Town and country, and a party for a book

Last weekend, I went to Brighton on Friday night, and failed yet again to get any pictures of Jan, her flat or the views therefrom, or the Brighton ICHF Show. I started off well, with a nice photo of sunset over Chelsea Bridge [please correct me; I'm an ignoramus; from the map we thought that was the most likely candidate];

and then left my camera in the bag which was propping up a basket of yarn all day... But it was lovely, and Jan and Yvonne and Annie and Fred were there , and although I wasn't in the main drag of the teaching, I showed a few people a few techniquey-type things, and purchases were made. One has already been gifted, the other will be handed over tomorrow; and then There Was Yarn. Most of it has been dyed for the weekend. But I'll blog the rest as I knit it up...

Since then, I've tried to pack a five-day week into a three-day one, mainly by avoiding unhealthy things like sleep; but as far as I'm concerned, it's Friday night now...

Now going back to the title of this, and not wanting to get all Beatrix Potter on anyone (I'm not sure I was ever that keen, although Jemima Puddleduck and Mrs Tiggy-Winkle spring to mind, mainly because of pretty bonnets and sprigged gowns; the only one I really loved was the Tailor of Gloucester with its illustrations - cats, needles, cherry-coloured yarn, utterly unrealistic Christmas deadlines, nope, no idea why I liked that one...) , until I got this job, I'd have counted myself as a country-mouse; happy to go up to town every now and then but basically content to be provincial. On mornings like today's, travelling from this (village station, 8:03 am)

to this (corner of Westminster Bridge and Parliament Street looking over Westminster Abbey, 9:37 am)

is really very pleasant. (I've no idea whether it cleared up in the village during the day - the fog had re-descended by the time I got home 11 hours later...) I'm doing the village a disservice, but the Fens in February are not, and have never been, my favourite place to be. And there is something slightly unnervingly Ruritanian about those propane cylinders right next to the track, firing off semi-controlled pop-pop-pop-pop noises in little explosions under the tracks to keep the points ice-free...

Another thing about being a daily town-mouse is that you can get to events like this

even if you can't stay very long when you get there! That's Woolly Wormhead, signing my copy of her book. There were hats galore, a full array of the glamorous models from the book (I was leaving as the last arrived fashionably late), presents flying around, and lots of knitters. MLQ was also there, but we just sort of waved at each other in the distance... This blogging business is sometimes really odd - I think I'd met MLQ before at Ally Pally; but I'm not entirely sure...

The photo above is really unflattering; sorry, Woolly - you were looking very fine when not exposed to a horribly harsh flash!! So I'm also going to post this one, which probably qualifies as a Heroically Bad Photo, but actually conveys the essence better - I tried several without flash, but there was some Serious Explaining (and therefore general animation) going on... But once I cropped this, I really liked it...

Pioneers

I was at a long meeting this morning; and had lunch there and walked back through Tower Gardens as I had my camera in my pocket. I'd seen London Daily Photo's post about the Emmeline Pankhurst statue so I thought I'd get a photo of it in the sunlight because it was really clear, pretty weather.

When I got there, there was a Photo Opportunity happening - the camera over at the left is taking a picture of Some Guy in a Dark Overcoat Wittering to Camera. The person mainly hidden behind the cameraman - you can just see her red coat - was holding a certificate - I think it may relate to this. And of course, the Lady in the black is Baroness Boothroyd; the first woman Speaker. And of course the conjunction of the statue and the reality was just... astonishing is the closest I can come to it...

I wished I'd got Madam Speaker's ankles in; she was a Tiller Girl, and you can tell... Then I realised I'd taken another photo before BB turned round because I was interested in the certificate...

I had a variety of slightly unnerving meetings today - but I love my job.

Poetry for St. Brigid

Part of the annual Silent Poetry Reading

This poem's been rattling around in my head for a few months now, maybe because my family's been blessed with two beautiful children this year... Warning : it's not exactly cheerful...

Limbo

Fishermen at Ballyshannon

Netted an infant last night

Along with the salmon.

An illegitimate spawning,

A small one thrown back

To the waters. But I'm sure

As she stood in the shallows

Ducking him tenderly

Till the frozen knobs of her wrists

Were dead as the gravel,

He was a minnow with hooks

Tearing her open.

She waded in under

The sign of her cross.

He was hauled in with the fish.

Now limbo will be

A cold glitter of souls

Through some far briny zone.

Even Christ's palms, unhealed,

Smart and cannot fish there.

Seamus Heaney, from Wintering Out (1972)

Finally, some knitting... Christmas, part I!

I've done quite a lot since Christmas, but it's been really busy; a lot of it in a good way, but the last two Wednesday nights' commutes have been nightmarish (last night it took 4h 35mins to get home, the week before just under 4 hours...) and the last couple of weekends have been nice and busy too. This weekend seems to be shaping up to be pretty well-occupied, but I've been editing pictures by dribs and drabs and there's something to show now...

This year's Christmas knitting was neither as time-consuming nor as intricate as previous years - the two baby shawls this year, particularly the cobweb-weight one, nearly killed me! Most people got something, though. On the basis that it's more blessed to give than receive, I'll start with the gifts given. And I think I'll go by approximate order of age, so babies first...

Baby A got the ubiquitous Baby Surprise Jacket - but I loved the way that the self-striping Regia DK/6-fädig (present from Jan before she moved!) behaved when knitted with the "wrong" number of stitches. It's quite a lightweight DK, so even if he's not big enough for it until the summer, there will probably still be chilly evenings when he can wear it... I think it's Joseph's-coat-ish!

Baby O had a sweater - from a lovely book I got at John Lewis just after they re-opened. The variegated yarn is one of mine; the dark blue some Emu Superwash from Sew Creative's bargain bin a year or three ago... The buttons "go" better than they appear to in this photo...

Fiona (L), and Lorna (R) now. F's sweater was my first attempt at a top-down raglan (she's tall and slim so being able to rip back the cuffs and knit them a bit longer is a distinct advantage); and I used mainly Stylecraft Apache (now discontinuted and another Sew Creative bargain) with stripes of anything-washable-I-had-handy-in-about-the-same-colours. Some of the stripes are furry, some just bright!

L got a bag - she usually gets a sweater, but her mum very sensibly reminded me she'd had one for her birthday and usually got the hand-me-downs, so why didn't I make something smaller? This is felted (some Rowan Magpie from the stash), and then embroidered with chain-stitch and buttons. It reminded me a little bit of a Kandinsky when it was finished.

On to adults. First, a Halfdome variant for a friend. I'm saying "variant" only because I didn't follow the colour-scheme - there are random numbers of rows of each colour - otherwise it's the small size from the pattern stitches-wise, and the middle size length-wise. I was convinced it was going to be too big, then too small, and in the end it turned out to be just right. This is half Rowan Felted Tweed and half Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sport (colour "Motherlode").

Some of the Christmas projects have already been blogged - Sue got a pair of the Serpentine Mitts, and my aunt Barb got the well-documented Monkeys.

Friend Chai in Canada got some Socks of Doom - and these were victims of the camera loss just before Christmas. They were knitted in a fantastic hurry before last-posting-date came along, and photographed the same week - and two days later there was the camera débâcle... At one stage I thought I didn't even have a photo of the hand-dyed yarn - but here it is...

Dad had a scarf - I made him a brown one in Felted Tweed a couple of years ago which he'd commented on several times; so I thought a grey one in the same yarn might go down well. This is a reversible cables pattern - I was slightly embarrassed to buy the pattern from here because I thought it was the sort of thing I could do for myself, and in the end I changed the number of stitches, repeats, etc.; but I'm really glad I did because it was a fun uncomplicated knit of a very nicely written pattern and I got it done well before Christmas... Unfortunately, I only seem to have a picture of it at its very beginnings - but imagine that you can see both sides and the cables are perfect both ways round; because they are...

Mam got a Nantasket Basket for holding her stocking-fillers - and I completely forgot to take a photo of that either. So here's one of a similar one I made for EJ's birthday in August.

Mam's was actually in this colour combination:

which is a swatch for the cushion I made for Jan, which she has documented elsewhere! (Another I forgot to photograph; thank God for friends with digital cameras!)

And I think that's it! Next time: beautiful yarny things received! After which normal service, whatever that is, will be resumed...

Epiphany

January 6, Epiphany, Twelfth Night... It always feels much more like the beginning of a New Year to me than the changing over of the calendars. I'll be keeping my decorations up until the last minute, as usual, and doing some New Year tidying up...

Just back from a lovely overnight break with Jan in Hove and Brighton; more on that later! But I'd just missed a train in London, so when I got to Kings Cross I visited the refurbished St Pancras - and loved the way their huge tree was still up, and the blue lights and silver star against the pale-blue girders of the ceiling. There are so many shops and bars in the ground floor, though, that I think you must have to be on the platforms themselves for the real beauty of the old station to come through... While the tattiness of Kings Cross is a bit depressing (I spent half an hour in the pub there last night, and anyone who's been in there...), I do like the cathedral-like feel of being able to see all 8 platforms at once...

Knitting content next post - promise!

2008

I wasn't going to do a retrospective on 2007, although there were some very good things in there - or a 'new year's resolution' thing for 2008, because I keep my resolutions to myself, in general...

But then I saw this over at Neil Gaiman's blog, and yet again he says it perfectly... Hope all that comes true for everyone reading in the year to come!

Every home should have one...

Not a cat (although I think every home should have one of those too); she's come back from her holidays and sloped off to the bedroom to pretend to sulk. Actually, she's come back smelling of grooming powder and stuffed with biscuits, but she does like to have a moan for form's sake...

After a day's hard tidying up, the dining-room table was finally Ready for the Assemblage of the Big Christmas Present. It arrived in November, but I didn't want to make it up before Christmas...


What can it be? It's certainly in a big enough box! (The people at the post office were worried about how far I'd have to carry it... then they looked at the address and realised that 'about 50 yards' was the answer...)


And it came with a Christmas card...


I opened it when it first arrived just to make sure Customs hadn't done Bad Things to it on the way in, but all the little bits and bobbins were securely contained in a sealed bag, so I took out the card and left the rest alone...


When you get it out of the box, here are all the bits... The envelope in the foreground says "Assembly instructions. *Read first!!!*" (If only everything in life came in a flatpack, with instructions.... no, don't go there...) Look at all that oaky goodness, on my ash dining table...




Making it up was a doddle. I got out my box of 51 screwdrivers (I haven't actually counted them in and out, some of them are socket-set-type-things, but that's what it says on the label) despite only needing one #2 Philips; and it took only a short time to assemble the windmilly bit on the front (seen here sitting on top of the base with its rotation-counter)

wonder very briefly about which way round the main post went into the the base - before, you know, actually looking at it: this guy leaves nothing to chance:

sort out the bits which needed to go onto the main spindle [ditto]

and finally, wind a skein!

I had the idea of a 'can you guess what it is yet' series of photos, but I got carried away with the precision of the thing, and how it all made up so perfectly, and forgot to take photos of most of the assembly. But it's a skein winder from Ball and Skein, and it works brilliantly. Thanks to Mam and Dad for going with my somewhat strange idea of what I'd like for Christmas, and to Judy and Chris for the help with shipping info, different woods, etc.!

Dyeing day tomorrow, I think - better check the vinegar situation...

Home again

I'm back!

You know when you go away on holiday, and you think your house is a bit of a mess, but you get home and think, 'actually, where I live is quite nice'?

This time, not so much.

I had people round the last two nights I was home, was wrapping presents until 3:30am, had 3 hours' sleep and then finished a present and wrapped that, sort-of-did the washing up, packed in the last hour and flew out of the door for the train (sans hairbrush, moisturiser or stitch-markers); and the house looks like it. For my own sanity, I'm going to clear up before I sort out the photos of the Christmas knitting. But couldn't resist posting this; nephew Baby A in his Woolly Wormhead I-cord beanie (a free pattern!)

More later...

Finally festive

Long time, no blog... It's not that no knitting has gone on - some of it I can even show you - but the last couple of weeks have been full of small, hassling events like late trains and failed signals, and lost cameras, and mail containing replacement cameras getting lost en route, and so on... All sorted out now, I hope... The last of the Christmas shopping is done; the last of the Christmas knitting is still to be done - two little hats to go! - but it's under control...



At about 6 last night though, the house still looked as if a bomb had hit it, and was still tinsel-free and without a tree... So I thought whatever... and just put up the decorations in the middle of the mess anyway.



Happy Christmas everyone, from me and Tiny Clanger. She's back on top of the tree, her battery hasn't yet run down so she still shouts in Clanger as required... And this is the first photo with the new camera. At the moment, the memory card hasn't arrived, so won't before I set off North, but Dad has a spare, apparently... Still have wrapping and packing to do, and the Bug has just been borne off for her holiday, swearing all the way; maybe there will be photos of knitting later on; maybe not.

Happy 70th, Mr F.

After my extremely good lunchtime fish-and-chips (the benefit of working in a traditional institution on a Friday! And they home-make their tartare sauce, too...) I went off to read the papers; someone was already reading the Grauniad so I ended up with the Indy instead. Don't know about you, but if I'm knitting as well as reading, I tend to absorb more including the ads, because I'm loath to stop and turn the page - so I read the birthday column today, and found that the Grand Panjandrum of colour, Kaffe Fassett, is 70 today. Which has dragged me out of my long blog-silence.

Does anyone remember a series in the Times in about 1983-4 about knitting? They had contributions from Richard Rutt, and Elizabeth Zimmermann... And the pattern for the Toothed Stripe sweater which later appeared in Glorious Knitting; which blew my mind with its sheer simplicity - no 'you will not get the expected results if you do not use X-brand yarn', no 'blue with green should not be seen', just sheer, wild, rich colour. I was about 17 at the time and I haven't put down the needles since...

So, happy birthday, Mr F. I know there are many more universally revered figures in the knitting world, including Mrs Zimmermann, but that was my personal Knitting Can Alter the Way the World Spins on its Axis moment... And I don't give a damn which way you weave your ends in; or if you do.

So some colour. A very good excuse to show you the fabulously bright skeins I got at the Secret Santa exchange at the knitting group at Liberty last night... Handspun merino!

Not entirely sure how much there is in each skein, but it looks to be about 4-ply weight, so I think there's enough to do a really decent splash of colour against the background of some of the dourer (and we're talking Gordon Brown just after Prime Minister's Questions dour) colours in the stash... They're from Victoria; but I only know Victoria from a couple of evenings at Lib's so I don't know whether they're her handspun or not!

(Nic and baby Pete were also there, first time I'd met him, and he was lovely and they were both looking extremely well...)

And a bit more monotone, but this is why I've been AWOL for the last two weeks - steeling myself to do some stitch samples for a class tomorrow.

I've not done a lot of stitching over the last few months (and frankly for a while before that), but it's Christmas so something ornamenty for this four-hour workshop... These will become a 6-petalled poinsettia-like object (no, I haven't counted how many petals/leaves a poinsettia has; and no, I don't care...), once the final petal is complete...

My personal favourite is at the front of this photo... shame I managed to get my personal least favourite in focus at the back, but that's trying to do flash-free photography after a long, hard week for you (in the sense of there is so much to learn and I need to turn myself into some sort of sponge and just absorb all of this while coming up with some seriously good ideas every now and then to justify my existence, rather than actually difficult, in the former sense of I am mindblowingly bored and under-rated but I am still a professional so I will attempt to derive some satisfaction from the minutiae of the daily process; I still have the sense that someone wrote a job description for me and it would be crazy not to fill it!)

I'm off to write up the instructions for all those petals now...

Have other things to show - probably on Sunday as I'm off to view (as yet blogless) Sue's new, and hard-won flat tomorrow night after teaching; if I'm still sentient... Otherwise I'll go and see it anyway; I have a housewarming present and bottle of pink fizz to impart, after all...

(And if anyone's bothered reading this far, and has worked this out - is it just me, or is getting paragraph formatting to work in New Blogger a serious pain? Editing the HTML really doesn't seem to work all that well either!)

Nephew!

Updated: now with photo content!

My SIL and brother's baby, born yesterday at lunchtime (with sharp nails, see photo!), is a boy called Alexander Paul, henceforth to be known as Baby A on this blog - after this report saying that most teenagers are providing way too much information, I have no idea how much everyone will know about this year's generation of babies! Everyone OK, and all fingers and toes counted and so on... yay, and phew!

6lbs though, which is good and healthy, although marginally smaller than the mammoth babies (myself included) of past generations... Which gives me an excuse to knit him something else, as if one were needed. (Yes, indeed, it's another Heartbreakingly Cute Baby Kimono from those Mason-Dixon people; this time with buttons because despite having an enormous quantity of haberdashery round here, it doesn't seem to include ribbon of the correct shade...)


(He's also getting the EZ baby jacket with the rainbow collar shown last week, once I sew the buttons on whichever front boys' buttons go on, and also this hat with tentacles, pattern available gratis thanks to Woolly Wormhead who's knitting, and giving away patterns for, fabulous hats in anticipation of her own baby next year)




Not as cute as the baby, but here's the Bug, helping with the button choice. Well, not really. As far as she's concerned,

Sorry. It was only a matter of time before the lolbug made her appearance...

Otherwise it's Monkeys all the way:

Thursday: progress slightly hampered by my first really huffy seat-companion so far. Not only did he feel he needed to take possession of both seats by that sitting-with-his-legs-wide-apart thing, but he was also going to make seriously exasperated pshaw noises all the way home as soon as I pulled out my knitting. As I'd a) already had to fight my way on and off various platforms due to collapse of Victoria Line and b) discovered that if I plug my dead iPod into my government-issue PC to charge it, it does everything bar calling the police and c) lost a beautiful rosewood dpn in the lunch area (I went back on Friday morning but I suspect someone mistook it for a coffee-stirrer or something and had binned it - the cleaning is very good! and thankfully I very rarely use the 5th needle in a set - it was just very sad, as I'd decided this was my most favourite set of dpns, ever...); I just had to be content with the last (half)seat on the train, and try and tune him out by knitting and humming (irritatingly, I hoped) to myself...


Friday: progress assisted by knitting a bit at lunchtime, and deciding to get a marginally later train in favour of picking up some food for the weekend (meaning 20 minutes or so sitting down at King's Cross in addition to the train).

First step (so to speak) on Monday morning is turning the heel...

Monkeys, and the benefits of evil twin-ness...

Thanks to everyone who commented on the last post - I'm still feeling slightly smug about the shawl...


But on with the next thing, and the amount of time I have to knit on the train is making itself felt in the speed I can knit smaller items. I made a hat on Sunday night and the Monday morning train (can't show you yet); and then started a pair of Monkey socks halfway down to London on Monday. Progress each evening:


Monday:




Tuesday:




Wednesday (about 6 rows to go - will explore grafting on a train this morning, but have some waste yarn with me in case that's an insane idea!):



I'm loving this yarn - and may have best part of a pair of Christmas socks for my aunt by the end of the week, if I continue to get a seat in the evening...

Evil twin-ness - I've been meaning to post this for a couple of weeks. Jan and I have a standing joke about this - it seems that we both discover things at about the same pace, and have the habit of turning up when we meet with a pair of socks at the same stage of completion in the same yarn, or ordering the same needles from the same shop in the same week... When I had my week off at the end of October, I went down to Brighton, and Jan gave me a very beautiful pair of ear-rings as a good-luck-in-the-new-job present. The day before, I'd ordered a pendant/brooch from luckygirltrading. When it arrived....

Scary, eh?

200 not out...

Just realised this is my 200th post. Which is very weird - I didn't think I'd have all that much to talk about when I started this blogging thing...

But I have some actual Finished Objects! You wait for months, and then four - or five, or seven, depending on how you count them - come at once.... If I were sensible, I'd eke these out into several posts, but I'm updating my Ravelry notebook, so may as well upload the photos in both places!


First - TA DAAA!! The Unbloggable Project - aka the "Shetland Tea Shawl" from A Gathering of Lace...

... which turned out very nicely in the end, despite my paranoia at various stages of the process, and was much appreciated by my brother and sister-in-law whose first baby is due next weekend...

I suppose technically it's only 99.995% complete - sitting on the train the day after posting it off, I realised I had no memory of sewing in the last half dozen stray ends, and when I checked with my brother, I hadn't... I'll have to do that when I go up at Christmas, but they're pretty secure...

This shows the additional rows I ended up working in Beech Leaf lace from the first Barbara Walker treasury, once I ran out of chart and it still seemed too small. The beech leaves worked out very well with the leaves on the edging... Here are some close-ups including the obligatory Blocking Shots...

The yarn is laceweight (90% Blue-Faced Leicester, 10% nylon for strength) from bluefaced.com and is more like a cobweb weight; and it took about 90 grammes of the yarn. I actually think it's finer than the Jamiesons of Shetland cobweb I saw at Ally Pally... Anyway. I think I'll probably leave it till after Christmas to start another ambitious piece of lace!!

Next up is the Gryffindor Bag - very nice free pattern from Rosemary Waits. This is for Fiona's 9th birthday, which is today - I'm hoping they're going to swing through the village sometime today and pick it up... As ever, it took me forever to do the finishing on this - I finally lined it and got the handle and fringing on yesterday (because you don't want to do this sort of thing without a sense of impending panic, that would never do...). This picture is fuzzy but atmospheric - the other ones taken with flash make it look very flat and stark, which it isn't... The cushion in the background is a charted needlepoint one from this book by Candace Bahouth - there are some lovely things in the book but I've lost the urge to needlepoint...

Third are the Serpentine Mitts, finally finished... All four of them! And all four from one skein of Jitterbug. I think there's something slightly weird about Jitterbug - the yardage given on the ballband really doesn't seem that much, but it seems to go on for ever...

And finally, finished last night after 2 days' bus knitting and a KTog (huge group of us again at the Grads Café!) , a February baby jacket from EZ's Knitters Almanac. These are so much fun to do - that's the second one and I may well cast on for a third...

Not sure who this one's for, yet... The buttons were a great find at our very large and slightly scary new John Lewis (who decided that making people walk across a translucent glass bridge with views down two floors to get to Haberdashery was a good idea? It certainly deters me from going in there, anyway, which is probably a Good Thing!!) and I've made buttonholes on both sides so once the recipient's decided, I'll be able to stitch them on in gender-appropriate positions. If I can remember which way round these things go, anyway! I always have to go off and look at pictures of men's and women's shirts on the web to remind myself...

So I'm feeling pretty productive and trying to ignore the vast quantity of items on my 'to knit for Christmas' list... Think I'll adopt Tahoe as my train knitting this week - it's coming on, but not as quickly as winter... I need to finish this front and stitch it together (minus one sleeve) to see if it's going to fit. I'm not convinced it isn't a little snug... I reckon a couple of days' train knitting will get me to the end of the second front and on into the final sleeve...

Week 1

Well, I did the first week, I survived and I enjoyed it. Even the commute, mostly. The fifteen minutes on the Victoria Line in the morning, not so much, but I got a seat on the train every day, and the people I sat next to were either nice and smiley, or just asleep... Here's a picture of a thing I found at the end of the road by work on the way to the Tube...*



Saw Yvonne and Sue at Libertys on Thursday night - Yvonne knitting the most gorgeous scarf of many colours, Sue ploughing round an endless frill... I took the Unbloggable Project which is, thanks to the increased train-knitting time, Off the Needles.

Otherwise the knitting's not been quite as successful! Took the second Serpentine Mitt off the needle, to discover




Not so much a ta-da!! moment as a ta-doh!! moment... Actually, this photo also makes one look much longer than the other, which isn't the case - but I have, indeed, knitted two left mitts by the simple expedient of following the instructions re: the gusset but also working the pattern over the opposite two needles, which has the result of creating two identical mitts (apart from the centre cable which I thoughfully twisted in the opposite direction for the second mitt)... Thankfully a) the yarn will make 4 mitts b) I already had a taker for a second pair... So all was not lost...


Still plugging away on the Tahoe cardigan - halfway up the second front, at which point I'll do all the finishing and give it a try-on with one sleeve...


I also forgot to blog my personal trifecta in charity-shop books, found in the British Heart Foundation in King's Lynn last Saturday - total cost £6.

From the left, a book of stories I nearly bought at full price the week before, as I'm currently enjoying Mr Gaiman's Fragile Things collection (I'm not normally a fan of short stories but these are great; more a series of little atmospheres...); a knitting book with actual content as well as the 1980s interpretations of the sweaters); and a cookbook which is both retro and practical. It's relatively unfaffy Delia (she does, for instance, assume her readers know how to make pastry), and very 70s in its nutritional values (I can't imagine today's Delia suggesting a recipe comprising six eggs and 12oz cheese to feed three people); it is, however, a great combination of the basic, the quick and the traditional, and I suspect it'll be used and re-used in the same way as my extremely battered copy of Fay Maschler's Eating In, also a collection of Evening Standard cookery columns but from the 1980s.

*Generally things found on the way home from work in the old job were interesting leaves, or completely bizarre pieces of litter...

Bodging

The last couple of days, I've been fixing little minor niggling things around the house that would irritate me even more when I've even less time... And other things which have gone awry during the week. And am thankful that my not-particularly-frilly girlhood included instruction in the right use of screwdrivers, Superglue and which sort of fuse a lamp-plug needs*. Thanks, Dad.

The pretty thing on the right? a pen. Certainly mightier than the sword; as long as you aren't sitting in the dark with your muse, waiting for some chap to sort out the light-bulbs for you...

*and, since I posted this, the art of cassette-tape splicing has also come in handy...

Holiday at Home: part 2

I can't believe how quickly this week has gone. Although I have done things. Which I'll catalogue tomorrow, I think.

On Tuesday night, I knitted at the Lamb with E-J (whose blog needs to be seen, and particularly today, for the pastel which makes even our route to our former office look romantic and burgeoning with possibilities) and Rosie (whose blog always needs to be seen...). We had a very strange start to the evening, with an incredibly inebriated, extraordinarily scatological, racist, South African (not a guess, she told us about 32 times) woman who decided that standing at the counter and screaming at an assortment of staff about their nationality for 10 minutes was the best way to go. The staff all behaved with extraordinary grace in the circumstances... The new menu was slightly hilarious in the description (the word "napped" has reached Ely in the sense of 'covered in sauce', rather than in the sense of 'fell asleep for a bit in the middle of the day', which I suspect has happened for centuries) but really extremely good in the execution...


On Wednesday I went to Brighton to visit Jan. And although I took my camera, the only shots I took were some very grey ones of the Thames as we went over Blackfriars Bridge.



.. and adding to my geographical bemusement this week, went back over the river near Borough Market... Oh, I don't know, doubtless I'll pick it up... I chose the only dull, grey day this week to go to the seaside, but it's always good to get together, and we went to see the Indigo exhibition at Brighton Museum which was excellent. I love textiles exhibitions with historical/anthropological background, and this was good; and it was well-labelled, which is my usual complaint... And although it's boring shopping, I did find a Good Coat for work, and it was extremely nice to have a second opinion in the choosing! After that, we went to one of Jan's local knitting groups, at Borders in Brighton, and I met Up Knit Creek and several other really friendly knitters... (as if "friendly knitters" wasn't tautological...)

There has been some knitting. I'll show you the shot which shows some actual created Thing...
Tahoe - one sleeve, one back, nearly one front. Quite a quick knit - or it will be up to the neckband which will take a little while. Doing it in a week wouldn't have been unrealistic if I hadn't been trying to finish the Unbloggable Thing too. As it is, I think I'll have one sleeve and the neckband left to do...



The rest of the knitting has been on the Unbloggable Thing - which is now halfway round the edging after 16 hours' knitting - only another 2 working days to go on that!

And I picked up the Hemlock Ring blanket to watch the second Pirates of the Caribbean film with a friend, and realised that I'd managed to do something really, really weird about three repeats back on one (but only one) of the 8 segments... So that's actually made negative progress this week!