And a walk...

around Wensleydale, since you ask. Rather beautiful too, the high point being the diversion to the ruins of Jervaulx Abbey.

part of the ruins of Jervaulx

The "of history" part of this particular horse is the 16th Century bombshell known as the Henrician Reformation. This, of course, covers the dissolution of monasteries such as Jervaulx and Fountains, which we also visited.

view over the grounds - the sheep on the left is a spy from Lancashire

Fountains was beautiful, if a bit busy for my tastes, but Jervaulx was nothing if not tranquil. You pay if you want to, the leaflets and guides are left in a wooden porch with an honesty box, and then it's just you, some sheep and a fabulous ruin....

Jervaulx Wall

... and a tumbling riot of wildflowers, including white achillea (Yarrow), which I rarely see growing wild in Hampshire.

No doubt the monks would have used achillea for medicinal purposes as it was a common ingredient in dayes of yore, and judging by the amount of the stuff growing on the roadsides near the abbey it would have been a fortuitous place to incur a paper cut. Or scroll cut or whatever the medieval equivalent might be.

The walk continued on from the Abbey, with another diversion in the direction of the tea shop (nice Tunisian Orange cake slices, by the way), and away up into the Wensleydale countryside.

Pretty much this very walk, in fact. Or one which resembled it very closely. And one which I would recommend most heartily.

Lions and Fish

What a useless blogger, wandering off for over a month. But it's been a busy month and since it included both "random crochet threads and a walk or two" it at least lived up to the byline of this blog. And frankly, that's the main thing, eh?

Anyway, on to the random crochet threads. This is "Growly".

He doesn't look very growly at all. More like a slightly depressed pincushion. With bouffant hair. 2 out of 3 of those surveyed said he was a lion, although it took one of those two some moments before she made a positive identification. The third respondent thought he was a hedgehog. I felt ashamed.

Meanwhile, washed up on the shingle, we have "Mr Fishburger".

We did have "Captain Fishbones" as well, a splendid purple creature, but I think one of the cats has dragged him behind the sofa. If these are the sort of jolly japes they get up to when I'm out, I think I might have to ration their biscuits.

It's a Prawn!

Apparantly. Or so I've been told by some undiscerning savages. It looks like a completed nautiloid to me.

I've got permission from Beth to post up the adapted pattern for her nautiloid. She was pleased that the pattern would be available to crocheters as well as knitters, so many thanks.

The directions below are based on Beth's original knitted pattern (which is here) . To a large extent, I winged it, so the crochet instructions are much more of an inexact science. However, the nautiloid is very forgiving - the odd mistake here or there, like forgetting to increase, increasing on the wrong row, or increasing two stitches instead of one, as I did several times - will be difficult to detect, so don't worry too much about trying to achieve 100% accuracy.

I opted for a variegated yarn rather than going for stripes and am glad I did - the first few rows are quite fiddly owing to the fact that you have to work SC with so few stitches on the hook. Trying to introduce alternate colours would have made my head explode. It's not impossible, though. You could try adding your contrast colour after you'd increased up to about 5/6 stitches - it gets much easier then. Then again, a lot depends on your hook size and the deftness of your fingers.

SHELL

Magic ring 3 sts, (or ch 2 and work 3 sc into the second chain).
Row 1 - SC around
Row 2: sc-inc, sc to end - 4 sts.
Row 3: sc around
Row 4: sc around
These four rows are tough on the fingers, but it will get easier.
Rows 5-8: Work as for Rows 1-4 - 5sts.

COILING THE SHELL

Add a little stuffing at this point and roll the shell towards the hook. Once you get the shape you like, you basically need to SC into one of the shell stitches to keep the coil in place. It really is up to you where you choose to pick up the stitch, but try to keep to the centre of the shell as far as you can, and don't pick up too low down or you don't get much of a coil.

Now, you started this process with 5 sts in your round. Now you have 6. What you should do is SC the coil stitch with the stitch on your hook (sc-dec) to return to 5 sts again, but if you forget and end up with 6 sts, it's not the end of the world. As I said, the nautiloid is very forgiving and so long as you keep more or less to the number of stitches, it will look ok.

So, that was row 9.

Round 10: sc around

Round 11: sc around

Round 12: sc inc - sc around. 6 sts.

Round 13: coil shell, sc around.

And again;
Round 14: sc around

Round 15: sc around

Round 16: sc inc, sc around. 7 sts

Round 17: coil shell, sc around.

Just continue working in these blocks of 4 rows until you get the shell size you want. I went to about 28 sts, but you could make a mini nautiloid or a monster nautiloid if you felt like it.

HEAD

I kept increasing by 6 sts each row until I had a half ball shape which more or less fitted into the neck of the shell. So,

Magic ring 6 sts

Row 1 - 1 sc inc into each stitch - 12 sts

Row 2 - 1 sc inc, sc - repeat to end of row - 18 sts

Row 3 - 1 sc inc, 2 sc - repeat to end of row - 24 sts

And so on until the circumference is about right. Then sc around for as many rows as it takes to get the head the right length. I think I did about 2/3 extra sc rows, but it's up to you. Don't close the head, just leave the end open and once you start to attach it to the shell, get the stuffing in.

A word of warning - if you make the head too big, it will look ever so slightly phallic when you sew it on!

To attach the head to the shell, make sure the head fits inside the shell so that the shell gives a sort of collar effect. Either add safety eyes before attaching and stuffing, or sew the eyes on afterwards as in my example.

The tentacles are dead easy - just make a set of chains as long as you like. I made 8 chains of about 19 sts each and sewed them on.

And voila!

As I was taking the photographs, I stepped backwards and stood on a snail, coiled shell an' all. I didn't feel too bad about this as he had just been chomping through my campanula.

Poetic Perspective

A nice walk was had last week around a village called Hawkley. The church roof is very distinctive and looks slightly skewed, like an optical illusion. I forgot my camera, but found this picture on flickr. The owner, Luptonn, very kindly gave permission for me to borrow his photograph and post it here.

Each diamond shaped segment looks as if it's a completely different size to the next segment along, as if the panels don't actually belong on the same roof. You can't see the four individual quarters on this picture, but you can sense something slightly off balance about the architecture, and a lack of symmetry which compels you to keep looking up.

The time on the clock is somewhat ironic, as we discovered on our walk that there's a memorial to a WW1 poet (Edward Thomas) up above the valley. The path was too muddy to risk the detour so I had a look at some of his poems when we got home. This one was short, but poignant.

In Memoriam

The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood
This Eastertide call into mind the men,
Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should
Have gathered them and will do never again.

Patternless Plankton

This is Sheldon Plankton, the evil and diminutive enemy of Mr Crabs. If you don't watch Spongebob Squarepants then shame on you.

There isn't a pattern for this as I made it up on the fly, and it kind of worked apart from the uneven antennae. The arms are missing because it was "claimed" before I had a chance to sew them on. Once the small one takes things as his own, it's very difficult to persuade him to let me finish them. Sheldon currently resides in the kitchen, inside a tagine. He's no doubt hatching some kind of devilish plot as I speak. Involving preserved lemons, I suspect.

If anyone is interested I'll try and remember what I did and write a pattern. The chances of this happening are low, however, as I can barely remember what I did yesterday, let alone a few months ago. It was worked in a chunky, seagreen aran mix that I found in the remnant basket of my local craft shop, and I probably used a 4.0mm hook.

Told you I was useless at remembering things.

Pooh Sticks

You take them all the way up the A34, show them the sights, drag them around the Ashmoleon to look at Egyptian Mummies (what small boy doesn't like Egyptian mummies?) but when it comes down to it, all your average 5 year old wants to do on a day out in Oxford is play Pooh Sticks with his friend.

More Circular Things

This time a nautilus. It's supposed to be a knitting pattern, but the thought of grappling with four double pointed needles was too horrific to consider for even a moment. Converting the original pattern to crochet was not difficult. Just do everything it says, but with a hook instead of the pointy things. It is working ok so far, but I worry about the face and tentacles which will have to appear at some point. However - it's quite definitely a shell, and it's coiled, and it looks like it's supposed to. I should stop at this point and leave it as an "unfinished project" to avoid future disappointment.

The original knitting pattern was featured in knitty.com and is by Beth Skwarecki. If you have a penchant for the pointy needled craft, then you can find the pattern here. One of my Ravelry friends found it. So thank you, Clare.