Thanks for sticking with the posts this month; I'm going to try and keep up with more frequent posting, but posting every day in December may be a no-no!
It was vile outside, and a perfect day for just sitting around knitting and making copious quantities of tea, but I had promises to keep...
Maintained my reputation as a Weather Goddess - was awake for a couple of hours during the night listening to the rain battering against the front windows - but we had a good wander around and shop and I only got completely soaked on my way back up to the station...
Maybe it'd have sounded more harmless if I'd included the haunted castles...
I hope it fits, and suits...
Anyway; got rid of the most out-of-date things including three separate quantities of yeast (haven't even bought bread for 2 years let alone made it) and some generic curry powders I never really liked... And although I really like star anise, I also seem to really like buying star anise more... Most of the jars came from the rather wonderful Daily Bread, but it's not the easiest place to get to without a car; I'll have to try and get there on a Saturday sometime after Christmas.
My hat from the Woolly Wormhead Mystery KAL on Ravelry is done and blocking - but I'll wait for the full reveal to put up a picture; and I started another Christmas present today...
It's not moth; fear not. I think it must have got caught on a door-handle in the cupboard under the stairs... But it's not exactly at the end of the scarf either...
There's a good 18" to re-knit; and it's the infamous "can't count to eight" scarf, and of course it's the end with 5 tassels rather than 4...
I may need to wait until after Christmas to sort it out.
This is the first end - I'm ploughing down the long stretch of very simple, easy-to-memorise lace in the middle, to the accompaniment of a lot of podcasts (finally starting to catch up after a stretch of audio-book-listening!) Either another 6 or another 14 repeats to go, depending on how much yarn is left... I think it might be the longer version, though. And then another end. There's a little bit of beading on the ends.
The yarn is a quite wonderful Knitwitches blend - 70% baby alpaca, 20% silk, 10% cashmere - which isn't on their website - and the colour is slightly greener than it is here - heading slightly towards the teal end of turquoise.
Then I started with a Latvian Braid. I actually managed the two-colour long-tail cast on this requires; but after I'd finished the braid, I realised that wasn't what I wanted and ripped it back. Repeatedly. In the end, I worked out what I actually wanted to do, and went to bed to sleep on it, and by the time I left for Tesco the next morning, I had a provisional crochet cast-on and braid.
By about lunchtime, I had three braids, one pattern and the lettering...
And then I knitted some more, pausing to blog briefly and change CDs occasionally (Jeffery Deaver's The Empty Chair - I'm working through the Lincoln Rhyme audiobooks in order) until about 8pm when I ran out of chart. Stopped to cook a bit of dinner, add some more rows to the spreadsheet/chart and then settled down to knit some more... and it was just-another-row or just-another-CD until .... erm ... 2:20am. How did that happen? (Actually, that happens to me quite often with colourwork, particularly colourwork which is growing quickly...)
Needless to say, it was a slow start this morning, but while listening to The Archers Omnibus and the rather wonderful Desert Island Discs this morning (it was Julia Donaldson, who wrote The Gruffalo among other things; I haven't read it, or any of her others, but she was funny, and warm, and moving, and picked some lovely stuff), I danced along the foot and finished the toe; and to the accompaniment of the first CD of Dorothy L Sayers's Strong Poison, in the Ian Carmichael reading (of course), I picked up the cast-on, did an attached I-Cord edging and sewed in the ends.
And it is done!!
Things I like:
And now, the obligatory reverse-of-the-work shot...
Not too shabby, if I say so as shouldn't...
I've written up some brief instructions and the chart - I need to sanity-check it (possibly by knitting another one for myself without the lettering but with a different chart on it) and will then try and work out how to upload the PDFs somewhere!
Getting quite excited about this Christmas stocking - it's looking really good. More on that tomorrow...
And now on to the disappointment. I went into the newly re-opened Central Library in Cambridge this afternoon for the second time, but to actually use their services for the first time. I didn't have a huge amount of time to spare; I suspect most people don't...
Step 1: Queue for staff attention for a couple of minutes - one of the sets of CDs I borrowed (via Waterbeach LAP) has a production problem - it's in two sets of 5 disks and although disk 6 (the first of the second set) is labelled correctly, it has the same content as disk 1 (the first of the first set). The staff member is interested in this and says he'll note the error and see what they can do. Ask if I can return my other stuff there as I've queued - but am asked to use the self-return machines instead. OK; this a new thing and I've watched the online videos saying how efficient they are.
Step 2: Attempt to use self-return machines. The first item just sits on the conveyor belt, as does the next one I try. I decide this machine is not working, and move round the corner to use another one. This is also not working; but the woman next to me is returning things, so I decide to wait for her machine to become free. She leaves, and I put my items on the conveyor belt one by one as requested. Neither moves. I keep trying, digging down to the bottom of the bag for actual books rather than the CDs and cassettes I'm trying to return. The hardbacks work fine, as do the cassettes (and it's very cool, actually - you get the title up on the screen and so on), but the CDs and paperback fail repeatedly.
Step 3: Queue again for staff attention. Someone comes to find me after a couple of minutes, and is (somewhat patronisingly) surprised I seem to be incomprehensibly unable to use self-return. She takes me over to the self-return station and (unsurprisingly to me) it doesn't work for her either. So she takes me to another terminal and finds that the items I can't return don't have the appropriate electronic tag. Apparently the problem is that they come from another library - one of the things I've always loved about Cambridgeshire libraries is that this has never ever mattered. While I have a member of staff, I ask where the audiobooks are; except I ask for "talking books" and am briskly corrected; but am pointed in the right direction.
Step 4: Pick my audiobooks. Nice selection, although I'd rather have an A-Z by author for the whole sequence than the division into CDs and Cassettes. I know a lot of people don't have cassette players any more, but most of the people I know who use audiobooks actually do - so having to look in two places is slightly annoying. But they've got a lot of new ones since I last looked and I very quickly find 3 I want.
Step 5: Head cheerily for the self-checkout stations. I've used these for books in the past but I heard in the paper that I can now also pay for other media checkout (I will owe £6.60 for the three audiobooks). When I get to the terminals, I find there's some sort of collection slot, church-style, next to them; I follow the terminals round the pillar to see if there's one which takes cards, and find there's a change machine. There's no sign saying "out of order" so I try inserting a note into the machine. Nope.
Step 6: Queue for attention again. Apparently the pay-at-checkout facility isn't working yet (some sort of indication of this would have been useful). I ask how I can pay for my loans. I'm told that I should go back to self-checkout and then queue for attention again. I decline to, and there's a lot of exasperated sighing; apparently my books can be checked out there and I can pay for them, but they'll then have to hand-write when the books are due, which seems to be a problem.
Step 7: Pay, and leave, gratefully.
As a qualified librarian, I found this whole experience incredibly disappointing. I was attempting to return 7 items and borrow 3, and it took me 27 minutes, only 6 of which were spent actually looking at the stock.
And yes, of course I'm composing an e-mail to the head of user services, or whatever title is currently fashionable.
The plaque says
I work very near the Cenotaph, and the wreaths there are impressive and moving; and some of us went out and did our 2 minutes' silence out there this morning; and I didn't and wish I had.
Snailhannah had brought her Lambies and a row was duly knitted...
... and this was the replacement bus. The fact the company was called SABLE was rather reassuring...
I thought my photos were actually better than they are... But here's a slightly strange one - three of us with cameras on a staircase.
No, Tom's head didn't really ignite; here he is later, examining some slightly dubious lions... There were quite a few very odd animals in the collections today - a dog crushing a snake on top of a cushion was definitely one which made us all giggle...
It was a lovely day; they're excellent company and we had fun. More photos of things in the collection soon.
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...
First visit; won't be the last...
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...
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).
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...
