Matthew tells me it’s not Tuesday, but I refuse to believe him. Because if it’s not, what the hell happened to Tuesday?!

Lordy.

Kitchen: Save your potato water for making bread — Alice at Slipped Stitch told me this ages ago and I’ve never looked back.

Garden: If you still haven’t planted your wintering garden, there’s still time! Get your beets, carrots, cabbage and garlic down now. Though the cabbage may not take, as we near heavy frosts, beets, carrots and garlic will fair just fine and should emerge ready to eat between early February and late April.

I am feeling pretty frustrated at the moment, I have so many knitting / sewing design ideas in my head but dont seem to be able to find the time to get them out!!!

When me and emmms were working on the year of socks it was a bit of a squeeze to get the patterns out every month but as we were setting aside days devoted to sock design it all seemed to work out, maybe that is the way forward for this year to come! Even though we are not using a specific design idea we do want to keep pumping out the patterns for the future and I know emmms feels the same way about not having enough time!

I normally do most of my knitting at work or on the bus but this is no place to start a design when all you want is to be surrounded by yarn, reference books and wine, not squashed between a woman with a four year old on her lap and a window!! I have the same problem with designing at work, I get on a roll and suddenly have to go out and deal blackjack, put’s a big stop to the whole process, well that or instead of adding up the cards I start adding stitches and manage to confuse the hell out of  everyone at the table!! Ha, ha, either way it is not working!

For me personally for the rest of 2009 I am going to concentrate on getting the Manos del Uruguay Scarf and Glove set I have been working on off the needles and onto paper by the 1st Dec,

 I am going to decide once and for all between Cascade Eco+ and Fyberspates Scrumptious for my new sweater:

And by the new year I am going to finally finish and write down the pattern for the palm-less mitts that have been sitting there for months!!!!

Wow that feels better, I am not gonna let this crazy time nonsense beat me!!!

Come on emmms your turn!

Even though I’ve been a little hopeless at updating lately, that doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing posts. I’ve been writing heaps of them. They’ve just all been in my head, and until we as a species master telepathy, that’s not really very useful.

So, I’ve decided to inaugurate a new Weekly Thing. As perhaps evidenced by the Year of Socks, I’m good with schedules and deadlines, even if I have a tendency to rail against them when they are being imposed by other people. Herewith, the very first Official Kitchen Garden Tip Tuesday:

Kitchen:

When you’re using boullion powder as the base of your soup stock, sprinkle it over the started ingredients (onions, garlic, ginger) just before you add the rest of your ingredients instead of dissolving it in water. Stir it in and let it infuse for anywhere from 2-12 minutes, as the rest of the ingredients become tender, then add the water and bring it all to the boil. I find this method allows the  boullion to better draw out the flavours of the main feature of the soup (in today’s case, a gorgeous acorn squash — nom!).

Garden:

If you’ve ever noticed how some herbs seem to wilt after you water them, try approaching them from the base of their stalk rather than from above. This works especially with those with more delicate leaves, like coriander and dill, which don’t like getting their leaves wet. (As soon as I started doing this my coriander began to flourish.)

For Isabelle and Kate, M is for make — I was just having a bit of a nosy on Folksy, to see if I could find us some new fabric sources and came across Isabelle and Kate’s Fabrics. As soon as I saw they have one of my very favourite cotton/linen prints, which you might recognise, in a lush pale blue, I knew I had to dig deeper.

And I’m so glad I did! It turns out there’s another shop, also called M is for Make, and it’s full of gorgeous Japanese imports, ethically printed and organic cottons and fab craft books. I assure you, my purchase was purely for market research.

I’m just checking them out, so I can report back here.

It’s practically a community service.

Besides, you know how important it is to support small businesses.

…

And they were really, REALLY pretty.

ETA: I’ve added links to some of our favourite fabric shops in the sidebar (under Cunning Shops) — a heap of people have asked where we get our fabrics and the ones listed are definitely some of our faves, online. There are a couple not yet listed as I’m still searching for the links for places we’ve bought from in-shop or at trade shows.

ETA 17 November 2009 (the following day): The fabric has already arrived! The fabric came beautifully presented and Ican’t wait to cut into it. But talk about amazing service, I only ordered this yesterday morning!

It feels like ages since we’ve been able to post regularly, but I promise we’re still here!

When we haven’t been sewing up new and exciting WIP bags, Emmms has been hard at work on her thesis (just waiting to hear back from her supervisor about a chapter she submitted) and Lou has been wading through some franky INSANE hours at her job.

This means we totally missed our anniversary!! But, man, as soon as the madness dies down, there will be champagne and drunken posting all over the place.

We have some new patterns that are waiting to be released, some crafty ideas that need publicly mulling and a host of early-winter gardening tips and discoveries that really, REALLY need to be shared.

In the meantime, owls!

I was just perusing the BurdaStyle photo album of homemade halloween costumes and came across this beauty!!

This definately has to be one of the greatest reasons to have kids, dressing them up in the most insane outfits and taking photos!!

As I am a fan of the ‘odder’ costume my other favourites is this:

For the past week I have spend my working breaks knitting the gorgeous Eunoia Tunic, designed by our own genius Emmms. She is so fantastic and has created an absolute beauty to knit.

When I first saw her in the process of designing it all those months ago I was amazed at the little construction tweaks she had made to the traditional style of top down raglan sweater knitting.

The main body is stockinette with a billowing high/floppy neck however to hold the interest of the knitter she has continued the ruched effect used on the neck as a panel which ripples down the centre front as you go! 

 The increases for the bust are made using pleats which sit just under the arm giving a very different but perfect shape to the body and I am really looking forward to repeating the same technique in the arms to create the puff sleves!

I am so glad I chose this yarn for this project as It gives such texture, shine and definition to the tunic. It is Wensleydale Longwool Sheep Shop Aran, 100% wool in shade number 103m and it is divine! Definatley something I would recommend and use again in the future!

And the buttons, well what can I say, little round pieces of gorgeousness from Textile Garden

All in all this is a project I just cant bear to put down!!!!

Lou and I met up yesterday morning for a very brief swoon and delight over our collection of luscious fabric. We only had a couple of hours, as she had to get to work and I had to get to the library.* It’s a pity we didn’t have longer, as we had some very serious business to attend to. We’ve booked ourselves in for a stall at Christmas craft fair and thus the real reason for gambolling with fat quarters was to play matchmaker and decide what they are all destined for.

I’m unbelievably excited about all of this. My initial hesitancy towards actually cutting up fabric (‘It’s so pretty!’ ‘It could all go horribly wrong!’ ‘But it’s so pretty!’) has turned into a gleaming excitement at the potential of the clean, uncut length. Planning what threads to use, how they might be embellished, which buttons to use… Give me a bottle of wine and a Friday night and I’m happy.

I think my very favourite of the combinations I trotted home with is this:

I was going to make one of our sock-perfect knitting project bags with it, but I think it needs to be bigger — bolder! I want to give those demure Japanese ladies room to breathe and the delicate dragonflies space to soar.

*You know, I frequently wonder what it must have been like in those days wherein everyone seemed to have a rich aunt willing to bestow a paltry allowance on her favourite niece. Where have all these aunties gone? If we had the Edwardian good luck to find ourselves with such a thing, I’m sure we would be able to spend far more time in gleeful rhapsody over luscious fabrics.)

Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaabbage.

They want to suck your brassicas.

The Sparrows (like The Birds, but purply and cute, not savage scary)

We have been sitting on these fab knitting and crochet project bags for ages,

slightly psychedelic and chocolatey, too!

and all because I, Emmms, finished the sock we used in the first photoshoot and needed to knit up enough of a second sock to use for this photoshoot!

divine vintage atomic barkcloth

That will teach us to not do it all in one go!

fish eyes? abstract fried eggs? pretty orange on vivid blue...

Or rather, it’ll teach me to have an array of half-finished socks at the ready, should we need a prop!

wide-eyed owls against the moon

Which really means I should get cracking and cast on…

These bags are all up for sale in our Etsy shop, Made by Loumms. Oooh, and exciting news: we’ve had our first custom order at Folksy! How cool is that?! Even cooler, it’s for a secret pal swap! We’ll post pics of the finished piece as soon as it’s been received.