Wool For Brains

I have tried solar dyeing before, sticking the yarn in a jam jar with some dye and acid and leaving it in the greenhouse for a while. I can report that the much worn socks that I used that yarn in are still as colourful as they started out, none of the dye fell off in the wash despite the yarn never being cooked as such. I don’t know whether it would work on a larger scale and the british summer is renowned for being unpredictable (and wet). My larger scale process involves a steamer (Argos £9.79) and a 3kwh solar panel (free). Total cost £9.79. Those of you that don’t look at the husband’s blog (that would be all of you because he doesn’t show you wool) now know what the scaffolding was for.

I don’t think I have a jam jar big enough for 200g of fibre so it’s altogether a different process but the end result is the same. Yes, a 3kwh panel is overkill for running a steamer and that’s not what we got it for but you should know that I can convert just about anything to a textile use. It does have other uses during the day running the kettle, coffee machine, toaster, microwave, fridge, freezer, vacuum, iron and washer. Not all at once of course because it’s only rated at 3.3kwh and the kettle eats power like you wouldn’t believe. There’s something wrong when the steamer cost me more than the panels but that’s because the panels aren’t mine, I didn’t pay to put them up and I don’t have to worry about maintaining them. There’s a grant for microgeneration and the people that own the panels are claiming the grants and getting their money back from that. We’re just providing the roof space for their panels and using what comes down the wire before it goes off to the national grid.

So far it’s a win with the glass roof (at least when it’s not raining which it seems to be doing a lot of the time now) but the jury is still out on the steamer. It clearly works because the dye didn’t fall off in the rinse. My first run had liquid all over the newspaper I’d thoughtfully put it on. I’ve not worked out why it is that the condensate didn’t all run back into the base, I’m guessing that it was because it couldn’t drip back through the centre because it was full of plastic bag rather than vegetable. My second attempt left plenty of clear space around the plastic and that worked much better. I’m not sure yet whether I’d have been better spending an extra £4 for a hotplate because I know what I’m doing with a pan and there’s less chance of leakage.

Since the panels went up we’ve had a day of black cloud and rain and two days of sun and white cloud. On the days with sunny intervals the roof generated enough to power the house for the day. Should we get a day with no cloud (possible but becoming more unlikely given the time of year) then we should be a net daily exporter of power. At the moment I’m spending a lot of my time peeking in the meter cupboard seeing whether the house is running on sunshine or the bought stuff but the novelty should wear off soon. We’re moving towards the season of grey wet miserable days so I suspect that soon the roof will have all on keeping up with the ironing and the kettle but there will be sun again next summer, and the one after that.

Carolyn asked whether the dog had vanished with the shop. He spends most of his day being asleep in various places as befits a sofa dog but in the evenings he comes alive for a spot of wool mangling, spider chasing or playing with squeaky toys. There is a rubber chicken somewhere off to the bottom left of the photo but really that was just an excuse to jump all over Dan and make him squeak. He’s only small but he’s sturdy and 8kg of charging fluffball still packs a punch when he lands in your midriff.

I really dislike having work done in the house. It doesn’t matter how much of an improvement there will be after everyone has packed up and gone, it’s the process that bugs me. I’m tied in while people come and go, the dog wants to drive them all away or have a sneaky sniff in their pockets, there’s usually dust and noise and it’s all just pants really. Previous home improvements have included having the fence removed and then the fence team vanishing for two weeks, having the shower ripped out and then finding that the specialist manufacturer of odd sized shower doors had stopped making them. There was the excitement of the replacement double glazed windows that were the wrong colour and the new oven that was white instead of stainless. I could go on but that’s enough to show that my experience of having work done on the house has not been totally positive. It occurred to me that even if the builders were busy putting in a dedicated wool room with voice activated tea production, a moth annihilator and an automatic wool desiccator I’d still whine about it. I am trying to be positive, to focus on the outcome rather than the process and to believe that this time things will go well. I am also trying to give myself something to think about if it all goes wrong. Not that it will of course, I’m being positive remember.

These are not colours I would have put together, it’s the pink that I’m not enamored of. To be truthful I don’t much like the green either. Happily these aren’t for me and the recipient likes them so all is well. These are Opal, wool with cotton for summer socks, and I bought the ball because there was a choice of two colours in cotton rich and the other was even less appealing. These will forever be holiday socks and you have to like them for that.

Guess what – I don’t like the colours of these either, all Finding Nemo with added pink. The selling point with this one was that it was cheap, when it’s £3.50 a ball it can be whatever colour it likes. I did plan on overdyeing it but when I was packing for my holiday it was close to hand. We will get to see what it looks like after a dye bath because I bought two balls (it was cheap remember).

I can’t rely on socks to keep me in a positive frame of mind this week so I’ve turned to weaving. This is a selection from the big black sack of yarn that periodically I feel ashamed about. I’m hoping that the feel good factor from using up stash yarn will see me through the week. I’ll weave until I’ve run through this pile of yarn or until I’ve had enough, the idea is that they’ll all be about 80″ long and 6″ wide and I’ll make them into one piece bags (like this one). If I was organised enough I’d wind the warps and bag them up with the wefts but I’m capable of changing my mind at any time about what goes together.

If that’s not enough to keep my mind off the noise then I have a fallback. Yet again I’m not sold on the colour but as it’s foster knitting and not mine that doesn’t matter. This is lace in superwash sock yarn again and I think I’m forming an opinion. More about that another time..

I’ve written four or five blog posts this week and binned them all. This is hopefully the post that will enable me to get out of the corner that I’ve backed myself into. The blog has been keeping a secret this past few weeks. I’ve hurt my hand and my elbow and although it’s minor stuff it’s pretty much knocked on the head any knitting (left hand) or spinning (right elbow). I suppose I could weave but I’ve been too busy moaning and feeling sorry for myself for that. I’ve recovered enough now to be able to lift the teapot so I’m on the mend but it’s not over yet. I’d like to continue pretending that there’s nothing wrong but there has to be a limit to how far I can stretch the little that I’ve done so it’s time to come clean. It’s either that, an unexplained long silence or a succession of cute dog photos.

I have been spinning a little, I can’t do much at a time because of the attention seeking elbow but I’ve been using what time I have to make progress on tidying out the stash. This is the remnants of some chestnut alpaca, I’d carded and spun about half of it and because it didn’t come out that well I put the rest away. I’ve now hand carded the rest and used it for long draw practise. It wasn’t as even as it could have been (that’s why I need the practise) and that’s the reason for the twinkle. The idea is that the eye is so drawn to the sparkle that it misses the lumps. If I’d had more patience on picking out the second cuts there would have been fewer lumps but prep is boring and spinning is fun. That’s not true of course, spinning is less fun when you’ve only half done the fibre preparation. There’s only about a hundred yards of this so its future is as a warp stripe.

This has the same camoflage twinkle although the yarn improved drastically after finishing and could have probably have stood on its own. I am pleased with this, again it’s a bit uneven because my woolen spinning is like that but I’m pleased that I spun it at all. The last time I tried spinning yak I hand carded it into little yak punis (tight rolags) and struggled. This time I dipped my hand in the bag and spun it as it came and all was well. It fluffed up nicely in the finishing which went a long way to disguising the uneven bits. It could have been softer but I was worried about those short hairs pilling out. I’ve struggled with really short and really long fibres but I think I might be on the way to having the short stuff cracked now. There’s 330 yards of this so there is enough to knit a scarf or something.

This means that the stash is at equilibrium with two bags spun up and two new bags added this week (dog included for scale). In my working life I often said that any fool could add numbers up, the skill was in choosing the right numbers to make sure you got the answer you wanted. Clearly the correct unit of measurement in this scenario is “bag” rather than “gram” because if we were using the traditional, boring and totally inappropriate weight measurement then I would have spun an amount equivalent to half of the small bag. In my defence I would say that it was cheap, I bought it out of the shop profits and when I’m miserable I have a tendency towards retail therapy. It did make me feel better and as I can dye now I can lift a pan there’s more enjoyment to come. (Coming to an Etsy shop near you soon – Falkland and Shetland)

I was going to display my felting endeavours today but I’ve been sidetracked. Nothing new there then. This is turning out to be the year of stash reduction, I’ve been working hard on using up fibre and yarn that has sat around for too long. One of the reasons that stash control is so important to me is that I’m woefully short on storage space. I have a small stash of yarn and fibre (no, really I do) but it’s still bigger than the space I have to put it in. This is because all the usual storage areas are already filled with fabric. I had a solid 10 years as a quilter, I had a large disposable income and not much free time and those are the conditions you need for serious stash accumulation. I have four wheelie storage cabinets filled with fabric but that is nothing compared to the yardage that’s in the wardrobe.

I’ve recently been using fusible web and that set me thinking about what I used it for last. Somewhere I have a panel with Noah’s ark and pairs of animals fused on to it and then machine appliqued. My suspicion was that it was hiding out in one of the boxes in the bottom of the wardrobe and I thought I’d see how close it was to being finished. The bad news is that it wasn’t there, that means that somewhere there is another box marked “quilt tops, need finishing”. The other bad news is that there were some things in the box that I’d totally forgotten about. I did used to have a list back in the days when I had a ruthless policy of “finish two, start one” but it was on a laptop that has long since given up the ghost. This then is the new list of quilts that need finishing, except that I know before I start that it’s incomplete. All the photos enlarge when clicked, they don’t dewrinkle though but you can’t have everything.

This was the real shock, I looked at it and recognised some of the fabrics but I can’t remember making it. I have no idea when I made this, probably around the mid 1990’s. The top is finished, it needs quilting and binding. The reason I put it away was the reason I stopped sewing, once it’s finished you have to do something with it and getting rid of the output was a problem. It was far easier to stop just short of it being finished and thereby avoid the whole issue of “what do I do with it now?”

I did remember this when I saw it, it was a pattern from the Keepsake Quilting catalogue, it’s possible that I bought it as a kit. This is fusible web applique with machine embroidery. The piecing is finished but it needs quilting and binding. I never had a clear idea of what I was going to do with this – was it a wall hanging or did I mean to add big borders for a lap quilt?

I’d forgotten all about this until I saw it. This was a pattern in the Keepsake catalogue except that I didn’t buy it but ripped it off from the photo. This is english paper pieced by hand. It’s not square but I packed it away with the remaining length of black fabric so I could square it up if I wanted. The piecing is finished but.. (you get the picture)

I knew this was in the box, this and the next photo were planned to be the front and back of the same quilt. One of them has much wider borders than the other and is the back. These are the blocks from my quilting group’s first exchange, we swapped 12″ blocks so it would have made a big quilt. I took the predominantly black blocks for one side and the lighter blocks for the other. I know that I set these and did the borders in 1999 because I took them with me to our meeting in New Mexico (I used to get out more) for show and tell, I got home and then set them aside for inspiration for the quilting. The piecing is finished…

This is a 1994 production. I can be clear on that because we all signed and dated the label for the back. This was a round robin quilt, I made the big block with the cabin and sent it on its rounds with the theme being my dream cabin in the woods. I’ve packed it away with the key fabric I used so I have the means of making the tree filler blocks I’ll need to square it up. I enjoyed this, some of my best work went into the blocks for the other group members although that was back in the days of film cameras so I have no idea where to look to find the pictures I took. This needs more work to finish but it’s still not a big job, the reason I never finished it was that I didn’t have any idea what I was going to do with it next. Wall hanging?

This is not of the same vintage, I was working on this when I was on maternity leave and had to put it aside when I developed carpal tunnel problems and couldn’t hold a needle. Somewhere there is a box with a part finished block in it and the pattern. I’ll look for the box, finish the block that I set aside nine years ago and then call this done. It was supposed to be a full size quilt but once I’ve added the setting blocks it will make a lap quilt. If I’m sitting in the evening I’d now rather be knitting than sewing and it’s better being finished now to half size than sitting in a box for another ten years.

I am left wondering where the rest of the tops are because I really thought that there were more of them. I had a big cull about six years ago when I sold a lot of pieced tops on ebay and it is just possible that this is everything that was left. I know that then I had 26 tops in various stages of completion, I sold a few, finished a lot but I will be very surprised if that got the heap down to single figures. Apart from Noah and his animals (which I could well have sold) I can’t remember what it is that I might be missing. I think I’ll concentrate on finishing one or two of these before I start an all out search for the other box.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled fibre..

I did have a post planned for today but it revolved around the postman having brought me exciting things. No amount of pacing up and down and looking at the front door made him come so I’ll have to save the squeals of excitement for later in the week.

• ??????? ????????? ????? ????

In the absence of interesting post these are the latest husband socks. I still like the pattern, it looks way more complex than it is, its simplicity is revealed when the fabric is stretched. This is a k4 p2 rib, with a 6 row repeat but when it is relaxed it falls into those interesting waves. The six stitch pattern fits easily into these 72 stitch socks, it would also fit into the standard mother and son socks which are both 64 stitches. The first photograph is the one taken after all small dogs had been removed, he was asleep elsewhere right up to me putting the socks down, after which he just had to sleep on that section of the settee.

It shouldn’t be too hard to guess who these socks are for, there are very few people I know that would ask for green and yellow stripes. I didn’t feel bad about dyeing a ball of sock yarn yellow just for this, when I’ve finished Dan’s socks the first thing I”ll do is to dye the leftover yarn a more usable colour. I measured his feet this morning and his ankles are still the same as they used to be but now they look skinny because of the extra length in his feet. I’ll start with 64 stitches and have a rethink when I’ve turned the heel.

• ?????? ??????? ???????? ???????

The warp here is leftover from this fabric, there wasn’t quite enough hence the purple stripes. It’s interesting to see how different it looks with grey rather than teal weft (well I’m interested but then we know I don’t get out much). This is my first indirect warp because the one thing that the postman did bring me this week was a set of warping pegs. I’m all for the speed of indirect warping on the rigid heddle when you have plenty of yarn for warp but it has drawbacks when you are using up odd bits and pieces. Without knowing the yardage of each little ball I set off warping without knowing whether I have enough odd bits for the width I want. I can’t plan the stripes because I don’t know how wide a stripe I will be able to make with each ball. With the warping pegs I can set them the right width apart and just wind off all of each ball and stop when the total number of ends (threads) is what I need. Before I go to the loom I know that I have enough warp for the width I want and I also know how much I have of each colour. Rather than setting off hopefully I can plan what I’m doing with the yarn that I have. I’m not at all sure that I like symmetry but now I can have it if I want. The other advantages are that I don’t have to walk the length of the room over and over again and I don’t have yarn stretched the length of the dining table/drawing area/spinning corner. ?? ??????? ??????????? ??????

The exciting thing that did arrive over the weekend is attached to this. No, the wandering Mini didn’t come home. If it turns up now it belongs to the insurance company because it has been replaced by a shiny new Mini (rather less shiny now than it was on Friday because it’s been out in the rain and parked in a field). It’s not mine but I do get the benefit from it because my car now won’t be going to work in the morning but staying home with me. This means that I will be able to find a Sheffield A-Z when I want one and not need to get directions from friendly yarn shop owners. I may have bought some yarn while I was there, well it would have been rude not to wouldn’t it?

• ???? ????? ???????

No Reservations release

I thought you might like to join us on our morning walk today, it was bright and sunny without being too warm. There has been no rain for weeks so all the muddy places are now dusty. Even the places in the road that are always boggy are dry enough to walk on so if you wanted to wear your flip flops that’s ok. We won’t be out long, an hour at the most, because after half an hour if the dog hasn’t seen signs of turning for home he starts sitting down and looking back. If the silly owner doesn’t get the message he soon escalates to lying down with his head on his paws (known as the “drag me, I dare you” pose).

We don’t trek across fields and hills, partly because I have a naturally indolent dog but also because long hair picks up burrs very well indeed. That doesn’t stop us getting out because we have a number of places within a short walk that are perfectly suited to short legged dogs and their owners. Today we are on well maintained paths, mostly gravelled. This used to be part of Westthorpe Colliery (some photos here

) so the planting is relatively recent but the trees have grown enough to make a pleasant setting for a walk. There are supposedly 38 species of birds that nest here and I can well believe it because every one of them was singing this morning.

The bluebells are just coming into flower, there are none in the new wood but plenty on the land adjacent to it and they border the road home. You may imagine me crawling about to get this shot but if you were there you’d see that the flowers are on a bank and naturally at eye level.

The silly dog knows that we are nearly home now, this is the stage of the walk where he leaps about and grabs hold of the lead. Once he’s killed it enough he will usually settle down and plod along for the last five minutes. Occasionally he will pretend to be too tired to walk another step and lie down then sprint ahead and fling himself down again. Sometimes he spots a squirrel up a tree and has to be dragged away. What with the squirrels, low flying blackbirds, chickens wandering in the road and cats sitting on fences there’s no wonder that it takes us an hour to do a forty minute walk.

• Hellraiser: Bloodline dvdrip

I’ve had a long spell where although I’ve still been knitting it’s been on the back burner a bit. I didn’t start anything new because I couldn’t think what to knit despite having a drawer full of yarn and a well stocked Ravelry queue. I’ve been there often enough to know that it’s nothing to worry about, it passes in time and I return to having dreamed up a dozen new projects before I’ve finished washing the pots. The signs of recovery are there now, I made some yarn with a purpose in mind and I got as far as picking out a pattern for a simple scarf with interesting yarn when the recovery train was derailed by an eight year old.

It was Shrove Tuesday and my son and I were talking about why Pancake Day was always on a Tuesday and why people made pancakes just before Lent. This naturally lead onto a discussion of what one would give up for Lent if one did that sort of thing. Then he decided that he would make a sacrifice and give up gingerbread for Lent. That was a bit of a token effort really because if you can swap to Jammie Dodgers for supper then it’s not really hurting is it? I thought the honorable thing to do was to match it at the same token level so I offered to give up buying yarn for Lent. That sounds dramatic (it certainly got an “Oooh” when I recounted this to my knitting group) but the reality is that this would be no hardship at all, I couldn’t knit through the stash during Lent if I worked at it full time and if I had a need for a yarn that I don’t already have then I could spin it. He thought about it for a moment and said that he didn’t think that would do at all. This is where I made my big mistake. I thought it would be interesting to see how his mind was working so I asked what he thought I should give up for Lent. My advice is to not try this at home but to dash straight into the kitchen and fetch a can of pop and whatever unhealthy snacks are to hand and hope that this proves enough of a distraction to get you off the hook. He fished around a bit for the right words (his vocabulary not extending as far as “wip” and “startitis”) and then came out with the stunning comment that he thought that I should give up starting knitting something without finishing something else. I may have momentarily done an impression of a goldfish, I was certainly lost for words and rational thought too because I agreed.

In the Cut

• The Business ipod

I can tell you now that there is no better cure for not knowing what to knit than being told you can’t start anything. There I am, all set to go with the new yarn that I made and now I have to finish a sweater first. I’ve seen two other patterns that I Must Knit Now (if not sooner) and they’ll have to wait too. My get out of jail free card was handed to me on Wednesday night when more devout knitters told me that Sundays are feast days and don’t count. I shall now be having SSK (special Sunday knitting) until Easter with a matching Sunday gingerbread man for junior. I will certainly be making sure that whatever I cast on will stay the course because if it’s ripped on Monday then I’ve blown it for the week.

I know that I don’t get out much but life certainly isn’t dull.

Twelve Monkeys rip

Between Love & Goodbye dvd

Nine Tailors sock kit

You could open it and just look at the pattern, looking doesn’t count. It’s in a clear plastic bag, there’s the pattern at the front. I can see enough to know that it’s the right kit and what else would I want to know?

You could check the gauge and see what needles it needs. Nice try but I’ve knitted five socks with that yarn so it’s not a total unknown. I’ve got whatever needles I need and any other supplies I’ll either have or can improvise.

Adam’s Wall ipod

You should look at the pattern because you’ll need to adjust the sizing. Quite right and I will. I’m in between the two sizes with an extra helping of calf. I know this without looking at the pattern because I’ve knitted five socks this year from this designer. It’s unlikely that her definition of medium and large has changed much.

You could wind the wool, just to be ready I know from experience that this is the start of a steep slippery slope so I’m afraid that I will have to decline. Try harder.

The Candy Snatchers movies

My general take on knitting is that if it can be written down then I can knit it. I may not be brimming with self confidence in other areas (parking springs immediately to mind as one of them) but I do genuinely believe that I can knit anything. It all comes down to a variation on two stitches and I mastered both of those some time since. I have an inkling that this might be the pattern that makes my brain ache seeing as there’s cabling and colourwork together and so I have two opportunities in a row to go wrong. Just to top it off there’s lace and beads as well. What more could one want (or get) from a sock? I’ve wanted to knit this since I saw it. I had to wait a year for the sock to be released as a kit (it was originally designed for the Tsock club), then I waited a bit longer to get it as a Christmas present. I’ve waited long enough now that another month or two will make no difference. The thing that’s stopping me from listening to my inner knitter who wants us to have it cast on in the next five minutes is that I already have two socks on the needles with the last club sock still to come. The voice of reason (who doesn’t say a deal and usually speaks so quietly that I find it easy to ignore) is saying that when I’ve finished the last Margarita sock, the Tsuspense sock (and its twin) and the sixth sock then I’ll be focussed enough to start The Nine Tailors.

I’m not listening to my inner knitter, I feel as if there’s no-one listening to me either. If you read this through Bloglines you’ve not been seeing as much of me of late and you’ll probably be reading this three weeks from now. For some reason Bloglines stopped publishing items from one of the feeds in the New Year, there are two more feeds with subscribers that carried on working but the main RSS feed went a bit wobbly. What can I say, it wasn’t me (I think) and I use the Google reader and that’s been just fine. I’m sure at some point it will catch up but until then I’ll just talk to the hand. The wall is a good listener too.

The chillies are easy to pick and store, this is the start of the string and once dried they will keep until the next season’s crop is ready. Other fruit take more effort. There is an advert showing on television at the moment that gets a reaction from me every time I see it. “British apples are in season and ripe for picking”…..”I like mine in a Bramley apple pie” They then show a tiny pie that would fit on the palm of my hand – someone is just not eating their share. My conversational opening at the moment is “Hello, could you use some cooking apples?” I have two trees of eating apples but they are only small trees and although they crop well we don’t have a problem keeping up with them. The two Bramley apple trees are a different matter. I’ve made three batches of apple jelly (using up last year’s dried chillies) and two batches of chutney and I’m nearly at the end of my supply of jars. My mother has been wrapping apples in newspaper to see us through the winter but the trees are still full of apples. I’ve been picking them by the bucket but I haven’t got to the point where they are all out of reach. I did start with the motto of “none shall fall” but that was overly optimistic although more catchy than the alternative of “I’m going to give away as many of these apples as possible”. On a good day I can give away half a bucketful between my plot and the car park.

My allotment hut does have some knitting content. This is the closest you want to be to this pair of socks, they get washed once a year at the end of the season and they are very definitely foot shaped. They are not filthy-stinky, rather filthy-covered in dirt. These are my first pair of handspun socks, they are a bit chunky so are ideal for wearing in my boots. I could spin before I could dye so the colour changes here are made from switching between two colours of merino. Before making these my joins were not very good but that improved with a vengeance.

The final count on the buttercup squash was twelve squash from three plants. The smaller fruit all vanished, I suspect that they were too thin skinned to survive the hungry slugs but that just meant that they were self pruning. We’ve eaten one of them, it weighed 4.5lb and would serve eight. It was delicious with much more flavour than the butternut that I usually buy. My neighbour grew butternut that was really butternut rather than buttercup and she had a grand total of one fruit so either I’m better at growing squash than she is or the buttercup is better suited to our growing conditions. The pumpkin didn’t do so well, it was overrun by the squash and I ended up with just this one but it will serve well for carving at the end of the month. The two marrows were courgettes that got away but it looks as if they are going to store successfully. One may be destined for yet more chutney when I can come up with some more jars.

I like apples, it’s a good job really isn’t it?

I was hoping that the sock would have had a rose by now but over the weekend I went one better than losing my place in the chart, I lost the chart itself. I knew that it wasn’t lost-lost, it was in the house in a dog-proof place but as my definition of dog-proof is changing by the week that didn’t give me a lot to go on. The pattern vanished on Friday and turned up on Monday on the staircase. I’m not at all sure why I thought that was a good place to put it especially as the knitting was on the dining table and I don’t want to think about the number of times that I walked past it over the weekend without seeing it. I do now have the start of a rose, at some point in the past I’ve done intarsia in the round before but for the life of me I cannot think on what. If I can’t remember where I put a knitting pattern the day before then there’s little chance that I’ll dredge up a memory of something I knitted decades ago.

The key thing about that photo from yesterday is that the chart was dangling from my hand and yet the place marker was still where it should be. It remains in place even when stuffed in a carrier bag with the yarn (what a great idea, storing the pattern and the yarn together, why didn’t I think of that?). Of course the magic is done with magnets, you need a piece of card twice the size of your chart, fold it in half and apply self adhesive magnetic tape to the inside (£3 for 3m, ebay). When you do yours you’ll make sure that the edges of the card are straight (my card was a leftover and is rather wavy) and that you get the tape lined up nicely. I shall now be raiding my son’s craft supplies for the pretty holographic card that I know he has somewhere so that I can make multiple sizes before I lose the tape.

Mission: Impossible movies