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!

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!

October means......

..........Socktoberfest!!

I have joined the ravelry group and also the Through the Loops group where there is a mystery sock thread going on for Socktoberfest. The pattern is a mystery but part of it is released each Wednesday. So far just the cuff has been released (30 rounds) and I have completed 25 rounds so far. I'm not sure whether to do both socks or just do one and then the other after, but if I do this I won't have a finished pair by the end of October which is kind of the point. I think I'll have to start the second one from the other end of the ball.

I am using the Wild Fire Fibres Bambino that I started on the Bayerische socks with. Those got frogged as it was a VERY fiddly pattern and my Addis weren't pointy enough for all the cabling and twisting so the yarn is put to much better use on this mystery sock.

Tasty cakes

First off, a pic of my socks in progress. The Show Off Stranded Socks. An easy 4 row repeat to remember. I'm using the Socks That Rock mediumweight and they are coming out quite big but they will make good slouchy socks I think.


While we were at Woolfest, Colin bought me a swift (shhh, I don't know about it 'til my birthday) so that he doesn't have to sit with his hands held out wrapped in skeins of yarn while I wind them into balls. He also got me a ball winder stick (technically known as a Nostepinne) which you wind the yarn onto by hand (link = YouTube video) to make a centre pull ball. I decided last week to have a go on a 20mm knitting needle. It takes ages to wind a ball onto it. It'll be fine for left over bits of yarn in shortish lengths but I decided to have a look for a wool winder.

I found this one second hand on ebay and it arrived yesterday.


I couldn't wait to give it a go but as I don't have a swift (nudge, nudge, wink, wink.) I used a couple of balls I'd already wound by hand. And look at them now........

I think the technical name for these is cakes, and the most tasty looking non-edible cakes they are. It was so quick!! My skeins are going to wind so fast. Wheeee.

Last Tuesday evening was Borders Knitters night. We had a total of 21 people there this time, which seems to be about the number we have each month. Another 3 new members turned up. I don't know what we would do if all the people who have ever come all turned up at once, there would be over 30 of us and I think Borders would have a fit! As it is, we are going to be going fortnightly probably as of August.

In my last post I mentioned some yarn that I couldn't show. That was because I got this for Becca and she hadn't seen it yet.



I wasn't happy that the yarns I picked for her at Woolfest were sufficiently turquoise, which was what she had asked me to get, so I got these from Scandinavian Knitting Design. 2 balls of Alpaca and 1 150g ball of Kauni Effect. She did take one of the sock yarns I got and the bluey skein of Manos Silk Blend from Woolfest too.

Poor Becca is a bit poorly at the mo and is off work and very bored, so I popped over to see her on Monday. We have decided to have a knitalong for a Booga Bag, using the Kauni Effect. This is my colour

This is one of those patterns that EVERYONE on ravelry has made, so I succumbed in the end. We knitted some swatches to see how they would felt and bunged them into Becca's washing machine at 40 degrees. Not a lot happened so she put hers back in at 60. After doing this 3 more times she eventually got a decent felted fabric. I went home and put mine in again at 60 and it felted straight away. So we have concluded that her newer machine is far too gentle and we need mine because it has a much more vigorous agitation action. When the bags are done we will chuck them in my machine at 60.

Colin is getting a new car, a Mazda 3. I quite like the Mazda 2 for myself but I'll wait a few more months I think. He is picking it up tomorrow and then later on we are going to the National Exhibition of Wildlife Art preview evening. We got invited because we bought some pictures last year. We will have to restrain ourselves I think!

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!!!!

Bainbridge scarf

Also congratulations to my friend Mark who has just become a daddy. Click on over and see his cute little son Ben.

New knitty is up!

The spring issue of Knitty.com is out. It has probably been out for ages but I only just noticed!!! I think Jaden is very pretty and will be going on my list. And Marjorie. Posey looks fab but I couldn't be bothered with all that fiddling about. These are cute too. Oh dear, my ravelry queue is never going to get knit!

I'll get Colin to take a photo of me wearing the earlight at the weekend. It produced a lot of giggles at the knitting group on Tuesday.

Sock crisis!!

I have been having a major sock crisis!! I need to have a sock in progress, it's just one of those things. I finish a pair of socks and I have to cast on another pair straight away. Is that an addiction? From my last post you can see I cast on the Zokni socks in the Fauveline Yarn. This is the second time I have attempted these socks, the first time was with garnstudio fabel in the 672 colourway. This was far too busy to show the stitch pattern, so they got ripped out and the yarn became a Dragon Scales scarf. This time the Fauveline yarn was too fiddly and also too busy, so the little I had done (one and a bit repeats) got ripped out and that yarn put back in the stash for a later date. I really want to use this yarn because it is so interesting and very soft when knitted up which is a bit surprising. I have now cast on for a third time using a plain(-ish) light coloured yarn (the bottom one in this pic).

I am only on the rib so no opinions on its success yet but fingers crossed.

I have also whipped up a little project that I saw in the latest issue of Let's Knit magazine. I can't show it yet as it will be a gift. (If you are on ravelry you can see here). It took me an evening and about another hour to complete and I used up the single ball of Wendy Fusion from my stash.

I only have 2 other WIPs, one is the Drops 88-4 cardigan (link on left sidebar) which I really want to finish this month, and the other is a lacy scarf that has been hibernating for about 12 months. I picked it up the other day and it is actually quite pretty, so I may go back to that too.

Well I've gone and let myself in for another round of sock-related bloodshed and signed up for Sock Wars III. It all kicks off on 9th May. This time it is sponsored by South West Trading Company Tofutsies Yarn but I don't think you have to use that yarn. It seems that that would suggest that this time it will be sock yarn weight rather than DK weight as used in the last two rounds. Well we shall wait and see. Go on over and sign up, the more warriors the better, but be warned there is a $2 charge this time too, but what's that? A pound? Nothing really.

There is growing interest in the knitting group at Borders. They have even put it in the events page on the website (click the link and scroll down). I was up there on Sunday afternoon and there was a poster on the notice board just inside the door and one on the end of the knitting books section, so it is well publicised. There has been interest from customers of Stash too, so I wonder how many people will turn up. 'Citin'!! I was listening to the podcast "Lixie Knits It" and she mentioned she was on ravelry so I messaged her to say I liked her podcast. We "chatted" a bit and I mentioned the group and she said she will try to remember to mention it on the next podcast which she is doing at the weekend!

Have a look at this pattern, Cherie Amour from knitty.com. I managed to miss this one and only happened to click on a link from another blog. It is definitely going on my to-do list!

Finally on knitting news, I bought a ringbinder and some clear pockets and sorted out all my printed off knitting patterns. They were all over the place but are now filed by type - socks, scarves, jumpers etc. I had more than I thought in the end, I just kept finding them in my various knitting bags and piles of magazines. Oh there's a thought, I could go through the magazines and tear out the patterns I want to keep and chuck the rest in the recycling, hmm, may do that this evening.

Update on The Gorgeous One - he started getting very defiant and ignoring our attempts to stop him doing things he shouldn't so we rang up Amanda at BarkBusters for advice. She said to not give him any praise or cuddles etc for 48 hours!! It was agony. When he realised what was going on he started becoming extra cute and desperate for attention, bringing us all his toys and rolling around the floor as if to say "look at me, aren't I wonderful?" His behaviour did improve though when he worked out he wasn't getting attention. This morning he got lots of cuddles and seemed none the worse for his experience.

I hate to even think about it, but the big birthday is coming up later in the year. I have decided I would like to take better photos and learn how to do it properly. I like taking "snaps" but I'd like to be able to take arty type photos. I know you need to be a bit artistic to recognise an arty subject in the first place, and I'm not really that way inclined, but surely you can learn that to some extent. Anyway, Colin suggested that he gets me a digital SLR camera for the big birthday, so I'm going to take my time and get advice on what would be a good one to get for "an enthusiastic beginner"! I want to learn about lighting and f-stops and all that technical stuff that the compact point-and-shoot camera that I now have does for me. And then there's all the imaging software stuff these days instead of developing. Could be a huge learning curve.

Vince's Tundra Hat!

On ravelry, I am one of the moderators on the group called The Coconut Lodge, which is for fans of The Mighty Boosh to chat about the Boosh and also show off any Boosh-inspired knits. Knittyinpink suggested we had a bit of a knitalong based on the hat that Vince wears in the series 1 episode Tundra. I found a couple of suitable-ish patterns but I wanted to make a felted hat. I was using the leftover Lamb's Pride bulky from the Fabulous Lace Inset Cardigan, and 8mm needles, so I went with Ryan's Hat from here but using the larger yarn and needles. Once I started it was a quick knit, and grew very rapidly into this..............
I was a little bit worried it wasn't going to shrink enough during the felting, but after 2 goes through the 40 degree cycle it came out like this................
(that's me pretending to be Vince asleep in the snow, didn't quite carry it off!!)

Anyway, I'm really pleased with it, apart from it maybe could be a bit taller. It is worked down from the top, so maybe the increases could have been done on every 3rd row instead of every 2nd row. I had bits of skeins left so I think I used about one and 3 quarter skeins on it. I'm not sure if I will add any Booshy embellishments, I'll see what everyone else does with theirs first. I don't want to make it so that I don't want to wear it in public for fear of ridicule, at the moment I think it is wearable apart from being very RED. I shall have to get one of the red T-shirts with the lightning bolts on, and then I can wear it with that and the Glam Rock Ski Suit Socks while I'm watching the DVDs!! (Colin thinks I'm bonkers!).

We had a lovely evening with Gill on Sunday, and then Tuesday we met up with some friends who moved back to Ireland in January, and who were over for a visit to sort out some things on the house they are trying to sell. We had lunch at The Rake near Cheshire Oaks and then popped into Borders for coffee afterwards. We were too busy chatting that I didn't get a chance to look at any books!!!

Yesterday we went over to Manchester for Colin's first radiotherapy appointment. I sat in the waiting area listening to the Jonathon Ross podcast and trying not to make a show of myself by stifling my sniggering. I did think of taking some knitting but I think sniggering and knitting in a corner may have resulted in 'the men in white coats' carrying me off!! The session all went fine and there were no nasty effects so he is going to go on his own for a couple of weeks, and then see if he needs me to drive after that. I gave him a session of Reiki last night to help things along, and I'll do about a 20 minute top up each day.

So it means I don't get to skive off work now!! Pah!

belated thanks, ravelling in it, and foodie friends.

I just wanted to say a belated thanks to my step-dad Bill, who came up to visit with my mum last weekend and washed both our cars and cut the grass. I am ashamed to say that mine hadn't been done since he did it last visit in May. Gulp!

I am having fun on ravelry. I now have 17 "friends" and have uploaded several of my finished projects, books, stashed yarns and queued some patterns I would like to make. AND, a friend and I have started a group called The Coconut Lodge, for all things Booshy, and we have 7 members! One thing I have noticed from putting up pics of my stash is that there is a lot of blue/green there. I need to add some colour desperately.

Less than a week until Sock Wars now. I have 3 possible yarns now. If my victim is female I'm sticking with the Natural Dye Studio BFL sock yarn

If my victim is male, I'm going with garnstudio Fabel
And if either of them are allergic to wool, I have some Rowan Bamboo Soft.
I have 3.25cm DPNs AND Addi circulars, so I'm all set. Let battle commence!!!

I have given up on The Angel Makers. When I bought it I thought it was going to be witchy and a bit supernatural but it has turned into a saga of a woman who gets beaten up by her fiance. No thanks! So I have abandoned it and gone for something I know I will like, Memnoch the Devil by Anne Rice. Its the 5th in the Vampire Chronicles.

Last night we had a couple of friends round for dinner. We hadn't seen them since January. A very nice evening was had by all and my tuna fish pie went down very well. Heather brought some runner beans picked from her garden that day, and they were lovely with it. Colin bought some Stinking Bishop cheese, and I'm afraid it tasted to me like a cowpat, (not that I've ever tasted a cowpat! I came close once but that's another story) so I had some of the goat's cheese and the smoked Lancashire. Colin did a fancy starter of Ciabatta with Asparagus and Poached Egg, mmmm, delish!

On Tuesday we go to Manchester to see the radiotherapy team at Christie's. We should find out when Colin's treatment starts and for how long. Wish us luck.

Ravelry name

Hooray, I got on ravelry yesterday!!!

My username is ElectroGirl

Wow, that is one scary black hole of a place, several hours have just vanished without a trace!! I think I shall have to limit myself, but at the moment it is a HUGE novelty. There are some great resources for seeing what other people have made with yarns you may have in your stash, and also pics of things people have made from patterns you have made. 'Citin'!!!

Oh, and we need people for a Mighty Boosh ravelry group, so leave me a comment with your ravelry name if you are interested.

Can you tell what it is yet?

This is (was) my secret project. (Click to enlarge) I have confessed to the "victim" what i was doing and that it won't be in time for her birthday. (And that is despite the postal strike). It is going to take me a lot longer than I thought, and will be interrupted by Sock Wars anyway. So I'm going to send an alternative gift, and keep hold of this myself for now. Phew, I didn't realise you needed 18 stitch markers either. Luckily, thanks to Blossom who sent me 6 in my birthday surprise package, I did have enough in the right size. They are a bit of a mixture though. (BTW if anyone is still trying to figure it out, it is a Clapotis.)

I have just got gauge for Sock Wars in Garnstudio Fabel too, so if my victim is a man I will use that because it is blues/greens and greys. Not sure a man would want Shades of Grapefruit to be honest!

519 ahead of me for ravelry, I reckon I might just get on this evening!!! Now I just have to think of a cool name. A friend is going to start a Mighty Boosh group on there, so if you are interested leave me a comment, we need a couple more people to be able to set it up.

Secret projects

The secret project is a little bit ambitious. It would mean knitting like a demon for a few days, and that is not the best idea with my hands. So a little reassessment is in order. I will complete what I have started but not for the deadline I had intended. A new (smaller) secret project will be underway tomorrow. Watch this space.

1167 ahead of me now, that's about 2 days away!!!!