After my Fiber East post, Probably Jane commented that, along with Nickerjac, she's part of a knitting group that meets at Stepney City Farm.   Jane mentioned that the farm has a large farmyard to run around in, toy tractors, great cake and kittens (real, actual kittens) , so I decided this would be a way of combining knitting and boys during a summer holiday morning.

The kittens were friendly and cute beyond words. We also fed sheep and patted donkeys, noshed bacon sandwiches and ate the chocolatiest-ever chocolate cake. The knitting group was the best bit though. Nic and Jane were so welcoming, helpful and chatty. 

It was my birthday last week. I felt like the luckiest girl in the world, not least because we had a party at Knit Night, with a delicious, flamboyant cake and prosecco. The girls wore badges professing their love for me.  I was very embarrassed and a little flattered, just as they'd planned. 

I was also given this:

My very own hand-knitted Muddy Sheep! And he is knitting!

Receiving any knitted gift is always wonderful for me. As a knitter I can imagine the trials and emotions invested in that gift:

I imagine the knitter's mind wandering as they knit, thinking what the recipient will say when they see it, and maybe chuckling inwardly at the thought.  

I imagine the apprehension the knitter feels that it might not look as good in reality as it does in their imagination.  
 
I imagine there's a good chance that the knitter underestimated the time it would take to complete - despite having underestimated many times in the past already (or is that just me?). So I imagine them cursing as they find themselves knitting at break-neck speed to get it finished in time. 

And finally I imagine the satisfaction when it's done: when that perfect button has been located, the mattress stitch has worked its magic again, and all the fiddly ends are sewn in.

I knew all that in my heart when I was given that gift, and now I've put it into words.  Thank you to all my Knit Night friends for a wonderful party. And for my Muddy Sheep, thank you Karen.

Wendy x

The knitting group that I'm in had a party last night to celebrate our third birthday. I love these knitty friends; so much fun, so many giggles and always there when it matters.  

But back to the party; I'd promised to make the cake and after seeing this cake on pinterest - and though I feel obliged to share the link to credit the original, I'd much rather not, since hers is sooo much better than mine! - I knew I wanted to make a muddy sheep version.

I used my staple cake recipe; the BBC's blueberry cake with sour cream, and James Martin's chocolate ganache from his book Desserts, though it didn't come out at the consistency I needed, so I got a sugar rush with all the adding and tasting that I had to do to get it right. It's a tough life.

It was really fun to take the time to be creative in a different way, though I think I'll go back to the day job now, especially as the girls decided they were more sheep-dogs than sheep! Ah well, at least it tasted good.

The knitting group that I am a part of organise a Secret Santa, with presents given out at our Christmas party, and it works really well.  One of the girls did point out that it's not very 'secret', because we always guess and admit afterwards who bought or made what, but that's beside the point -  just buying or making one present means you can put in some time and effort.  That would be difficult if buying for everyone, impossible if buying for no-one, and awkward if buying for only some!

This year I decided to make something.  The girl whose name I had picked out of the bag as my giftee is a seamstress and always produces fabulous Secret Santa gifts, so the pressure was on. I've been playing around with a technique for making 'contoured' colour changes with intarsia, by using increases and decreases either side of a colour change. I decided to make a cowl, and my design for the Secret Santa gift uses this 'contoured' intarsia technique, involves 18 small skeins of yarn, and the intarsia is done in the round, so I always knew it would be a challenge. I ploughed ahead anyway, approximated how much yarn I would need for each colour block, and ended up knitting with this distressing tangle:

If you are consistent about turning one way at the end of a knit row, and the opposite way at the end of a purl row when knitting intarsia, then the yarns magically untangle (sometimes with some gentle persuasion). But this wasn't working for this project: all the skeins moved around in the tray, especially because I was doing intarsia in the round. I was a bit worried: as much as I love intarsia, I was on a tight deadline to get the project done and untangling yarns under pressure is not really my idea of fun.

I know you can get 'yarn holders', but I didn't have any, and not being keen on buying eighteen of them I searched the kitchen for things that I could use instead. I decided on cups, as they are reasonably heavy so will stay in place, plus I have plenty of them, so there would be no need to empty a mug of yarn just to get my morning cuppa.  My intarsia tray ended up looking like this: 

It worked like a dream: the little skeins of yarn twisted round and jumped in their cups as I pulled on them to release more yarn, but almost never escaped their ceramic confines, and my strands stayed untangled throughout the whole project. 

Even with nearly-zero levels of yarn tangling, I still have to make a positive effort to relax into an intarsia mindset, and accept that it's a messy business until it's all over and the ends are sewn in. Maybe there's a metaphor for life in there somewhere - it's muddy and a bit out of control, but learn to live with the chaos and it's all worthwhile in the end.