Author: MR

Good GRIEF ! – it works !!!   :D

/ MR / 21 Comments

This first sweater – started on Friday and finished today – I even put it on and went out to Aldi ! – was an experiment to see if I can follow Frannie’s directions and produce a garment in CORRECT fucking size.

And I can !!!

Yesyes she said testily – I KNOW I’m doing that lean again ..

Well YOU try taking a shot of your own back view ! (Will accept any how-to ..)

Shows how everything fits, see ??

Looks like the bazoomas really are bigger than the bum now !! Astoundin that !

The next garment will be longer – I couldn’t be fagged doing more vertical chains than 172 sts for an experiment – and a totally different yarn and stitch. I shan’t go on and on about it because you’ve already fallen asleep with your mouths open.

Were I wealthy I could heap dollars on Frannie. But as I’m a pensioner I can only thank her for putting up her post on this marvellous idea of doing your own gauge-making (sort of).

Hoping to avoid klutzness ..

/ MR / 18 Comments

Sorry to everyone who’s bored shitless by my going on about crocheting sweaters; but as it’s currently obsessing me – both the problem and any solutions – I am triggered to keep posting about it. You may pray this solution works, so that I will shut my face on the topic !

By happenstance I found a lady who sells wigs mostly (but also crochets) on YouTube talking on A Very Timely Topic –

How to Design a Crochet V-Neck Sweater | Make It Your Own Design Series

and fell upon it with huge relief. Watched the entire thing and finally grasped how it can actually be done. Very, very simple, team ..

One creates a large-ish swatch (i.e., test piece) of crochet in a stitch one would like to use for a sweater and a relevant hook. Any yarn, any hook: it’s the swatch that sets the standard. Then one measures 10cm X 10cm within the swatch, counting how many stitches (horizontal measure) there are therein and how many rows (vertical measure) and writes ’em down.

One takes certain measurements off oneself – or should that be ‘on’ ?? Anyway, these are upper arm and bazoomas since these are the biggest measurement for sleeves and for body, and also desired length. Neckline depth ditto.

And it’s possible I need say nothing more, because you get it, right ? – it’s just maths from now on !

In the sketch above, I’m doing both back and front in the one long rectangle, not two separate panels.

Please add me to your nightly prayers, OK ? –  know you do ’em coz I do, regular. Well, maybe rather than adding ME, add my latest crocheting effort. When I go to heaven I’m going to ask God if you did, so mind ..! [grin]

I did it again: I am A KLUTZ !!!

/ MR / 29 Comments

Sometimes I wonder about myself. Fairly often, to be truthful ..

Every jumper or cardi I make, I check my gauge and change hooks where needed (it always is). And then I find I’m not meeting bloody gauge after all. There is something about trying to make one’s stitches match those of the garment designer that is beyond me, and I fucking wish it weren’t !!! It maketh me very mad indeed.

Here we have my latest FO – you wouldn’t recognise it from the original – a cardi called “The Working Girl Cardigan”

by Veronika Cromwell.

Am I falling over ? – you ask: no, merely trying to show how big I’ve made this cardi. Am I a turtle halfwit, you follow up with; and I’m obliged to nod miserably.

Still, at least I got the shawl collar right this time, by dint of reducing the number of the pattern’s stitches around the inner edges by a third. And I had to re-crochet the sleeves, too, because they were gigantic. Now they’re only enormous. Sighh ..

One of these days, Alice .. (Who knows the source of that quote ? – I mean, other than moi ..)

If Colorado can do it .. [grin]

/ MR / 12 Comments

And she just did ..

Why then, so can I !  😀

Coz after all, those of you who’ve been around here for a good long while will remember that I used to post lists of my favourite numbers every so often, right ?

Right.

No complaining where there’s no action to accompany the track, btw: consider yourselves lucky that I’m so KIND !

And when I die                        Blood Sweat & Tears
I love the nightlife                 Alicia Bridges
If you leave me now             Chicago
Blackbird                                    Crosby, Stills & Nash
Memphis soul stew               King Curtis
Border song                               Elton John
Goodbye Stranger                  Supertramp
I shall be released                   The Band
Let me serenade you             Three Dog Night
Signed, Sealed, Delivered   Stevie Wonder

Ah, the simple things ..!

/ MR / 10 Comments

There was a large part of my life when you could never have persuaded me that my happiness might hang on .. a hanging thing. [grin]

What you’re looking at there is the newest addition to my crochet tools collection: it is a truly wonderful thing called The Wool Jeanie.

It’s the most bloody momentous aid to hit knitters and crocheters in the last .. oh, only the gods know when the previous ‘best thing’ occurred. To be able to sit peacefully with one’s yarn simply arriving without fuss of any kind at all is fucking MAGIC !!! And for someone like me, who guides her yarn in with her right hand (I am unable to find the words to tell you how unspeakably wrong this is !) as well as using her crochet hook with the same hand, it’s simply bliss. BLISS !!

Now I never need re-wind a ball of yarn to pull from the centre again; and the sole use of my swift and yarn ball winder will be for the few times when I buy my yarn in skeins – which isn’t often.

Hannah ? – BUY ONE. You, my only craft-oriented reader, really need this gorgeous tool. I have spoken. (I cannot include the mind-boggling Midnight Knitter, for she is so far out of my league as to be æons away – like the current and beautiful Blue Moon !)

 

Headlines assortment

/ MR / 13 Comments

I was taken, this-morning, by online newspaper articles – that is, by their headlines. Mostly headlines simply pass me by as I peruse them with a distinct lack of enthusiasm; but today some seem to be pertickly .. ahh .. interesting (?).

Consider the following:

I am a coffeeholic, no doubt about it. This header causes me a little angst because it might – just might – mean that my hopeless habit is gumming up my works !! If coffee grounds make stronger concrete, isn’t constipation to be expected ?!

Then there’s this one:

Sighh .. What else is to be said ? – smaller pension pool available to more pensioners can only mean one thing ..

There are more ..

It’s gratifying – although far, far too late – that the USA recognises the arsehole’s intention of destroying its entire system. I said at almost the outset that tRump wanted to destroy the Presidency and what it stood for.

And, moving on with relief ..

Four ? – is that the best they could do ?? Hmph ! – pathetic ! Still, that an article is actually published about my favourite occupation is damned fine !    🙂

I have saved the best till last ! [grin]

This headline combines possibly everything horrible into the one story, as you will immediately have to agree ..

That there could actually BE a tour group of a sewer, that it be a Moscow sewer, that the sewer is flooded ..

STOP PRESS ! (additional)

My friend Sue asked me why I didn’t include this one – and I was infuriated that the bloody ABC didn’t have it in the list at the time of my early morning posting.  It’s absolutely a header I would’ve started with !!

Written for me ..

/ MR / 19 Comments

Today’s online The Guardian includes this article.

It’s something I’ve thought about many times .. not the death of Robbie Robertson, but of all of them – rockstars, exemplification of my youth.

“Robbie Robertson is gone and our world – once again – is diminished.”

To me that sub-heading is not overly dramatic, it’s simply a fact; something that hits home on an almost regular basis, these days. I’ve reached that age when the death of my contemporaries has to be dealt with far, far too often; and that I never actually met or even saw Robbie on TV has no significance .. I heard him a thousand and one times, so I knew him.

Just like I knew them all, the members of the dozens of groups who created the musical joy of my 20s and 30s – Chicago, Blood Sweat & Tears, Three Dog Night, The Who, The Doors, CCR, Fleetwood Mac, The Animals .. At this moment my brain won’t furnish any more of those evocative names, but there are dozens of them. Any of you of my generation are shouting at me the names that meant most to you – maybe The Mamas and the Papas, or The Lovin’ Spoonful, or Supertramp ..

I fear that there may be group members whose deaths I haven’t read of because the editors of online content are too young to know who they were. I’m not sure why I feel as if I need to know of their ‘passing’ – a description I loathe that’s become the accepted norm – but it could be to do with that aspect of my character that has me arrange my now tiny book collection in author order and my DVDs by title (yes, I’ve kept the DVDs I really love). OCD, possibly ..

I appreciate the writer’s assumption that we of the ’60s and ’70s take in the reference of her article’s title without having to think about it. She knows we know.

And the beat goes on ..

 

Made me grumpy !

/ MR / 12 Comments

I was wasting time the other day (becoz I was reluctant to return to my crochet, owing to a fear that the second panel was smaller than the first in a very fine wool sweater I’m making) watching cat videos on YouTube.

I saw one wherein a very attractive moggy – orange and white – was gazing at a mobile phone, and then curled up on top of it. The video purported to be footage of a cat shown an image of its dead owner; and I will confess that I had a lump in my throat upon seeing it.

Said lump was only in existence for a nanosecond but.

“WOT ?!” I cried aloud: “cats can see people on phone screens and recognise them ??” I laughed scornfully: “total bullshit !!”

This video – also on YouTube, of course – proves me right. Amazingly, I think, it doesn’t out the video on the grounds of how illogical it is !

There are people out there making up fake videos. One can’t help wondering why, fer crissake !!!!

Well, I can’t compete with her

/ MR / 17 Comments

But the question is: do I want to ..?

We all have different goals – those of us who have ’em, that is – and no-one can say whose is the most laudable.

I didn’t consider myself to have a goal at all: I did tell several friends that I’m going to kark at 93, but that was a statement based on .. erhmm .. maths, rather than one constituting a goal.

Check out this pretty amazing woman:

(I use the adjective because I reckon it’s fucking amazing that anybody at all derives enjoyment from running in races.)

The ABC article got me wondering about personal goal/s ..

Do I want to be celebrated for doing stuff people associate with younger women ? – nup. Do I seek to come first at anything ? – nup. Do I harbour secret yearnings to win literary awards ? – nup.

So do I have one single aim ? – yep.

To keep love in my life: that’ll maintain the difference between us.