Lustrum Concessions

You know, I hadn't even heard of the word 'lustrum' before I moved to Holland - they use here it to celebrate or commemorate a 5 year period between big events.  It was, according to the internet so it must be true, originally to mean the period of time between censuses being taken in Ancient Rome - 5 years.  Nowadays an orchestra, or company, for example, can celebrate its lustrum every 5 years after its founding.  And when cake's involved, I heartily embrace this tradition.  And cake is frequently involved, at least over here in Clog-land.

But here it is - my first Ravelversary Lustrum (if one may mix these up a bit) and the first lustrum of my blog.  Hell yeah!  Has it really five years already?

I can't give everyone cake, much as I'd like to try, but I must celebrate this momentous occasion, and why not by giving five lustra to all.  

...

Okay, what I really mean is that all my patterns have 25% (see what I did there?!) off from now until after the second lustra of February!  Okay, I'm getting a little too taken with the whole lustrum thing...  So, from NOW until the 14th of February all my patterns will have 25% off.  No special codes or coupons needed!
 

It's a LUSTRUM SALE!  But in case it's not obvious enough:

You can find a link to the design page with all the patterns HERE!  

And to make the checkout much simpler, I've changed all the prices to Euros to stop the problems people were having if they were buying patterns in a mixture of € or $.  Sock pattern buying: now with new added simplicity! ;-)

p.s. lustrum

It's That Competition Time Of Year

Of course, the implication is that I do something at this time every year, but having missed the occasion for the past 2 years, I thought I'd commemorate both the occasions and the remembering of said occasions this year, at the same time.

wahey - she remembered!

The occasions?  Both my Ravelversary (31st Jan) and my Blogoversary (4th February).  Or, as I'm bang-slap in the middle of them at the moment, I shall call it my Ravelblogoversary.
I can see this catching on...
So, what's the deal, I hear you ask.  Or I do in my head, which is enough for me to write a sentence or two about it.

The deal is this, dear blogowers (that's 'blog followers' to those not aware of the entry in the RedScot Dictionary of Made-Up Words OUP 2018): I'm offering a complete set of my 'to buy' patterns to the winner of the competition.  That's 9 patterns to the worth of... quite a lot.  My arithmetic skills are currently off partying somewhere.  Probably with my calculator.
And don't worry if you're not a member of Ravelry!  Anyone can see them if you click on this LINK and all I need is an email address so I can send the winner the PDF collection.  If you ARE a member of Ravelry, however, I can send you the patterns there and you will be able to keep them in the online library!

prohibition

gloriana

pom star

bloody mary

honey socktails

strawberry mohito

irish ale

piña colada

irish coffee

But, HOW to win them, I hear you ask. Again. Because I've not been dithering with picture placement at all.  Oh no.  Well, it's simple really. All I need to know is what you think my favourite colour is.  And don't think checking on my Rav profile will help, as I've unhelpfully removed any mention of my preferred palette choice.  

But because I'm actually really a helpful person at heart, I'll give you a heads-up and let you know you have a choice of 3 favourite colours - so you have 3 times the chance of guessing one of them.  (And I should be clearer - give me one colour - if it's one of my 3 favourite colours, then you're in with a chance!)  You don't need to be specific - I'm not looking for a Crayola-perfect colour name, just the general colour umbrella will be sufficient!

All you need to do is write a comment here on the blog telling me what you think the answer is. The winning entries who mention any of the 3 colours will be put into a computer generator thingy (technical wordage notwithstanding) and the winner will be announced after the end of the competition.  

(If blogger is playing silly-bluggers, then hop over to THIS THREAD on Ravelry and let me know what you think the answer might be!  Not a member of Rav and blogger playing silly-bluggers?  Click on the contact me on the profile and send a message.  I'll have that open for the duration.)

The closing date?  February 14th at a minute to midnight CET.  I may as well have something to look forward to on Valentine's Day, eh?

Happy guessing!

Red's January SALE

Yes indeed! For the first 2 weeks of January, you can get 25% off the price of ALL REDSCOT SOCK PATTERNS!  Oh yes!  Buy one or buy 'em all - you'll get 25% off the total price!

Don't say I'm not good to you!

Click HERE to go to the pattern page on Ravelry!  (You don't need to be a member to access the page or buy the patterns!)

Sale starts 1st January 00:01, ends 14th January 23.59
all times GMT

Overwhelming Ossimness in Auction Form

PHEW :: mops brow ::

The last two weeks have been spent organising an auction in the Completely Pointless and Arbitrary Group on Ravelry, with the proceeds to go towards aid for Japan, the recipient of a devastating earthquake and tsunami a few weeks ago, with aftershocks still continuing even as I type.  (Yes, it was quite a late auction, considering, but being for-all-intents-and-purposes unemployed just now, I have no grasp of calendric points of interest, like actual dates and days of the week!)

The response was immense! Overwhelming, in fact, or just about! Donations poured in, all amazing in their own way, from home-baked scones, to hand-turned pens, to delicious skeins of yarn, to fabulous sets of patterns (guess what I donated?!), to custom knit socks, to decadent lots of body scrubs and smellies and bath gorgeousnesses, to hand-made quilts, to batts of fibre-y goodness, to bacon chocolate (I'm telling you - had I been in the possession of any money at all, this would have been MINE!!), to watercolour paintings, to amazing sets of precious needles, to knitting novels, to calligraphy services, to custom-knit shawls. AND BEYOND.  OVER 75 auctions in all.

Truly, truly amazing!  And what's more truly amazing is:

WE RAISED THE GRAND TOTAL OF  $4,516.84!!!!!!

(Monies raised going to Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres, The International Red Cross, and The Search Dog Foundation.)

Many, many thanks go to the bidders, the donors, the time-givers, the time-keepers, the winners, the non-winners, the pompom wavers, the lurkers, the kamikaze last-minuters, and everyone else who looked in! 

Especially to itgirl (whose help was invaluable), plus dizzybea, knittingfiddler, ktb38, Ericafillyjonk, knittybe, erqsome, Veriton, MonicaPDX, frenchiekisses, webgeckos, LtdEdition, casey2, whirlybird, Savitar, Drin, alwen, monkeypants, kultakutri, bigalice, Dyddgu, GravitySlave, madmoon, bemgelado, teabird, kermit, Roswitha, Hexenkind, beeca, boxkikker, thegeorg, gwynivar, historyweaver, troubleagain, loves2design, heatherfeather, auntietracy, hbd, Lissagail, InJuneau, stabbycat, markfifersmyhero, mitchy, lizajane, teabird, Goldbek, DianeS, Sockenanja, iamtheinfidel, fiberqat, HeatheroutsideBOS, arpelia, justnet, mpindstrup, Dragon, DonnaD, rwest81, KnittyBe, LunaTheFarmLady, Faaayth, Gigi, ZaftigWendy, pokito, Bettiegee, aminca, jdlashier, MidnightOwl, CorinnesKnits, aimers1212, JoeysHouse, rrevbbd and last but not least, zuzusunshine!!  

(If I've missed you, it's due to lack of brain-function today, not because of any nefarious intentions!)

Elation. An Elegy, Part the Second.

Otherwise entitled: "The Sock Support" surprise: The Reason Behind Writing the Last Post of DOOOOM.

Ravelry never ceases to amaze and astound me.  Yes, there is a wealth of patterns to be found.  Yes, there is technical help and advice around every corner.  Yes, you can join a group with fellow fibrists who share your love of socks, 'Lost', David Tennant, or playing the mouth organ.  Okay, I'm not positive about that last one, but if there's not one now, it can't be long...  But above all, yes, you can find friends.

Today I have been humbled by the kindness that has flowed over the intertubez from people in Ravelry.  I don't really have the words for this, which is most unlike my normal verbose self, but I am above all buoyed-up by their support.  I'm almost embarrassed with the attention, in fact.  So, thank you to everyone who was involved in the Sock Support project (for want of another name) and especially to Scrubmonkey and Craftswoman who, legend has it, masterminded the whole shebang.  I have no idea how they did it, but gift horses were never meant to be orally examined!

Thank you!

And in the true spirit of Completely Pointless and Arbitrary, I give you skipping electricity pylons.  Because I can.

Down In The Dumps. An Elegy, Part the First

marjory the trash heap

Now, as you all know, I'm not one for parading my innermost feelings about on the interwebz.  Well, at least not on something as public as my Wronicles, at any rate.  Saying that, I do wish my three avid readers to know that the reason I've not been keeping up-to-date, Wronicles-wise, is not because of you.  It's truly not you.  It's me...  But don't worry, this isn't going to be a 'Dear John' post, in fact, just the opposite.  But you need to read on to see whether I've finally flipped or not...

So, where was I?  Oh yes, it's not you, it's me...  And it's The Fates.

red shakespeare

The Fates and I are not on the best of terms at the moment. They seem to take great pleasure in scaling tremendous heights then dumping crap on my life from the icy regions above.  But let's be honest here: with the current state of financial crap-dom and the knock-on effects, Fate is having a WHALE of a time, least of all with me.  But, as all things must be worn-down by the ceaseless pounding of Time and Murphy's Law No. 332 (the one involving saving up to buy a pint of beer but tripping up over a bar-stool and watching said beer go flying onto the local thug's brand-new leather jacket), so has this Fraggle's spirit been ground down.  Or as much as something so ethereal can be flattened. Hmmm, might have to go back and change something to include the Wind of Fate instead.  Although, no - being blown away by Murphy's Wind of Fortune smacks of something altogether of a more unsavoury olfactory theme...

But I digress.  Slightly.  Really, this is just a little post to say that things are on top of me at the moment that make functioning on a normal level slightly tricky.  My poor Wronicles are again falling by the way-side.  I've barely knit anything for months and as for designing?  Well, I've started to pick up my latest alcoholic sock pattern again, but mostly have just looked at it and put it back down.  I have, however, figured out what to do with the heel.  So all is not lost.  I may have even figured out what to do with the cuff.  We shall get there in the end...

Q is for...

Quixotic

Ravelry icons

                                                                                    
Our favourite knitting site is a host for many wondrous things, one of my (many) favourites being the quixotic nature of some words... (I use this in its 'whimsical' and 'fanciful' sense.)  If, when conversing on the forums, you type the words 'cup of coffee, cake, killer rabbit (there's a long story there, but not for the telling right here) and ice cream, to name but four, the magic of Ravelry then depicts the words in a delightful little icon which follows your text.  It is very amusing, and the 'cake' especially has come to mean a lot to the members of a certain CPaAG...

I decided I liked these little symbols so much that I'd try to turn them into 3D knitted representations... I found patterns that I could adapt for three of them, and so determined was I to make the fourth, I made it up myself!

But I run ahead of myself...

Firstly, may I present unto you the ice cream:

um, ice cream...

Notice the waffle cone and the blueberry and strawberry scoops! Heh! This is from the marvellous pattern by Marcie Nishioka, called 'Scooped' of all things!

Next we have some cake. This is a very important part of the 'Very Longest Thread' in the 'Completely Pointless and Arbitrary Group' on Ravelry. Newbies are asked for cake when they post for the first time and it occasionally incurs a bit of confusion along the lines of:

"Cake?" 

"How can I bring you cake?" 

"Oh. I see." 

"When I type 'cake' the icon turns up and you all get Rav cake..." 

"D'oh"

etcetera...

(There's a small possibility that I'm re-living my first postings on the VLT for your delectation right here and now...) 

Childish? Well, yes, but good, clean childishnessy-type fun!

And so: cake.

cake (like you'd never guess it by now...)

Now, I don't know exactly what kind of cake the Ravelry cake is supposed to be - it has a cream-coloured sponge, pink icing and filling and some cream on the top edge...  For me, I think I shall go with a Victoria sponge with a strawberry filling and fresh double cream piped around the edge of the pink icing on top.  And now I'm getting slightly peckish...  This cake is only slightly altered from the 'Let them knit cake' pattern by Hannah Kaminsky.

Then we have the killer rabbit.  Um. Well. How to explain... It involves cake, or the lack thereof...

Once upon a time in a Ravelry Land not far away, cake stopped being followed by its icon. Gnashings of teeth, howls of frustration and tears of despair ensued (indulge me, people, I'm writing a story!) causing an outpouring of grief on a main board.  The multitudes were uneasy, scared and lonely for the lack of the pretty pink frosted cake but were delighted to find out that in fact the cake was being guarded by a killer rabbit. I think Casey, one of the founders of Ravelry and the code monkey, was drinking rather too much coffee that day. But anyhoo, the killer rabbit and its cute little bunny icon made it onto our pages, and therefore onto my knitting needles...

watch out for the fangs...

This little beastie was designed by MeganAnn and called 'rabbit'. (And I shall hug him and squeeze him and call him George...)

Lastly I decided I wanted to make a cup of coffee, as... well, it's as important to me as it is to the list of icons... But could I find a pattern?  Um, well, yes actually, I could, but it was a crochet pattern, and I can't crochet my way out of a wet paper bag... So I searched again but to no avail.  Well, thunk I, maybe I can just do one myself...  It can't be THAT hard, right? RIGHT?

cup of coffee (oh, for a latte icon!)

Actually, RIGHT! Heh. 3 stitches cast onto 3 dpns, m1 on each stitch for the first round, and k1, m1 for the next few, a couple of purl rows for the base of the cup, then k1 and m1 whenever I thought it needed to curve out a bit more... Then a length of browny i-cord for the coffee part and a small i-cord for the handle and Bob's your Daddy's Bro!

And so you have it. My own quirky versions of some Rav icons...

huzzah for arty-farty shots!

(Ah, pants - Q could've been for quirky...)

Saint Brigid of the Socks

Hmm, hope the title of this post doesn't sound blasphemous... But really, I am overwhelmed with the socks formerly known as just 'Brigid'. It may be because they're my first socks evah, or it may be because they fit like a, um, glove... It may be because by the second sock I'd figured out the hell turn. (Sorry, the spelling is staying like that now.) It may be because they're cute and cosy. It may just be because I feel like the proud new mother of twins...

But anyhoo, may I present my first pair of socks...

Cute, eh? (Feel free to say yes!) I took them on their first visit outside yesterday and they behaved very well indeed. I'm going to stop the baby analogy now to add that they were boot fillers so they didn't really see the light of day, but my tootsies were cosy and comfortable, which means they fulfilled their requirements!

Now, of course, I want to make MORE socks... You have to have a look at this wonder from the Tsarina of Tsocks. It's called 'Firebird' and I almost dribbled with sock-lust when I saw it for the first time. But I have to wait a while before it makes it out of the sock club and becomes available to the general public. Ah, me...

And talking of Ravelry... (There's a perfect logical explanation for the subject change in my head. Should you wish further commentary, then my head will be happy to help.)
...What an interesting few days it has been on the forums. There were some strops beheld and a business flushed itself down the tubes on one. There was a part of me that felt sorry for the person at the centre of the complaints, but it all came down to (IMHO) very shoddy customer service over a long period of time from the business in question.
It seemed it was a day of bad karma all round - full moon? Um, no - waxing crescent at the moment. Maybe a mass biorythmic energy flash? A sun-burst in Earth's direction? Maybe an international coffee outage? Who really knows, but on another forum a fire was flamed under a reputable small business owner, started by someone new to the forums. This was very quickly extinguished, as although the OP had a valid-ish complaint, he/she hadn't actually checked whether it was still valid. Which it wasn't. It all smacked rather distastefully of witch-hunt inciting. But then, if one was, wasn't the other? Perhaps, and I have to admit I'm not the one to judge, even if I am writing about it here... But it did make it a car-crashingly interesting day. Too interesting, really, as I think I spent most of the day on teh interwebz. Icanhazcheezburger.com has a lot of time absorption to answer for aswell.


Maybe I need to get a proper job?

But, knitting-wise, it is now time to start the Aoife (pronounced 'Ee-feh') jacket thingy that I've been drooling over since I saw the pattern on Knitty.com a month or so past... Oh, and Coco is still on the go, as are the mary-janes... Want to start a bag for my sis (but not naming it here in case she looks!) and maybe another bag for me... (Hah - I say 'maybe' like it's not already a certainty!) And there's that wire I bought up in Holland and ALL those pretty beads...

I'm just going to bask in the glory (and warmth) that is Saint Brigid for a bit first...

ABCs...

I love the concept of the Ravelry group 'ABC-along 2008' - the purpose of which is to post a photo which is a "reflection of you and things that are meaningful to you" every fortnight of the year corresponding to a letter of the alphabet (fortnight 1 - A, fortnight 2 - B etc etc). I may be too late to join officially, but I'd like to play along anyhow! Here are my attempts to catch-up...
A is for:

Angels.

Found on a tomb in Tours Cathedral. I like the play of the shadows.

B is for:

Bee!

Taken in my parents garden in Scotland.

And C is for:

Ceiling

The stunning frescoed ceiling of the Piccolomini Library in Siena Duomo.

Ah, me! I need a better camera as my one is starting to die and is eating batteries like there's no tomorrow, but the dear wee thing has served me well so far!

But back to the knitting. I *must* try to stay away from the internet for long enough to learn a cable cast-on!
Percy says hello.