2011, the year of the socks

Earlier this year, I made my first ever pair of socks, following an easy pattern from The Purl Bee. It turns out knitting with 5 double pointed needles is a little like wrestling a spiky yarn monster but isn't actually that difficult. The socks were a present for my Swiss friend. I think they turned out pretty well.

The blue bits are made of alpaca yarn (can't remember the exact brand) so they were super fluffy :3


A couple of months ago, I was rummaging around my favourite book store, The Book Warehouse and found a spiral bound book from a brand called Company's Coming entitled Learn to Knit Socks. At £2.99, it was cheaper than a knitting magazine or single downloaded pattern and looked like it had a good range of socks (although the photography left a bit to be desired, some of the photos were decidedly... off).


Around the same time, I found out my granddad had bowel cancer. I don't get to see my grandparents a lot, and I never saw them much growing up. The cancer highlighted the fact that my granddad might not be around much longer (touch wood, he's got a while yet). My grandparents live up North in Manchester where it rains 90% of the time and gets pretty cold, so I figured socks in something cosy would be appreciated.


Debbie Bliss cashmerino dk in colour 18032 (much more of a berry purple than these photos let on). It wasn't cheap, but to me it was worth it for warmth and a luxury feeling for your toes. Plus, cheap yarns tend to be synthetics, and who wants that on their feet? Ew.

Apologies for the dodgy photos, I had to use a camera phone

The pattern was broken rib, and the instructions in the book were clear and easy to follow. I'm very pleased with them despite a few mistakes (including a mysterious length disparity).


My granddad couldn't stop petting them and saying how soft they were. :)

Rainbow Cake

The cookies didn't work (they were delicious, went down well at college, they just didn't cheer me up) so I tried rainbow cakes.

They didn't work either (again, tasty, but not anti-melancholic). I can't change the things that are making me sad.


What am I supposed to do?

Everything Cookies

Today I was feeling a bit sad, so I did some baking to cheer myself up. Turns out it's difficult to stir with your left hand when you're used to stirring with your right but have messed up your right wrist cheerleading. Such is my burden. The purpose of the baking was really to use up some of the ingredients in my cupboard but as always I ended up not having enough of X or Y so I had to go buy some and now I've got surplus of that to use up but now I'm going to run out of Z.


Anyway, Everything Cookies. They are called that because I went to the local shop to buy a large thing of chocolate to smash up into chips and they didn't have any large bars or any chocolate chips, so I just bought assorted sweets to throw into the mixture.

The rest of the recipe is adapted from a recipe on La Fuji Mama. Here we go!

• 325g plain flour
• 50g butter
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 200g white sugar
• 40g light brown sugar (this is because I was out of brown sugar and didn't want to buy more. The original recipe called for 110g of granulated sugar and 130g brown sugar)
• vanilla essence
• 2 large eggs
• chocolate or whatever assorted candy you spend way too much money on at the store

1. Preheat oven to 190°c
2. In a large mixing bowl cream together the butter and sugar
3. Beat in the eggs, one at a time and add the salt and a dash of vanilla essence
4. Add the flour and baking powder and work to a doughy texture. If it gets way too stiff, add in a dash of water. You don't want it as stiff as a dough for rolling out, more of a sticky mixture
5. Add in your chosen poison drops. I eventually settled on the Reese's Pieces, a pack of Rolos, the white chocolate buttons and a tube of Smarties.
6. Dollop a spoonful of mixture for each cooking onto a lined baking sheet and bake for around 10-13mins.

Mine came out looking like this:

The caramel in the Rolos melted all over the sheet and some of the cookies merged together. BTW, this is tray 1- the recipe makes double this amount easily. Each of those cookies is about 2.5cm thick and 6cm across.

They tasted like misspent youth, a year wasted at art school, and the deep heat muscle pain relief spray I have been dousing myself with all day.

Pocodile

This is a pocodile.

That's pocket-crocodile to not retarded people. His name is Pocky.

I made him up as I went along which I guess is why he looks a bit like a Kronosaurus. Maybe making up amigurumi as you go only works with crochet. 


Obviously something to take into account when I make his lifesize brother... (I kid, I hate seaming)

Beating the budget blues

This isn't really anything I've made. It's more something I'm forcing myself to do. When my student loan came at the start of the month (WOOO!) I knew that this time I was going to have to be better with my money. As young people go, I think I'm pretty good with my money. I don't spend it on lots of nights out, I don't buy a lot of new clothes, I cook for myself instead of eating out etc, but I need to be better with it. Why? This year I got a huge financial leg up from the Wondrous Bank of Mum and Dad. Because they'd done the same for my brother, they offered to pay my rent for the first academic year of university.


Well now it's nearly the end of that first year (EEEK) and I'm looking for somewhere else to live in the city. Got a roomate lined up, need to get a flat sorted. And then it dawned on me. I haven't been bad with my money, but I haven't been great either. I needed to make a budget.


So I drew this up:

• £20 a week for food and drink
• £15 a week for travel
• £15 a week for fun

Giving myself a £50 a week budget for the last 7 weeks of term, totalling £350, leaving myself a good chunk left over from my student loan to help me afford rent while I get myself employed.

I let myself go over budget in the first week and then overspent on travel this week (I had to travel to the suburbs for a job interview) leaving me with 80p for the entire weekend. Yes, 80p.

For those of you not in the UK, here is what, approximately, 80p will buy you in London:

• 4 copies of a rag newspaper
• 1 button from a fabric shop
• 2 apples (if you're lucky enough to find a shop that sells apples for 40p rather than 45)
• a copy of Take a Break or equivalent awful magazine
• 4 missiles in the spaceship game in the Namco Arcade
• 8 chances on the 10p falls in the arcade of your choice
• a small chocolate bar
• 2 Mini Milk ice lollies

I decided to stay in today, do laundry (praying there was still money on my card) and sulk. I ended up handwashing a load of underwear because I needed to do 2 loads of laundry and only had enough on my card for one.

And then I started reading something that stopped me sulking.

Down and Out in Paris and London is Orwell's account of his life in the slums in the late 20s/early 30s. It didn't sound like a hoot and a half. I'm only 6 chapters in, but so far dearest George has been robbed by another lodger, pawned all of his clothes except the ones he's wearing, been living off bread/margarine/booze/tobacco for about a month, hasn't washed for 3 weeks, lost his only source of income, and had to sell his overcoat to buy food.

And even George admits that he's not the poorest around by a long shot.

I think every young person who feels perpetually broke should read this book. We may not be as well off as we'd like to be, but chances are we have a roof over our head, spare change to buy food with, and a few fancy gadgets we could sell if the situation really divebombs. I'm probably not going to be particularly rich for the majority of my life; I'm getting a degree in ceramic design FFS. But hey, if having 80p to live off for the whole weekend means that next month I have a flat sorted for next year, I think I'm willing to put up with it.

Owl

I made an owl this week while watching The Ricky Gervais show on 4oD. When I make amigurumi I don't use a pattern, I just imagine the shape I want to make and then make it grow with increases and decreases. Most amigurumi animals are a variant on the same shape, you just alter the eyes, wings, ears or whatever.

I don't have a photo of it, but before I sewed the button eyes on Owl looked really quite mean.  I think amigurumi are a bit like children, you can try your hardest but they always end up with their own personality. Sometimes they turn into completely different things (I've had a cat turn into a bunny and a hermit crab start out life as a mermaid's tail).

Poor Owl looks a bit confused. Probably something to do with looking through 8 small holes in two completely different buttons I found in a baggie on a train floor.

Sorry, Owl.

Yesterday I also made a pie

My mojo is definitely back.

I made pie.

I don't even like pie.

I made it just because I could.