Koigu sock progress / hooray I'm on Yarnival!!

I think darling hubby is a bit annoyed with me. Not only was he not expecting me to shriek right in his ear with excitement when he showed me the email saying I'd made it into Yarnival,
but I really don't think he was expecting me to totally ignore him for the rest of the evening, elbow him off the computer and read all my new comments chuckling happily to myself. I know, I'm odd. I'm also happy. The counter has been zipping round tonight (UK time right now- 21.00), and I'm so glad that you've all dropped in for a visit! Please come back soon and let me know what you think, even if it's that I'm a loony (I know this already, but I don't really want to be normal. I equate it to 'boring').

Gratuitous sock photo:
Mmmmmmmm...... koigu......

Hubby looks more concerned every time I say how gorgeous this stuff is, since I spent quite an obscene amount of money at the wool shop on my visit a week and a half ago. I think he's terrified that if he doesn't keep a sharp eye on me, I'll remortgage the house to feed the yarn habit and we'll end up homeless with tons of wool. Hey, we'd be warm, wouldn't we? What's the problem? No, I couldn't let all that gorgeous wool sit out in the rain and mud. Got to keep a house just to keep the wool safe.

It was my birthday on Friday (as if I didn't feel old enough spending the day in a school full of people born in the nineties, my Mum phoned to sing Happy Birthday at me, and kindly referred to my age as a fraction of a century. Thanks, Mum.

What would you do if halfway through a lesson you were teaching, the 32 eleven-year-olds in front of you figured out that it was your birthday and spontaneously burst into song? Let's just say that the last ten minutes of the lesson were somewhat unstructured, as I couldn't stop laughing. And do you know something interesting? It is impossible to stay mad at people who give you three cheers, no matter how mad at them you were the rest of the lesson!

As my birthday treat, darling hubby took me down to a small theatre in Lyme Regis last night to see Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall - of which more tomorrow. Fantastically mad bloke, inspired us to get the chickens, (and signed a photo of them for us yesterday - top bloke!). All I will say here is that you get a fair few funny looks queueing up to get a book signed whilst knitting a sock. Well, could you waste 20 minutes standing in a queue? I couldn't!

To celebrate my inclusion in Yarnival, and the knitting world becoming aware of my loopy british rantings, I thought I'd explain where the title of this blog came from.
When I was sixteen, my Aunt, who is very crafty and lives alone, so can be as messy as she likes, wrote me the following poem. I've kept it carefully ever since as a fantastic excuse for my messiness, and it now graces the wall of my craft room. It is rather heavy on the praise, having been written by a doting Aunt to a sixteen-year-old, but it makes me smile. Having a whole house to mess up, I should add, has merely magnified my ability to create mess on floors and all other surfaces.

But he still loves me. Luckily.

It is simply titled:

Lucy P.

and it goes like this:

Lucy likes to work things out
Find out what they're all about
Tapping on computer keys
Chopping down unwanted trees
Papier Mâché, Mosaic table
Lucy P. is very able.
Knitting sheep, threading beads
Growing lots of veggie seeds

She's now passed GCSEs
Seems she's even good at these
Quilling and some paper folding
Damn that bedroom!
Who keeps scolding?
It's in her nature to create
That bedroom floor will have to wait.

I think it would be fair to say that I have never let my creativity be stifled by undue considerations of mess. And I think my Mum would agree.