Oh my God, I actually did it!!

I've only gone and bloomin' done it!!! With a total of 51,526 words (4793 of which I did in a blur today!) I am now a novelist!!! Chocolate, I need chocolate!! And a bit of a lie down!

Nearly there.

Two 3,000 word days in a row have got me back on track! I have caufght up and am now 800 or so words ahead. Less than 6,000 to go, so I'm hoping to finish early.

I am going to treat myself to something yarny when I finish. What should I get?

A mini break

We had a couple of days away in Gloucester this weekend. We went down for a 40th birthday party of someone I knew at university. I hadn't seen her since our wedding over 14 years ago, but she looked exactly the same. Her husband used to play in a band at uni and they did a bit of a mini reunion which was good fun. A bit ropey but considering they hadn't played together for 20 years and only had a quick rehearsal that afternoon it wasn't too bad.

While we were in the area we also met up with some friends who live in Stroud and had a wander around the town, which is very pretty and has lots of little unique shops. Different to the usual big brand high street shops that seem to be in every town now.

Of course when you stay in a hotel you have to get your money's worth from the cooked breakfast, but that meant I had 3 cooked breakfasts in a week, if you include last Sunday too. I'd better lay off them for a while I think!

I did take the laptop with me but to be honest I wanted a break from the writing. I managed 600 words on Saturday, but this meant that by yesterday I was 4200 words behind schedule for Nano! I worked out that with 8 days and 16000 words to go, I need to do 2000 words a day to meet the target. When we got back yesterday I managed 2000 words and the same again today. I'm still behind obviously but should catch up just at the right time ie on the last day! It's going to be a race to the finish. It funny how an extra 333 words a day doesn't sound much but is a huge psychological barrier.

While we were away both my new target in Sock Wars Day of the Dead and I received our socks so we think we have a draw. The organiser doesn't seem to think this can happen but it obviously has. And to top it all she isn't prepared to sort it out until after Thanksgiving, which doesn't even register on the consciousness of most people in the UK. So I'm declaring myself dead and my partner can carry on and hopefully win. The socks I got do have purple in them so I'm happy to keep them.

I will fill in with photos soon, at the moment all my spare time is spent either writing, or thinking about writing. I'll be glad when its over. I haven't thought about Christmas, it still seems to early but its basically only 4 weeks away, aaarrggghhhh!!!!

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.

Good Luck

I managed to finish something for a change. Not a great picture, (it's obvious I haven't been on a course to learn about my new camera yet!) but this is my finished Good Luck Cowl in Noro Kureyon sock yarn.


I was going to keep going until the yarn ran out but this is about half a ball so it would have been twice the size, far too long. At least I can get another one out of the same ball.

I'm thinking I should maybe put it on now and not take it off for the next 15 days. I've managed to get to halfway in NaNoWriMo but I'm now going to need all the luck I can get to find another 25,000 words to finish it!!!

I am waiting to find out if I have killed my victim in the Day of the Dead sock wars prequel. I sent them off on Monday and she sent hers to me on Wednesday so it's a race to see which postal system is the fastest. I'm safe until Monday now at least. In the meantime I have cast on for a pair of Nine to Five socks using the Wild Fire Fibres merino/tencel. I had started a pair of the Teak Fingerless Mitts from the Boutique Knits book but the yarn really wanted to be socks so I frogged that. It is much happier paying homage to Dolly Parton! There is a free ravelry download if you want the pattern.

We are off to have a yummy cooked brekkie at the Blue Moon cafe in the morning with Becca & Mark,

Boutique knits

Aaarrgghhh!! It is already 2.30pm and I haven't written a word yet today. I will though, and by the end of today I will be over a third done!

I get an email every day from Knitting Daily which is associated with Interweave Press. Last week they were advertising this new book. Boutique Knits by Laura Irwin. There were a couple of pictures of the projects inside and I was taken with a pair of fingerless gloves. I checked on amazon uk and they said it would take 9-12 days. So I went with my old faithful Book Depository and it came this morning, 5 days later.



There are some cute projects in it, even some full size garments, but I liked these 3 best.

A head and shoulders hood,


a cute hat,


and these are the little gloves I liked in the first place. It is hard to tell, but in the detail on the back of the hand there are two different colours, both pink. You could use any two colours I suppose. There is not much of the second colour so you could use up left overs. They are made with sockweight/fingering weight yarn, so I think I have a little bit of that somewhere in the stash (ahem!!).

And these are the Day Of The Dead socks that I sent off to New York today. Feels a bit mean sending off half made socks but those were the rules. My partner hasn't finished hers yet so I may win this round and get to knit on, depending on the speed of the post of course.

Well maybe I'll go on a little bit......

Phew, week 1 is over and I have just finished my efforts for today. I have been struggling a bit for the last couple of days because I'd got to a bit where I wasn't overly sure what was going to happen, so it felt like a bit of a hurdle. Whereas I got over that hurdle by the end of yesterday and moved on to something else today and it just seemed to flow and I managed 1900 words in about 2 hours.

Apparently week 2 is supposed to be a difficult one though. At least I am over a quarter of the way now.

Not going on about it

It's going to get a bit tedious for me to keep posting my NaNoWriMo total each day in a new post so I've added it to the sidebar and I'll update it there instead. As you can see I'm still up to speed. I managed to get finished by 11.30 this morning so if I'm feeling inspired I may add some more later.

I am a couple of rows off the end of the Day of the Dead sock 1. In the new rules you don't actually finish the sock because your original target is not necessarily the person who will receive them so you have to stop when the foot is 5inches long and send them like that for the recipient to finish themselves. Seems a bit disappointing to receive an unfinished pair really. I wonder how the winner will be determined. Will it be when their final target receives their unfinished sock or when that person finishes them? Maybe at that stage the socks will need to be finished by the assassin because the final recipient will be known. Have to wait and see won't we?

I had a text earlier to say that my Mighty Boosh tickets will be delivered tomorrow. If anyone is interested I will have a spare one which I'll be wanting to sell, so if you fancy going to the Manchester Apollo on Tuesday Dec 2nd, email me or leave a comment and we'll work something out.

I've just realised all my latest entries have been photo free! I'll have to do something about that, I much prefer blogs with photos. I'll take a pic of sock 1 and post it tomorrow. Until then I'd better do some work for a change!

Day 3

NaNoWriMo is going well so far. I had hoped to do 2000 words a day to get up a head of steam, but haven't quite managed that since Day 1. I am ahead of target though. I needed to have 5001 words done by now and I have 5360.

At the moment I am stopping with something left in the idea tank to start the next day's writing with. I think if I just wrote until I ran out of things to say I would worry about not having anything the next day. This way it can work away at my subconscious during the evening and night and see what comes out. I was watching TV and knitting last night when an idea popped into my head and I scurried upstairs to write it in my notebook.

I wouldn't say it was exactly fun, it is taking a good two hours at least to do each day, but it feels good when you get to that daily word target, and 5300 words is over a 10th of the way already.

Day One

Target - 1667 words
Actual - 2110 words

Halfway down the leg on sock 1.

Just in case anyone was curious!