'Tis (the start of) the season

(Actually, I have made nearly 6 Christmas presents already, but they're for people who read this...)

Festively coloured Cascade 220 (two skeins courtesy Pavi Yarns this morning; I had the white from another project).

It's going to be a Christmas stocking for my nephew... I sort of like this one, but it's knitted in chunky/bulky so I'd have to change the stitch count, and therefore some of the patterns, and I'd like three colours rather than two; and I have the Alice Starmore Fair Isle book which is still untouched; and I love the heels and toes on the Mamluke socks (I really need to knit another pair of those...) I know I want Latvian braids in there somewhere, and the nephew's name knitted in near the top...

So I need to swatch - probably a good thing to do at the KTog this afternoon - and then chart...

Needless to say, this is not what I'm meant to be thinking about this morning; I'm in Full Procrastination Mode over something I have to write and am feeling very ambiguous about... can't tell you what, yet... What I'm meant to be doing is writing on that pad at the back of the photo... but then I had to go and collect the yarn, didn't I, or the post office would have closed and it would have been another week... (I'm ignoring the fact that if I'd collected it a couple of hours later it would have made no difference....)

But the Stocking Project will be a nice ongoing thing I can show you while I stealth-knit in the background...

Anthropologie...

I've lost count of the number of pretty, pretty links to items on the international Anthropologie site I've seen over the years on other people's sites. So when I realised they'd opened a shop in London, I thought I'd take a trip over there at lunchtime.

First thing: normally, I hate music in shops. The music here though is French indie/pop and therefore adorable. Second thing: the prices are completely weird and slightly disconnected to what you're actually buying - anything with a handmade element costs what it really should and some of the homewares are more like IKEA pricing. Third thing: they had French breakfast bowls, in colours which go with the kitchen.


I had one of these, once, before it broke; and every French household has some for drinking tea/coffee/chocolate, or beating eggs, or whatever...

First visit; won't be the last...

Battered

Regardless of the current state of the postal dispute; I got this sad, damp little item through the door today;

It had sort-of-dried into that shape - makes you realise how wet it must have been coming through the letterbox, and how wet the person delivering it must have been while writing out the illegible information... At the other end, I'll probably know the person at the post office who'll be looking for whatever-it-is on Saturday morning and will trust that they know my name and I have this curled-up card; lots of people aren't in that situation...

New in the neighbourhood...

There's a new baby next-door-but-one; I knew his gender and estimated birth date, but only bumped into one of his parents a fortnight after the event. So I whipped out a Baby Surprise Jacket and took it along...

The yarn is King Cole Mirage in colour Helsinki, bought at the stall in Durham covered market - it's lovely stuff to knit with (if you don't mind a 50% acrylic content)... and I got a lovely thankyou card from the family at the weekend...

Enabled

The usual buzz about Lidl's annual yarn bonanza hit Ravelry a couple of weeks ago. I was going to resist. In fact I did resist until last Friday, when my colleague mentioned that she had a Lidl at the end of her road, and she knew I knitted, and it didn't look bad - there was a lot of wool in it - and would I like her to go back on Saturday when she was going to be shopping there anyway?

3 packs of Treviso sock yarn in a neutral colour (75% wool/25% nylon, 200g per pack, 840m per pack, £2.99 per pack; totally dyeable, rumours of felting on Ravelry).

This colleague is one of my union reps; I can't work out whether she's assisting my general well-being, or endangering it further; but I'm in her debt (although not financially just at the moment...).

2009 books, #63

This one deserves a post on its own.

Unseen Academicals, by Terry Pratchett. London: Transworld/Doubleday, 2009.

Brilliant. Pratchett takes on the Beautiful Game and wins. We get everything from Real Football, or whatever it was called in the days of bearbaiting, cockfighting and other lethal sports, to the start of the modern game; in conjunction with Ridcully, Rincewind, the Bursar, Ponder Stibbons and a host of new and wonderfully drawn characters. There's academic and sporting rivalry, dwarfmail modelling and serious pie-making.

There's the usual combination of extreme funniness and heartbreaking serious truth; there's a lovely non-typical romance and some Beautiful People; there's that sense you get in the best of the Pratchett books that This Is the Way the World Turns, and occasionally the Way It Should Turn; and there's a bit on the Offside Rule and the Nature of Celebrity.

Wonderful and another Pratchett tour de force.

Couple of bits...

Couple of FOs - they won't look like this in wear (at least I'm hoping not!) -but two little cowls for two not-so-little girls... Both to the Clémence pattern by Katya Frankel, the top one in Aran weight (bought at The Skep in Pudsey the first year SkipNorth went there and languishing forgotten, and uninventoried, in the stash), and the bottom one in DK (Schoeller and Stahl "Limbo", one of my favourites...)

A nice quick knit once I'd figured out the pattern. It's one which is quietly more difficult than it looks; which is relatively rare in knitting... But once you get the hang of it you can't stop... There may be more of these made for Christmas...

Not a great picture - but we're into the several months where I don't see daylight... part of doing NaBloPoMo is to convince myself I'm still alive...

All Hallows

We don't do Hallowe'en much on the Green; no trick-or-treaters, not much pumpkinnery; it's not really a UK thing and this is a pretty traditional village. Sadly, we haven't had penny-for-the-guy either...

However, this is one of the funnier things I've seen in a while...



Those cats are so even-tempered. I know I'd be cut to ribbons if I tried this with the Bug, but I know a lot of US indoor cats are de-clawed so maybe that's it... the big one in the tutu looks so much like Tilda. She used to just sit down if she felt foolish, too...