When I was young I loved the Mr Men books. I’m of an age where they were just Mr Men – the Little Misses series hadn’t been added at that point. I even taught myself how to do joined up writing by tracing Roger Hargreaves signature from the front cover of the books. Mr Bump always seemed a bit of a silly character to me, carelessly getting hurt so often. However, I have been doing a really good impression of Mr Bump this past week or so.
Now I look back on it, my opinion of Mr Bump when I was a child was strange, as I had a habit of regularly walking into lamp-posts – I simply didn’t see them as I was too busy looking at everything else around me. My recent run of “Mr Bumpiness” began with a reversion to childhood. I walked into a lamp-post in the centre of a footpath to McDonald’s just after we’d finished the North East Wool Show (which was great by the way). Unfortunately, said lamp-post had a road sign screwed to it to face the road next to the footpath and so I collided with it edge-on and quite forcefully. The poor lady serving the drive-through customers who saw it happen was quite worried and brought me a cup of ice cubes for my arm when we got into the building. I’m sure that helped quite a bit, although the bruising has been spectacular.
I managed not to injure myself further for nearly a week (apart from a ganglion suddenly appearing on my left wrist) and then on Saturday, during the Pop-Up Wool Show (another excellent event) I misjudged where my chair was when sitting down with my knitting, fell off it sideways and landed on/in our roller banner. Cue another massive bruise, lots of embarrassment and a very broken roller banner – a replacement is due to arrive tomorrow thanks to Instantprint. Sue had just popped outside to eat her lunch and knew nothing of what had happened until she came back to see the banner leaning rather limply against the back of our neighbour’s stand (many thanks to Cuddlebums!). Antidote Yarns and Designs also kindly came over to ask if I needed anything, but all I could think of to ask for was a little more dignity!
My mum suggested I break some matches to avoid a third thing happening. This superstition is not one I’ve ever heard of before even though Mum has always said ‘things come in threes’. I meant to try it, but forgot. On Monday morning whilst removing all the bedding from the bedroom (a new bed was due to be delivered) I walked into the corner of a table in the hallway (hidden from my sight by the duvet, but I should have known it was there) and later on dropped/knocked over a whole pint of water on the dining table. So, it seems I’m either into my second set of ‘threes’ or I’ve just been incredibly unlucky lately with my sudden lack of spatial awareness/co-ordination. I’m just really grateful none of my injuries affected my driving for getting home from our events!
The North East Wool Show and the Pop Up Wool Show were both great and in between these we also visited my Mum and were visited by Sue’s brother and wife for the solar eclipse. All of this meant that I wasn’t able to get a blog post written last week.
Knitting-wise I have been very busy since my last blog post. My shawl design has gone off to the tech editor, I’ve collected the yarn for a big piece of brioche knitting and I’m only ten repeats of the pattern away from finishing it and I’ve got most of the yarn for a new garment design. An additional colour is arriving today.
If you’ve been to any of my workshops on stranded knitting (or any type of colourwork) you’ll know how important contrast in the tonal value of the colours is. If two colours have a similar tonal value the pattern will vanish into the background, even if the colours appear to be different. I learnt this the hard way with a cowl I knitted for Sue. It was in black and red and included one of her poems in morse code. The big writing shows up, but the morse code is virtually invisible because the red and black both had similar tonal values. You can really see the lack of tonal value contrast if you look at the picture in black and white.
It was after knitting a swatch for my new design with the colours I had that I realised there was not enough contrast in tonal value – hence why a new colour is being delivered today. I can’t show you the swatch, but you will see the finished design in a few months.
Next weekend the rights to my Spring Breeze Hat return to me and I will be able to publish the pattern myself. I’ve added an additional size (extra large), which is ideal if you: a) have a bigger head; b) have lots of hair; c) like a more relaxed fit to your hats.
Here is the extra large hat being blocked on a balloon:
I can’t currently find my medium size sample (the one I sent to the magazine) and I’m not 100% sure if it’s been returned yet. With this in mind, the photos for the pattern may have to just include the small, large and extra large to start with and be updated to included the medium when I’ve either found it or knitted a new one. If you’d like a cheeky discount on the pattern when it’s launched as an individual pattern, then do sign up to my monthly newsletter!
That’s all from me today. I am going to aim to be less like Mr Bump for a while! I hope you have a good week and get to do some things that make you happy. K x