Hat

(waiting patiently for a tube)

And he wears them all the time...

Bye, for now....

*errr, not really