The Tower of London

During a fallow period for work, I took myself off this week to see the Tower of London, one of the bigger London attractions that I can’t recall ever having visited, either as a little kid following my parents around or as a bigger kid on my own.  While there was plenty of medieval and Tudor-style martial architecture in evidence (such as the Norman tower, above), I was surprised and delighted to find that the walls of the Tower also enclose a beautifully preserved Tudor village (albeit on a very small scale), in which many of the Tower’s beefeaters live with their respective families.

The three holidaymakers having the time of their lives in the foreground have nothing to do with me.

I just love the dinky building in this line-up, being muscled out by the others.

And, finally, let me say what we’re all thinking here: who would have thought the beefeaters were so terribly stylish, with that gorgeous blue on their front doors?  I think everyone on my street should be made to paint their doors in such a wonderful colour too.

Beyond my photos, all I have to say about the Tower is that it is steep, at £14.50 for a concession ticket when bought on the day (it’s a pound less when bought ahead of time online*) but, surprisingly, I didn’t feel like I’d been ripped off at the end of it.  There’s a great variety of stuff on show, with the Tower’s history dating back to the 1100s, and the complex is sizeable, easily the equal in size of a village or small town – it takes the best part of a day to visit the whole place properly, certainly once you factor in time spent in queues.  Personally, I found it fascinating to see the tower where Thomas More was imprisoned, having studied his life and (some of his) work in some depth on my course last year, but there were plenty of other famous names too: Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, Sir Walter Raleigh, Rudolf Hess.  And it’s extremely well taken care of, and that’s down in no small part to the funds they must raise in visitor revenue.  So I don’t feel like they were acting the cod too much with the ticket price, on the whole.  And they have the coolest costume in the world for their guides!  What’s not to love, really?  (Answer: the bloody queues.)

*I was frustrated in my attempts to buy an online ticket and spent the rest of the day moaning about this to the BF, who after a while reached into his pocket to give me a pound coin, telling me that now I would be paying the online price.  Everyone’s a comedian.

Ripple cushion cover

I have long harboured an ambition to recreate for myself Alicia Paulson’s absolutely gorgeous crocheted ripple blanket, but have been put off by a number of considerations: the scale, the time involved, the cost, the fact that I don’t crochet (I can do something with verbal instructions, with some extremely basic step-by-step instructions at my side, but I can’t work out pictorial patterns in crochet at all – at least, not yet).

Photo courtesy of Alicia Paulson

But look at it.  Isn’t divine?  So don’t get me wrong: one day, I will make one, but for now, I will content myself with a stopgap – a ripple cushion cover.  I had intended to try my crochet skills on this smaller project, but try as I might I just couldn’t get the pattern I’d found online to work up into a convincing-looking swatch, and so I threw down my crochet hook for my trusty knitting needles.  I give details below of the stitch pattern; I did find it online, but now can’t locate it, so I apologise to whoever’s clever idea it was.

The greatest thing to be said against this pattern is the weaving in to be done at the end. Even on such a relatively small piece, there’s quite a bit of weaving in when you change colour nearly every wave.

The BF has said he doesn’t much like the colours in my cover, and I would of course have turfed him out immediately, had I not unfortunately agreed with him.  I’m not crazy about the colours at all, whereas I think the colours in Alicia Paulson’s blanket are what make it so attractive; I attribute my choice  to going to the yarn shop without any specific design in mind beyond knowing I wanted to make another cushion cover.  I then discovered the shop had everything on sale, so I, trying to take advantage of the sale, though of ways to justify buying as much as possible.  This led to some panicky hemming and hawing in the shop rather than the calm forethought at home that such a project requires in the choice of colours. Also, crucially, over here in London I had no already-existing stash to raid, and busting the stash would be the very reason most people would embark on such a randomly striped project. So I’ve done things backwards all over the place.

Once I’d knitted my material up to the required length, weaved the ends in and sewn up my seams, I got the opportunity to try out that very photogenic activity of blocking for the first time, featured above.  After blocking, I crocheted some buttonholes on (the coward’s way out, not trying to work it into the material itself) and added some cute toggle buttons, which were 50p each from John Lewis.  I neglected to mention in my last cushion cover post that I get my cushion pads from John Lewis too; my 35 cm square duck feather pad cost £3.65.  JL actually has a really wide selection for these, at least to my mind, but in Ireland we are completely starved of such a decent one-stop shop, so perhaps I’m inflating its worth: half the time I love the JL craft area, its wide selection of yarns and knitting patterns, its pretty little boxes and notions for sewing, and half the time I am exasperated with its nonsensical ribbon situation and frankly pants craft fabric selection.  It is a trial.

My finished cushion!  As to what to make next, or for whom, I’m not sure …

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The Hard Facts

The number of stitches you cast on is dictated, as with the last cushion cover, by the width you’re looking for and your own gauge.  The formula is 18x + 18, where x = number of reps required.  I was working to a desired width of 35 cm and in my gauge that comes to give or take 70 stitches, so I needed 3 reps (i.e., 18(3) + 18 = 72, which is near enough the mark).

Row 1: k2tog 3 times, (yo the next 6 stitches, k2tog 6 times) repeat as desired, yo the next 6 stitches, k2tog 3 times.  Rows 2 & 3: knit.  Row 4: purl.  Thus for me, on 4.5 mm needles working to a desired width of 35 cm, the pattern for row 1 was k2tog 3 times, (yo the next 6 stitches, k2tog 6 times)*3, yo the next 6 stitches, k2tog 3 times.  Yes?  Yes.  Then repeat till you’ve made up enough material to cover your cushion pad.

I’m looking at my flowers, which were £4 from Borough Market yesterday, in their classy vase (a glass from IKEA); I’m reading the paper; I’m listening to Fleet Foxes (which I only got last week and am now kicking myself that I didn’t get into sooner) …  Have a good Sunday, everyone.

I’m in love again.

I think I may have to marry the BF just to get some wedding invitations by Bird & Banner.  LOOK at these beautiful things.

 

Again via Oh Joy!, my new favourite website.  I will now try to restrain myself from posting anything more lifted from there but, well, no promises.

I’m in love

By Famille Summerbelle (via Oh Joy!).  They also do one of Paris; each is just £35.

The Lion King

I just wanted to put up a short note about The Lion King, which I saw last night at the Lyceum Theatre*.  The costumes and set literally gave me goosebumps they were so good; I had been wondering how effective the staging could be in pulling off a story about animals, but suffice it to say that they pull it off with aplomb, between masks, puppets, stilts, even a peculiar wheeled contraption.  Both the opening and closing Pride Rock numbers, which feature the whole cast and a really amazing variety of animals, were thrilling.  The music for the most part, however, was not quite so amazing as the spectacle – the singers were excellent, the band extremely polished, but I wasn’t convinced about a number of the songs (particularly the songs that did not feature in the film).  In all, though, between the performances, the dazzling effects and the tremendous goodwill of the audience, it was a thoroughly enjoyable night, and I imagine is a fantastic hit with kids, which would certainly explain its longevity.

I was a bit perturbed to be sitting beside a gaggle of girls younger than me, all of whom sang along (out of tune, without the right lyrics) and generally made arses of themselves, clearly indulging in nostalgia for an only just finished childhood.  Weird.

*The backdrop to an important scene from The Sign of Four, as Holmes fans would know.  I spend my life doing this in London, associating place names and the like with cultural artefacts.  Hence, I sing Belle and Sebastian’s “Mornington Crescent” whenever I pass it on the Tube; passing Shepherd’s Bush I do the Only Fools and Horses theme tune (at least the bit that goes “Shepherd’s Bush-bush-bush-bush …”).

Apple pie

Before I head off, I just wanted to quickly post about this apple pie.  It was just about the only thing I could muster the energy to make this week while feeling poorly, which gives you a pretty accurate idea of my priorities, and it fully repaid the effort – an excellent comfort food when you’re feeling run down.  I ate almost all of it myself  over the course of a couple of days and I can confidently attribute my recovery to this wise move.

Because I was working around what I already had rather than going by a specific recipe, the only guidance I can give you is pretty vague, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing: add your own spices, play around with the filling, whatever, it’s very versatile.  In pulling together elements from a few different recipes I found online, the pastry was made up of something like 240g white flour with a few tablespoons of sugar and a teaspoon of cinnamon, all sieved together and made into breadcrumbs with about 120g of butter and a couple of tablespoons of water to make them cohere.  Then I put this, in greaseproof, into the fridge for an hour or so while I got stuck into the filling: three Bramley cooking apples, peeled and chopped into little cubes, then heated in a saucepan over a medium heat with a wodge or two of butter, a few tablespoons of water and caster sugar to taste.  This mixture I alternately covered with the lid to soften and mixed around to make sure nothing burned.

After lining the tin with greaseproof, I rolled out half my pastry mixture onto a floured work surface and transferred it to the tin.  I wasn’t very good at this part and there were many cracks and fissures – dab the cracks with milk and jam the gap with some leftover pastry and you should be fine.  Then bake blind until it’s dried and browned a little (I did this in a 200°C oven – sorry, I wasn’t timing anything this day).  Remove from oven and fill with your apple filling.  Roll out the rest of your pastry, transfer on to the pie and prick with a knife or fork.  Because the filling was pretty much perfect when it went into the oven, I was happy to judge this by eye again without worrying about whether it was cooked all the way through – take out when you’re satisfied that the topping is nicely brown-looking.  Allow to cool and sieve over a little icing sugar.  Feed to the sick and watch them revive.

Later – I forgot to add that these measurements are for an 8″ tin; the tin used for the pie above is not a normal pie tin but a normal loose-bottomed cake tin (this explains the crappy edging, at least to my mind.)

Parish notices

Hello all,

Sorry for my absence over the past while.  I have been ill – not swine flu, according to my doctor, just some viral infection that’s taking its time to get out of my system – and have had a) nothing to report and b) no will to write.  I hope to have  a good deal to write up next week, with a few tickets booked and my second cushion cover nearly done.  I’m heading home to Dublin for the weekend, where I’m expecting at the very least lots of food and attention.  I don’t see this as unreasonable.  See you next week!

Hatchards

Photo courtesy of Swiv

I know I’m the slow kid in the class on this one, but I just had to write a little note on this place after my first, very brief, visit there last week.  I went to Hatchards in the first place not because of whatever prestige it gets from being the appointed booksellers to HM the queen and HRHs the Duke of Edinburgh and the Prince of Wales, but because it was the nearest bookshop to the office I was working in last week.  I wanted to get my hands on a copy of E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime as soon as I could after work on Friday, so I steamed up there without any notions about the place at all, only to find an absolutely enchanting bookshop.  Knowing that I wanted to head home quickly, I didn’t give myself a chance to browse, which I could tell would eat up a lot of time, so I just quickly got my book, purchased it and left – but I definitely plan to head back soon for a proper browse.  Despite my haste, though, I couldn’t resist, seeing as I was in that part of the world, popping my head into Fortnum’s next door, which is simply insane but great too.  I’d never really thought of Piccadilly as prime browsing territory but clearly I’ll have to rethink my ideas.

I have been knitting again

I am the equivalent of a fair-weather friend to knitting: I am only spontaneously inclined to pick up my needles once there’s a nip in the air or a glowering look in the sky, and I hardly, if ever, knit during the warmer months in the usual run of things.  This is not to say that I only knit out of necessity, but that’s what it amounts to.  However, I am keen to make a few more friends while I’m in London this summer and thought a good way to do so would be to join a group or two*.  Thus I only took up my knitting needles in order to go to a knitting group, not thinking I’d get too much from knitting in thirty-degree heat, but I was surprised and pleased to find that it was just about the best thing I could have done.   As I’ve mentioned here already, I had a dry patch with work for a couple of weeks (mercifully finished now, though that’s not to say it mightn’t kick in again soon) and so the occupation of knitting was extremely pleasant.  Once I’d made the initial outlay for my yarn, it was completely free (and, further, kept me out of trouble – while placidly sitting knitting in the garden during the heatwave last week, I was not in town spending money).  That first purchase gave me an excuse to moon away some time in the precincts of the lovely Loop, which is sure to cheer anyone of a crafty disposition.  The project I’d chosen was involving without being wearing.  I practically always knit to the accompaniment of something else – at home, I would normally stick on a DVD and watch a couple of hours of a series while knitting away; over here, I took out a Poirot audiobook from the library and merrily knit away to a genteel murder in the warm sunshine.  There are worse ways to while away the time.  And I always get a kick out of the way knitting just grows, almost of its own accord.

I chose my project – a cushion cover – mainly out of necessity and a lack of imagination, as I wanted something reasonably simple, fairly portable and not requiring too much outlay in yarn.  Further, this project would create some much-needed decoration Chez Basil in glamorous Souf London.

Front view

Back view

I know it’s plain, but the yarn I used (Sublime Baby Cashmere Merino Silk DK in shade 0124) is beautifully soft and it’s very comfy, which is the name of the game.

Lovely buttons, 75p each, from Liberty

It has occurred to me more than once whilst making this project that, quite embarrassingly, this is just about the most ambitious knitting project I’ve done.  I call this embarrassing because I’ve been knitting for so long now, and I’m always to be found knitting, at the very least, in the darkest point of winter – I had pretty much assumed on the basis that I’ve been knitting for three quarters of my life that I was hot stuff at this game, but this is, on reflection, complete humbug.  Despite being a quick knitter, and well able to produce a nice, even-looking piece of material, I’ve never really attempted socks (which really made me feel like the new girl at I Knit – sock fever had hit Waterloo in a big way); I’ve certainly never gone near anything approaching a jumper, either in size or complexity (much to the BF’s chagrin – almost as soon as he learnt that I am a knitter he started annoying me to make him a jumper); I can’t remember having had to tackle buttonholes before now; and I’ve never even properly blocked anything.  I’ve almost entirely stuck to scarves and hats.

However, this did not so much knock my confidence as really get me thinking about other possibilities – what have I been missing out on, and what should I put on my to-do list?  I must say, I don’t really understand the widespread adoration of socks.

The knitting group even got me contemplating seriously, for the first time, that I may just make the BF a jumper.  Though I’d probably need to start it imminently to have a chance of it being done.  For now, though, I’m content to bend my will toward churning out another cushion cover or three – as one wise soul at I Knit put it, one on its own on the sofa would look very lonely altogether.

* I am also on the lookout for a good book group, if anyone knows of such a thing.  I would especially like a group that is not enormous and meets either in central or south-east London.

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The Hard Facts

I made the stitch pattern up as I went along, but it’s not hard – your total number of stitches will come to 6x + 9, where x = number of repetitions of the motif across the width in the line with the largest number of reps.  In order to fit the 45cm width of my cushion pad, the number of reps worked out as being 11 when worked on 5mm needles – in all, 75 stitches, for which I give the directions below.  Knit up a swatch yourself to check your gauge and adjust accordingly.

Make up an inch or two of plain stockinette stitch (this is where you’ll place your buttons when you’re finishing up).  Then follow the motif pattern:

Row 1: k4, (p1, k5) 11 times, k4.  Row 2: p3, (k1, p1, k1, p3) 11 times, p3.  Row 3: knit.  Row 4: purl.  Row 5: k7, (p1, k5) 10 times, k7.  Row 6: p6, (k1, p1, k1) 10 times, p6.  Row 7: knit.  Row 8: purl.  Repeat to required length.

Then put in your buttonholes – their placement will depend on your guage and simply where you’d like to put them.  Stockinette stitch for another inch or so (give it more than you’d expect – I bound off a bit too quickly, in retrospect).  Weave in the ends and seam it all up and you’re done!