Meeow!!

Phew, another week gone! But I have done quite a bit of knitting.

The first project I have made this week is a Multnomah shawl. My dilemma a couple of posts ago was which yarn to use for a pair of Glass Slipper socks and I eventually plumped for the Green Eyed Monsters Gem sock yarn.

It was most strange. As I used it it was quite greasy feeling and was sticking to the needles really badly, I was having to physically push the stitches along the needles. After two pattern repeats of the leg I couldn't bear it any longer and ripped it out, deciding that the yarn needed bigger needles and possibly something lacy. So I decided I would make my first shawl. I haven't made a shawl before because I wouldn't wear it but having seen other ways of wearing it rather than just draping it over the shoulders I thought I'd give one a go. I didn't want anything too fancy so I went with the free pattern of Multnomah. It is a lot of garter stitch followed by feather and fan. The same thing happened with the yarn, it was ok to start with but the more I knit the greasier it got. I think it was the heat from my hands bringing out whatever it was. It stuck to wood, bamboo and aluminium needles. But I persevered and eventually invested too much time in it to rip it out. I finished it yesterday, and there was probably enough yarn for a couple more pattern repeats but I just couldn't work with the yarn any longer. I have given the shawl a wash and blocked it and it feels fine now. I made a comment on the ravelry listing for this yarn and the etsy shop owner said its the first skein she's heard of like that. Just unlucky I guess. (I'll get someone at knit group to take some photos.)

Oh, just so you know, I have restarted the socks in the Malabrigo sock yarn........ooooh, much better!

The next thing I have knit is a Knitted Kitty.


This has turned out really cute. It is supposedly for a gift but I may just keep it myself. I was just worried that I would spoil it when I tried to embroider the facial features onto it.

And finally I have almost sewn up my red cardigan. I just need to set in the sleeves and knit the collar.

All this activity at the weekend was possible because I spent it on my own. Colin went off to a school reunion in Ireland for 3 days. Well the reunion was only for one evening but he visited his dad too. So I had the house and dog to myself.

Alpacas bite back!

Check out this story, they aren't as cute and fluffy as you think!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/8218853.stm

This just tickled me!

It's just the look on it's face!!

What a difference a day makes.......

.....24 little hours. Look how much my mushies have grown in exactly 24 hours, they must have really needed that drink!


And here is a little drowned blackbird on the roof of our garage, taken with my sooper dooper zoom lens. If you click to make it larger you can see the water drops on his feathers.

Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

The postman has just been and look what he brought!! Cookie's book!

I had a panic last week because I had pre-ordered this book from The Book Depository. I had an email to say that they now had them in stock and my order had gone to packing. The next day I had another email saying they cancelled my order so I emailed back to ask why and they said they had underestimated the demand and had to cancel some orders cos they didn't have enough. Amazon didn't have any either so I went on the message boards in ravelry and Terri PM'ed me to say that Socktopus had 7 copies left when she last looked. By the time I got that message another 6 hours had passed so when I went to look they had 2 left. I snaffled one quick and now it is here! I'm too exited to look at it now! (BTW they are waiting on more, to arrive 3rd week of April if you want to pre-order.)

We went to the beach at Thurstaton on Sunday morning and we lost a tennis ball but gained a punctured football! The beach wasn't a great one, a bit stony, so I think we'll go back to West Kirby next time. We did stop in Church Farm Organics though and got a few tasty treats.

Speaking of which, the Chester Food & Drink Festival is on over Easter weekend. Mmmmmmm, hog roast for lunch, slurp!

Snoozy Susie

Delamere

We went out to Delamere Forest Park after lunch today to give Susie a bit of a run out. She hasn't had a lot of exercise this week so she needed it. First she found a rather big stick but got fed up of that pretty quickly when she discovered the muddy puddles.....








and ended up looking a bit grubbier than when we started. There were lots of other dogs running about and lots of cyclists to avoid if possible. There is also a new Go Ape adventure there where you basically traverse through the trees by various ropes and swings. Not my thing, we'd have to go there with someone who wanted to do it so that Colin could go up and and I could stay on the ground.




Then it was home time, looking a bit sheepish from getting all mucky. I put the hose on her with a bit of dog shampoo out the back but forgot I'd have to get my hands wet to get all the shampoo out - the water was FREEZING!!!

Dogs, UFOs and The Moth

Firstly, especially for Clarabelle as requested.........more doggy pics













Yesterday afternoon I had a little bit of a tidy in my knitting baskets, and uncovered a few UFOs!

I found the Interweave waistcoat that I'd thrown in the naughty corner, but looking at it now it is easily fixed and finished.


The first of a pair of Jaywalkers in the Regia Kaffe Fassett sock yarn. I had hoped that this would have more of the bright blue in it, but most of has disappeared under the heel.




The unfinished pair of socks I received during the Sock Wars Day of the Dead competition. These just need a tiny bit more foot length and a couple of toes.

Cherie Amour in Colinette Iona, abandoned becasue I couldn't work out where to continue the pattern after casting off arm holes!









Then there are the projects I am currently working on sporadically, a pair of Monkeys using Wendy Happy bamboo yarn. Coincidentally I made my other pair of Monkeys with bamboo yarn.

And a Drops cardigan with the ebay yarn that arrived last week.







And of course the super secret own design socks that are not progressing very fast at all.






Then today as I was perusing the sites I like to look at regularly, I came across a tutorial for making Dorset buttons and promptly came home and made this.

I have stuck a bit of magnetic tape on the back and turned it into a fridge magnet.









Yesterday I was looking at mooncalf's blog and was reading the comments left. Sometimes I click through onto the commenters' blogs to see if I can pick up on any good ones I'd like to follow. On one called Peapods I clicked through to a site called The Moth. The Moth is a group of people who meet in two places in the USA and get up on stage and tell stories. The stories have to be true and are completely unscripted. They are a maximum of approximately 15-20 minutes long - perfect for my commute to work. I subscribed through itunes (free) and listened to a couple to and from work today. They were really good. Some people are just born story tellers and can string out an incident that maybe took 5 minutes into a whole 20 minute fascinating story. Give The Moth a try, it's worth a listen.

All the other bits

Right I'm going to catch up with all the bits I've scribbled on a piece of paper to blog about.......

Knitting stuff first...... Issue 2 of the Knitter arrived in the post on Thursday. I wasn't expecting it until at least Monday. I subscribed to the offer of 3 issues for a fiver, then quarterly direct debit. This issue is all about intarsia and fairisle, not my thing at all. I don't think there is anything in this issue that I would knit, except maybe this for a cute little gilet, though where I would wear it I don't know. I was quite taken with this dress too but it would be completely impractical for me. As in the first issue, most of the patterns are from previous publications so as I said before if you have an extensive knitting book collection you may already have these patterns. I do still have high hopes for this magazine though so I'll stick with it for a few more issues anyway.

I have decided after knitting upteen pairs of socks from patterns I would like to design my own. I now have my Harmony Guides and have picked out a few stitch patterns I would like to use. It's not as easy as that though is it? The stitch patterns in the books are for flat, back and forth knitting, so in order to use them I will have to work out how to knit them in the round where there is no "wrong side". I would need to change all the knits to purls and vice versa and also go from the other end of those rows too. It's going to take some thinking about. However, one revelation I have had, is that I have now worked out how to turn a heel on any (even) number of stitches. I wanted to knit a quick pair of plain socks but only had the Opal pattern for 60 stitches. The socks are for a man so I needed more stitches (I've plumped for 72) but only knew how to turn a heel on 60 stitches. I laid in bed at 7.30 yesterday morning and thought about it, then got up and tried my theory, and it worked! I'm so pleased. Once I have written it down and worked out a formula I will post it for you. (You will probably all now tell me this already exists and I needn't have bothered in the first place!) Edit: Bum! Just googled it and found this - but I'm still chuffed I worked it out anyway!

Ah yes, a couple of stash acquisitions


Araucania Ranco solid in a browny green and a purple colurway, and Regia Silk in dark blue for my step-dad's socks. I was using some Possum yarn but I ripped those out becasue the yarn was driving me crazy. It was too sticky for the tiny needles, it needs to be knitted on larger needles and possibly usedfor something lacy.

Other stuff..........we had a murder in our garden during the week. I came home from a dog walk to find black feathers all over the garden and at least 9 magpies kak-kak-kakking on a nearby roof. I'm thinking it was probably one of our lovely blackbirds but there was no sign of a body, just all the feathers. Magpies - grrrrrr!!!!

A quick fact for you - I have now had my new car since Dec 13th and I have done a grand total of 182 miles in it!

Finally, I am pondering something. Last night we went to see some friends about an hour away - not a great success as the dogs didn't get on particularly well which was a shame - and on the way back we had the radio on in the car. Claudia Winkleman was talking to three female authors, can't remember their names, who have put together a book of erotic short stories by well known female authors using pseudonyms. No-one, including them, knows which story was written by each author so they are kept anonymous. From the sounds of it some of the stories are pretty full-on. So why is that called "erotic fiction" and not "pornography"? I'll leave it with you.

(If you are wondering, the book is called "In Bed With" and one of the editors names is Imogen something - I have NOT read it!) Oh, here's a link for amazon.

How did he resist?

The C word.

(No not the rude one, the scary one)

Eighteen months ago, it was a word beginning with a small "c". It was something you heard on the news that ageing celebrities had died from after "a long battle with". It was something your neighbour's, auntie's, second cousin's hairdresser had had, and was mortified because her hair had fallen out.

Then it came crashing into our life with a giant capital "C", when Colin was diagnosed with a soft tissue sarcoma in September 2007. And it has been a part of our lives since. Happily he had it removed - it was a lump on his forearm - and after 6 weeks of radiotherapy in Nov/Dec 07 he was put on regular check-ups and "touch wood" he is fine. When his sister lost her battle in June 2008, he took it upon himself to raise money for Cancer Research UK and you can read about his efforts (and maybe sponsor him???) on his website 365challenge.co.uk and read about the gathering momentum of the publicity for it on his blog.

On Monday he took Susie to the vet to have her stitches removed, and the results of the lump were in. It was a soft tissue sarcoma! What are the chances? The report was that they believed they had removed it all, and that it wasn't the type of thing that metastisizes but may reoccur at the same site. They do not do radiotherapy so we just have to keep an eye on it and if it reoccurs they will remove it again. We wonder if her previous owners knew, but they hadn't told Labrador Rescue about it and they hadn't noticed it. It's not really something that you would miss on a family pet.

But the bright side for her is that she has us. We will look after her no matter what. We love her to bits already and we'll be keeping an eye on that leg. And, now the stitches are out, she can go off the lead again and have a jolly good run around at the park, chasing the ball and meeting her new friends.

Back to the important things

Phew, I don't know what came over me there, maybe it was the fact that it was my 300th post and it needed to be significant. Anyhoo, back to the important things, knitting!

I have an FO and two WIPs but can't show any of them as they are for other people. One of them is a pair of socks for my step-dad which he knows about but I don't want him to see them until I have sent them to him. The other two are surprises but I think one person may have figured out what I am up to becasue I asked her for her shoe size!!!

As I hadn't worked on a pair of socks for over a month, I am all enthusiastic about them again. So much so that I have decided I want to design some myself. Whether there are any original sock patterns left to discover is another thing, but to help me along I have made a little purchase. Well, 3 little purchases but they only count as one really as they are a set of three books. The Harmony Guides to knitting stitches: Knit and Purl Stitches, Cable and Aran Stitches, and Lace and Eyelet Stitches. I have had these on my amazon wishlist for quite a while and when I saw them at £8.99 each (RRP £14.99) with free P&P I could resist no longer. Hopefully they will be here in a few days but not to worry because I need to finish these other things first.

Susie has had her operation to remove the cyst from her leg and after a week it seems to be healing well now, even though she managed to pop one of the stitches. The rest are coming out next week. The vet didn't know what the lump actually was so has sent it off to be analysed, but fingers crossed it isn't anything sinister, we could do without that, financially and emotionally. She has very quickly become part of the family and is very affectionate, especially with Colin, she won't leave him alone in the evenings and keeps pawing at him for attention.

The Really Big Issue

So the USA has a new president - the end. Or it should be. But the main talking point of all this is that he is the first black president.

I'm not saying this isn't a really big deal - IT IS!!! It is a FIRST, like the first man on the moon or the first test tube baby. I will admit that I am totally ignorant when it comes to politics and human rights etc - in my own little country let alone the rest of the world - but I know that this is a momentous event.

My point is that it shouldn't be. He is not the first ever president. Putting political leanings and policies aside, the difference between Barack Obama and the 43 presidents who have come before him, is that he has dark skin. This is by virtue of chance. The reason he has dark skin is that his ancestors were from a country where the conditions meant that by the natural process of evolution and natural selection it was advantageous for the people to have dark skin. Can you imagine a bunch of freckly red heads running around in the searing African sun, they wouldn't have lasted five minutes. (Maybe they didn't and that's why there are none there now! (No offence to redheads, I am after all married to one.)) Obama's ancestors did not think to themselves, "let's deliberately make our skin black to annoy the hell out of white people".

Obama is an articulate, intelligent and clever man who has worked his way up in his chosen career like anyone else, the colour of his skin should be irrelevant. Sadly it is not.

However, all that aside I think everyone is missing the REALLY BIG ISSUE here.

***How on earth does Barack Obama think he is
going to have time to housetrain a puppy?!!***

As Diana famously said........

......there are three of us in this marriage!

It's not looking good!

I could survive for 35 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

I think she's settling in okay, actually!

Our new housemate!

In between Christmas and New Year we decided we needed a new housemate. Some of you long term readers will remember that we lost our old boy Podge at the age of 16 in October 2007, and our unsuccessful attempt with a puppy in January 2008. We thought we would wait until the spring to get another dog and not rush into getting something cute and fluffy. We decided to go for a resue dog because Podge was a rescue and a great success.

Anyway the subject came up over Christmas and we decided to start looking and went to a couple of rescue places. The first one had a couple of nice looking dogs but none of the temperaments were quite right. Then at the second one we took a border collie out for a walk but decided against him because he would have just had too much energy. We tried to think of a calmer breed and wondered about labradors.

We looked on the internet and there is a charity, Labrador Rescue with a branch in the north west so we had a quick look at their website. We had to register and have them contact our old vet for a reference before we could be approved as adopters. When they said everything was fine we waited to see if a likely candidate came up on their site. The next day I spotted a female, 4 years old and we rang them straight away. We were the first to enquire and we made an appointment to go see her on Friday.

We had to drive about an hour to Chorley up the M6, but it was worth it. She was unsure of us when she was first let out of her kennel, and barked and growled a bit but we took her around the garden and she was fine. We were a little wary, not wanting to make a mistake but we just couldn't leave her behind, so she came home with us.

And we couldn't have wished for a better dog. She knows loads of commands, if you put her food down and tell her to wait she won't touch it until you let her. And she stayed downstairs at night despite the fact that we didn't put up a stairgate and she could have come up anytime. She has been off the lead and played with other dogs, and she is very cuddly. We do have to get a cyst removed from her leg next week, and we have some drops for a waxy ear, but apart from that - SUCCESS!

Okay, so you want to see her now don't you? Here she is..........Susie.

Animals do the funniest things.

I just saw this youtube video on another blog, and it made me laugh out loud

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzRH3iTQPrk

It's the reaction of the mother that gets me!! Make sure the sound is on when you watch it.

Ireland, to be sure.

Seeing as we have been back from our hols for 10 days now, I thought I ought to post a few pics which aren't Booshy!

The first place we stopped when we got there was Gorey, Co. Wexford. Some friends of ours moved back here from North Wales about a year ago so we stayed with them for 2 nights. These are their children. Do not ask me to spell their names, there are too many bs and hs in there to get my head around but phonetically they are Niall(l), Cweeva(r) and Derval(middle). Unfortunately Cweeva had her eyes closed in every one of the photos I have.
(Edit: the names are Niall, Caoimhe and Dearbhail)



From there we headed over to the west coast to Lahinch in Co. Clare where we had an apartment for 5 nights. This is one of the two streets there, the other is a main street with several pubs and shops.


The weather was pretty dismal for the first few days but we drove around looking at the beaches from under our rainhoods and through the car windows. One evening in Lahinch there was a surfing competition and between the rounds there was a husband and wife who went out on one surfboard and performed acrobatic feats for our entertainment.




On the Tuesday the weather cleared up and we were able to go to The Cliffs of Moher which is apparently the most popular tourist attraction in Ireland.


I thought this one was rather attractive too. She was called Bessie


and this was her owner busking at the Cliffs


Gratuitous shots of me and Colin at The Cliffs




On our last night in Lahinch there was a lovely sunset out of the window of the restaurant we were eating at




Oh I do have a couple more Booshy photos. Here you can see how high up we were from the stage


And this is a rather blurry shot of Noel. The pictures had to be taken without the theatre staff seeing as you weren't supposed to take photos.


I finally finished reading The Cure Of Souls by Phil Rickman last night. I can't believe it took me nearly two months to read this. That's the knitting habit for you! I do like this series of books but I felt it got a bit higgledy piggledy at the end. Maybe it was because I took so long to read it and lost the thread of the story. The next book I am gong to read is Storm Front by Jim Butcher.

In knitting news The Tweedy Waistcoat is coming along nicely, no pics yet! I have the back and one and a half fronts done. I didn't realise before I started that it was knit in so many pieces. I do like the two colours that I (and Anne at the LYS) picked for this, they do go well together and it will be quite understated but smart enough for work.

Oh Canada!

We have just had visitors for 2 days. Colin's cousin Sheila (middle) and her husband Fraser (far left), who stayed with us for two nights and Fraser's brother Barry and his wife Pat (right) who stayed at a local B&B. They are all Canadian. They were really nice laid back people. This was taken outside our house this morning as they all left to drive down to Felixstowe to visit more people.



Yesterday was a great day, it was hot and sunny and we spent the day at Chester Races. It's the first time we've ever been and we've lived here 12 years! Of course we had to have a bet. There were 7 races and I ended up with 4 winners and a second place and tripled my money!! When I say I arrived with a fiver and left with 15 quid it doesn't sound so grand but I was only betting a pound at a time. This was my first


and my second winners


Fraser did really well, he made a net profit of £60.