Circle socks finished

I finished these off yesterday

Pattern: Circle Socks by Anne Campbell (this is a free ravelry download so you need to be on ravelry to see it - sorry!)

Yarn: King Cole Zig Zag sock yarn

Needles: 2.5mm Addi lace circs using magic loop.

Mods: Only did 4 repeats of the circle pattern on the leg cuff.

Of all the beautiful sock yarns I have in my stash, I used this cheapy 50% superwash wool, 50% nylon Zig Zag. It isn't the softest yarn in the world by any means, but it was only £3.99 for 100g and I loved the colour. I'd say it will be quite hard wearing too and will probably soften up in the wash.

I think that Glass Slippers will be my next sock project but I will need just the right yarn to show the pattern off. I'd love to use this gorgeous Malabrigo sock yarn that Karen gave me for my birthday at knit group this week, but I think it may be too dark.

Perhaps it is time to use my Posh Yarns Eva

which I have had for well over a year. Or Green Eyed Monsters Gem,

hmmm, decisions decisions.

But for today I must seam my Red Cardigan, its been waiting over a week now.

Birthday & subs

So last Saturday was my birthday, yay! Here are my prezzies.......

The book "The Silver Spoon" is brilliant. I've used it everyday since Sunday, mainly making sauces so far but I did make Turkey Stew with Mustard on Tuesday. Tonight I'm going to make bolognese sauce and already I can see it is going to be different to what I usually do to make it. There are no tinned tomatoes or garlic for a start! Interesting!

We went to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince on Saturday afternoon, which was okay. You couldn't go and see it as a stand alone film though becasue it didn't really end anywhere, I think you need to have seen all the other films or read the books.

Then we went to Nando's for dinner. Never been before. Again it was okay, the chicken burger was very nice but it was a bit fast food-ish for a sit down meal really.

I also had a cheque from my mum which I put towards my new subscription to Yarn Forward magazine. I have every issue right from the start so I thought I may as well subscribe again and save myself the price of two issues a year. My first issue and free gift arrived yesterday.

The free hat pattern is quite nice actually so that will go on my Ravelry queue!

After Colin met Eddie Izzard on Tuesday, he booked us tickets to go and see him in Liverpool in November!

More than just books

Other stuff has happened recently apart from reading. Last weekend my parents came up to visit. My step-dad has just retired and had a significant birthday so a cake was called for.

This was the first Victoria Sandwich I have made in probably over 20 years! Came out pretty well though I do say so myself.

On Sunday morning we went for a walk around the Walls and when we got to the weir there were several herons on the water. My zoom lens got this photo from quite a distance (I've cropped it quite a bit so the detail has been somewhat lost).


A bit further on we were aiming for the Racecourse as my ex-boss was competing in the Chester Half Marathon but the heavens opened and we made a quick dash into town to Caffe Nero for much needed coffees. He managed 2 hours 10 minutes, we heard later.

This morning I finished off my Flutter-by Socks. The second half of the skein had some really dark bits pop up in the purple bits so they aren't the same now, but its not really a problem just a bit of a shame. It may come out in the wash. It is a really easy and fairly quick pattern to knit.



Pattern: Flutter-by socks
Yarn: Wild Fire Fibres Fantasia from the May sock club, colour Rhododendron
Needles: 2.5mm Addi lace circs
Mods: Decreased to 30 sole stitches after the gusset.

I'm not sure what I want to cast on next, perhaps I should revisit those WIPs!

Well my review of Pride & Prejudice had mixed responses. Linz - it was nice to know I'm not the only one who didn't like it, I really thought I was after talking to a few people I know. Anonymous - yes, I do know who you are AND I know where you LIVE, hee hee!!! P&P isn't the only "classic" I have read, I enjoyed Dracula and Frankenstein but not P&P or 20,000 leagues. I didn't study English Literature after the age of 14 so I don't really know how to "read" a book in the way that you do. I like to read for enjoyment of the story, and that is enough for me. If it doesn't float my boat, I'll move on. I don't really want to get into the analysis of the writing or the period it was written, but I respect the fact that other people do. (I will just say that on your recommendation I have started the first chapter of Emma, but if I find I'm not enjoying it I will not plough on this time.) Everyone has their own tastes in books and that is why there are so many different books out there.

On that subject I am currently reading The Witch's Trinity by Erika Mailman a story about a witch hunt in the search for the reason why the crops are failing and everyone is starving in a tiny village in the 1400s. There is a gruesone trial of an old woman with a test which she cannot possibly pass which proves she is a witch when she isn't. And this stuff really went on! Scary.

How old?

Would you believe that this man is 90 years old? That's Colin's dad and we were over in Ireland for a few days last week to see him on the big day. He is fit as a flea and puts me to shame! This is him with Colin and his sister Fiona.


Fiona gave Colin this shirt and I told him that from the neck down he looked like Noel Edmonds - he was a bit miffed at that!


Here is the birthday cake with some little golfers on it, Sean still plays a few holes every day.


And this is my old car which lives in Ireland now. Look what they've done to it - put one of those funny Irish number plates on it! That's its new owner giving it a kiss, Colin's niece Rachel.


So we were away from Wednesday to Saturday and when we got back my mum came up to visit from Sunday till this morning. I think she fell in love with Susie when she met her - well who wouldn't? Look at her!

Valentine

We don't do Valentine's anymore, but on Saturday morning Colin went out early and got my car washed for me, and picked up my yarn from the Post Office, aaaah!
15 balls of Alaska for Amused

I finished these socks for my step-dad on Friday evening. My mum is coming up to visit next weekend so she is going to take them back with her. Hopefully they should fit, as they are just slightly too big for Colin, who is one size smaller than Bill.


Before that though we are going to be celebrating Colin's dad's 90th birthday at the end of the week. 90! Imagine that!

Becca's Birthday BFFs.

I can now blog these........BFF socks. Becca managed to resist all of about 10 minutes when I gave them to her last night at knit group and eventually succumbed after gentle encouragement from a couple of other knitters. (Her birthday isn't until next Tuesday!)



Thank goodness she loved them. She even sent me an iPhone photo when she got home of her wearing them with some very high open toed shoes! Sexy!





I think the colors are represented best in this photo.

Pattern: BFF socks by Cookie A
Yarn: The Natural Dye Studio Nino, 100% luxury merino, ?colourway
Needles: 2.5mm Addi lace circs using magic loop
Mods: None.
Time taken: 6 days.

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!!!!

Birthday flowers

I had some beautiful flowers on my birthday, so I thought I'd give the new camera a go and take some pictures. They are all taken on the AUTO setting (!).

These were from my mum and step-dad - except for the sunflowers which I added because I ran out of vases! (And they match the vase too.)


Sorry, can't remember who these were from - but again the sunflowers were added, they were from Paul & Kate


These were from Iain and Helen (of hand-drawn card fame).


And these are just a couple of close ups of the sunflower heads.

Cake!

I'm not going to bore the pants off everyone with hundreds of photos from my birthday, so here is a select few.

Me cutting cake


Me still cutting cake (can someone tell me is that T-shirt rude do you think? I'm not sure!!)


Very cute salt & pepper shakers from Mel & Stu


A brilliant birthday card from Iain & Helen. Why its so brilliant is that Helen drew it!! She is so talented. I love the way it looks 3D, but is actually flat.


I think parties are a little bit self indulgent because you know that people aren't going to turn up empty handed. I did get more cards and pressies than I probably would have done if it had been a quiet one, but hey, it was one of those birthdays with a 0 on the end.

Luckily, although it was a bit dark and dismal, the rain did stop so that we could have people sitting out on the patio. It was touch and go though. I hope a good time was had by all.

Colin bought me a fab new Digital SLR camera. I just need to learn how to use it properly now, rather than just leave it on AUTO. And find some artistic things to photograph rather than use it for snaps. Colin got all arty and took this down on the river yesterday morning when we went out for a cooked brekkie at The Blue Moon cafe.


And yesterday afternoon, rather than having leftovers for dinner, we were invited to our neighbours so I dragged the birthday out for another day!

Wahey, the BIG four-oh!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO DONNA
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!!

Yikes, 40????? Does that mean I'm all grown up now? Nah!

A new post...........

...........is on its way, honest. I've been waiting until my Gathered Pullover was finished, which it was last night, so I just have to get a decent photo. My wireless connection has also been a bit hit and miss for some reason.

7 days and counting to ................my 40th!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Weekend visit

At the weekend, Colin went on a course in London so we drove to my parents' in Southampton and he got the train up from there, leaving me behind with these two!



On the Friday I went to the Isle of Wight to see my friend Sarah, and on Saturday I popped down to see my step-sister Sue.....

and Mollie (6)

and Alex (9).


It was Alex's birthday a couple of weeks ago and he got a Wii so I got him the sport accessories (tennis rackets, golf club, and baseball bat). Of course he beat the pants off me!! But I was definitely the best at making an a**e of myself on the trampoline!!

Soup and a sandwich anyone?

We've just had a busy week really.

On Tuesday my car went back to the garage, and guess what? They could find nothing wrong with it. Maybe its just me then because Colin drove it yesterday with no problem either. I'm still going to look to change it though.

On Thursday the decorator came to start giving the house a new lick of paint. He works on his own so will probably be here for another couple of weeks. We are getting new carpets downstairs due to Charlie's lack of house training (!) so we thought we'd have a freshen up of all the walls and woodwork too. And new laminate floors in the dining room and kitchen. Those were done on Friday so it was a bit mad here with the fitters and George (the decorator) trying to work around each other.

Also on Thursday we headed off to Oswestry for Colin's latest scan results. And it was great news. The tiny spot that was seen in his lung 6 months ago hasn't changed at all so they have concluded that it is more than likely some kind of calcified something that is totally benign. They are not going to need to do any more CT scans on it. We were both very relieved. A great birthday present for Colin for Friday in fact. Yep, he is another year older!


On Saturday some friends, Jon, Verity & Molly came over for a visit to the zoo. This is Jon and Molly who is two and a half.


She was really taken with Colin, I think there was some kind of kinship going on between two redheads!!


As it was so cold the animals weren't that active but there were a few out and about, we even got to see a Spectacled Bear which is very unusual, they usually hide away.


The penguins were out and the flamingoes were looking particularly pinky-orange.




The tigers had their lunch and had a little doze indoors.


Then we came back to our house and had something to eat and watched Mary Poppins. I was very jealous when Jon announced that their Boosh tickets are FRONT ROW!!!

Because it was Colin's birthday on Friday and it is our wedding anniversary on Wednesday we decided to treat ourselves to a cooked breakfast on Sunday morning. We went down to the Blue Moon Cafe on the Groves and had a full English breakfast each before heading over to Winsford to look at cars. There were 2 possible Polos so we asked for the keys to have a look at them. The first one had a deposit on it so we couldn't look at it, but the other one looked promising. From the outside it was fine but once we were inside we noticed a cigarette burn on the leather bit round the gearstick which then made us notice the smell of stale cigarette smoke. Yuck, no thanks. Colin then started noticing a few cars he quite liked so we ended up sitting in a Mercedes and a BMW too!

On the way back I mentioned lunch (you can see life revolves around my stomach!) and Colin said "We could go for soup and a sandwich somewhere if you like." Does this make sense to anyone? The way I see it is you have soup with bread or toast, OR a sandwich. Not soup AND a sandwich. The whole point is that you dunk the bread or toast in the soup. You can't dunk a sandwich in because it has a filling. How yucky would that be? Am I wrong? Anyway, we decided that we had enough stuff at home so seeing as we had already had brekkie out, we went home instead.

On knitterly things, I ripped out the six inches I'd done on the Joma sweater as it was so obviously going to be too small. I have now acquired another 5 balls of the organic cotton so I have started again on a larger size. As for the Zoknis, they got a bit of attention while I was waiting to make sure I could get more cotton for Joma. So I have 8 more pattern rows left until I can do the toe decreases and cast off the second sock. I hope I can do that tonight so I can take the finished pair to show Becca when I see her tomorrow. The Clapotis is getting quite big too, I have finished 3 straight section repeats and have dropped three stitches so far (for those of you not familiar with Clapotis - is there anyone out there? - you drop stitches on purpose!). With the possibility of having only two WIPs later on this evening I think it is time to scout out a new project. Oh hang on, I'm doing a quick KAL next weekend with the Coconut Lodge group on ravelry. We are making a Bainbridge scarf in honour of Dixon Bainbridge!!

Lighting up time.

Here is the infamous earlight.

And here it is in action with the room light on. You can see the amount of light it casts quite well here.

And here you can see it with the room lights off. Sorry it is blurred, the camera didn't like the dark without the flash, but with the flash on it defeated the object! I reckon you could probably knit in the cinema as long as you didn't have someone sat right next to you.

I finally finished my first Zokni sock. As you can see I opted for a heel flap in the end, I'm still not happy picking up wraps on a short row heel.

I did try to teach a short row heel last night though. I met up with Becca from the knitting group. It was funny because we were sitting in Starbucks in Borders knitting away and a member of staff tried to recruit us for the knitting group so we had to explain that we had been there last week and that I was actually one of the organisers. He apologised for not recognising us and was pleased we were with the group.

Anyway, Becca made great inroads into her boyfriend's sock, so I think she will go great guns on it now and hopefully it will be well on it's way by the next meeting. She brought me a really sweet "birthday card book" as a thankyou for the lesson, which had lots of cute puppies on it. You can put cards in it ready for when you need them. Great idea. I love the Westie in the woolly knitted hat, maybe The Gorgeous One would like one!!

Talking of whom, we are still really struggling with him. We are trying to housetrain him using a crate, so he goes in it for a while and then he gets taken out to the garden to do his business and if he goes he gets to play in the house for a while. If he doesn't go, he has to go back in the crate and then try again in about 20 minutes. This had been going on for 3 and a half days now and he still doesn't seem to twig that he should go outside if he wants to have some play. Ulgh, it is really hard work. If he is out of the crate too long he still pees on the paper pad in the living room. But it just seems cruel to keep him locked away, and he cries a lot and tugs at the old heartstrings. We are still umming and ahhing over whether he is going to be a permanent member of our household. It may have been a bit too soon after losing Podge, because we don't seem to have a strong bond with him even after nearly 3 months. When he does come out to play he is still very willful and naughty and doesn't respond to "NO!!". We'll give it a bit longer I guess.

Yikes, I broke my "no book buying" resolution last night. I got The Keep by Jennifer Egan and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. We have both been looking at The Book Thief for a while and hadn't gotten around to buying it so I took advantage of the Buy One Get One Half Price offer at Borders. Did I mention Bookmooch.com? It's a great way to get around the no buying books rule. I've had 3 books from there and they've cost me nothing!!