The good, the bad and the fugly

The Good
This weekend has been FUN. I've been out every night and shopping/sightseeing/church going* in the daytime. On Saturday we found one of those make-your-own-jewellery shops in Le Marais. Normally those places don't appeal to me, but this one was packed full of pretty, shiny things and it was also cheap. I made myself this necklace...
Also, it was Pamela's birthday on Friday so I knocked up (i.e. crocheted) a beret for her in some really nice Monoprix Husky (50% merino 50% acrylic I think, and super chunky). I didn't get a chance to buy the yarn until Friday itself but luckily I managed to get most of it done on my bus journey home from Monoprix.
The Fugly (I'm saving the best til last)
This ring was only 50 cents. That's all I have to say in its favour. Ugh, it gives me the creeps!
The Bad
On Friday night someone mentioned how they'd been in Montmartre and realised after a while that they must have appeared on about 10 different photos taken by tourists. We laughed and joked about doing it on purpose - getting your face onto photos that would be seen around the world. Then I thought - ooh, imagine doing that in the See You Next Tuesday Hat! That would be totes lolzworthy, yes?

Update on the Pomatomus/yarn barf situation: the yarn is now split into two separate balls. I had to cut. I learnt how to spit-splice (bleeeerrrgh - especially after drinking wine and not brushing my teeth... whoops, TMI - but at the same time a very effective technique). I'm 75% through the first sock. Worked out the deceptively simple Chart B (hint: ignore those blank squares. They don't mean k1. Start and finish at the thick black lines) and managed to do a fair portion, from memory, at 3am on the nightbus home, after a good few glasses of Merlot.

*Vespers at Notre Dame. It was somewhere warm to wait for Jenny ;)

The knitting gods obviously don't approve of my bad language...

I'm on the second chart repeat of Pomatomus, getting along great and I've just found my rhythm.

Then the Ball from Hell decides to spew out this:

Apparently this phenomenon is called 'yarn barf' but in this case the ball pretty much turned itself inside out. I'm furious.

I have about the same sized tangle that took me 4 hours to undo. My options seem to be:
1. Pouring myself a stiff one and trying to untangle, however I have my sock-in-progress attached to one end so that will be even harder/potentially risky.
2. Knit a bit, untangle a bit, knit a bit. No, I get stressed out just typing that.
3. Putting the work I've done on a holder and starting the second sock from the outside of the ball. Pain in the arse and I'm not looking forward to another 10 rows of 1x1 rib (knitting into the effing back loop).
4. Cutting. I'll be fucked if I have to cut into a ball of wool that someone (admittedly not me) spent a good sum of money on.

I'm of no doubt now that ball winding is a skill in itself, time consuming, and requiring at the least a good level of ability and at the most a ton of equipment. I'm not here for that, I'm here for the knitting.

Fuckity fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

See you next Tuesday x

Some people may find this hat in bad taste. But I happen to like pom-poms, ok?

Behold the master!

I am now a knitting guru. This is because I have a protegé, Sylvie-Claire, another lost au pair in Paris I met through Facebook. We totally cyberstalked each other, she left a message in an au pair group and I spied her dreads and was like, yeah, she needs to be my friend! And when we met she was like, "you knit too! so do I!" and I was like "OMGZ that is SO COOL I don't know anyone else in real life who knits! what do you knit?" and she was like, "scarves" and I was like, "OMGZ you really need to get into making other stuff coz it like totally rox!"

From what she told me and the pics she sent of her stuff I could see she was well ready to progress. I know that if I hadn't found the amazing Stitch and Bitch books I'd still be doing flat pieces and... um... hats made out of three panels of knitting. We went shopping last Saturday at La Droguerie and she bought some mohair for a scarf and some wool for hat. By about Tuesday she sent me a pic of her stripey scarf which was already massive. I was like, "girl, now iz the time for you to be makin hatz".

She was given a hat pattern along with her wool in La Droguerie, but it was all in French. So I sent her these instructions that I cobbled together in an email.

Tonight she came online around midnight (I'm stuck at home babysitting, she's stuck at home because of the transport strike) and needed some help... I talked her through finishing off her hat. The conversation was kinda like talking something through delivering a baby (or so I'd imagine) concluding in the ecstatic, moving climax when she emailed me pics of the finished object. I confess a tear almost welled up in my eyes.

The next step is to teach her how to make hats emblazoned with expletives...

I win

My willpower has been amazing lately. On Saturday I took Sylvie to La Droguerie, where she bought two balls of mohair and some wool. We waited about ten minutes amongst all the gorgeous wool for the balls to be wound and I managed not to buy anything.

Yesterday I went to Le Bon Marché because I needed a set of 5 dpns for my Pomatomus socks, and managed to walk away with only the needles, although I was sorely tempted by a scarf kit, of all things, produced by La Droguerie.

I got lots of moral support after posting my ball winding woes on Ravelry. Glad to see I'm not the only one. Strikes me as weird though that as we speak, 4 people have clicked 'agree' on my post, and 4 have clicked 'disagree'. How can anyone disagree with my post? Are they disputing I spent 4 hours untangling 200 yards of wool? I guess some people must just really love making balls... good for them. Perhaps they should start advertising their services.

aaaaaaand...

... now I realise I never posted my last, amazing FO. The impact will be lessened slightly seeing as Halloween has passed.

Pretty hat yes? No! Click here for a fright. People with heart conditions are advised to proceed with caution.

This post is edumacational

Been a lazy blogger lately. Went back home to Liverpool for a week and a half and was busy, busy, busy. Although that's no reason why I've only just got around to sorting these pictures out from my trip to Musée d'Orsay in September. I took them in RAW format and forgot about them... anyway, behold:

Knitting Art in Paris by Helen Wilkie

First off, I saw this painting, "Bergère avec son troupeau" (Shepherdess with her flock) by Millet. Click title for full pic. As you will see, she's using DPNs. I didn't even know of their existence until 2005.

Next off, also in the Musée d'Orsay, a statue of a girl... er... spinning? I have no knowledge at all of spinning. And I have no desire too, my patience has already been put to its limits winding up a ball (more to follow).

Next, I saw these murals in the Bastille metro station. Apologies for the photos, I took them on my phone and there were some people sitting right beneath them, wondering what the hell I was doing. They show tricoteuses, and were obviously painted by someone who's never knit.

This ends today's lesson.

I have one lousy FO to post. My second Short Row Hat made with Noro Kureyon. This colourway matches my bag almost perfectly, which thrills me no end.


And now a rant about skeins of yarn, which I've already vented on Ravelry. I have a gorgeous skein of Cherry Tree Hill that Interannette sent me in a swap. I'm absolutely desperate to cast it on to make some socks. Last night I sat down with a loo roll and the second series of Spaced on dvd and started to wind my ball. By the end of the dvd (seven or eight episodes and some extras) I was still left with this:

That's one large, slightly wonky ball of wool, a knot and another little ball of wool where I realised I would have to start untangling from the other end.

That's four hours of my life I'll never get back. Thank god for Simon Pegg, Jessica Stephenson and my insomnia. I could have been up to the heel of the first sock my now!

Seriously though, I'm actually quite annoyed now about the whole practice of selling yarn in skeins. Unless you've got a ball winder and/or swift you've got a long, boring, difficult job on your hands before you can even get down to the knitting. It doesn't make economic sense, in the money or time sense to buy yarn in skeins if you've got to go out any buy more equipment. I feel like it's a bit of an affectation - "I'm so dedicated to knitting I'm prepared to suffer for it". Yarn does look nice in a big twisted hank but it's so impractical. As people on Ravelry pointed out, you pay more for the yarn and then have to wind it yourself, whereas cheapo mass produced stuff comes ready wound. I think we're being had.

Not that I don't love my yarn and have lots of respect for independent yarn producers. Maybe I'd just like to kick up a bit of a stink so traders might start offering the option of ordering yarn pre-wound.

Anyway... once I get past this knot I think a pair of Pomatomus are in order (that's a helluva lot easier to type than to say).