The full list of 15 different blocks I’ve knitted from 200 Knitted Blocks is as follows:

0) Plain mitred square (not actually listed as a separate block, because it’s too dull!)
18) Flowing Pinks
37) Little Cables
56) Big Heart
57) Christmas Stripes
62) Interwoven
82) Dash
98) Scattered Leaves
99) Softie
101) Blue Seas
129) Purple Haze
141) Random Bobbles
161) Soft Stripes
169) Furrows
201) V-stripes

Thanks to Le Mans and the Grand Prix yesterday, I’ve even managed to get 4 sets of blocks sewn together. Only 11 more to go, then the arranging and joining to go…

Strip LED type lights work well, but given that I only ever use my half hood, (which is tensioned directly over the top of the roll bar), and that the ‘window’ at the top is slightly lower than that, mounting on the back of the roll bar was going to foul. Mounting underneath the bar would work, but would also have the result of sitting the light right in the airflow. I wanted a rather more unobtrusive solution.

My eventual answer was to mount a small (52mm) racing rain light (sourced from MaxParts) on the roll bar diagonal using a 42mm exhaust bracket spray painted black, and slightly modified to take a bolt through the flat part to screw into the light housing. Caterham themselves do a sub-loom particularly designed for a 3^rd brake light, which made the wiring much easier, though getting hands into the space beside the fuel tank to undo connectors and feed the wires up into the boot was tricky. Best done with the wheel off!

High level Brake Light

I ran the wires along the underside of the diagonal (under a run of black duct tape also secured with some cable ties), and drilled a small hole in the roll bar mounting plate to take the wires into the boot.

I’m quite pleased with the result.  Neat and unobtrusive, but nice and bright, and usable with the hood up.

Rear view of the car with new brake light on roll bar

hole saw and hole in knee panel

Having read many threads on Blatchat on where other people had mounted theirs, and considered options like the main bulkhead in front of the passenger’s knees, and on the passenger side dash, I found a spot on the passenger knee panel where the body of the socket could happily sit without fouling on the wiper motor etc which are all located there too. Juducious use of a small hole saw on the panel (measuring and getting the hole in the right place was tricky) has now given a nice solid mount.

Rerunning the wire through the main wiring grommet on the transmission tunnel meant it coming out quite close to the central fuse box, so, I thought, why not wire it in there properly, as there’s a spare slot?  A couple of tiny parts from Caterham, and a bit of wire and terminals from Maplins later:

12v socket mounted on knee panel. You can see the spare slot in the fuse box bottom right.

Seems to be a nice neat solution, and means that the wires are out of the way under the dash, the fuse is accessible, and the socket is properly mounted.

Anyway, the standard repeaters (including those fitted to new cars) are pretty unsightly, and stick out a long way from the wings. They are mounted through a small hole drilled in the fibreglass wing, and held on by 2 screws. Reading Complete Kit Car a while back, they featured some miniature LED repeaters, which seemed to me to fit the bill perfectly.

That was the easy part.

Fitting them required the screw holes either side of the mount to be filled in, which, of course, not only means fibreglass filling, but paint as well. I was a bit over-zealous with the preparation of the first wing (the one that came off) and ended up having to repaint the whole thing, but luckily I have a handy small business not far away who did a proper repaint of the wing before it was refitted.

Button LED repeater - front view

different view

The only downside to these new repeaters is that the plastic ‘body’ of the light is now actually inside the wing, so is liable to get shotblasted by road debris. So, I have ended up using the same silicon adhesive that attaches the cycle wings to both secure the repeaters themselves, and to protect them. It doesn’t look very nice, but it’s out of sight and should work.

My inspiration for this blanket came from a book I found at the library: “200 Knitted Blocks for blankets, throws and afghans”. It hasn’t actually quite got 200 blocks, as for several blocks there are 4 colour variations which are counted as separate blocks, but there are well over 100 distinct patterns to choose from.

The multiple colour schemes strongly influenced my idea for the blanket, which was to knit 4 copies of each block, to make a 12″ square, then combine 15 of these squares to a 5′ by 3′ blanket. I’m using 4 colours of wool, and rotating the colours round the 4 variations, so for example here are my first set of squares, block 141, ‘Random Bobbles’:

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Note that these blocks have been blocked specially for this picture!

I’d originally decided to sew the blocks into sets of 4 by rotating through 90° each time, but since I’ve knitted more sets, I think I’ll just see how each set of blocks looks best when joined up: I think some of the patterns will look odd rotated.

Anyway, I’m now on my 11th set, so the end of the knitting is in sight! Once knitted, I’m adding the sewing up to my small projects list, so that I can take a break from it, and also so I can start my next big project, the final (crucial) part of which arrived in the post yesterday…

I’m not quite sure when exactly I was given this book – it might have been a birthday present the year before Esther was born. It had therefore been read, and filed for future use, and it’s taken me a good few years to get around to trying it!

As my first ever attempt at sewing clothing, I liked the idea of making your own pattern to fit, as I’m almost never the same shape as clothes I find in the shops. I had a couple of metres of a fairly crazy flower print in my craft stash, so thought I’d have a go at the “Tourist Trap” A-line skirt with a zip and pockets, from the first (and easiest) section of the book. Making the pattern and pieces up was fairly straightforward, and the sewing wasn’t hard either, although I did need quite a few post-it notes, as you have to keep referring back to the techniques section at the front (although with more experience, I probably wouldn’t need to go back and forth quite so much).

I made a slight mistake with cutting one of the back pieces, so there’s rather less ease than I intended, but the skirt does fit, and looks nice (I think):

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Overall, this book gets a definite thumbs-up so far! There are a couple more patterns, for a semi-circular wrap skirt, and a layered A-line skirt, that I’d like to try sometime.

This weekend, Paul wanted to drill a hole in part of his car using a hole-saw. He keeps having to go up to his parents’ house to use his dad’s workmate. That wasn’t an option this weekend, as they were away, so we all took a trip to B&Q to buy him one of his own. While we were wandering around (Esther had a lovely time walking from one Duracell Bunny display to the next!) we started talking about my sewing table troubles, and we had a brainwave.

So here it is – my new sewing machine table:

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It’s perfect – I can fold it up and stick it in the cupboard when I’m done, and it’s strong and stable enough to work with my machine. Welcome to the crafty corner Black and Decker Workmate WM301!

P.S. I may even let Paul use it occasionally, if he asks nicely!

As I’m sure you’re aware, the blogosphere is currently awash with resolutions posts, or ‘how to make your resolutions’ posts. This is the former rather than the latter.

Lots of people recommend only making one resolution, to increase your chances of keeping it, and from the Happiness Project, I got the idea of a one word resolution.

So here it is … are you ready?

TIME

I think that encapsulates all the ideas that have been swimming round my head for next year.

There are several aspects to this one-word resolution:

• Family: make more couple time & make more family time; partly achieved by stopping any sort of ‘work’ at 9pm.
• Crafting: only have 2 projects on the go at any one time (one long-term, one short-term).
• Home: set a timer for 15 minutes of picking up the house before bedtime.
• Me: only read my blogs/feeds once a day, and make sure I get 30 minutes of me time every day.

Hopefully having this written down here will give me a kick to actually achieving these things, but I’ve stuck a reminder on my calendar the first of each month to review how I’m doing, and make adjustments as necessary.

When I bought my car, it was shod with Yokohama 539s, which were designed to be a compromise tyre – mainly road use, but offering something more than the standard radial. I had no particular reason to be unhappy with them. Compared with anything else I had ever driven, the dry grip was high, and I expected the need to be pretty careful in the wet. It wouldn’t be fair to say that the car was ‘tricky’ in those conditions, but it certainly wasn’t especially confidence inspiring on more slimy surfaces, and I did tend to ‘tiptoe around’. Having swapped the rears and fronts around to even out the wear a bit, my researches began as to where I should go next on tyres, especially after much digging eventually told me that Yokohama no longer made the 539s in the 195-60R14 necessary to maintain my ride height.

Lots of people swear by Yoko 048s and Toyo 888s, but these are very much trackday oriented rubber, and I have heard a few stories about cars thus equipped in the wet …. Given that my car will always be a road car, and won’t shirk a bit of British weather, I felt I needed something that would perform a bit better in everyday conditions. After all, outright dry grip is more necessary in a more powerful car than mine. Avon CR500s come highly recommended, and seem to be the recommended compromise tyre for many seveners with highly varying firepower. But Avon don’t make them for 14 inch wheels – only 13 and 15. Not terribly willing to invest (yet!!) in an extra set of rims, the Yoko 021Rs seemed a good bet, as they are in actual fact a wet race tyre. Camskill’s do a discount for Lotus Seven Club members, so off went my credit card details and back came 5 new tyres. Good service from them, though the labels gummed to the tyres by the delivery company were an absolute nightmare to get off.

Since they were fitted (though not assisted by a tyre fitter putting one on the wrong way round, and disregarding my request for tyre pressures of 18psi!) I have not regretted going this way one bit. Outright dry grip is significantly higher than the 539s (admittedly mine were relatively old) and the performance in the wet is a big change. The car now feels planted and secure rather than skittish in those slimy conditions. Downsides? Well, they are a bit noisier, and the sticky compound does an excellent job of picking up loose fine gravel and either firing it at the wing or, at very slow speed, depositing it into the face of the driver. It will be interesting to see how they wear.

539 left, 021R right

Since we had family for Christmas Day and again on the 27th, we thought making the gingerbread house would be a fun project for Boxing day – and it really was!

I think the best way to describe the process is in pictures …

Here’s the kit opened and ready to go:

Paul and I did a joint construction job on the walls and roof:

While Esther was doing “her bit” – well what do you do with a spare gingerbread man?

Then I outlined all the icing:

And Paul decorated – here’s the final result:

We were thoroughly impressed – construction was as easy as the kit said, and we used it as the table centrepiece the next day, where it was greatly admired.  Maybe next year we’ll have to try making one from scratch, including the gingerbread… hmm…