ADAM AT HOME UK

An audio clip will appear  HERE   in due course... I am always amazed at just how much crochet I churn out.  I suppose it IS my main occupation now, but there are quite long stretches where things just 'progress' towards completion: Work In Progress, or WIPs as they seem to be known.  Well, of late, several projects seem to have come together in quite quick succession:- In the wake of my Ocean Waves wrap came a scarf using the same pattern and yarn, but in a slightly different way: On the tail of that was probably my favourite so far - a pineapple shawl worked in hand-dyed alpaca-and-silk yarn, to a pattern by my guru Fiber Spider on YouTube. It's 6 ft by 3 ft 6" and thus this photo really only shows half... The upper photo shows the blocking process, where one dampens the shawl and stretches it out to open up the lace-work.  As you can see, an awful  lot of pins are involved, but the end product IS worth it.  It's one of those patterns that seems initially compli

Not sure whether I'll do an audio clip for this post - it's so short... Well, not to beat about the bush, Benny is now gambolling about the clouds with his ancesters.  A sad day in some ways, but it's the down-side of owning a pet: the time will come when he, she or it will need euthanising and it's just a process one has to go through. That said, he's been a (mostly) very faithful companion who did, eventually  understand that he was not to bring me little presents and was to eat his snacks OUTside!  So now it's just Merlin and me... It's nice to be able to allow him the whole house (bar my bedroom!) although I am still not allowing him out - that will probably have to wait till around or after Christmas-time.  We shall see.......  In the  mean time, he's very keen to be near me - more than before? that's hard to say, but he really does not like me being the wrong side of a door (in his view) and 'creates' accordingly!  He's been here s

Click  HERE   to hear a spoken version... So, now we come to Merlin... First of all, some background: For those of you who don't know him, I have had a cat - Benny - since I moved into my current home in 2009. He was a rescue, aged about two, who had had a bad accident and lost one of his front legs. He has coped excellently with this problem and now, twelve years later, could be said to be about fourteen years old.  However, back in the summer he was having real problems with getting onto his favourite bench in the garden - even a low chair defeated him. My heart sank somewhat, as mechanical problems at the rear end for any animal usually end in euthanasia. SO... having decided I did not want to be without a cat, I started questing. A friend's daughter had a couple of farmyard rescues - one of which was a sort of silver tabby, which would have complemented Benny very nicely!  In the end though, the family decided they wanted to keep him. Sad at the time, but silver

For the spoken version, please click  HEREABOUTS ...  BLOG CATCH-UP I feel a slight apology is in order - not that I imagine there's anybody out there looking at this any more! I hit a couple of 'tricky' spots with the banyan, not the least of which was trying to sort the hem out. There was no way I had the space to lay things out here, so I ended up using Martin-at-Pennell's wonderful cutting table - my goodness it's useful having a friendly local haberdashers!  The garment is 90% finished I suppose... The last hurdle is to sort out the sleeve length: I have left them over-long as I want to turn them back to form a cuff... but it means  a bit of unpicking - not difficult with a hand-sewn garment, just tedious... so it gets put aside.  Now I have a small kitten (of which more later) which means the banyan has been bundled away until there's less danger of someone's claws shredding the silk damask... In the meantime, I have made myself several more items of

For some reason, I did not post this back in May... so here it is, 'better late than never' !! To bring you up-to-date on a few things: THE BANYAN progresses, albeit slowly.  There's an awful lot of just plain old sewing of long, straight seams.  Perfectly enjoyable, but not really 'newsworthy! The second photo shows the neck of the lining being re-inforced, prior to stitching it into the outer layer. Exciting stuff... but I have a few more straight seams to sew before I can move on to that... Then I have been developing my latest crochet pattern, called Treble Triangles, which is now slowly taking shape as a wrap... Oh... and on top on all that... I have just taken up the tenor Viola da gamba! When I left school, forty-five-odd years ago, it had been my intention to learn the gamba as my second study when I went to college to study singing.  Of course life is never quite that straightforward and I ended up at Guildhall - where second study was, automatically, piano :-(