knit•er•a•cy |'nitərəsē, 'nitrə-|

Dear United States of America,

Thank you for doing the right thing. Tomorrow, I'll tell you some stories about the reaction here in London. But tonight, boy am I proud of you. You did good. I feel hopeful again.

Love,
Harper

Let there be dancing in the streets-- or in the wood, at least!

I can now tell you, since we have the official word, that the Severndroog Castle Building Preservation Trust's Heritage Lottery Fund Bid for the renovation and reopening of Severndroog Castle has been approved!

We have been awarded a grant of:

Stage 1 pass
Development Grant of £15,900, 68% of the total eligible development work of £23,218

Now, this means the work is just beginning! If any of you are interested in coming down, volunteering, helping out, or giving money (and that last part is important; we are expected to match some funds here), please let me know or contact the Trust through our webpage linked above, but linked again here!

Being part of something like this is so rewarding. I am helping one of my favourite places in London (and a place that figures heavily in my books) come to life!

Here is my autumn-into-winter schedule of classes at iKnit London.

Crochet classes last two hours and will give you the basics.
The beginning knitting classes are spread over three Thursday evenings and will cover all kinds of good stuff, from the very basics to interpreting patterns, fixing simple mistakes, and planning a first project.
The Christmas Stocking class is a project class; we'll make a Christmas stocking out of wool supplied by the shop, and it's a great way to learn the basics of sock knitting on a large scale, as Christmas stockings are socks, too!

Single-evening Crochet Classes:
6:30-8:30pm, unless otherwise specified

8 October
5 November
3 December

Beginning Knitting Courses:
Current class (not joinable):
17 and 24 September, 1 October
16, 23, 30 October
6, 13, 20 November
27 November, 4, 11 December

Make Your Own Christmas Stocking
11, 18, 25 October, 1pm-2:30pm

You can sign up for any of these classes from the iKnit London web page. Needles and wool are supplied for all beginning classes, and we are supplying wool for the stocking class but you may need to bring your own needles for that one.

I am not offering another Fair Isle class this year; they have a Fair Isle class which is being taught by somebody else, though.

Alas, sock classes have not done terribly well at IKL, mostly because there's nother store in London that is offering very popular ones, and there's no need to create competition where there doesn't need to be any.

Personally, I am available to answer questions and help with snags, mostly for free, via email or through this journal. If you want to learn how to do something complex and scary, get in touch with me and I'll supply you with private tutoring rates if you're interested.

Some of you know that my family and I are addicted to Taste of Thai spicy peanut chicken and peanut sauce. I often post appeals for this stuff to be mongoled to us in the UK, as they don't sell it over here. Our last shipment included mostly peanut chicken bake and very little peanut sauce, and we have a houseguest this week, so I wanted to make Thai chicken. We were out of peanut sauce mix, and just on a whim I went looking for recipes online to see if I could concoct some myself. Turns out it's quite easy to make!

I found this terrific recipe at Cooking With Amy, which looks to be a great food blog, though I haven't explored it very far beyond the peanut sauce recipe linked above, which I'll reproduce in its entirety below the cut tag. If you've ever wanted a great zipper-style (you can put in all kinds of extras) peanut sauce recipe, this might be the one for you!

( Perfect Peanut Sauce )

I mentioned before that at least I already had the wool for this one. I hadn't remembered what a great purple it is, though: it's from Blackwater Abbey Yarns. The shop I worked in before I moved to the UK had a trunk sale for Blackwater Abbey, and even though they weren't offering much of a discount, I was quite taken with the Celtic Dreams pattern. Blackwater Abbey feature Beth Brown-Reinsel's patterns, so it seemed logical to go ahead and buy the pattern and wool right then, and keep it for when I was ready to knit it.

( Photo and some technical bits behind the cut )

....and of course, you can find anything on YouTube. Well, almost anything.

She blowed up reeeeal good!

Now, if anybody can find a video of Lenny Tang's Express Elevator to Hell ("Das' too bad fo' you, mah friend!"), I'll be happy. Well, for a couple of minutes, anyway. ;-)

So I got a good ways into the hareball fichu from Victorian Lace Today. I'd finished the interior neck edge and the first lace panel. But the second panel just killed me, nothing seemed to be coming out right, and when I finally broke the cashmere wool trying to knit four stitches together, I ripped it out and started again-- with the blue laceweight merino I'd bought last year in the US. I tell myself I'll be able to see the stitches better if I'm not knitting black, and I probably will-- but it would have looked awfully good in black.

Here are some photos of someone else's finished version of this project, just so you know what I'm making. It's a lace collar that can be tied around an existing blouse collar to give it a bit of, well, lace. :) I have a couple of white summer shirts I'm looking forward to wearing it with, so here's hoping I actually can make it work.

Am I an idiot for attempting a project like this when I don't really have all that much lace experience? Well, it's how I learn to do everything, isn't it? I pick something too complicated and butt my head against it until I succeed. Still, I admit that even though I'm an awfully good knitter most of the time, lace just lays me low.

I'm still laughing hours later, so this must have been funny. :-)

Via someone on #filkhaven, I sent pola_bear this.

She replied with this.

I think she wins!

I got this from cynnerth, who got it from somebody else, etc. Because obviously I wouldn't ever go looking for such stuff myself....

Three Wise Camels

This, combined with the memory of this seriously NSFW piece from Metaquotes....

Well, the mind wobbles.

Alternate covers, if you're just too cool to let other people see you reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Thanks to satyrblade for the link.

We picked up a copy of Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels the other night for £3. None of us had ever seen it, but everyone says we should see it. Tonight after dinner, we finally sat down to watch it.

What a fun film. Well, as fun as it can really get with a body count that high. But hey, Sting is in it! ;-)

Seriously, if you haven't seen it, you should. I can't believe we waited this long. As London films go, this one and Football Factory are pretty much the cream of the crop. Unless you count Shaun of the Dead. Or, you know, Love, Actually. (And I kinda do.)

There are lots of good films based in London, aren't there?

What's your favourite London film?

Welcome, Yule-- Harper's Traditional Winter Solstice Post

The Shortest Day

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!

Susan Cooper

Welcome, Yule.

Courtesy of khall, this video, from YouTube.

NOT work safe. Hilariously funny. In French, with subtitles.

Many of you have commented on my default userpic, which was taken at the Rollright Stones in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, in May.

At the time we were at the site, we didn't notice there had been vandalism damage to the site hut: we just figured it was not always open. But apparently, there was a fire in January, and the Rollright Trust, the group that takes care of the stones, can't afford to build a new hut. This morning, I read about The Rollright Project, and I thought I'd pass along the information to anybody who might have some interest in buying a CD or, if you're close enough, attending a benefit gig.

Of all the stone circles I've visited in England and Ireland and the US (yes, I've visited a stone circle in the US), the Rollright Stones are my favourite site. They are small, comfortable, homey and unspoiled, and I'm quite surprised that anybody would vandalise the caretaker's hut there. If you can, I urge you to contribute to the rebuilding of the hut. The Rollright Stones are the only stone circle in England not supported by National Trust or English Heritage.

A friend posted a link to this article this morning, and I really liked it. Because it's at Salon, you have to click through an advertisement to get to the article, but I thought it was worth it.

Not Exactly [Last] Week In Folk Music: Duncan McFarlane!

We didn't go to Folkmob last week; we were just knackered.

But Tuesday night at Sharps was something not to be missed-- the guest was Duncan McFarlane, and he is completely worth your time if you have the opportunity to go and see him. stevieannie, I think you would particularly enjoy his driving mix of traditional and original-nodding-to-traditional material, not to mention his obvious homage-to-Nic-Jones guitar style. He was fun, he was energetic, he was right there and not at a distance, and he was really enjoying himself. He was chatty and personable at the break, got everybody to sing along, and didn't take himself too seriously.

My itty bitty floor spot went OK; I sang "Shirt of Lace" with the lap harp and it wasn't awful but it wasn't perfect either.

( Good and bad parts about this experience. )

From autographedcat:

Nerd Hell.

We're all goin' there, youknow......