Didn’t realize knitting was so dangerous

I have just finished reading this wonderful book for my book group. We all loved it – and we’re a very fussy lot so it comes highly recommended. But…

I didn’t realize knitting could be so full of hazards.

In 1871,  Jane Digby’s sweet natured daughter-in-law met an untimely death when she “slipped while walking downstairs carrying her knitting, and as she fell one of the knitting needles had pierced her spine.”

Ouch! I’ll definitely have to be more careful.

Very interesting undies

Lover of all homemade things though I am, I think knitting your own undies is probably a step too far. The bloke’s pants are particularly weird-looking.  And surely sitting on all that knotty string chaffed your sensitive bits something chronic!

It’s a fab image though. It comes from one of my late grandmother’s old sewing and knitting mags, kindly passed to me by my Aunt Ruth (my Dad’s sister) who’s just had a clearout prior to moving home.

The magazine is called Pins & Needles no. 140. It’s undated which is annoying but I’m pretty sure it’s from around 1960.

All I can add is thank goodness for M&S.

We are amused

I discovered this video clip on the BBC news website yesterday… just when I thought it had all faded away quietly.

Would just like to say that the knitter has done a fab job on Kate’s dress, adding long lacy sleeves to reflect the actual dress in place of my guessed-at short sleeved version. Lovely!

Click here to see how Charles and Camilla admired it.

 

Vanessa and Ben

As well as Knit your own Royal Wedding, I’ve been working on a few Christmas knitting and other books which you can see here.

During the hectic knitting days of the past few months, one of the highlights of my day has been listening to the bright and perpetually feisty Vanessa Feltz who has a morning talk show on BBC London.

So as something of a thank you I have knitted her and her gorgeous pop star fiance, Ben Ofoedu and will be posting them off today.

Check them out for real here.

I’ve just made another video – this time, on how to embroider the sort of eyes I use on most of my knitted dolls.

I hope you find it useful.

Here’s the link.

Now on video

I bought a flip camcorder ages ago to create a few tutorials which I thought might be useful. Well I finally got round to using it today to create a tutorial on sewing a knitted leg together. I use the same technique on almost all my dolls and it’s a bit unusual. So I thought this might help.

Please don’t expect perfection. It was quite hard to do it with one hand on the camcorder button and one moving the knitting around (so I ordered a tripod from Amazon this morning).

But I think it uploaded on You Tube OK so here it is.

Next time I’m going to be doing a tutorial on embroidering eyes, so keep watching this space.

Nutty knitting fact

I was surprised to read that the wool from a single sheep (presumably over the course of its life) could be spun into a length of yarn that could go round the world eight times! At least I think that’s roughly what it says.

I’m currently reading some children’s books in French in a desperate effort to improve my French skills.

Anyway they’re a charming series of books (this isn’t the best illustration but then a flying sheep is a bit of a challenge) in the Kididoc series and have all sorts of flaps to open, wheels to turn etc.

We bought them to help our son to learn French – and now he’s gone and chosen to do German instead and I can’t even count in German. You can lead a horse to water…