BEST foot forward - competition results

Thanks to the 8 people who put in estimates/guesstimates for the end-of-year competition; there was a good span of guesses, none of which were wildly off! I do really appreciate people putting in their entries, and commenting, and generally making me feel as if I'm not wittering madly into a void. And I've been stash-diving and am reluctantly parting with a couple of prize items...

On the number of projects knitted:
Actual number: 50
Best guess: 51, by Yvonne. Well done! I'll wait until I see you at IKL sometime - Thursday, maybe?


For anyone interested, and because I hadn't worked this out before, this breaks down as :
8 lace shawls/stoles/scarves
7 children's garments
7 pairs of socks
5 cowls
5 sweaters/cardigans
4 non-lace scarves
3 potholders (crochet!!)
3 washcloths
2 hats
1 baby blanket
1 bag
1 Christmas stocking
1 cushion
1 pair of mittens
1 tea cosy
and 0 partridges in pear trees, although I'm sure the extraordinarily clever Alan Dart has a pattern in development...

Yvonne wins two skeins of CTH Potluck Worsted (4 oz and 280 yards per skein; you'll have to work out what that is in British) in colour scheme Water.






On the metreage knitted up:
Actual figure: 21,120
Best guess: well, actually Yvonne got this one closest too with 21,000m (I'm beginning to think she's slipped some sort of monitoring apparatus into my knitting bag at some stage... that's only one ball of DK out, which is frankly just frightening).

However, I think she's the sort of nice, lovely, public-spirited person who would put her second winning raffle ticket back in the pot, so next closest is anonymous (and first) poster Rachel with 20,513m! I don't have a way to contact you, Rachel - so I'm hoping you're a regular reader. Please e-mail me at liz AT lizmarley DOT co DOT uk and send me your snail-mail address so I can get your prize to you.

For anyone interested; this averages out at 1760m/month; which is, according to Google (and don't you just love that you can put "1760m in miles" into Google and get an instant calculation?) 1.094 miles. I had a vague target for myself of a mile a month, because I was pretty close last year, but didn't calculate whether I'd reached it until the end of the year. My "worst" month was June with 845m and my "best" December with 2945m, but that's because I only count projects once they're finished, so it's all a bit random...

Rachel wins a scarf kit: 3 balls of Schoeller and Stahl's lovely Limbo in the blue/green colourway


and a PDF of my Helter Skelter scarf pattern (which isn't linked on Ravelry yet because I have yet to figure out the becoming-a-designer thing, but is proving very popular at I Knit London, who have been selling them pretty steadily for the last six months or so - I keep seeing people working on them and wearing them when I go to knit there, and it's lovely!).

And the other vital statistic for 2009:

Yarn knitted up this year: 7,659 grammes (equivalent of 153 50g balls; which is only 21g a day, but I'd refer you to the 8 lace shawls/scarves/stoles...).

I started counting up yarn acquired in the course of the year and gave up in mid-February.

However, with UK Knit Camp looming this year, I need to cut down, so I'm going to be counting yarn in as well as yarn out this year. Gifts and purchases will count as yarn in; but destashing and knitting up of yarn will count as yarn out... And I'm probably going to embarrass myself by posting a monthly total here... I shall, as ever, not be counting needles/magazines/books in that total, so IKL shouldn't suffer too badly...

And tomorrow, I vow to start blogging the Christmas Knitting (both given and received).

BEST guarantee...

... of a thaw, seems to me, is knitting of a hot water bottle cover... I'm sure that by the time I do the decreases on this one over the next day or so, and knit its polo-neck sweater, the weather will be balmy and springlike. Surely tempting fate has to work the other way round sometime or other?

I haven't used a hot water bottle since a very cold winter 22 years ago... They didn't have Dream in Color Classy then... and hot water bottles came wrapped in very bad pseudo-polar-fleece from Boots (one cerise, one turquoise, IIRC)...


Interestingly, three people on the train asked me what I was knitting and said how beautiful the colours were. Dyers, take note - normally I get No Attention Whatever, and I think I usually use pretty yarns...

Ah well... and competition reminder.

NaBloPoMo isn't really working for this month. Partly it's the freezing temperatures; mostly it's spending 6+ hours each day just ploughing back and forth to work.... I shall keep trying. It's not as if knitting isn't being done...

And if everyone can Think Good Thoughts to prevent trains hitting people in my local area, that would be good too. I've no idea whether this was suicide or an accident (although I understand you would have to try very hard to end up on the line accidentally at that particular point); but please, let's just hope people stop doing that.

On a more cheerful note, my brother sent me a YouTube clip of Gypsy Girl by Cruella De Ville. At the time, we thought this was a really good video. How times change... In return, I sent him a YouTube clip of possibly the most absurd Christmas recording ever.

And I realised I never gave an end-date for the annual competition. Let's say Sandi-o'clock on Friday (i.e. 6:30pm GMT this Friday, January 15). I'm hoping I'll be enjoying a drink with colleagues at that point, but it's as good a time as any...

BEST comment of the week

Gave up entirely on my normal train route today, and went both ways via Liverpool Street, doubtless to the distress of the people who normally do that route, putting up with really quite nasty trains and a slow route in favour of actual reliability and then having dilettantes like me swarming all over the place...

Anyway. I got onto the train this evening and removed (a) over-mittens (b) fingerless gloves (c) hat (d) coat (e) scarf and (f) sweater (I still had many layers of clothing, thanks), and piled them all into the gap between seats. The woman in the seat opposite watched this with amusement and said, "you've seen that card, haven't you?" I admitted I had. "So this is sort of Knitters' Revenge Week, then?", she said.

Made me feel ever so much better about the whole thing.

BEST achievement of last year...

... was definitely taking the garden in hand. I went out there today, and although it's pretty desolate at the moment (and covered in the thin layer of snow which stopped me getting into work this morning*), at least parts of it will come back in the spring, and it won't make me feel guilty and ashamed, as it would have at this time last year.

Over the last couple of days, mainly clad in many, many knitted layers while waiting for the house to warm up, I've put together a Flickr slide show of all the versions of this shot in date order - some of them turned up on the blog but not all...

So if you don't have any paint you could be watching dry (or just want to have some reassurance that warmer days will come), or you're trapped under something heavy while reading this, do have a look.

While looking for all the versions, I found the photo below, which I made last year but never posted. It also makes a change from the current state of my small resentful house-mate, who is spending 22 hours a day sleeping next to a radiator in the bedroom at the moment, emerging only to eat or dive briefly into the garden to answer the call of nature...

Keep warm, all.

*Bet you were wondering why I was more positive. I'm not the most disciplined worker-from-home, but after yesterday, only wasting 90 minutes of my day dealing with trains, with the knowledge I was only 10 minutes from home at any time, was just fine and I got a fair amount done.

BEST thing said about today...

... is nothing. Well, about today's transport, anyway. Oh, OK. SIX AND A HALF HOUR RETURN JOURNEY TO WORK. I think that's all anyone needs to know really.

Except that, as if you didn't know it, knitting is very, very cool. I sat there, and knit reams on a secret project, while reflecting on the fact that if I wasn't knitting I would actually be lying on the carriage floor weeping at the sheer lies which were coming through the announcement systems, from people who weren't as well informed as the people who had Blackberries etc. in the carriages. Not the fault of the employees; but they have walkie-talkie radios and the people on the train have Bluetooth and WiFi...

(Oh, and podcasts are also very, very good, for the whole distraction-from-reality-thing. I was going to add some actual extra positive examples here). But it's frankly too cold; and I need to be up stupidly early.

Apologies - this was not meant to be NaBloPoMoWhinge. Tomorrow I shall Put on My Happy Face. And Ye Shall All Fear Me...

One of the BEST and worst things about living in the UK?

The railways. (I typed failways in originally - I nearly left it there).

The best thing about them - actually, on my line, normally, they really do work. And I'm saying this as someone who's used them a minimum of 10 times a week for 120 weeks now. That's 1200 journeys; and maybe 15 of those have been nightmarish; and those which are merely more than 30 minutes delayed get a small refund (I have 8 refund coupons so far this year, two of them from one day which, in my memory, is extremely happy other than the rail journey. I get a loan from work for the season ticket amount and buy myself a small treat from the amount saved on the coupons). It's not a bad record. It certainly beats planes for punctuality, in my experience.

You also get to see some of the most beautiful British scenery by train. Last night I put up a post on Ravelry about registering for Early Alerts for cheap fares on the East Coast line for the upcoming UK Knit Camp - you can travel from London to Edinburgh for about £20 each way if you book really early. (OK, it will cost you way more than a much more polluting plane journey if you have to go to something totally short notice and obviously inessential like, say, a funeral or job interview, but let's not disturb the bucolic peace of the moment for a second...) If you travel from points south past Berwick, you get the most beautiful view from the train - which you can probably tell from this picture of the train going over the bridge. At the other end of the country entirely, if you travel from Exeter to Plymouth, the view is equally spectacular when the train hugs the coastline .

However (and you knew there was a however coming...)

Tomorrow there is snow forecast for my area in the afternoon. So from 0300 a "snow timetable" will operate... I understand that there is snow forecast in London this evening, but I don't quite understand how that affects the early trains to London from my area, where there is currently no snow; not a flake...

It seems that if I set off from home at 6:15am or so, there is a chance I may be able to reach London by 9 or so. Possibly. By changing trains several times and sitting on endless stopping trains. Maybe. I'm not due in until 10, but then the snow's due at about 3pm, so I may have to leave early...

A colleague who lives not far from London found out at 4pm that most of the trains on her line (not one in the flagged "severe weather warning area") had been cancelled tomorrow. Again, without a flake falling...

I can't work out what's worse - advance scaremongering, or abject failure once the event's happened. But hey, they've tried both in the last month, so I'll let you know which is preferable.

(And yes, it is, additionally, that time of the month, thanks for noticing...)

BEST behaviour, and not...

I went into Peter Jones last Tuesday in my lunch hour, and stumbled, swiping my John Lewis card on the way down. The main purchase was a whole bag of Rowan's Felted Tweed at half price, in a colour which matches at least two of my skirts (I also picked up five balls of Scottish Tweed 4-ply to add to the Donegal/Scottish Tweed stash box - they're the sort of bright colours which liven up otherwise dull colourways). 1750m/1910 yds of tweedy niceness.

I love Felted Tweed, and have made a couple of scarves for my Dad from it, but at £5.50 a ball it's a little bit above my price range for garments, unless it's in a sale. (I'm not saying this is an unreasonable price, just that I'm a cheapskate generally when it comes to clothes, as those who've trawled charity shops with me will attest. One of the skirts this cardigan matches was a cast-off from my mother - who has very nice taste in clothes but bought too large a size - and the other was a charity shop find for the princely sum of £2.75, which is the cost of one ball of this yarn even on sale...)

Anyway; Felted Tweed is a fine-ish DK, nearer to a US sportweight, and has fabulous metreage, and I realised I have just the pattern for it, Véronik Avery's Nordique Swing from the Fall edition of Interweave Knits. As the name of the pattern implies, it's meant to be knitted in Avery's new yarn, Nordique, which seems to be a sportweight, but as Classic Elite who distribute the yarn don't sell outside North America and have no plans to, I thought I'd wait until a likely substitute yarn came along. I was thinking about the lovely Jaeger Trinity, but I have plans for that already...

Anyway; the best behaviour thing was - look!! I swatched!! (And then I felt very bad about myself. Not, you understand, for the action of swatching - but because actually what I was doing was knitting a tension square; we have a perfectly good phrase for this process in British English... in the same way as, thank you Google Chrome spellcheck, "colourway" is an actual word. Having said that, the spellcheck fails to recognise "Google", "spellcheck" or "swatching" as words either... Anyone know how to turn it off?)


Anyway, I knitted a square, and measured it, and washed and dried and blocked it, and patted myself on the head, and measured it again - and there was absolutely no difference. I did not get gauge because I'd given myself a talking to by then. Sadly I also did not achieve the appropriate tension, as UK knitting patterns used to have it. The tension demanded by the pattern is 24 sts and 32 rows to 4"/10cm. I got 21.5 sts and 34 rows to 4". But look, isn't it a pretty thing? And the fabric feels very nice and wearable. This sample is also done on a 3.25mm (US3) needle - I am not going to be knitting an entire garment for someone with my degree of, let's say, décolletage, on a 2.75mm needle... and anyway, then the row tension would be even more off and it might feel like wearing armour-plating...



I shall, nevertheless, be knitting Nordique Swing - having done the maths, the one three sizes down works with the number of stitches I need; with any luck that means I'll save a bit of yarn and have enough to work the sleeves till they're bracelet-length...

NB: Reading it back, this post sounds like an anti-American rant. For which, apologies - this was not my intention at all.

But my job is language (not grammar, by the way; I know my grammar's pretty awful when I'm not watching it like a hawk), and the beauty and variety of language, and being able to cope with how that language is used by actual human beings day-to-day. In my day job I take care that if someone types Roadside bombs or IEDs into our database to find information on what we've decided to call Improvised explosive devices, I've done as much second-guessing as I can so they still find what they need without even realising we've done something clever behind the scenes to help them; in my not-day-job I like the principle that you could have a US knitting thesaurus with Tension, see Gauge in it, and a British one with Gauge, see Tension; it's just nice to keep using both regional variations and everyone being aware of all of it because that's just interesting! Or indeed, all regional variations, if you think of British DK, and Australian 8-ply and US light worsted... And you could have entries for sport (French) and sportweight (US) which would alert you to the fact that the first is somewhere between a DK/8-ply/worsted/light worsted and an Aran/worsted/heavy worsted, and the second somewhere between a DK and a 4-ply/sock/fingering weight...

Hmmnnn. A Universal Knitting Thesaurus. Now that would be fun. And actually, I suspect that those wonderful people over at Ravelry have already done an awful lot of the work - they've sorted out most of the yarn weights, for instance, and you can enter either "tea cosy" or "tea cozy" into a search and get exactly the same results in the same order; which made me inordinately, geekishly happy a couple of weeks before Christmas when I was looking for just such an item...

BEST things about a lazy Sunday morning...

A nice pot of Hattiali, from Palais des Thés (thanks, Wibbo!), with my favourite crockery, while listening to Broadcasting House, The Archers and Test Match Special...

A new lace project (stealth, so just visible on the right)...

And a new pair of mittens, the last finished object of last year... These are the Eleanor Roosevelt mittens from this time's Knitty, which accompany Franklin's fascinating interview - the yarn is the lovely James Brett merino I bought on Christmas Eve at Boyes in Chester-le-Street...

Heaven. I have to do all sorts of things this afternoon, but every now and then a couple of hours of total laziness is called for...

BEST laid plans

I don't tend to make big New Year resolutions. Usually, January and February are just months to be endured rather than enjoyed, and putting any extra pressure on myself seems a bit silly.

I do have some things I'd like to do this year

• I'd like to keep the garden under control, and plant some more things in it rather than just hacking back. (Having said that, after the couple of weeks we've just had, I'm glad I didn't plant anything which needs much care this year - it was all under several inches of snow for over a week...)
• I'd like to tame the back bedroom which is the pit of hell. It's so bad that I won't be posting "before" pictures (although I will be taking them) until there are at least "during" pictures to show!
• I'd like to knit something steeked - this was also on my mental list last year (along with knitting something from the top down, which I achieved with the February Lady Sweater in January). I got as far as taking an Alice Starmore class at the I Knit Weekender and seeing how it's done; and found a very lovely pattern. However, I'm also intending to continue losing weight, and making a cardi in 4-ply which can't be unravelled once steeked doesn't seem very sensible until that's done. Sometime later in the year, maybe; meanwhile I've seen some nice patterns for cushions and rugs which are steeked.
• I'd like to finish St Brigid - I only have the front to go, and she's been in my WIP pile longer than I've had this blog!
• I'd like to knit from my stash more. This is rather difficult with both the wonderful I Knit on my doorstep at work, and rumours of a lovely new yarn shop in Ely. However, I've just shelled out for classes and accommodation for UK Knit Camp in August, and will want to go to the I Knit Weekender in September (10th and 11th, I believe). So I'm not promising anything because that would just be foolish.

So, nothing dramatic - I rather like my life at the moment and have no desire for radical change.

Being able to get into the back bedroom without a block and tackle would be good, though...

BEST wishes for the New Year, and a competition...

Happy New Year! 2009 was a reasonable one for me - no major changes, no terrible events for me personally although several friends went through the mill this year; lots of knitting and many things I'm grateful for.

I've signed up to NaBloPoMo again - a few people have commented to me over the holidays that they liked the daily blogging, and actually I quite liked doing it too. Sometimes the theme for the month doesn't grab me (and I know you're not required to follow it anyway), but this month's theme is "BEST", and we all really need something to celebrate in January...

I had a very good Christmas - the best one for a while. Here are some of my fambly - Dad, SIL, Mam and Nephew - opening presents on Christmas Day.

I was allowed to cook Christmas dinner, and it seemed to go well...

OK; the competition. I will be doing 2 prizes this year, and simplifying it a bit. There are only 2 questions:

1. How many finished objects did I produce this year (NB this blog is not an accurate guide and nor is Ravelry - you probably just need to make a guess)?

2. How many metres of yarn did I knit this year (NB for visitors from North America, add approx 10% to a yardage estimate...)?

For some sort of idea - this was the roundup of last year's stats...

Happy competitioning... I won't bother doing an anonymous e-maily thing this year, just leave answers in the comments if you're so inclined!

Christmas Countdown - 2 days to go.

Christmas knitting 2009

Items on list: 17 (unchanged)
Items started: 17 (+2)
Items finished: 16 (+2)
Net progress since Sunday - +2

Items still unfinished which are needed for Christmas Day - 0.

I win.

(I should probably admit that one item was finished on the train, and another is still blocking, and the final one is only technically started. But really, who cares at this point!)

Happy Christmas, all...

Countdown, 5 days to go...

Christmas knitting 2009

Items on list: 17 (unchanged)
Items started: 15 (+2)
Items finished: 14 (+3)
Net progress this week - +3

As ever, Franklin has hit the nail on the head...

Snow day

If you don't want my rail rant, just look at the pretty picture, and reflect that this is enough snow to bring public transport to its knees in this neck of the woods.

So, obviously, it wasn't as easy as all that. No Definitiveness. When I got up at 6:15, the snow was about 6" deep and the rail companies were saying different things. National Express East Anglia alerted me to the 0659, my usual Friday train, being "indefinitely delayed" due to Something-or-Other at Watlington; First Capital Connect ... well, let's just say that none of what ensued was recorded on their website.

Went down to the station for the 0732 which was delayed for 23 minutes. Sat there (knitting with gloves on) bitterly reflecting that predicting in last night's blog post exactly how long the train would be delayed might give me some satisfaction if the waiting wasn't in sub-zero temperatures on a metal seat.

Got on train at 0755.

Train pulls into Cambridge station at 0804 and announces it needs to wait for extra carriages.

Extra carriages arrive at 0820 and are hitched to the back of train.

Train breaks down.

*Extra carriages are detached from back of train; we all move back 4 carriages and start again.

Train breaks down.*

Repeat pattern from * to * once more. (No, honestly.)

By this time it is nearly 0900 (when I'm due to start work 60 miles away) - we are told it will be an indefinite wait until one or all of the "units" are fixed. Meanwhile, people with WiFi are reporting that the three trains after ours are cancelled.

Hear King's Lynn train announced; leave train; change platform; go home.

Work happily until 2.30 when the power goes out for an hour. It's thawing fairly fast here and small branches are falling off even the impeccably-manicured trees round the Green, so presumably something fell on the power line. It was back about an hour later...

I'll make up the lost time sometime over the weekend, but for now I'm going to pick up my tea order from the post office and do some Christmas knitting...

Deep and crisp and drifty

This is the view from outside an hour ago. Now, I know there are people from more wintery climes who regularly read this blog and will be laughing heartily at the pathetic picture this paints (although do click to embiggen the wonderful cross-hatching the wind is creating). But at least one of them has spent serious time in this country, and realises Quite How Much Havoc this will generate. This photo was taken at the point the BBC thinks we're getting "light snow" and 3 hours before we are due to hit "heavy snow". And it's seriously blustery out there...

I'm hoping that it will all get Definitive before I have to leave for work - on the announced-on-the-radio "there are no trains leaving East Anglia" scale of Definitive; rather than my having to plod down to the station to find that there might be a train in 23 minutes and then there isn't but the screens go blank and I stand there for ages and then have to come home anyway... In that case, I already have official sanction to come back home and start on the mountain of stuff I've forwarded to myself... I'd much rather wake up, find out it's impossible to get anywhere and do some decent work, preferably in my pyjamas.

On a completely separate tack, I went to the Poetry Library today for work-related reasons, and met some really nice people. After we'd finished the main part of the meeting we heard about their Lost Quotations service. If you can help, or comment, do!

On the way back from the Poetry library, a pigeon crapped on my hat. I was so utterly and totally affronted by this that it took me several minutes to realise that if I hadn't been wearing a hat, I'd have been dealing with pigeon-poop in my hair. And also made me realise I hadn't blogged the hat yet. Another day.

Countdown, not quite two weeks to go...

Threat level: probably edging from substantial to severe...

Christmas knitting 2009
Items on list: 17 (unchanged)
Items started: 13 (+1)
Items finished: 11 (+2)
Net progress this week - +2

Eek. Having said that, I'm 80% of the way through the most complicated thing left on the list...

Is it just me...

... or was John Humphreys and Justin Webb bemusedly covering Mr-Squiggles-gate and the "paedo" mouse song this morning one of the funniest things ever?

Apologies for the links to the Sun. It was that or the Daily Mail...

Countdown, 3 weeks to go...

Threat level: still at substantial...

Christmas knitting 2009

Items on list: 17 (unchanged)
Items started: 12 (unchanged)
Items finished: 9 (+3)
Net progress this week - +3 - yay...

Back to my needles... The usual Attempt at a Christmas tree went up on the Green today. I'd like to hope it'll last any length of time, but I'd bet it'll only be a matter of days before a) the wind blows it down b) joyriders crash into it c) the Yoof decide climbing it would be a great idea d) all of the above...

It's beginning to look a lot like...

After a really nice evening at IKL last night, and an earlyish night, I woke up this morning feeling completely appalling. Couldn't work out whether I was getting flu, or whether I wanted to throw up, or what. So apart from a trip downstairs for water and pills, and another to phone work and let them know I wasn't going to be in, the morning sort of didn't happen.


This afternoon I've been feeling a lot better; and sometime or other while I was lying around feeling sorry for myself, this happened outside...



It's amazing how a single line of coloured light-bulbs can make somewhere look magic. And at least this afternoon I have the energy to knit...

Last day of the month...

and NaBloPoMo achieved...



And also, the biggest bit of knitting for this Christmas (I think, have still to decide what to do for one present!)


The Patent Dryness Test was reached. More photos to come...


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!

Study in contrasts

It was One of Those Days, weatherwise. Woke up to driving hail, and by 9am there had already been a period of blue skies, and then this (click to embiggen) which Never Bodes Well - that was the second bout of hail coming over. I do love the 'sun-before-the-storm' moments though - the light is so amazing.

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...

After a quick look round the shops (and a reassuring discovery that M&S's sizes for this winter are less punishing than last year) and very nice noodle lunch, Sue and I went to the Val McDermid/Mark Billingham talk at Winter Wordfest (.pdf link). I was delighted to find out the moderator was Nicholas Wroe of the Guardian review, but actually they hardly needed him.

While I haven't seen McDermid speak in person (I had to back out of a previous event), I've heard her on the radio a lot and was prepared to be entertained, which I was; Billingham was an unknown quantity, and because his books are on occasion very dark, I was unprepared for his being quite wonderfully funny (apparently he was a stand-up comedian before he turned to writing). It was a fantastic two-hander with a very light touch from Wroe; and the opening chapters of both books, Blood line (Billingham) and Fever of the bone (McDermid) were gripping enough to send me off to the library catalogue as soon as I got home to place reservations...

And in the interests of continuity; with just over 4 weeks to go the Christmas Threat Level is at Substantial...

Christmas knitting 2009

Items on list: 17 (+2 - one I'd forgotten , and one I'd already done but forgotten to count)
Items started: 12 (+3)
Items finished: 6 (+2, one of them the biggest bit of knitting for this Christmas, yay)
Net progress this week - 0 (hmmnn...)

Ninja Flossie

Spent last night over at Wibbo's in Hove. Basement cat Flossie is such good value...

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...

Genre-girl

Sitting in a café recently talking to a colleague who used to work in a local public library, I innocently said "oh, I'm a handcuffs-and-guns sort of girl, myself". A chap at the next table turned so quickly he probably got whiplash.

Maybe it'd have sounded more harmless if I'd included the haunted castles...

(Today I am a) small blue thing

I hope I haven't posted this before. I am incredibly tired and have had a very stressy week so far! Am looking forward to 24 hours or so beside the seaside with Wibbo but there's a day's work to get through first...

A 2-year-birthday sweater for my nephew. I haven't phoned them (haven't been back early enough to call at a civilised hour), but gather from my Dad that the parcel did actually arrive. In which case it will have contained this. Pattern is Ziggy Zag from Stolen Stitches. I did have one problem, which meant counting three times round the neck divide, which turned out later to be a problem with the pattern rather than me. The PDF's been corrected now, though...

I hope it fits, and suits...

They know how to draw you in...

... those British Library types. Headlining an e-mail "Prize draw, Jeremy Irons and live music" is a sure-fire winner with me ...

The Supremes, part 1

Sorry, couldn't resist the post title as a West Wing nut.

As ever in this country, radical change comes slowly, quietly and robed in tradition. You had to be quite interested in that sort of thing to notice the UK Supreme Court opening on October 5, despite it being the first formal division between the judiciary and the legislature since the late 14th century. But if you've walked around Parliament Square in the last couple of years, you'll have seen the most beautiful building (which Pevsner described as art nouveau Gothic - two for the price of one, then) being unearthed from a coating of air pollution and neglect.

I had heard all sorts of good things about the building - the Peter Blake carpet; the curtains by Timorous Beasties... So I took my courage in both hands and e-mailed the court from work to find out whether it was possible to visit. Within a day or so, I had an e-mail from the Librarian, inviting us over, and mailed my colleagues to see who was interested; in the end there were three parties of us, and I put myself in the second one. We had a fantastic visit last Friday - the Court rooms are beautiful and it was fascinating finding out how on earth an important legal library is built quickly using chunks of existing libraries and a minimum number of staff.

While we were there, though, we discovered that most of the building (apart from the library) is accessible to the general public, day in, day out. The Court doesn't sit on Fridays so the court rooms are wanderable-about as a tourist then, but anyone can visit the building (subject to airline-type security checks as with anywhere on Whitehall), sit at the back of the court and see proceedings, look at the architecture, visit the exhibition about the court (and watch proceedings on plasma screens) and generally see business being done.

Makes me (quietly, and in an entirely British way, you understand) extremely proud of what's been done. Not as flamboyant, or as scandalous, as many other things which have been happening recently, but possibly, potentially, more important in the long run. While the current members of the Court are Law Lords, the intention is that future appointments won't be; and six centuries of tradition will gently be severed...

(Part 2 of this post will be sorted out if it ever stops raining, and I can take some photos of the outside of the building, which is glorious. Check the links above for pictures of the inside.)

The day ended better than it started - having looked up the large number of cancelled trains this morning just before setting off for the station, I was somewhat aggrieved to find mine had joined them only 12 minutes later... Presumably the people who update the website don't get up as early as the people intending to travel on the trains... And of course it was raining...

However, I made an excursion to Muji at lunchtime (ostensibly for pens for Wibbo, who's exiled out of Mujiland) and the sun was shining, and after a reasonably productive day at work, I met a friend for dinner (the Papaya Tree on Kensington High Street; I'd recommend it for food and service; apparently, so would Michael Winner; but you can't have it all...) and the train home worked, albeit with only half the number of carriages.

Checking blogs when I got back, funniest LOLcats for a long while, if you've ever had one of those cats who's permanently on the wrong side of a closed door...

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Lazy(ish) Sunday

The weather is pretty terrible outside, and public transport is pretty limited on a Sunday, so I've had a fairly lazy time knitting and pottering around tidying up, paying the bills ready to post after payday etc... This is the only Little Ray of Sunshine this afternoon, and it didn't last long - not long enough to go out and plant the bulbs I bought earlier in the autumn, anyway!


I did produce my course blurb, syllabus and requirements list for next year's Cottenham Summer School (the link is to this year's programme but gives you an idea of what's usually on offer). Feedback last year said people had enjoyed it and would like an extra day, which is very flattering but will be pretty tiring - 4 days' teaching with the same class is a lot less tiring than multiple classes doing the same thing though...

I also had a good clearout of the spice rack in the kitchen. I got rid of some jars I don't really use, and made a list of what I need to refill (there are South Asian, South East Asian and Korean shops just on the main road around the corner from the Cambridge Blue so I can sort this out before knitting on Tuesday...) It's a big rack (about 90cm/3' by 60cm/2'), with 1-lb jam-jars, and one of the most satisfying things about getting a kitchen built a decade or so ago - you can draw something on the back of an envelope and a cabinet-maker will get together proper plans and produce something like this...

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...

The countdown begins - 5 weeks to go

It's that time of year again.

Christmas knitting 2009

Items on list: 15
Items started: 9
Items finished: 6

Hmmnnn... A couple of things on the list are smallish, but a couple are quite large... better get knitting!

Probably best that after many years of making my own Christmas cards I realised I was devoid both of inspiration and of time this year; found some nice charity ones online which arrived today... and realised the last overseas posting date for Christmas is actually only about a fortnight away!

Slightly funny moment in the library this morning - went to shelve some Young Adult books and there was this huge gap on the shelves in the middle, in a library which is chronically short of shelving. It took me a minute to realise that that was where the Twilight books would sit - if we ever actually had them in the library for more than 30 seconds or so at a time... Presumably they did come back at some point last week before flitting off into the darkness again...

Pretty, and not so pretty

Old news, I know, but I just went to find out what this year's Christmas stamps are, and my heart was made glad. Pre-Raphaelite stained-glass windows!!!!

The page was slightly marred by the quote from the Royal Mail’s Head of Speical Stamps, presumably produced by the Royal Mail's Head of Special Spelling without the intervention of the Royal Mail's Head of Special (or, indeed, any) Proofreading.

And then the not-pretty. I went to pull a scarf out of the cupboard today to wear, and found this:

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.

Bluebird

Some knitting in today's post - this is my mam's Christmas present, Rosemary Hill's Bluebird. I can show you this because she doesn't read this blog, and my Dad is far too nice a man to reveal the secret...

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.

Baby Mahalia

My Dad edited this photo while I was staying with them this September, but I suddenly realised I'd never posted it... This has always been known as the "Baby Mahalia" photo at home - it just needed the Photoshop addition of the microphone to make it art; and yes, that's me, 42 or so years ago. Obviously, the singing voice isn't a patch on the original...

The Habit of Art

Went to the press night of Alan Bennett's new play, The Habit of Art, tonight. I always forget that under that cosy exterior, the man has a mind for theatre like a steel trap, designed on post-modern lines. The "main action" - between Auden and Britten, two men whose work I admire without really understanding anything about their lives - is a play within a play; and people are constantly breaking in and out of role. There's a lot of playing about with self-consciously self-referential writing; and the nearest comparison I can think of is Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildernstern Are Dead, in the hopping in and out of two universes; except that, literally 40 years on, it's not really like that either... Richard Griffiths and Alex Jennings are extraordinarily good as Auden and Britten, and Frances De La Tour does a wonderful job as the rather slinky director. It's booked out, other than returns, until the end of January; but there are another couple of months of the run after that...

ETA - reviews from the Guardian, the Independent and the Telegraph are somewhat raving and deservedly so; the Times is slightly less convinced...

Stocking chart and guide

Hi - thanks to all who've commented on the stocking. I'm still quietly quite chuffed myself...

I've put up a couple of files for the chart and a bit of a guide to it. To make the stocking you also need a copy of Folk Socks because the braid, heel and toe pattern are lifted from there. Both are PDF files.

The chart file is here; and the guide is here. Let me know if there are problems - I had horrendous trouble uploading them and am still not confident they're viewable by anyone else.

And as a result of this experience I'm looking for someone else to handle my mail and possibly my domain names - anyone got good ISP recommendations please?

Look! Look!

My nephew's stocking has been started, and finished.

This is one of those days when I'm so glad I have this blog, otherwise I'd be wandering around the village accosting strangers (or, worse, non-knitting acquaintances) with my knitting, waving it in their faces and saying "Look what I've done!! no, no, look!!!"

I have had so much fun with the binge-knitting this weekend...

It's been a very quiet weekend, which was fine; I was meant to have a dinner guest last night, who had to cancel earlier in the week, but the Knitting Obsession had possessed me by then, and there'd probably have been nothing started and I'd have been sitting in a big pile of yarn and books come 7pm and it would all have been a bit embarrassing...

So this was the view on Friday afternoon/evening when I got back from meeting Rosie... Books include Alice Starmore's Fair Isle Knitting, Nancy Bush's Folk Socks, and Jan Eaton's Cross Stitch Motif Bible. I started off using a pencil and a printed-out Excel spreadsheet, but in the end took it over to the PC and blocked things in there - much easier apart from the lettering...

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:

• It's festive and garish and still looks traditional
• It's the size intended (hanging up like that, it measures 65 cm (26") from the top of the hanging loop to the toe)
• The heel is exactly right for a stocking that's designed to hang up (the heel and toe both come from the Mamluke pattern from "Folk Socks"); I was hoping this was the case, but it actually is...
• My swatch came out at 18sts/10cm, which meant casting on 72 sts - which meant I had a huge choice of Fair Isle patterns at my disposal - and then when I reached the heel I discovered that the Mamluke pattern is worked over 72 sts as well so it was a no-brainer...
• It's a proper sock - most of the ones I've seen weren't really in proportion
• After the Latvian braids, I had no ripping back, at all - very unusual for something I've worked out myself
• It was the most satisfying bit of knitting I've done for a long time. I worked on a bit of a scarf a couple of weeks ago which had the same enjoying-the-moment appeal; but this was wonderful - there was nothing at all I'd rather be doing on earth than using this lovely yarn (Cascade 220) and making this great big sock. It's been a busy week after a busy weekend, and having a three-day weekend was just what was required.
• I left long floats rather than knitting them in (other than for the lettering) and that worked very well - it's unblocked in the photos but I think a quick hover with the steam iron will probably sort it out without the need for blocking.

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!

And now I need to start all those other little things you do over the weekend... To be fair, I took stretching breaks (generally when I put a new CD in) to do bits of washing, ironing, washing-up etc. so it's not actually unhygienic; and I do have food in; but I could do with giving everything a bit, no make that a lot, of a tidy-up. Time for some more Peter Wimsey, I think!

Knitting!

I finally got round to updating my Ravelry projects page with all the stuff I've been doing which I can show (there are still two or three things I can't because the recipients are also Rav members...)

And realised I don't think I ever got round to showing you the finished Moorish Sweater.

This was a fun knit. I love two-colour knitting and this is chunky weight so it knitted up fast - despite not taking it on the train very often it took just over 3 weeks. The yarn is Sirdar's late lamented Peru, some of which was bought incredibly on sale at Kemps to eke out the 8 balls of blue I've had in the stash for a while. This pic was taken at the KTog at the beginning of October when it was still a little too warm to be wearing it, really... It's definitely going to be a staple this winter - it's light and warm at the same time. It's pilling slightly, but not too badly...

Getting quite excited about this Christmas stocking - it's looking really good. More on that tomorrow...

Joy and disappointment

We'll go for joy first. I met Rosie for a drink after she finished work (mid-afternoon - it felt very decadent to be slightly tanked at 6pm...) Managed to hand over her long-delayed birthday present and catch up, and it was really nice. Rosie changed my life when we bumped into each other at the Mill Pond in Cambridge in April 2004, and I found there were Other People Like Me who knitted in the local area; since then I've met so many lovely people via the KTog, started this blog and met more lovely people, started teaching knitting occasionally... and generally built up some courage I didn't have before...

I thought I had photos of Rosie's main birthday present (rather belated); but actually I only have a pic of it in somewhat embryonic form in a café in Vienna - but that's appropriate as it's the Farbenfroh sock in the Hundertwasser Silver Spiral yarn...

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.

Recipe

A couple of people asked me for the recipe for the gingerbread from Tuesday's event; and I made the same for the library meeting a month or so ago and a couple of people asked me for the recipe then. I don't have an accompanying photo, or not one I can find at the moment... This is all in ounces because the original recipe was... my electronic scale switches modes between grammes, which I usually use, and ounces.

Heat up an oven to 150C, gas 3 (you'll have to convert if you use fahrenheit); line an 8" square tin with baking parchment.

Ingredients
4 oz butter
2 teaspoons golden syrup

8 oz plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
3 oz sugar
2 heaped tsps ginger (powdered)
1/2 tsp salt

2 eggs, separated

4 oz (you can get away with a 100g tub) mixed peel - you can substitute glace cherries in an emergency, and it's OK, but not as good...

Extra sugar

Method (we talked about cookery lessons this evening and old habits die hard)...

Heat the butter and syrup together gently until they're nicely melted. Meanwhile, measure the flour, sugar, ginger, salt and baking powder into a mixing bowl.

Take the butter/syrup mix off the heat. After a minute or two, put the egg yolks in with them, stirring all the time. Once amalgamated, tip into the flour mix and stir.

Put half of the mix into the tin, distribute and press down slightly. Spread the mixed peel/dried fruit over; then spread the other half of the mix over and level it.

Pour the egg whites over the mixture, tip the tin to level it and pour off any excess. Sprinkle sugar over to give a crusty coating.

Bake for 15 minutes; then give the tin a quarter turn and bake it for another 15 minutes.

Enjoy. It generally doesn't last that long...

Remembrance

Two pictures from Sunday. I hadn't been out of the main entrance at Liverpool Street in several years, so this monument was new to me:


The plaque says

Children of the Kindertransport

In gratitude to the people of Britain for saving the lives of 10,000 unaccompanied mostly Jewish children who fled from Nazi persecution in 1938 and 1939.

"Whosoever rescues a single soul is credited as though they had saved the whole world" - Talmud

Dedicated by

Association of Jewish Refugees

Central British Fund for World Jewish Relief

2006

And there was this, on the wall of the V&A next to the staff entrance:

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.

But the everyday monuments to ordinary people being called to do extraordinary things, and responding to the call, also resonate.

Franklin at I Knit redux

A very good evening. There were a number of us, but not so many that insanity resulted (probably due to the Tuesday night...); the guest of honour apparently got slightly lost on his way out of Waterloo station, several times, but still arrived on time... and we had an exclusive reading from a book-in-preparation.

Dolores was there in spirit and in narration, but not in person; Franklin did say something about her having headed for Earl's Court on arrival, so I suspect she might have been listening to The Archers and hoped to hook up with an Australian barman...

Yvonne/Stash had brought some wonderful antique knitting books with her;

Snailhannah had brought her Lambies and a row was duly knitted...

... and of course Gerard watched over the proceedings...

Thanks, guys, for an excellent evening.

2009 books, #64

Nine dragons, by Michael Connelly. London: Orion, 2009.

The tagline on the cover of this says Harry Bosch is back. And this time it's personal. At which point the seasoned Connelly reader will think 'well, when isn't it?' - Bosch is not known for his laid-back equanimity - but the publicity people have a point. Very well-paced and stylish, with some interesting stuff on triads; but there's a sort of emotional hole in the middle. I'm trusting this is something which will come back and bite Harry in a future sequel, but it's not very satisfactory for the current book...

Also currently listening to one of Tony Britton's wonderful readings of Dick Francis novels - Bolt, in this case.

Lovely day

I had a great day today - went down to the V&A to meet Franklin and Tom. There was a brief, horrible period between about 2pm yesterday afternoon when sparkleduck let me know that there were no trains on the usual route today (thanks! I'd have been completely lost otherwise), and getting onto a rail-replacement bus first thing this morning, when I did wonder whether it would happen...

This was the view while I was walking through the village early this morning...

... 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.

Meanwhile just a reminder of Franklin's talk at I Knit London on Tuesday night (November 10), 6pm onwards...

'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...