Wednesday, November 15, 2006

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.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Shopping trip stash acquisitions

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. My weekend in pictures:


Koigu! ooooooooh.................... why have I never had any before?




Pretty colours..... Couldn't wait! started knitting in the pub on bonfire night. It's in the village I grew up in, they're used to me.

Off-roading on Sunday into an astounding sunset...

....and the man who forgives me spending the mortgage money on wool, darling hubby himself, in his element with a muddy Landrover. I love him - he didn't scream when I told him that I'd spent about a week's wages on wool in an hour. And he buys me chocolate when I've got PMT.

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Shopping trip

Uh oh. Went a teensy bit over budget.
Will post details tomorrow. Right now, I have to go and hide some of the evidence and find food in the freezer for the next month. If I don't spend any money on food, we might still be able to pay the mortgage. Whoops! Somebody take my credit card away!!!!
I'd just like to say for the record that I love my husband very much and he is a very understanding man. Hopefully.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Warm wooly parcel to Scotland

Remember the pixie hat?
Well, there was about a ball and a half of the merino handspun left, so two evenings saw a pair of chunky oversocks, knit flat with a seam up the front, on 5mm needles with a bit of chunky- spun turqoise English 56's from the stash to fill in the heels and toes. There was about a metre of the merino left over when I'd finished. Perfect!
Those should keep the toes warm on cold Scottish nights in front of the telly. The joke is, she's bored up there so is learning to knit! She's found a friendly lady in a multipurpose yarn / haberdashery / craft shop who has cast on a scarf for her and shown her a few rows, and now she is bravely going it alone! I can't wait to see the scarf! First ever piece of knitting - it's a rite of passage! If she finishes it, I'll have to reward (tempt?) her with some Koigu or Lorna's Laces (my spree on Saturday now has another excuse!) - have to start the addiction as soon as possible! In the meantime, until her scarf is finished, i sent her this one that I knitted about six months ago in handspun merino, simple 2x2 rib. I was enjoying playing with the colors of the stripes. It's been waiting in a drawer for cold weather and to have its ends darned in, so two minutes with a needle and off it went to the cold North! Oh and another hat that was completed about the same time as the scarf as some 'something to do in the car' knitting. May as well keep a head warm as sit in a drawer!

See? Who says I never finish a project? Loads of FOs there! She received the parcel a couple of days ago and I think she loved it. I'm especially proud of the socks, not so much the hat any more as I was asked, very kindly, 'why does it have a nipple on top?'

Um. That's not quite the look I had in mind. Still, if she layers it with the other hat, she will have a very warm head.....

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Hooray! It's finished!

No, not the sock. In fact, not any piece of knitting. My YP assignment! Finished at 1.15 this morning, handed in at 10 am. I've got time to knit now!
Speaking of which, I've started a new project. I've been looking at Rowan Tapestry for months now whenever I go near a wool shop, stroking it and wishing I could come up with an excuse to buy some. Winter has given me my excuse! First frost on the ground this morning, I must need another jumper. Hooray! Now, I have to state for the record that this is my first ever attempt at knitting a jumper, so be kind and don't laugh if it all turns out a bit wonky! The colours are gorgeous.... stripes without the effort of darning in ends! Yay!

...and somebody, who I think has been feeling a teensy bit jealous of the chickens, got the very rare priviledge of curling up on my lap this evening whilst I was knitting. Normally I shove her off after thirty seconds, because she pounces on the wool and tries to bite the needles as they wave about, but I've been feeling so sorry for her having to be kept in for so long convalescing that I tolerated minor attacks on the WIP this evening and kept breaking off to stroke and fuss her. Everybody? Ahhhhhh.....
Yes, I know, I'm a soft beggar. Please ignore the mess in the background. It's been over a week since the parents visited, so standards have slipped again. If my Mum visited every 2 days, my house would stay tidy! (this is not because my Mum tidies up, although sometimes I do find she's snuck off and is hoovering my stairs, but because she nags me if it's not tidy so all the mess gets hidden before she arrives!)

Another gratuitous kitty shot, because she just came to see what I was typing and to scrounge some kitty biscuits. Darling hubby keeps some on his desk. When she wants some she jumps up, walks in front of the screen (and occasionally across the keyboard - sometimes accidentally sending emails that read 55243i8732egklfdu6465&U^%£%££.... to random people in the address book -hopefully not Keir's boss!), and pushes the pot of biscuits over with her nose to get his attention. So he gives her some biscuits. Has he trained the cat, or has the cat trained him? Interesting philosophical question...

Do you see Darling Hubby's new toy next to the cat? Do you notice something else? Just behind it? I'm sure there is a third one somewhere too.... Now, I'm not even thinking of complaining. It'll make it harder for him to object to me going on a spree on Saturday! I'm going to Get Knitted's open day! My first chance to get my hands on some Lorna's Laces! Do you think I should warn him? Nah! I can make meals out of whatever's in the freezer for a while - that way I can spend the food money on wool!

Now I'm off to see if I can chart a pattern for some chicken socks for somebody's xmas present.... or maybe some mittens.... or a scarf...?