Soulmates - knitting and coffee

Some things just go together, like cheese and wine, or bacon and eggs and for me knitting and coffee is one of those non negotiable pairings. Sitting down with a freshly brewed cup of coffee and some relaxing knitting is just the perfect thing. And one without the other just isn’t the same.

A recent bout of ill health has meant that I’ve been forced to re-evaluate this valuable part of my routine and I think it’s fair to say that I’ve struggled to enjoy my knitting in quite the same way without my hot cup of coffee by my side. Other hot beverages are indeed available - and believe me I’ve tried them all. But it’s just not the same, and my knitting mojo is definitely flagging as a result.

I think it’s partly because I view both of them as synonymous with ‘me time’. When my kids were very small, sitting down with a hot coffee (and the actual time to drink it) was a rare luxury. But I could often grab 5 minutes to knit while they were toddling around. Unlike a hot coffee, they couldn’t do much damage to my knitting, short of knocking it off the coffee table or trying to eat it - and I always tended to use small wooden circulars when they were around to minimise damage (either to them or the knitting).

Over time, my routines evolved and the boys activities moved on to more active pursuits where supervision at a distance was all that was required. For quite a few years, I was the connoisseur of soft-play centres and would put up with any amount of ear-splitting screeching for an (almost) uninterrupted hour of coffee and knitting.

Now, I find myself with a lot more knitting time (and a very bad social media habit which threatens to encroach on knitting more than I care to admit). But it has to be accompanied by something with low acidity and caffeine free. I know that on the scale of first-world problems this is probably up there with Waitrose running out of strawberries, but the lack of coffee has really affected how much I’m knitting, which is never good.

So far rooibos is probably my favourite tummy-friendly beverage but if you have any tried and tested recommendations I’d love to know. Anything to get me enjoying hot drinks again would be gratefully appreciated.

A bit of shawl inspiration

I found myself in the knitting doldrums the other day and fancied a little light pattern browsing. Nothing serious and with no intention of making any firm plans, you understand. Just a casual perusal of some lovely knitted items, with a possibility of purchase.

Ordinarily in such circumstances I would have turned to Ravelry, but since their accessibility debacle I am no longer using the site and so instead I turned to Yarn Database.

I had previously registered there as a designer but never really investigated the offerings as a purchaser and I have to say that I really enjoyed using it.

If you create a login for the site you can browse all the individual designers and also create a ‘follow’ list of your favourites. You can also apply filters and search for patterns under a range of different attributes.

It took just a few minutes to compile a list of suitable shawl projects - and yes, to buy a couple - and all without going near Ravelry.

The only thing I do miss Ravelry for is seeing other people’s projects -getting an idea of the different colours used, how items look when worn etc. For this I turned to Instagram. Most designers create a hashtag for their designs - for instance I have #FussFreeFestivalShawl for my pattern of the same name - and it’s easy to type the hashtag into the search bar and pull up a list of projects, often with details of yarns used etc. Perfect for that dose of knitty inspiration.

Anyway, my point is that life after Ravelry doesn’t have to be hard work. It just needs a bit of willingness to look in a few different places and to actively seek out and follow those designers whose work you value. Since stepping away from Ravelry I’ve found that I’m far less likely to be influenced by the ‘hot right now’ page and much more likely to seek out patterns that I’m actually likely to knit. Ones that work for me, my lifestyle and my stash, rather than being influenced by the bigger names. Having said that, I did see the new Stephen West Slipstravaganza blanket yesterday and bought it in a flash.

In case you are curious, these are the shawl patterns that caught my eye. All are non-Ravelry links:

Clockwise from top right:

Diamonds in the Breeze by Kath Andrews

Photosynthesis by Tin Can Knits

Trousseau - Stolen Stitches

Wavedeck by Kate Atherley

Toscaig by Flutterby Knits

Going gently

Socks are the Ready, Player One colourway from Must Stash Yarns

As I’m writing this it really does feel like the perfect spring day, cool but with beautiful bright sunshine and vivid green leaves starting to show on the trees. After being under Covid restrictions for such a long time it does feel as though we are more than ready for spring this year, and that stepping out into the bright spring sunshine is symbolic on more than one level.

But with this new-found freedom goes a plea for going gently. Not everyone is in the same place with this. Some people plan to change nothing and stay shielding for now. For some people, the restrictions of the past year are something that they live with on a permanent basis – for them, there is no ‘return to normal’. Some people are raring to go.

We are all navigating our way through this. But no matter how anxious/scared/nervous you are feeling please spare a thought for our shop owners and their staff. Not only are they navigating their own feelings but they are trying to stick to the guidelines as best they can and to keep both themselves and their customers safe.

A friend of mine, a local café owner was devastated today when a customer left a stinging Trip Advisor review – slating perceived shortcomings in their system. It was a misunderstanding that could have been easily sorted out with a short conversation. Instead they took to social media to vent their views and caused a lot of public upset instead.

There’s not much point having #BeKind in your social media profile if you are ‘that person’ haranguing a poor café owner about their napkins.

The next few weeks and months are going to be hard enough as it is. Please spare a thought for those business owners who are thankfully still in business and let’s try to keep them there.

Creativity with nowhere to go

Snapshots of March 2021

I keep having the same feeling I used to have as a young child. Desperate to do something creative, I would follow my mum around the house. “What can I draw?” was my constant question.

I felt a strong urge to create something, but I had no idea what. And my mum being busy with the house and siblings wasn’t in the best place to help.

Looking back, that changed somewhat once my Nana taught me to knit. For those years before I discovered ‘going out’, knitting was a really valuable creative outlet at a time when I didn’t have many other ways to express myself.

Now, after a year of living under Covid restrictions. I find myself thinking very similar thoughts. Desperate to create something, to come up with something new or exciting. I find myself wandering around the house, picking things up and putting them down. Opening the laptop to write…and then closing it again. Nothing seems to scratch the creative itch as it were.

Partly I’m suffering from a lack of meaningful downtime – as we all are. And partly I think it’s just a lack of inspiration. There are only so many times you can look at your own four walls and as someone who normally takes a lot of inspiration from the natural world, it’s been hard to have that removed.

What will happen when the lockdown is released and we can suddenly do all the things and visit all the places. Will there be a creative surge, with all those untapped ideas suddenly all fleeing the nest at once? Or will it be a slow trickle as I gradually learn how to be creative again.

Or, horror, will there be nothing left? Just a whizened shell where my creativity used to live.

I suspect that the truth will probably lie somewhere in the middle. I’m hoping that with the careful application of some fresh air and a change of scenery – and yes, bribery with cake – my creative self can be persuaded to play out again.

Partly as an antidote this and partly to persuade myself that I have actually done things during the month I started to create monthly collages of snapshots. I used to do this regularly, back in the day on Instagram but I’ve sort of got out of the habit. It was a surprising amount of fun though - and helped to reinforce that I have actually achieved things, despite living through the weird concertina time warp that is Covid.

In praise of blogging

I miss writing. I miss sitting down in a café with my notebook and sketching out a few blog post ideas. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that this year my blogging game has fallen off a metaphorical cliff.

Obviously, there’s the whole ‘living through a pandemic’ to contend with and the sheer emotional overwhelm which has left me visibly struggling at times. But partly it’s the fact that all the little moments of my week – those 10 minutes interludes here and there where I could grab my notebook or my phone and jot down a few random things have just disappeared.

I don’t particularly have ‘free time between things’ at the minute. With being at home so much, if I’m not working at the kitchen table, or relaxing – knitting – there are a whole host of other domestic mundane jobs that are competing for my attention. My poor notebook rarely gets a look in.

Still, I’m determined to do something about that and to reclaim some of the lost time that I seem to have sunk into trying to keep the Instagram algorithm happy. I’m sure that I’ve written about this before, but it is easy to lose yourself in the world of Instagram – indeed that’s the very thing that the app is designed to do. It’s designed with the express intention of drawing you in, and then crucially, keeping you there.

Instagram doesn’t want you wandering off to check out someone’s blog – or following external links to pastures new. It wants you there, on the app. Spending time, seeing adverts and generally keeping their usage data high.

But, as lovely as the Instagram community is and no matter how inspirational and uplifting I find it, I generally don’t read as many of the captions as I should, and I’m sure that people skim over my content as much as I skim over theirs. Nothing beats a good blog post – ideally read over a cup of coffee during some well-earned downtime – for really connecting with someone and for being drawn into their ideas and their experiences.

So, here we are. Up and blogging again.

All I need now is that cafe, a large vat of coffee and a good spell of people watching to get the words flowing again.

Knitwear in April

Ever keen to extend the knitwear season as long as possible I was thrilled when, after a lovely sunny day or two at the weekend, the temperature plummeted again.

Don’t get me wrong, it was lovely to bask in the (almost) warm sunshine and to contemplate replacing my winter boots, with summer sandals. But when the mercury dipped again and the wind developed a distinct easterly sharpness I was secretly pleased that knitwear was still needed.

Shown here is one of my favourite shawls – the Cornhill shawl by Eden Cottage Yarns in their Carlisle Fingering, as well as my Fuss Free Mitts – a free pattern which is up on my blog. I knit a few pairs of these in various colours and I usually have at least one pair rolled up in most of my walking jackets. The other pockets generally hold masks – but that’s Covid times for you.

In other news I have been dusting off the blog a little and trying to get back into some semblance of a writing routine again. This of course necessitated the purchase of a shiny new notebook, about which I am very excited – more on that later.

For now I have been content with revisiting my blog reading and finding out who out there is still blogging. Much has been written about the death of the blog, but honestly I think that more and more people are finding that they need a break from the pressure and the heated-ness (if that’s a word) of social media. I read this article recently by Tanis Fibre Arts on the subject and I have to say that it really resonated with me.

I tell myself that I don’t have the time to sit down and draft out a blog post or two, but I’ll happily lose half an hour on Instagram – feeding the algorithm gods. So I’m trying to get into good habits by actually reading other peoples blogs and spending a little less time surfing Twitter or Instagram.

I used to use Bloglovin but I’ve never been a huge fan, so I thought it was a good opportunity for a fresh start. I signed up to the free version of Feedly and so far I have to say that I’m really enjoying it. I think there is the option for more features if you pay for a plan but I’m just seeing how I get on with the free version for now.

One thing I was exploring was the old concept of a blogroll – remember those? My old Blogger page used to have a little sidebar widget with a blogroll and I used to love visiting other sites and seeing what blogs they in turn followed. Is that still a thing do you think? I’d love to see that make a comeback.

Anyway, all this to say that hopefully I will be around a little more in the coming weeks as I blow the cobwebs away. And if you have any top blog recommendations please do let me know. I’m always looking for new ones to follow. Maybe I’ll even share them on a blogroll of my very own.