Bonsoir....

Aujourd'hui, je suis trop fatiguée d'ecrire. Je me couche, et je dors. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

(je n'étais pas trop fatiguée de tricoter, vous comprenez?)

à dèmain.

Displacement activity

Cindy is a wicked woman. All I did was ask an innocent little question and she wrote a whole blog post to answer it (ok, she's a very kind and thoughtful wicked woman). The thing is, that very kind and thoughtful blog post included lots of temptation, and (here's where I fell down) lots of very useful links and information. Now, I'm sorry, but a woman on the last day of her holiday who's supposed to be doing lots of work simply can't resist that kind of a distraction! Armed with some new pointy DPNs and some brand-new gorgeously snuggly-soft malabrigo sock yarn, what knitter could resist the temptation to just read up on the process? "Just a quick look, so I can understand how you do the heel. I've been wondering for ages..." The trouble is, a quick look becomes a long look, becomes a long read, and at some point in all that reading, my wayward fingers, which should have been marking books, picked up those new pointy DPNs and that gorgeous wool and... well..... this happened. The books I should have been marking, in case you're wondering, still lie abandoned on the floor. Either I'm going to have to stay up all night after French tomorrow marking them, or I'm going to be taking that class to a computer room on Wednesday. Hey, now there's an idea....

Oh, and Cindy? Thankyou! I'm loving the toe-up sock so far...

Last day of holiday

It's the end of half term. I have just had an entire week off work to rest, relax and prepare for the next six weeks of term, leading up to Easter. I seem to have managed two out of the three...
Never mind. After the last few weeks of worry and stress and hard work, I deserved a proper rest. I have no idea what on earth I'm going to teach the kids tomorrow, but never mind. Actually it isn't as bad as it sounds, they all need to do a test this week so tomorrow's lessons can all be last-minute revision, and all I'll have to do tonight really is mark two sets of books. Bummer. I hate marking. I must set more homeworks this term taht are either learning (i.e. no marking at all, do a quick vocab test next lesson) or can be marked by the kids at the start of the next lesson. I'm spending far too many hours trying to slog through 11 sets of books every week! I just can't manage it. This morning we had some lovely fresh air and exercise up at the club doing some practical shotgun, whch is great fun, and I also knitted a bit more of the lace on the silk cocoon cardigan sleeve - I'm nearly onto the stockinette section now.
The cocoon lace pattern is coming out really nicely, although I have to say in deep purple it's reminding me more of blackberries at the moment. This second pic is the closest I can get to the colour of it, although it's really still not quite this blue, it's a really deep imperial purple.
I just rushed outside to take these in the afternoon sun, as it peeped out from behind the clouds for a couple of minutes. Also enjoying their Sunday stroll around the garden:

Ethelred, Elsie and Attila, snacking on some corn, their third favourite thing in the whole world (just out of interest, #1: mealworms, #2: fresh corn-on-the-cob).

And not to be left out, this little madam came out and rolled around in the cutest, take-my-picture kind of way. I think she's afraid the chickens will get more blog space than she does... fat chance. She's normally to be found on or near wool 23 hours a day!

A strange day - lots of waiting around and some spinning.

My brother was supposed to call in this afternoon on the way back from his latest ski trip. My Mum came down to see him, as we don't get to see him very often - he lives waaay up in Blackpool. He did eventually get here - at about 7.30 pm. We had been expecting him since lunchtime. Such is the way of things when you are on a school trip with a coachload of 40 or 50 kids - delays happen very easily and are totally unpredictable. Like the customs office deciding to check each and every kid's passport and search every single coach coming back today from Calais to Dover. Many many coaches. Thousands of kids. Hours and hours of waiting with bored exasperated kids. Who'd be a teacher? Well, me, obviously, but then we know I'm mad. Apparently it runs in the family.

Things I did get done today whilst sitting about chatting to my Mum and drinking tea:
Frogging a holed kermit sock and picking the stitches back up ready to re knit the toe...

...casting on for another Elizabethan Ruff Cowl and starting to write up the pattern....

...and finishing and plying my handspun... Three-ply, one ply dark purple merino, two plies variegated blue/teal/purple bluefaced leicester. I have 126g of finished 3-ply yarn here, which I have calculated to be about 330m. I don't know yet what to knit with this, I was planning on a hat or cowl, but maybe mittens? Don't know. It's not going to be socks, as my last pair of handspun socks lasted all of two weeks before I walked a hole in them (I wore them 3 or 4 times). I just don't think my handspun, unreinforced, is tough enough for socks. But that's okay, there are tonnes of gorgeous sock yarns out there. Some of which is sitting here calling to me. I have to reknit the kermit first, or I'll never do it.

Question: Was knitting socks in a yarn called 'kermit' setting myself up for frogging? Discuss.

Oh, thank heaven for pointier needles...

I can now just about do a p5tog, although it's still tricky. The stitch pattern is starting to look lovely (I've only just worked out that it's on the reverse side) but I've still got a lot to do before I get onto the stockinette portion. I started with a sleeve, so that I could check the gauge on the lace pattern as well and not be too annoyed if I ended up having to frog. It's fabulous. I wish I could afford to splurge on the alpaca silk the pattern calls for, but hey, credit crunch, yarn diet, yada yada yada... It'll still be fabulous.
Now, about that yarn diet... Um.... I may have had a slight nibble today. I'm back on the food diet, so maybe I just had to rebel somehow. I also needed to make up for this sad occurrence: Is there any sorrier sight than a huge gaping hole in a well-loved handknit sock? The tragedy is that these are only a few months old, and they are (were!) my current favourites, as they're so bright and zingy that they always make me smile the minute they touch my feet. So I needed cheering up. That's my excuse.

I had to go to Get Knitted to get the pointy needles, and this gorgeous thing followed me home. It's Manos del Uruguay silk bled: 70/30 merino/silk. It may become a cowl or a hat, but at the moment is just being stroked and cuddled. Yum. Well, I needed some new socks, didn't I? Malabrigo sock 100% merino. I'm not saying that I won't fix the beloved kermit socks, but I haven't decided yet whether to try and darn or whether to frog back to the hole and re-knit. I hate darning and darned patches so I'll probably have to frog. Damn.
The hole is kind of making me reluctant to finish these though: purple self-striping BFL sock, same as the Kermit in another colour. It's a hell of a lot of work if they're going to be very delicate socks. On the other hand I do love the feel of them... maybe I just need a little distance.