FO: Scrollwork Hat

After my last blog post, I totally shamed myself into finishing this hat:

The Scrollwork, a classy little number from Wool People Vol 4. It sat crammed on a shelf (a former CD tower, now useful as a place to put all the odds and ends of life when you live in a 1 bedroom flat- flashlights, stationary, pens, pocketknives, sunglasses, a button jar, scissors, and odd balls of yarn and anything you want off the table when you sit down for dinner) with just the brim done for more than a month, waiting for me to just put a couple of hours in to turn it into something more useful.

And finally:

The color is much more accurate in the first photo: a lovely, dusty pink with bits of tweed (as it is still permanently nighttime here, it's hard to get knitwear photos during good light, especially if one might be a desk jockey for pay all day).  The yarn is Classic Elite Portland Tweed, now discontinued.  Why?  Because it's weird, most likely.  It's a blend of 50% wool, 25% alpaca and 25% rayon, which is just...odd.   While I didn't curse it and hate it, it was not my favorite to work with- very little give and spring and life to it.  It's not terribly soft, and the alpaca/rayon makes it drape really nice, but I was warned up and down the internet that it would grow terribly huge and lose shape right away.  Also:  it is labeled aran weight, and it is nowhere near that chunky- it knit up DK.  So I knit it down 3 needle sizes for a very tight fabric, and the moment the heat from my head warmed it up during my victory lap (I always don whatever knitwear I just finish, at least for a couple hours when I finish) it started to relax and grow slouchy and loose and start to creep down my forehead and splay out where it hit the back of my neck, threatening to eventually suffocate me and perhaps even eat my brains.  

What to do?  I washed it and threw it in the dryer, tightening it up quite a lot, and with these puny Euro energy efficient driers, it was nowhere near enough heat or agitation to felt the fabric into a stuff, unyielding mass .  It's better now.  I would never normally do that- knitwear gets washed by hand in a bucket and dried flat in world.  I just recently started using the spin cycle on the dryer to wring it out to expedite the drying.  

But looksie, it fits perfect!  At least my head, which it is not intended for.  

FO: Plethora of Hats

A cold chill has swept the land.  After a bit of petered-out hurricane Gonzalo blew through England, it went from balmy and windy, to rainy and windy, to cold and windy in a 24 hour period.   Sweater weather!  Cuddly hats and snugly scarfs and indulging in all sorts of edibles that you've been turning your nose up all summer.  Sweet potatoes and soups and sweet potato soup, squash and crispy sweet apples and I've not turned down any offers of hot chocolate.

I've been plugging away on hats.  It's become a bit of a joke in my knit circle: another week, another hat.  And it's true, I've been knocking out about one a week.  These aren't difficult patterns, and most of them are worsted-weight, so it only takes me a few hours a piece.  

As always, fantastic gifts.  All of these are being flung to the four corners of the earth.

First up: 

The Botanic Hat, a clever little Stephen West Beanie.  It's completely reversible, and looks remarkably different when you give it a flip.

See?  The best thing about this is that when I finished, I weighed the leftover skeins and realized I had enough for a mirror-image:

The pair of hats used exactly two skeins of Rowan Lima, an alpaca yarn that makes me rethink alpaca yarn.  It's velevety.  Instead of being twisted into plies, it is chained, so it makes for less drapey structure-less fabric as it seems to behave much more like wool.  It's not bad at all..

Another creating- the Windsor Hat.  It's a free pattern on the Rowan site and I loved how feminine and girly it was (and I'm not a girly girl by any means).  The pattern was a huge pain in the ass though- it was written Rowan-style to be knitted flat, which is as complicated as you could possibly get.  Still- it is slouchy and warm and after a glance at the pattern, I was able to improvise and knit it in the round, and all was right in the world once again.

The yarn was an odd skein of Creative Worsted, a wool/mohair blend, and the pink was leftovers of Swans Island worsted Merino from my Wayfarer scarf.  

This bad boy is going to a friend of mine who just moved from a balmy climate to a cold one:

It's the Greenery hat.  I made an extra-thick brim so it can be worn as a big slouch or doubled over the ears (which hides the cabling a bit, eh?).  The yarn?  Ah, the yarn.  A few skeins of wool yarn I picked up at Monoprix in Paris out of pure curiosity.  While I miss Monoprix badly (like Target in the US, they had great chic clothes) this yarn was not the best.  It was really dense- this hat is heavy!- and had a weird acrylic-like squeak even though it was pure wool.  It's not terribly scratchy though, and I think it will keep a head very warm.

Finally:

I used all the scraps that haunt the flat from the ghosts of hats past and made a Kex hat, another  reversible beanie from Stephen West.  I've been making a ton of his patterns lately...I just find they are brilliantly unisex and uniquely constructed.  

I have some more projects to flaunt, but some are gifts and need to be gifted first, but I'm enjoying this sudden drop of temperature to inspire me to cover everyone I know in wool.  

A lovely Walk in Oxfordshire

One small problem with trying to walk a National Trail in summer is your accommodation trailside is kind of slim.  As in, book a few weeks ahead.  Or a month.  Or several months.   Or be prepared to sleep outside.

With that in mind, I took the train to Goring and Strealey station in Oxfordshire to walk a bit of the Thames path and some surrounding countryside up by Goring Gap.  A day trip of sorts, with my trusty book of walks in hand.

This area was moneyed.  Thameside mansions and estates were the name of game here.

And houseboats!  I do love a houseboat.

It was great birdwatching- I probably saw a dozen red kites circling lazily along the river, dozens of songbirds and a huge variety of water foul.

It was a warm, muggy day, but the trail followed an old towpath and was mostly treed in now, so the shade was nice.  

You still see odd artifacts of fortification protecting old railroad bridges and hillsides here, like this pillbox.

But mostly, gorgeous old trees.  You could tell the area was moneyed because there was less agriculture and livestock, more horses.  And not shabby ones either.

The trail ascends steeply through Goring Gap- a hillside that glacier melt cut through during the last ice age.  It's the one hill on the trail, and it was steep enough for mountain bikers to be walking their bikes down the hill.  Supposedly it's a gorgeous view from the top, but the foliage was so thick you couldn't even get a glimpse.

From there, we left the Thames and started walking through the countryside.

Our book had told us about a Pub a half mile off the trail.  We made for it but we were horrified to learn that it was still called the "King Charles Head", but it was now a private residence.  Herein lies the problem using a 10 year old guide book.

We walked into the tiny hamlet of Mapledurham.  I was looking forward to sitting and grabbing a cold drink in the cafe, but then I found out that just walking around the town and going to the cafe was going to put me out a few quid.  Seriously!

It's an estate on the Thames with a long history of harbouring Catholics in times of anti-catholic sentiment.  A beautiful little 13th-century church, a mansion, and a watermill comprised the estate.  

Kenneth Grahame supposedly based Toad Hall here in Wind in the Willows.  He's a local folk hero and he's buried nearby.

But, lo!  What was this commotion in a nearby field?

Doggy Agility!

We hit it at the tail-end (ahem) and only saw a couple dogs run through, but they had fresh water taps and a lovely ice cream vendor and a Thameside bank to plant one-selves.

Take that, Mister Toad!

While we carry plenty of water, we're careful to ration out what we have for the day until we hit a tap, and then I realize how friggin thirsty I was as I downed a litre.

Much, much better.  Also, I didn't realize I would be going through bottles of SPF 50 here, but I have.

Back on the trail, more farmland.  Really fancy horse farms.

I came across this little farmstand and bought some garlic on the honor system, since they were out of strawberries and garlic seemed to be the most portable option.

And then- an huge alpaca farm.  Hundreds of freshly shorn alpacas of all colors dotting the hillsides.

Finally, we made our exit at Pangbourne.  There's a bridge across the Thames here that is currently just a footbridge, as they are replacing the Whitechurch bridge.  We had a bit of a panic when we saw the construction barges and no discernible way to get across, as it would have been another 4 miles back to Goring Streatley Station.  Happily, they had a pedestrian walk way set up across the river.

We found a fancy pub on the riverside called The Swan.  Although the pub itself was ancient, it was a conglomerate-owned renovated place, but ofttimes that means the food is a bit better than normal, and this place was fairly good.  We ended up sitting riverside, drinking a bottle of wine and eating our Sunday dinner here.  The walk, although fairly flat, was a pretty challenging 12 miles of sunny warm hiking.

A lovely way to spend a Sunday.

city farms

Something kind of unique I've found in London:

City Farms!

There are several of them scattered around the city and some of them are quite central.  This one was in Vauxhall, a five minute walk from the National Rail station, and in sight of downtown London.  It's quite quietly tucked into a mixed neighborhood of social housing, Victorian row houses, and some new office buildings.  

Most of them are just glorified petting zoos and are volunteered-run and rely on donations.  They have a mix of sheep, goats, chickens, alpacas, rabbits, and usually an organic garden and a place to compost.  Most of them have horseback riding lessons and a small riding ring squeezed in with a stable of a half dozen ponies.  

These are from the slightly more suburban Dean City Farm:

Every time I happen by one, curiosity gets the better of me, and I poke my head in.  Far from rustic, most of them have cafes and lots of places to wash your hands, and the animals all look fat and happy and friendly enough to accept the handouts you can buy from the farm.