Some knitting content!

I was really disappointed in the lack of yarn shops in the Lake District. There was a tiny shop in Ambleside above a cafe called Hannalin Crafts, where I bought two balls of her own handspun DK from her Herdwick sheep. But the shops in Penrith and Keswick were almost exclusively crackly acrylics and I spent probably a total of one minute in there between the two. (Yes, I'm a yarn snob!) You would think there would be a decent yarn shop in a place with such a lot of sheep.

Did I ever put up a finished picture of my red cardigan? I don't think I did. Well here's one. According to Ravelry I finished this on September 19th. That's 3 weeks ago!! Yes, I remember I did finish it before my holiday and that is long gone now.


Pattern: Drops Jacket with Rib from Garnstudio, pattern 100-2
Needles: 5.0mm and 5.5mm
Yarn: Drops Karisma superwash DK
Mods: Don't remember any!

While away I got on with my Baktus scarf which I will be donating to Seasalt for the Bees Conservation Trust


Pattern: Baktus by Strikkelise
Yarn: Lana Grossa Cool Wool Big
Needles: 4.5mm
Mods: increased until there were 58 stitches across then started decreasing again.

I am now casting on for another knitted kitty which my friend Mel requested a while ago. She has probably forgotten but it is their first wedding anniversary on Sunday so I thought I'd give it to her then.

I am taking part in the mystery sock KAL hosted by Through the Loops again this year. It started on 1st October and you get a clue each Thursday. I have completed the first two clues using some of my WIld Fire Fibres sock club yarn.


I'm not sure I like the way it is pooling though. This is after clue 1. It is kind of swamping the actual lace pattern.


Well at least I will wear them and this will get that yarn out of stash.

I have also finished the gift for my friend's new baby. It is another Drops pattern but looks suspiciously like the Baby Surprise Jacket by Elizabeth Zimmerman. Here is a friend of mine modelling it!

Pattern: Jacket in garter stitch b18-25
Yarn: Drops Fabel colour 901
Needles: 3mm
Mods: made the smallest size and added 2 rows to the collar.

I finally caught up to date with the LimenViolet podcasts so had to search for some more. I am trying Stash and Burn, ElectricSheep and the Sassy Sheep at the moment. The woman on ElectricSheep is quite English and posh and sounds just like Melinda Messenger!

Llys Tryfan RIP

Ok, I have a huge mug of tea next to me, I suggest you do the same, we could be here for a while!

22 years ago today I was 2 days into my first year at university. It was still "Fresher's week" - we started later in those days - and I was aimlessly hanging out of the kitchen window of my Hall of Residence when my attention was drawn to the soft Irish lilt of someone below saying hello and asking what I was up to. As I was (and still am) totally besotted with Bono, the sound of an Irish accent did it for me. "Oh nothing much" I replied, as he disappeared through the door two floors below and into the building. A few minutes later the kitchen door opened and there he was. And 22 years later we are still together.


A couple of weeks ago we went back over to Bangor and it happened to be the day that all this year's students were arriving. We went to the Halls but sadly our Hall (Llys Tryfan) had been knocked down and replaced with a new building of the same size and shape in the same place. This is the old building - my room was on the end, top left, Colin was on the ground floor, 4th window from the right down the side.

and this is it now, it doesn't even have the same name anymore. We talked to one of the wardens and told them we had been there 22 years ago and he agreed to show us inside. It was all very shiny and new, all the bedrooms are now ensuite whereas we had 3 loos to 17 people on each floor! Ah we had some laughs there.

Ok, here are some touristy pictures from London, all the usual stuff.........

Marble Arch


The London Eye


The Victoria & Albert Museum


The ceiling of the cafe in the V&A


and of course Big Ben!

Two days wasn't really enough time, I felt like I missed a lot.

We then went up to The Lake District where we had a lovely little flat right in the middle of Ambleside. On Sunday Colin went and climbed a few of the Wainwrights so I pottered around the village, read and knitted. On Monday we went on the boat along Lake Windermere to Bowness. The weather was a bit grey and drizzly so no photos I'm afraid. Tuesday we drove around looking at the scenery and Wednesday we headed home. I think of the two, I preferred London as there was lots of stuff to do and as I'm not a walker looking at one hill is much like looking at another!

In between the two trips Becca had a Jamie at Home party. She invited all people from knit group so we all knew each other and her mum was the consultant so it was a lovely relaxed evening. I bought some lovely mugs, a matching milk jug, and a new apron!

My ex-work colleague and friend Iain and his wife Helen had their second baby last week. A little girl, a sister to their two year old boy, so congratulations to them. Here's a sneaky peek at something I am making for them.


On our last holiday day we went to see The Invention of Lying starring Ricky Gervais. It was okay I guess, a couple of funny moments and a great cameo from Steven Merchant and "Barry from Eastenders".

Well I think I'll stop there. I do have knitting stuff to show but I'll put that in a separate post.

iKnit

Colin and I have just had a couple of days in London. I can't believe how quick and easy it was to get there from Chester - 2 hours 5mins with only 2 stops and no changes!

I'll do another post about the touristy stuff we did, but while we were there I went to visit iKnit. It is literally out the back door of Waterloo station and round the corner. The lady in the shop very kindly said I could take pictures inside the shop.



As they have a liquor license Colin settled down on the leather couch and had a beer while I perused the shelves.




I thought it would be a lot bigger seeing as they have a big event there, which I missed by a week!. Apparently there is a big room downstairs for that. So what did I get - sock yarn of course!!!



Schoppel-wolle Zaueberball in Cranberries, Malabrigo sock in Lettuce, Cherry Tree Hill Sockittome in Glacier Ice and Cherry Tree Hill supersock in Jade. I also had to replace my Harmony 2.25mm circ because I snapped the end off on the way down pulling it out of my bag roughly!. The lady also threw a load of iknit badges into the bag because I'd told her about the knitting group, so I'll dish some of those out next meeting.

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!!!!

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 yeah, me & Noel & Julian, we're like THAT (holds up crossed fingers)

I am back off my holliers! We went to Ireland for 10 days starting with 2 days with some friends in Wexford and then going over to Co. Clare for 5 days. But enough about that......................

The reason we went was because Colin's nephew had got us tickets to see The Mighty Boosh in Dublin on 17th September. The seats were in the upper circle and it was general seating and quite a few people were in already when we got there so we were on the end, four rows from the front. We had to lean forward a bit to see all the stage and we couldn't see the screen at the back but there were only 2 times when you needed to see that and hopefully we will have good seats at Manchester in December.

Anyway..............(.don't read the next bit of you haven't seen the show yet and don't want to spoil it. I'll do it in a different colour so you know where to scroll down to.)

They came out singing "Future Sailors", Noel in sparkly silver top, black jeans & silver boots and Julian in a lovely white sailor suit with blue piping! Then they did a bit of banter about what they'd been doing since series 3. It was then time to introduce their special guests....the usual suspects arrived, Bob Fossil, Naboo and Bollo. Then Noel as Tony Harrison, Julian as Crack Fox, the Boosh band featuring Rudi on guitar, the Hitcher singing "Eels". After the interval it was time for one of Howard Moon's plays. This was all totally new material and culminated in the 2 of them in very skimpy outfits showing off the full glory of their pasty white legs!! Then the band came out again and Noel, Julian, Mike, Dave and Rich were all dressed as old ladies doing the Nanageddon song, swinging handbags and all. Finally there was a medley of songs from the TV series including the soup song and bouncy bouncy. There is a really funny bit involving the Honey Monster too. (There are links in this paragraph, just click on the names of the songs to see YouTube videos)

We didn't see anyone dressed up in the audience but apparently the night before there had been someone in a full panda outfit!!

And then there was the book signing!!!!!!!!!!! We knew that there was going to be a signing of the Mighty Book of Boosh on Saturday 20th at 1pm. So we had planned to go down to Easons at about 10am and I would get in the queue while Colin parked the car somewhere easy to get to ready to head off to get the ferry afterwards. But on Friday we went into Easons and there was a notice up saying they were only issuing 250 tickets on a first come first serve basis so I thought I'd have no chance. I was so disappointed because I was almost looking forward to that more than the show itself, the chance to actually meet them in person. Although Colin was suffering with a cold and cough he got me up at 5am (what did I do to deserve him?) and we arrived at Easons at 5.30am and there was NO-ONE THERE. I was FIRST in the queue. We queued outside for 3 hours then were let in and I got ticket number one


and we queued for another four and a half hours sitting on the floor of the shop,

and then THERE THEY WERE.................

Julian looking very cool in his shades, and Noel just looking cool anyway, can he ever look anything but?




I think this photo is of Noel talking to me.......


and this is him possibly signing my book or the one we got for Peter & Jenny (Colin's nephew & girlfriend).




Didn't manage to get in any of the photos with them (Colin did his best among the security men and bookshop staff!) but I think the photo of Noel signing with Julian without his sunglasses on, is Noel signing my book. Julian had the book first and he took off his glasses and looked me straight in the eyes with this HUGE beaming smile, and I just didn't know what to say. I just smiled back and said "Hi Julian!" Then he passed the book to Noel and I said to Noel "I've been here since half past five to get first in the queue" and he said "Did you get first in the queue?" (there had been 8 competition winners who were brought in first to get signed) and I said "Yep!" Then he signed the book and I said "Thank you" and put my hand out and he shook my hand!!!!!!!! and he said "Nice to meet you" and then it was all over! But Oh God, it was brilliant!! I touched Noel Fielding and he spoke to me!!!!!!! They are both so nice and polite, but the funny thing was they looked really big, like bigger than lifesize, it was quite odd.

And here is the proof that it all happened......


I have reserved 2 tickets for the signing in Manchester in December too, so this time I'll be prepared with questions and I'll make sure Colin gets me in a photo with them.

Someone came in a full Old Gregg outfit, but she was too late to get a ticket, bless her. Full marks for being brave enough to walk through Dublin dressed like that though.

(Click any of the above photos to see them in all their full size glory!)

Woolfest 2008

Guess where I went last weekend?


This the bag I filled with goodies, but what did it contain by the end of the day??????

Tah-dah............(click on any of the pictures for a close-up!)


Five hanks of Colinette Iona to make Cherie Amour


Some cute buttons from Injabulo


3 hanks of Manos Silk Blend


3 skeins of KnitWitches sock yarn and 1 of Natural Dye Studio merino sock yarn


KnitWitches silk laceweight (600m) and KnitWitches cashmere laceweight (1000m)


See that grey spotty alpaca at the back?


Yep, this one. His name is Mingle.......


and his fleece is partly responsible for this. 6 balls of WhyNot Alpaca from Sedburgh, Cumbria, to make the Gathered Pullover from Interweave Knits magazine Winter 2007.


We went up to Cumbria on Friday but it was a bit too late to go into Woolfest and have enough time. We did go to the site to have a look and the first person we saw was Chris, dashing out the door. She was empty handed but informed us that her car was already stuffed to the brim!

We checked into the hotel and then had a lovely Italian meal that evening.

On Saturday we "did" Woolfest. I wasn't sure what to expect, but basically it was a big livestock building where everyone had set up their stalls. Yarn stalls, spinning stalls selling wheels and paraphernalia, live animals at one end including sheep, alpacas and rabbits. The Angora rabbits were hilarious, I didn't realise they had such pointy up ears.

There were plenty of stall holders whose names I recognised, and many I didn't and there were loads of ravelry badges being displayed. I bumped into J, Beryl and Chris from the knitting group, but didn't manage to spot Mel, she was probably buried in fleece!!

I bought all the stuff above (not the animals though) and Colin bought me a swift and ball winder stick (but I don't know about them until my birthday!).

The ladies of KnitWitches were very chatty and recommended an Indian restaurant that they had been to so that evening we went there. And they were there too. And Amanda from Natural Dye Studio was staying in our hotel so we saw them at breakfast.

I'm afraid I wouldn't recommend that part of Cumbria for a stay, as we went off to the coast to have a look and it was very run-down and bleak. Such a shame because the Lakes part is lovely.

Since we got back I finished my Vegas Sands cowl. I have made it quite tall and it fits snugly so it is going to be very warm in the cold weather.


Can you spot the one (not) deliberate mistake?


Talking of mistakes I have had an absolute disaster. I finished Colin's jumper as you know and had partly sewn it up when I asked him to try it on "just to see". Well, the sleeves were about 6 inches too long and the cotton was stretching so it was pulling the shoulders down making it worse. I decided to shorten the sleeve from the cuff but the first one wouldn't unravel. I decided to take the sleeves off and frog and re-knit them. But, when I went to take the sleeve that I had sewn on off, I cut the wrong thread and a hole started growing in the BACK of the jumper. So the upshot is that I now have a lovely full bag of balls of cotton and NO JUMPER!!!! I had to frog the lot!!! I will not be making it again, certainly not in the cotton, it just hung off Colin like a sack, ulgh. I think it is now destined to be a selection of string shopping bags.

But on a lighter note, I have started the Gathered Pullover and the alpaca is GORGEOUS!!!!