We did go for our walk on the beach, following my last post, and this is what we found. A covering of ice. Part of the beach were totally frozen and the sand was hard to walk on. There was a definite high tide mark, where the salt water had melted the ice. I've never seen a beach covered in ice before. It was weird.

Further along where the river gets to the beach, a lake had formed, which was covered in ice. Here is proof that it is possible for mere mortals to walk on water.

The kids loved the things I'd knitted them. Here is Jamie sporting his digger jumper. You might notice that it has already been christened with snot and christmas dinner. A sure sign of acceptance.

The new camera G bought me is fantastic. Here are some snaps of the socks I knitted over Christmas

And the jumper I've been knitting:

We've now had a bit of a change of location and weather. G and I are both suffering somewhat with colds and are doing our best to support the UK tissue industry. Tomorrow we're seeing some of my relatives, including my little/big bro. Better get that third pair of socks knitted so I can concentrate on some urgent birthday knitting that needs doing on the same set of needles.

Thanks for all your kind comments. Hope you're having fab hols.

God bless us every one

Merry Christmas to you all!

I hope everyone had a lovely day yesterday. I certainly did. I've been having a relaxing time here in northeast Scotland. It's been cold, crisp and sunny most days. Ideal walking weather. There's been a bit of fog, but only at night. I've knitted two pairs of socks and am half way through a third. Father Christmas bought me some lovely presents and Graeme asked me to marry him. I now have a lovely amber and gold ring on my finger, which may someday morph into something more extravagant. Who can say. About to go for a walk on a long, empty, sandy beach in the sunshine with my husband-to-be. I am as happy as larry.

Apologies to anyone who thought they should have recieved this news personally. Computer time is limited and the phone signal isn't great. Santa brought me a new camera so I should be able to post some pictures soon. Hope you all enjoy the rest of your holidays. Normal service will resume from Thursday. :)

Jingle Socks

I finally finished my Christmas socks. They didn't take that much total time, but I got quite distracted from them when I was making lots of pairs of fetching. I wish now that I'd done the tops much longer. I had a lot of yarn left over. I was following the stupid pattern when I started so I did what it said. Maybe I'll use the extra to make something else.

I got my first Christmas presents yesterday. They were from my talented cousin Gillicious, who made this lovely crochet ornament too.

I haven't opened the presents yet. I'm saving them for Christmas day. I had my first mince pies yesterday too.

and today I had my first Christmas dinner with turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and all that. I think this is the most Christmassy I've felt prior to the actual day in a long time. Hope it continues.

About Bloody Time

Well it's been a long time in the making but last night I finally finished Rufflette. I made it in Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk. I don't know what possessed me to do so. I certainly wouldn't do it again. It turned out to be nothing but a pain. The worst part was the edging, which I did on a circular needle. I don't like circulars and as a result it has taken me several months to finally stop avoiding it and get it done. At the end of the day I do quite like the look of it. I don't really think the camera phone does it many favours.

I still need to find some buttons for it. I think the fabric is sturdy enough to take some decent buttons, but I don't have any at the moment to put on. I wish I'd thought about it before going to the Knitting and Stitching Show. I think I could have got some quite nice ones. I'll have to do a proper search over the Internet. Here's another photo where my boobs don't look quite so huge.

Today, in an effort to empty the fridge and freezer, I did a bit of cooking. I started making the filling for a rabbit pie that we can have for dinner tomorrow. It's a pity I can't take a photo of the smell, because it does smell very appetising.

I finally used up the pumpkin from Halloween and made some pumpkin soup.

And I did the icing on the Chritsmas cake. I've never done one before. I'm not sure I like the finished product but I doubt it will last long and I'm sure it'll taste just the same. I'm afraid I can't take credit for the fruit cake. My mum made that.

As predicted I have begun sneezing today. It seems that the cold, which has been lurking for the last few weeks has finally got me, now I've relaxed. Oh well, at least I've got most of my Christmas shopping and my uni work done. Planning to finish it off tomorrow and give the house a good clean. Better go and sort out tonight's dinner.

Christmas Cheer

On the first day of Christmas,
My true love gave to me,
A finished digger jumper,



And some marzipan on a fruit cake.

New Knitty

Yey! There's a new Knitty.

Fetching

I've just finished the last of three pairs of Fetching that I've knitted this weekend. Even though I had decided last week to give up on all the presents I had planned to knit and didn't have time for I couldn't face buying rubbish for people when I could knit some lovely wrist warmers. Accessorise is full of wrist warmers which are mostly in acrylics and are overpriced. I decided just to knuckle down to it and get some knitted. I can now say I'm totally sick of the pattern. The muscles in my arm feel quite sore. They do look really good though.

Popped to Ring O'Rosie on Saturday and got some extra yarn to finish off the digger jumper. So that's next on my list. Better get on. Two weeks till Christmas!

Making things

When I lived at home I used to spend hours at a time sitting alone in my room, communing with rolls of card, pens, pencils, fabrics, glues, paints, threads and yarns. If anyone had asked me afterwards what I had been doing I would have said I was 'making things'. What was I making. I keep trying to remember but I just can't. I know I used to make my toys clothing because my best bear Tim is still wearing a pair of denim dungarees and a knitted jumper, that I made. I also have very vivid memories of making a 3D maze. You'd put a marble into the top and if you tipped the thing in the right sequence eventually it would come out of the bottom. I remember spending a lot of time on that. It was difficult to get the spaces inside just the right size.

When I went to uni I didn't stop making things. I remember making all my own christmas cards one year, with 3D christmas trees in them. That was a lot of work. One of the things that stood in my way was a lack of resources. That's when I started crocheting in earnest. I think that's one of the things that made knitting so appealing. You don't need that much stuff just to get on with it.

What I don't understand is, where does this need to create come from? And, what was I making during all those hours at home as a child? Was I just preparing myself for the making ahead? It worries me that I can't rememeber.

Pink

On Sunday Graeme and I walked up to Morrisons to get a few things. As soon as I walked out of the house I noticed something was different (the view is normally quite dull). One of the bricks in the wall opposite had been painted pink. No others, just this one.

I thought it was a bit odd. Further on, in Ouseburn park, I noticed that a kerbstone had been painted pink, and one of the metal fence posts at the edge. Round the corner, one of the red bricks of the bridge had been painted pink too. This is not your typical graffiti. There's lots of arty types in the Ouseburn Valley and it's not unusual to see arty graffiti around, but it never gets up to our street. Something weird is going on.

I was walking home from uni today when I noticed that one of the bollards on the end of our street has been got too.

The Monument metro signs have gone pink too. I understand that that is related to the winter festival. Is this pinkness something to do with that? Is it isolated pinkness or is this happening all over town? Anyone else seen anything?

Also, I managed to get over being miserable about my camera and took a photo of my first sock. Getting near to the toe now. I quite like them. They're in the sparkly Regia silk that Sarah gave me for my birthday. I think they will be my Christmas day socks.

RIP my digital friend

I took my broken camera to the camera shop today. It turns out that the standard Fuji repair rate is £99. Since I could replace it with a near-identical camera for that much money now it's not worth getting it repaired. I feel really sad about this because I love taking pictures with my camera and it was a birthday present from my parents last year.

Can't even be bothered to attempt taking a photo of the lacy socks I'm knitting with my phone camera. I don't think it would work. Hope you can all live with pictures for a bit. Hopefully Father Christmas will bring me a replacement.

Relaxing

I'm finding it hard to relax this weekend, although I've made some considerable efforts to do so.

My school friend Leanne visited on Friday night, on her way to visit someone else. It was really good to see her. She's the sort of friend who I can not see for ages and then as soon as I see her it's like no time has passed. We had a good chat. It's a shame it was a short visit, but hopefully we'll see each other before too long.

On Saturday I woke up at my usual time (grrr...) even though I could have comfortably had a 3 hour lie-in. I made a start knitting a lacy sock pattern from Knit Today. When I fist bought Knit Today, I was quite pleased with the way it seemed to be a bit more interesting than Simply Knitting and Knitting, even though it was made by the same people. It actually seemed to have patterns I might knit in it. I'm becomming more and more dissapointed with it as time goes on. The recent issue just seems to have become more like the other two magazines, with published letters almost exclusively from the over 70s. I don't have anything against the over 70s, but it would be nice to hear from more of a range of age groups.

The other thing which is annoying me is that the sock pattern I am knitting is really badly written.

• Firstly the sizes it gives are small/medium/large, with no indication of what foot/ankle sizes these might actually be for.
• Secondly, the pattern recommends 3 mm needles, with 54 stitches for small. That seems reasonable for stocking stitch, but the lace pattern is very open and it ended up absolutely huge, so I was forced to frog it and change to 2.5 mm needles.
• Thridly, between the top and the lace section there's a row which increases the number of stitches by two. There is not mention that this should happen in the pattern, which left me feeling like I'd made a mistake for ages, until I finally figured out what was going on.
• Forthly, the foot on the picture has stocking stitch on the underside, with the pattern on the top, however the pattern, just tells you to continue with the lace along the length of the foot.
• Fifthly, the heel is done using short row shaping. The instructions are slightly different from short row heels I've done before, but I thought I'd give it ago. I'm know finding that the second part of it (picking back up the stitches) makes absolutely no sense.

I think part of the reason for the crapness of the pattern is that the editors of the magazine assume that noone who reads it knows anything about knitting. The instructions would make much more sense if they actually gave their readers some credit and explained what was going on, instead of expecting people blindly to follow instructions. The only reason I'm still knitting the pattern is that I think the sock look quite good up to now. If I can't sort out their heel instructions I'll just make it up myself. Rant over (I think I'm making my not-very-relaxed point quite well).

Following knitting yesterday Glittr, Snaterkat and I went along to the turkish bath in the City Pool. I've been wanting to go for years. It's an old Victorian building and the turkish bath still has the old style chaging rooms, in varnished hardwood, with a bed in each to recline on. There's a steam room and three dry rooms of increasing hotness. There's also a spa and hot and cold showers. It's also possible to have a massage. We were only in the hot rooms for about an hour, but I felt like we'd been there for a long time. I felt so sleepy and brain-dead by the end of it I forgot to immediatly phone Lucy and Jen afterwards as I'd promised (sorry ladies). As it turned out we'd already missed them and ended up not going to Wagamama as a group anyway.

Graeme and I did go along for a late lunch. I enjoyed it along, although rather than relaxing I found the place quite noisy and hectic. I'm not very good with crowds, particularly when low on energy.

I'm ashamed to say I did hardly anything with the rest of the day appart from knit and watch TV, in a zombie-like state. We rented Pirates of the Caribean II from our local rental place. I enjoyed it, although the plot was quite complicated and didn't reach any satisfactory resolution at the end. It felt a bit like one of those dreams you have where the story goes off on lots off tangents and you wake up before the end.

I managed to sleep for 9.5 hours last night and am feeling much more awake today. The uni work I have to do is praying on my mind. I suppose I should try and get on with things. Hopefully I can have the evening off and have a less stressful week if I do that. I'm hoping be the Christmas holidays I'll have got everything I need to do done, and won't have any work to think about. I can always hope!

Last Day

Tis the last day of my teaching,
Fa-la-la-la-la, la la, la, la!

I was going to try and shoehorn this whole post into the song, but I don't really have the time. It's non-uniform day today, which I'm told is always a bit of a nightmare. But I don't care. I have two lessons left. Hooray! I'm still alive and everthing. Happy first day of advent to you all.

God bless us every one!