sheep crazy!!

On October 19th ebay uk had a 10p listing day so I had a sort out of my cardmaking stuff and listed a few things. I had sold some of my beaded stitch markers a few days before and had been looking on knitting websites at other markers. Then I had an idea. Why not make them with sheep on, after all that is where the wool comes from so they would make great knitting gifts for knitting mad friends. So off I went to HobbyCraft to get some Fimo polymer clay and a couple of hours later produced these! "I'll stick some on ebay and see what happens," I thought because no-one else had anything like them listed. By the end of the listing I had 10 watchers and the set sold for £4.50. I then sent a second chance offer to the person who had just lost out and she was in the USA. She was really chuffed to get a second chance and has asked me for a total of 7 sets!! I have another set listed for auction at the moment and someone emailed to ask if I would do a Buy It Now because she couldn't wait to get hold of some. So I sold her a set for £4.99.
In the meantime, one of my other listings was for a pair of the purple fluffy slippers. In the listing I stated that I could do other colours and had a request for a red pair which I duly made and have dispatched. The lady who bought the purple pair has now asked me for 3 more pairs, 2 red and 1 purple. I am so pleased that people actually want to buy my creations. So I'm gonna be busy making sheep for the next day or so. I'm going to make some coloured ones as well, not just plain black and white, but blue, green, pink, yellow, etc. Funky!!

Todays 3BTs
1. Getting the order for 7 sets of sheep stitch markers.
2. A lovely warm sunny day at the end of October.
3. Having a naughty sausage sandwich in a little cafe inside a local craft shop on a Sunday morning.

Scarf and history

Today, the BBC are asking ordinary people to write a diary of their day and upload it. They want to build a picture of what everyday life is like in Britain to store it for future generations to learn about. The link is http://www.historymatters.org.uk/output/Page96.asp You have until Nov 1st to upload your diary entry. They don't want exciting dramatic entries, just ordinary mundane goings on of real life. Interesting, I think I'll do it.

I caught up with an old friend on msn messenger over the last week or so. When I told him I was knitting, he asked if I could make him a scarf for walking his dog in the Welsh winds. Here is the result....... It's actually a lot brighter in real life! Hope he likes it.

A set of my stitch markers sold on ebay for 99p so I was quite chuffed, though its not going to make me millions! Gonna put a pair of my handmade fluffy slippers on in a minute. My neighbour popped round earlier and when I showed them to her she said she'd like some for her two daughters for Christmas. Result!

The other day I discovered a "Blogs of Note" called 3 Beautiful Things where the author lists 3 things they have seen or done that day that made them happy. So here are mine:

My 3BTs
1. My dog still looking and acting like a puppy even though he is 15 next week
2. Being told how good my slippers were.
3. Ordering the rest of the gorgeous yarn for my jumper.

Not too exciting but they made me happy.

Another scarf and yarn for jumper

Just a short post to show the scarf I made for my 4 year old niece - she saw her mum's and wanted one in "mad colours".



















Then you just had to see the gorgeous yarn I have for a jumper, the colours are sooo lovely.

stitch markers and fluffy slippers

Here are some pics of things I have made over the last few days. The blue and silver stitch markers I have listed on ebay at a starting price of 99p, so we'll see how they go and maybe do some more.

I love the slippers and have made another pair in the same colours but matching so that both start dark and go light on the foot.

Stuff I've knitted

Here are a few pics of the things I've knitted since going back to it recently.

The pink, grey and white socks are the Socks Of Doom I have knitted for Nina in the US.

The jumper is from Noro Unlimited and is Noro Silk Garden shade 84

The scarf is just some eyelash wool I got in the market and knitted up really quickly on 9mm needles and 20 stitches in garter stitch. And the 3 socks are just socks!!

Holidays, socks, Ed Byrne and dogs

Wow, where did the last 3 weeks go? I can't believe I've been back from holiday for a week already! It was a great break, especially for Colin who works so hard. We had a gorgeous villa with a pool (see photos) and the beaches went on and on and on.... It was a place called Conil de la Frontera near Cadiz on the Altantic coast of Spain. The area has not been invaded by the Brits and is not built up or anything. And hardly any English is spoken there, which was a struggle at times but we got by.

One thing I found hard was the meal times. I'm used to lunch at 1 and dinner about 7. Over there they don't serve lunch until 2 and dinner till 8.30. I was starving, hahahah!!! Although it was lovely, its always nice to get home and have a nice cup of tea!!!

While I was away I was getting excited about Sock Wars. I expected to get home and find I'd been "killed" ie have a pair of socks waiting for me in the post. But no, I was still in the game, or so I thought. I checked my email and there was no "assassination dossier" with my victims details so I checked the Yarnmonkey blog to discover a lot of people had not received their dossiers either. After some investigating it turns out that I had not been included in the game after all. I was most disappointed and wrote a comment on the blog. A very nice lady called Nina in Oklahoma offered to do a sock swap with me, so I am carrying on with my Socks of Doom and will be sending them off to her and she is doing the same. (Well I hope that is happening, for all I know she could be a big hairy bloke with a chainsaw! I hope he likes pink, white and grey!!!! )

Last Sunday night we went to see the Irish comedian Ed Byrne. He had rave reviews at the Edinburgh festival and didn't disappoint. The show is loosely wound around the story of the Michael Douglas film Falling Down, with Ed joking about how he would like to be Douglas' character, but with lots of digression onto other unrelated subjects. A good show. The support guy was a bit odd but had his moments. And luckily there was no audience participation which is a HUGE fear I have at live theatre things. I would never sit in the front! We were in row H which I thought was near enough but it then turned out there was no A-D so we were actually in row 4. Yikes. I still think The Mighty Boosh was a brilliant show though, we went to that in March. I love the Boosh - roll on series 3!!!!

Sadly, it seems our dog is getting old. He will be 15 next month and a couple of days ago he had a bit of a turn and has now had 4 of them. Its a small seizure type thing. The vet has given him medication and it hasn't happened yet today so fingers crossed. Its so upsetting to see it happen, I cry every time, probably because it makes me think of the inevitable "goodbye". Oooo quick, change the subject. Here is a pic of him a couple of years ago. Ain't he cute?

Got a new bit of kit yesterday. I went for a check up on my diabetes and insulin pump and I am trialling a piece of software for Roche which downloads info from the pump and blood glucose meter to your PC. It gives nice pretty graphs, except mine look awful cos they are all over the shop especially after the carb/insulin balancing (or mostly falling off) chaos of being on holiday, Still, all getting back on track this week. My HbA1c was slightly better at 8.8 down from 8.9. Not a great difference but I was expecting much worse, so I was secretly pleased with that. Lots of effort and gritting of teeth needed to get down to 7 still. Oh yeah, I'm going for hypnosis next Friday to see if she can help with the anxiety.

I got my first Reiki client. A friend of ours is going to let me treat her on Wed 25th. I'm not charging her, I need someone to practice on. I have had great results doing the distant Reiki so now I need someone "hands-on". Should be interesting.

Ongoing knitting projects are 3 pairs of socks and a scarf, and I just got some oddments of 4ply chenille from ebay this morning, so that will probably be another scarf and I have some chunky purple stuff coming from ebay too in the next day or two but I'm not sure what that will be yet. And while I was in Liverpool yesterday I popped into John Lewis - just to have a look, mind - and popped out again with two balls of mutli-coloured chunky and some 12mm and 15mm needles! I want to make a nice jumper in a lime-y green sometime too. I have got a great pattern on knitty.com (called Lucie) but I need to choose some yarn, the one they use is from America and VERY expensive. Oh, Christmas isn't that far off is it?