Learning to knit mittens

First of all, a word of warning, and apology, to the non knitters, this post is full of knitting geekness!

A few weeks back I decided it was high time I learnt to knit a pair of mittens. After all, I excel at socks and they’re not that different to knit. At the same time I decided a colour work knit was long overdue. So a project was born: knit a pair of stripy mittens. I found two lovely colours in Rowan Pure Wool DK whilst re-stocking the Make Lounge’s shop so I was ready to go.

Except that despite doing some research in my own pattern library and in the huge selection from Ravelry, I couldn’t find “THE” pattern. “I’m a fairly decent knitter, why don’t I try and make a pair of mittens without a pattern?” I told myself, “how hard can it be?”. Well, I had to frog (that’s unraveling your knitting for the uninitiated) my project at least four times and I had to refer to tutorials on You Tube and to other helpful bloggers to get me through, that’s how hard it was! But seeing the result and enriched with a few new techniques and knitting tricks, I can honestly say it was all worth it.

The first thing that became obvious when I started my mittens was that they would be more suited to circular needles than double pointed pins. So I spent a weekend teaching myself the magic loop method, as explained a couple of posts ago.

My next hurdle was the colour changes. As you can see from the picture below, the change was disrupting my beautiful stripes and as a perfectionist, that simply wouldn’t do.

So I did a bit of research and found out that I had to do jogless stripes. This is where I say a big thank you to fellow blogger Technknitter for her wonderfully simple explanation on how to do jogless stripes. After some debate I opted for stationary jogless stripes and this is the result. Better wouldn’t you say?

My last stumbling block was the thumb gusset. I had absolutely no idea how to shape for the thumb and initially, I didn’t even know it was called a gusset. Thanks to Catherine Hirst at the Make Lounge for pointing it out to me! Once I knew what I was looking for, I went digging in online patterns and knitting magazines but unfortunately, none of what I found made sense to me. I’m a very visual person so I opted for a search on You Tube instead and found a plethora of video tutorials and suddenly, gusset making became easy!

I have now finished my pair of fingerless mittens and I love them to bits! They’re made of good quality wool, they fit me perfectly and the stripes are lovely! What a great way to further my knitting skills!

Happy Ostara!

Hail, and welcome!
Green life returns to the earth
blooming and blossoming
once more from the soil.
We welcome you,

Goddesses of spring Eostre, Persephone, Flora, Cybele,
in the trees,
in the soil,
in the flowers,
in the rains,
and we are grateful
for your presence.

Yesterday was the celebration of Ostara or the spring Equinox. You could really feel spring in the air, it was a beautiful day! I hope you all had a chance to look outside, take notice and be grateful for all this beauty around us. 

The art of massage

I was lucky enough recently to enjoy a spa day with my darling husband. As part of the day, I had booked a full body massage for both of us. He came out of his fulfilled but I didn’t (we had different therapists).

It’s not easy being on the receiving end of a massage when you’re a qualified therapist yourself. You’re so much more aware of what is right and wrong and you tend to know exactly what you want and how you want it. On this occasion, my massage wasn’t bad, she didn’t do anything particularly wrong, but she didn’t do anything particularly right either! And it’s left me wondering if, like some say, an “ok” massage is really much better than no massage at all.

I’ll be the first to admit that massage is a matter of personal taste, one therapist might be good for someone and not for someone else, in the same way that not all types of massage are suited to everyone. But with training and experience, I have come to realise that not everybody, no matter how much learning and practicing they have done, will make a good massage therapist.

Massage is a science but also an art. First you have to be able to communicate with your patient, massage is a two-way relationship. My therapist in this case asked me no questions just instructed me on how to get on the table. Not only did she nip our “relationship” in the bud by doing so, but I’m pretty sure this was unethical if only because I’m a woman of child-bearing age and she should at the very least have asked about me being potentially pregnant!

Then you have to learn to get the pressure right, and trust me, it’s not as easy as it sounds! You have to develop some muscles you didn’t know existed, learn how to balance your body weight and most important of all, you have to learn to be firm, not strong. Learning to differentiate the two is crucial if you want your patient to enjoy their massage but also to preserve your own hands and wrists!

Thirdly, you have to listen. Listen to what your patient is telling you, obviously, but also to what their body is telling you, which may sometimes be very different things. This is where a degree of intuitiveness is required and no amount of learning and training can teach you that. I think this is the skill my massage therapist lacked the most on this occasion. She seemed to be doing all the right movements but never once did she hit the right spot. Never once did she find  and address a knot or sore point and there were many, I can tell you that! This to me says that she’s learnt her routine well but she has absolutely no idea what the routine is meant to achieve. And it’s left me incredibly frustrated and desperately wanting more!

It’s not easy finding good massage therapists, in London or anywhere, but here are a few of my recommendations:

- If you think the problem is structural, go to the British School of Osteopathy in Borough (near London Bridge). They have outstanding levels of care at the most decent price you could possibly get.
- For the best shiatsu therapist in town go see my friend Jim at Hands-On. Shiatsu is not a gentle massage like aromatherapy, so think about what it is you want or need before you go! But Jim does an amazing job, he gets my vote (and my husband’s) any day!
- For a great value spa day and spa treatments, go to Aqua Sana in Elveden Forest. It’s not that far from London and it’s unbeatable for the price.  BTW, the spa day mentioned in this post was not at Aqua Sana, I have only compliments for them!

I will add to this post whenever I come across very good massage therapists and spa treatments.

Button rings

What to do with a few buttons, silver plated ring bases and some craft glue? Button rings, of course!

This is a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon and doesn't require advanced crafting skills, you just need a bit of patience whilst the glue dries.

And yes, you've guessed it right, these are going in my "Xmas market/craft fair" box!

Berrylicious bracelet and ethereal necklace

Well it's been a busy weekend! First of all, hubby pulled a muscle in his back so this was the perfect excuse to get my rather forlorn massage table out of the cupboard. And since I'm due to spend a whole weekend giving indian head massages at a trade show in just a fortnight, I can really use the training!

Secondly, I taught myself to knit in the round using the magic loop technique. Don't get me wrong, I really like working on double pointed pins, especially when it comes to knitting socks, but I have this mittens project I want to make and I felt that the magic loop method would lend itself to it better. I won't describe the magic loop method in details here, there's enough YouTube videos about it out there. I'll just say that because of its name, it always sounded really mysterious to me and so I'd assumed it was pretty complicated. Well it's not! It's a bit like cables (as in knitting cables, not the electric kind of which I know very little!), it looks fancy and sophisticated but when you break it down, it's actually pretty simple. A bit of a let down challenge wise if I'm honest... Never mind, I am now fairly proficient at magic loop knitting so I can finally start my mittens project. I'll keep you posted on the results.

Finally, it's been a jewellery making weekend. I have lots of beads and findings in my stock - along with a pile of crafting books, a huge stash of yarns, a good stash of roving wool and a growing stash of fabrics... Craftaholics Anonymous may soon be in order! I've decided I want to de-stash, especially as we are considering moving to Bristol towards the end of the year. But I don't want to just sell the stuff on Ebay, that would be heart breaking (and no hubby darling, the books are never going to go!), I want to use up my stash making loads of stuff I could sell at a craft fair or christmas market. So I've made a start. First I made this lovely ethereal necklace with just a handful of perspex beads and a bit of chain.

Then I made this adorable berrylicious jangly bracelet with wooden beads. It's packed with beads and yet it's super light, I love it!

So here we go, along with my wire and bead experiment from a previous post and a few other bits and pieces I made last year, these are now officially stored in the "for sale at a craft/christmas market" box. I figure that if I make a few pieces a month, come the end of the year, I should have a decent enough stock for a stall. Let's see how that pans out!

Don't touch May Day!

I am deeply dismayed by John Penrose's Tourism Strategy for the UK that was published earlier today.

First, it decided to abandon the plan of moving UK clocks forward by an hour all year round, this despite the overwhelming evidence that it would boost tourism and the economy and have a great impact on our attempts at reducing carbon emissions. As a big supporter of the Lighter Later campaign, I feel quite let down.

But what pains me the most is his proposal of scrapping the May Day bank holiday. May Day for us pagans is one of our major festivals, we call it Beltane. Along with Yule, it is my favourite festival, a time for love and joy. I understand the logic behind wanting to extend the tourism season by moving a bank holiday but why sacrifice May Day? Why not one of the other bank holidays? In Belgium where I come from, only Easter Monday is a bank holiday, not Good Friday. Why not sacrifice that then? Or what about the Spring bank holiday at the end of May? Why can't we move that one instead?

Of course his plans will not stop me, or my fellow pagans, from celebrating Beltane. But it was nice to have a day off for it. It was also nice that somewhere in the calendar, there was still a remnant of our pagan heritage. Ostara has become Easter, Yule has become Christmas but May Day was, well, May Day! A date taken from the old pagan calendar, even if many had no idea why they were celebrating on that day. And I suspect John Penrose is amongst those ignorants!