Ginger Knits UK

I love David Shrigley and I love knitting so doing some simple arithmetic means that I also love this video. "...and they can just make socks, because they're crap." If only all adverts were like this.

Rather spending a whole blog post sounding like a knitting obsessed Father Jack I'm just going to give you the link to the Tea Party for Haiti I helped out with last week as part of my p/hop fun.

I've had a little more time for knitting this week, well crocheting to be precise. Here's a sneaky peak of my work in progress. I'm not going to tell you what it is yet as I need to buy another component but if you'd like to guess what it's going to be leave a comment below. There are no prizes, just kudos if you guess correctly.

My knitting plans have gone out of the window this week. I don't mind as much bigger, more important things have been going on. As you may know I volunteer for Medecins sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders in the UK office, coordinating their knitting fund-raiser, p/hop . I was in the MSF UK office on Wednesday, the first day the news about the Haiti earthquake broke in the UK. I've written a little about it on the p/hop website . I found the response of the MSF office staff awe inspiring, they really are a tremendous organisation. The response by the knitting community to the awful tragedy that has hit people already living unimaginably difficult lives has been heart-warmingly incredible. Take a look at the p/hop group on Ravelry or do a search on Rav to see what's going on. It's good stuff. I won't write much more as I'm tired but I know I've got a bed and roof over my head tonight as well as clean water and all my loved ones are safe and sound. If yo...

I had to pop into Loop, my LYS, to buy some more yarn for the cardigan I'm working on (more on that later) and some yarn for a friend. I'm trying not to expand my stash as it's already a stupid size, however this Imperial Yarn Pencil Roving was on sale so I somehow managed to come home with 2 rounds of it. I think I was influenced by the current cold weather as I think I'll make it into a blanket. I've been looking at patterns and have two types of ideas. One is to use a modular design, maybe in crocheted tessellating shapes or fair-isle repeating squares. I need to make sure the design felts well as I don't think this yarn would stand up to normal wear and tear. It's seems stronger than normal roving but weaker than yarn. The other idea is to knit something which increases from the centre such as this spiralling design by the mathematical knitters, Woolly Thoughts . Photo from Woolly Thoughts My main reason for choosing one of the above styles is so I don...

One of the things I like about being a Brit is our obsession with the weather. This is one of our national stereotypes and source of amusement in other countries. When a friend from New York moved here she put away all her winter clothes on the first mild spring day as that's what she did in the US as when the weather warmed up there it stayed that way. A few days later she was horrified that it was snowing and below zero and she had to scramble around in her freezing attic to find warm clothes. I think this is where our weather obsession comes from. British weather is unpredictable but also has subtle variations. In places where the weather is predictable why talk about it? Our recent winters have been wet but mild so this one is taking us by surprise. I'm enjoying the snow and loving wearing my hand knit socks - did I mention I love handknit socks? I also love the beauty and quiet snow creates. Here's a picture from NASA of our green isles turned white. Beautiful.