Halfway there!!

I have one Sock Wars sock finished and the other cast on. Hoping to get them in the post tomorrow or Tuesday at the very latest. They are off to my victim in Arkansas, USA. I am trying my best not to be too antisocial with regards to Colin's dad and sister visiting, but this is WAR!!!!!

Amazing S.E.X. (Stash Enhancement eXpedition!!!)

Ok..........yarn, check.........needles, check..........gauge, check..............row counter, check........fingers & thumbs, check...................target, on the way!! Woohoo, 3 hours till Sock Wars 3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yesterday I went up to Liverpool for a chat with the dietitian, which was a complete waste of time. It was a four and a half hour round trip for less than 10 minutes in the appointment, for something which could have been done over the phone!!! BUT.................seeing as I was out so quick I wandered back down the hill and instead of getting back on the train, I thought I'd just "pop" to John Lewis.

OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was mooching along the huge wall of Rowan yarn, when I noticed some of it was marked down. HALF PRICE. And the Debbie Bliss, and the Mirasol! I picked up about 6 balls of various things, working out that I had about £15 worth of yarn. Then one of the staff said "Oh I'm just about to mark that down by half again, give it here" so I did and she marked it down which meant I only had £7.50 worth and could buy more. She told me to bring anything else to her and she would half it before I got to the till. This is what I ended up with.



3 balls of Rowan Scottish Tweed 4 ply for 80p each

2 skeins of Rowan Summer Tweed for £1.15 each

2 balls of Rowan Tapestry for £1 each

2 balls of Natural Silk Aran for £1 each

2 skeins of Mirasol Hacho for £1.25 each

2 skeins of Mirasol miski for £1.25 each

2 skeins of Mirasol Sulka for £1.25 each

2 balls of Rowan Felted Tweed for £1.25 each


A total of about £80 worth of yarn for a grand total of £18.70 The reason is that they are moving at the end of the month and are getting rid of all the display yarn to start off fresh in the new store. So you won't get large packs of yarn, only the odd balls on the shelf. But still, I'm going back before they move!! Hopefully Becca will come with me and we can help each other carry home our haul!!! Hahahaha!!!

Well better go and tidy the house, we have visitors this weekend, so I'd better get my jobs done before Sock Wars battle commences!! Mwa ha ha ha ha!!!!

Tidal Waves just in time........

......before Sock Wars 3 tomorrow!!! Finished these last night. There's nothing like a deadline to cure Second Sock Syndrome, the second one took me a day and a half!!

Bainbridge scarf

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

KAL, house manoeuvres & The Book Thief

This weekend I started the Bainbridge Scarf KAL. I have more or less finished it, just the ties to do which I will probably finish this evening. I have used Rowan Bamboo Soft and it is REALLY soft!! I also started a pair of Tidal Wave Socks after I finished the Zoknis, using the Opal Neon I have in my stash. The Joma jumper is moving along slowly, it is quite a boring knit, loads of stocking stitch. Pics will be in the next post (whenever that is because the computer will be moved tonight to make way for the decorating!!!)


On Tuesday evening I met up with Becca at Borders. She started a Clapotis while we were there, and she is using a gorgeous yarn in a pale bluey colour, I'm rather jealous of it actually! I think it is this one. It will be lovely when its done.


George is getting on well with the decorating. At the moment we are sleeping in the back bedroom and we have now been turfed out of the living room as he is starting that today. Poor Colin ended up moving all the books yesterday because the dust really got to me and I spent the day sneezing and with a streaming nose. The living room needs to be finished by Wednesday because the new carpet is coming then.


I had wanted to go to Wonderwool Wales this weekend but Colin was due to be on a course all weekend and I didn;t fancy driving down through deepest darkest Wales on my own for 3 hours each way! But Saturday luchtime he abandoned the course so we could have gone. However, with all the removals needed its a good job we didn't. But he has promised to take me to Woolfest instead at the end of June. Mel and maybe Chris are going to this too so we may be able to meet up. I think we are going to make a weekend of it and stay over for a couple of nights in a nice hotel. It is in Cockermouth in Cumbria, somewhere I've never been before.

I have just started reading Grave Doubts by Elizabeth Corley. I'm only a few pages in so no comments on it yet.

I finished The Book Thief yesterday. I really enjoyed it even though it was set in WWII Germany. It was interesting because you get some idea from the German perspective of life during the war on a normal street. They were just ordinary people same as everyone else, running to shelters when the air raids went off etc. There was a slight Anne Frank-ness to it, with the family hiding a Jewish man in the basement for part of the book but the main character is a 9 year old girl called Leisel who is sent to a foster family after her brother dies and her mother is "sent away". She comes to love her foster parents and settles into the local community. They are very poor and she takes any opportunity she can to get hold of books which she reads over and over, finally writing her own book in the basement. The narrator of the book is Death, who comes to carry away the souls of those who don't survive for various reasons, and who takes a special interest in Leisel throughout her life. If that sounds interesting, get yourself a copy! Another bonus is that there are short chapters!

Zoknis finished

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!!

Farewell

As this yarn was so reasonably priced in the indoor market, I went back on Saturday and bought 10 balls which is hopefully enough to knit this for Colin.

The pattern is Joma from Let's Knit magazine issue 4. I made a start over the weekend and have used one ball already. I'm just hoping I bought enough, it could be tight at the end! I am making it shorter though so it may be okay.

A few posts back I mentioned that I was having a "I have to buy something" day but didn't explain why. The reason was that we said goodbye to Charlie aka The Gorgeous One the night before. We had contacted Westie Rescue and they were happy to take him but it would have meant us driving him over to Doncaster to a foster home. So in the meantime we placed an ad in Pets at Home and we had a phone call from a couple who came round to see him. As they left we had another phone call from a friend of a friend of the lady who runs the puppy classes we had been to. She was desperate to see him so came round the same evening. Over the next few days we went to both houses to check they had secure gardens etc, and just to put our minds at rest that he would be going to a good home. In the end we chose the family in Ellesmere Port. They were absolutely delighted to have him and came straight round to get him. It was all over so quick. We heard from them the next day and he had had a good night so that was good. They have promised to send me a photo of him when he is fully grown as I'd like to see how he turns out. So it was all very sad but I think it was the right thing to do for him and us. He will get lots of attention where he is because there are practically 5 adults in their house (2 grown up children and the son's live-in girlfriend) and there will always be someone around for him. They had to change his name because their next door neighbour has a dog called Charlie so he is now called Alfie which shouldn't be too different for him to get used to.

So here are a few pictures I took of him the afternoon before he went.






We are going to wait at least 12 months before thinking about a dog again, and then we won't get a puppy. We totally underestimated the amount of work you need to put in and we let Charlie down on that front. So we would go for a rescue dog of at least 2 years old I think.

Onto other things........I gave up on Stephen King's Cell, it was a bit of a gore-fest at the beginning. So I am now reading The Book Thief. For some reason Colin gave up on this after a few pages but I think its okay. Nina, I shall review it when I have finished!

My car is going back to the garage tomorrow cos the gear stick is really giving me problems. I am struggling to get first and second gear. I am also thinking of changing the car anyway because the service at the Ford garage is very poor. I test drove a VW Fox and a VW Polo yesterday and I think I prefer the Polo. So we will probably go out to Fords of Winsford next Sunday and have a look cos there are a couple on their website. They have all kinds of makes though so I may look at something else too.

Borders knitters

Well here we are, the motley crew of Borders knitting group!
These two were taken from opposite ends of the table


These are 3 new members who came last night, I think they were (l-r) Gaele, Kerry and Clare - (and that is my 2nd Clapotis taking shape in the foreground)


and this is (l-r) Becca, Karen, & Anne (who works at the LYS).


I did notice a member of Borders' staff taking a photo too so I'm not sure if that is going to end up on their website.

So we had a total of 18 participants last night. Some missing faces from the first meeting but the new people more than made up the shortfall (we had 13 at the first meeting). Chris came down and so did Mel who I hadn't met before but killed in Sock Wars in the autumn. We felt like we'd known each other for ages from reading each others blogs and emails. We are both signed up again so I hope we don't get each other as targets again this time.

We had to ask for a second table and more chairs to accommodate everyone! We were told that we wouldn't be able to have more than 20 so we will have to work out how to limit the numbers a bit. It goes to show there was a demand for a knitting group in the Chester area though.

Little acorn

I was going to take this project to do at knitting group tomorrow, but I started it yesterday and it grew so quick that I finished it off this morning after sewing up the Drops cardigan. I think the knot in the top is so cute, it looks like the cap of an acorn. I think Jambi is modelling it very well!

The yarn is really soft, I always thought cotton would be quite rough but this is lovely. I think I need to make a larger item in this yarn, and it was only £2 a ball at the market. And organic too. I only used half a ball on this hat.

Drops 88-4 finished

Here is a dodgy ole photo of me in the finished Drops 88-4 cardigan. I had literally just finished sewing on the sleeves. It is a bit gapey across the fronts so I'm going to pin it out and block it within an inch of its life to try to stretch it out. Hopefully it will dry by tomorrow evening.

New yarn

A couple of new yarn aquisitions from this morning's trip to town. 2 of each.


It was a "I need to buy something" morning, I'll explain later.

Repairs and a book review

I can't believe it is already only a few days until the Borders Knitting group meeting. It is next Tuesday. I have been in to the LYS and they have had more interest so who knows how many people will come this month. I have sent reminders to last month's attendees.

My Drops 88-4 is almost finished. I have to sew seams and do the neckband. I could probably finish it by Tuesday if I put my mind to it at the weekend. I'm just dreading picking up a hundred and something stitches around the neck and making it look neat, as the fabric is quite loose and holey. I am still working on the Zoknis, no progress on those lately, and I also want to cast on an Umbilical Cord Hat from the Stitch& Bitch book for a friend's baby due in May. There's a lovely one here. That may be my Borders project for Tuesday as it's small and portable. I'm going to use some Twilley's organic cotton.

So my car got fixed under warranty. The gearstick is still a bit stiff though so I don't know what they did. You just have to trust that they did something and didn't just leave it sitting in the corner of the garage for two days.

The Sky+ box had to be replaced in the end too so I lost 2 episodes of Supernatural, 2 of ER and the Boosh documentary that were saved on the hard disk!! Drat!!

And now especially for Nina - a review of The Keep. The story is about Danny who as a kid leaves his cousin Howard in a cave, and he isn't found for a few days. Years later Howard is renovating a castle in Eastern Europe and pays for Danny to come over to help. The castle is all spooky and you are expecting a lot of supernatural goings on. Then there is the part where Danny and Howard end up in some dark tunnels, and relive the experience from when they were kids. In the meantime there is another story going on which is the narrator of Danny's story who is a prison inmate called Ray who fancies his writing teacher. The book had a lot of potential which it didn't live up to. I didn't get the point of the narrator part of the book. And the reliving of the tunnel/cave thing was over and done with in a few pages. Then at the end you get at least 30 pages of the story of the writing teacher which I thought was completely unnecessary. If there had just been the castle story it could have been expanded and made much better, there were too many unfinished threads. The book has now gone off to a Bookmoocher in the USA.

Looks like we are going to see the Mighty Boosh live tour twice this year. Colin's nephew has two spare tickets for Dublin on 17th September which now have our names on them. Woohoo, that's a whole two and a half months before we see them in Manchester.

Hog Roast

Not a lot going on here at the moment apart from the agonising decision of whether The Gorgeous One stays or not. We have been making enquiries.

On Easter Saturday we went to the Chester Food & Drink Festival. It is on every Easter and is great, you get to taste all kinds of local produce, cheeses, breads, relishes and pickles etc. The wallet doesn't half take a bashing though. And of course there is the hot roast pork bap known as the Hog Roast for lunch, carved straight off the spit, yeee-ummm.

I have been reading a bit more lately and just finished Blow Fly by Patricia Cornwell. I couldn't get into it at first because it felt like it was written by someone else. All the previous Scarpetta novels are written in the first person from the perspective of Kay Scarpetta, but his one was in the third person and she wasn't in it much at all. It was all about the various secondary characters that have cropped up in previous books, (so it is best that you have read those first). The ending was quite weak too.

I have now started The Keep (see last post) and am not sure about that either. Have my expectations of a good book gone up? I think I will like the story of this book but the writing is annoying me. The main character is Danny and we follow him along, Danny this, Danny that, when all of a sudden in the middle of a paragraph it changes to "I .....". Who is this "I"? It's not Danny anyway. Very odd.

I am still partway through the second Zokni sock but am working on my Drops 88-4 to try to get it finished. It is all in fits and starts though, as I go upstairs to do a bit (out of the way of little sharp teeth) but don't really want to sit up there on my tod! I like to knit in front of the telly.

Talking of which the Sky is on the blink so they are coming out to fix it tomorrow. My car is also in the garage, for a new clutch and bearings (its only done 5200 miles for goodness sake!!!) but luckily I am 5 days before the end of the warranty and it is covered. Would have been £600 otherwise! Eek!

PS Hope the Boosh fans like the new pics of Noel on the left side bar!!

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!!

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.

6 months on

It is 6 months ago today that Colin had his tumour removed. Time has flown and you would never know, apart from the scar running from his elbow to his wrist. He has a follow up scan next week and a consultant appointment in April, but fingers crossed everything is going well.

Knitters within Borders!

I have just had a comment on my last post from Nina asking how the knitting group went on Tuesday - so I'd better tell you hadn't I?

Well I knew there would definitely be 3 of us, myself, Janet (the other organiser) and a lady from ravelry called Mandy. The start time was 6.30pm so I got there early at about 6.15pm. I wandered down to where the table was set out with about ten chairs and notices saying "reserved for knitting group". There was no-one there at this point so I went over to the magazines and had a look at the new Interweave Knits issue. At 6.25 I wandered back again and there was still no-one there but there was a girl looking at the knitting books and she had a bag with her that could have contained some knitting. I went to Starbucks and got a coffee and took it back to the table.

I'd just sat down when Janet arrived and then it happened..........the knitters came out of the woodwork!! They must have all been lurking behind the fixtures in the shop waiting for someone to sit down first. The girl I'd seen (Becca) came over and then another 10 knitters making a total of 13 of us. There were even 3 generations of one family. A member of staff came and said that she had hoped to come but that she was working but would join us next month.

There was a range of ages, the average probably being mid-40s, the oldest probably 80 and the youngest about 10. Everyone was making something different, and there were a range of yarns too. We had a couple of beginners and some very experienced so a great range of knitters really. I gave Becca a sort of lesson in casting on for socks and also helped her start a swatch for a lacy top she wants to knit. I need to get a simple sock pattern to her because the one she had assumed you had some knowledge of sock knitting. I think the basic Opal sock pattern would be best for her to start on.

I took my Zokni socks to work on but ended up only doing 5 rounds in 2 hours because of the chatting! I am really pleased at how it went though, and am looking forward to next month. For anyone interested, it is on Tuesday 8th April @ 6.30pm. I wonder how many there will be next month. I'll see if anyone minds me taking a photo so you can see all our happy, smiling, knitting faces!

books etc.

So last Sunday was Mother's Day, and this is what I made for my mum. It is from the latest issue of Let's Knit magazine. It came out quite big because I used a ball of Wendy Fusion and 5mm needles, so I didn't have enough lavender in the garden to fill it. I added some polyester stuffing in the end. I also sent her some Liz Earle body wash.



I actually watched her open it on the webcam!! This webcam has produced much hilarity, not least of which when I flashed my knickers and other undergarments at them. (The ones hanging on the clothes dryer behind me at the time!!). Here's my mum and step-dad concentrating at their end!

Whilst listening to a knitting podcast Pointy Sticks, (which sadly hasn't been updated since March 2007) I heard about an earlight. This is like a bluetooth telephone earpiece but is actually a torch. I got one from ebay and it's ingenious and perfect for knitting when it is getting dark and the light in the room just isn't bright enough for fiddly work.

Tuesday night is the first night of the new knitting group. I'm quite excited and intrigued to see how many turn up. I think we will be at least six anyway so it won't be a complete flop.

I have just finished reading Six Sacred Stones by Matthew Reilly. As usual you have to suspend all disbelief when reading an MR novel. This one ended at a huge cliffhanger and its going to be ages till the next book. I think I need something totally different after that so am going to try The Beekeeper's Pupil. I've had it for ages so its time I got round to giving it a go. Nothing else on my 50-strong TO Read shelf is jumping out at me.

I joined Bookmooch about a week ago. You list books you have read and get points for listing them, and then if someone asks for one you get more points which you can then spend on books you want. I have been asked for 7 of my books already so am building up a nice little cache of points to spend when I feel like it.

Slip up on slip stitch

This is what my Stitch n Bitch calendar told me on Tuesday.


Is that right? Does everyone else do it that way. I've been doing it wrong then!! I put the right hand needle into the stitch as if to knit and then slip it off the left hand needle. Am I twisting the stitch by doing that then? Hmm, going to have to investigate this further.

The sock has been going pretty slowly as the Gorgeous One has now got big enough to jump onto the couch and nothing is safe!!

His Royal Highness!!

I have been trying to think about what to write in this post. I didn't just want to waffle on about my knitting or what i had for tea last night as it is an auspicious occasion - my 200th post.

And then, this morning, it happened. The Gorgeous One's official Kennel Club papers came in the post. We had known the names of his parents, but didn't know that he had an official title. We thought we had to do that bit, but no, the breeder does it. I was still in bed when Colin opened the post. I heard him sniggering, and then he came upstairs with a cup of tea and the paperwork.

And so, on this very special occasion, I give you........................(ta ta ta ta ta ta taaaaaaaaa!!!)........

Charming Prince Snowy

Ahhh, the poise, the grace, the dignity...........