Worth it?

Following my stressful week (which wasn't helped when on Friday afternoon I rang the SAGE only to find that they had given away our wedding date after I'd asked them to book if for us several times) I had a lovely weekend in Beadnell with my knitting chums. I love being by the sea and I was so excited to get up on Saturday morning and find that it wasn't raining and the sea was looking very blue and lovely.

I was even more excited later to see the harbour at high tide, with the waves crashing over the wall.

To add to this Emily had brought her ball winder so I got to wind all the skeins in my stash into lovely centre pulling cakes. Now, I don't want to paint a picture of myself as a sad person, who hasn't got out much recently, but it really was one of the funnest things I've done in a while. I just love mechanical processes, and I love them all the more when they're so simple and produce such lovely results.

On top of all this excitement I also had some fabulous food cooked by Emily, Helen, Jen, Lucy and Glenda. Yum!

It wasn't all frivolity and excitement. I did spend quite a considerable amount of time trying to wind a skein of Hipknits Silk into a ball. It turned out to be impossible to wind on the ball winder because some parts of it were so tightly wound and the skein was just a mess. I ended up winding it onto Becca's stick thing by hand. I'd just watched her do some and she came out with a nice, neat centre pulling ball. Mine ended up a right mess (anything to do with the wine I was drinking, or my wondering attention???). I won't go into too much details, though I feel I must apologise to the other ladies for the stream of expletives issuing from my lips for the majority of the evening. The nice thing about doing this in the company of knitters was that not one person suggested that I was getting unreasonably irate, or a bit obsessed. Everyone was very sympathetic.

I did think that I wouldn't want to look at the stuff again, but then I got home last night and started this. I actually feel like it was worth all the pain.

(Yes that is a wooden spoon the yarn in on. The ball was starting to collapse.)

Thanks to everyone who had a hand in organising the weekend. Particularly Lucy.

Job Update

Well the interview is over and the school decided not to appoint any of us. They're going to interview more people. The lesson I taught did not really show me in a particularly good light. At least I've had chance to practice and hopefully I won't be so nervous next time.

In other news we've had plenty of viewings and it looks like I have a nice list of small DIY chores for next week.

Better go and get my dinner ready before knitting.

Behind

I feel that I am once again behind in my posting. At the start of last week I was intending to write a nice post about last weekend. Firstly, about my friend Lee's surprise birthday party. Here he is cutting his cake:

It is the first time I have ever been to a surprise party and I must say that torturing Lee all day by pretending we didn't care about his birthday, refusing to go for a drink, and then hiding in his living room with party food, drink, balloons and a lit birthday cake was endlessly amusing. I think he enjoyed himself too, after chastising everyone for being mean.

Secondly, about my cousin Tracy's wedding in Sheffield last Saturday. Tracy and Steve have been together for about 12 years and home only just got round to tying the knot. Here they are cutting the cake.

I was feeling fairly lazy during the evening so I gave my camera to my willing sister-in-law-to-be, Michelle, who took some good photos. I also now have a large collection of close-up photos of my brother. For example:

I have several reasons for not getting round to posting earlier. I somehow seem to have ruined my camera batteries, which now only work for about 2 minutes, even after charging. I still haven't managed to get all of my photos off there. I was in school all week last week, and after weeks of being apathetic I finally feel motivated (or petrified) enough to actually do some work. We also had our house valued, which meant lots of cleaning and we went to view a couple of other houses yesterday.

Finally, I have a job interview tomorrow, which is scaring me most of all, and will be taking up a lot of today in preparation. I only found out about the interview on Wednesday evening. It hasn't done much for my sleep patterns, or general sanity over the last few days. I need to keep reminding myself that it's not that important. In 36 hours it will be over. Can't wait.

There would have been some knitting content to this post, but I'll save it for when I can extract the photos from my camera.

P.S. I just wanted to point out that it has finally stopped raining, for what I think is the first time since Friday evening. We are snow-free and very wet.

Green

I finally finished my green jumper. I bought this yarn at WoolFest from Dyed in the Wool. It's 100% wool and was labelled as DK, but knitted up more like aran weight. I've been wondering what to do with it for a while and decided to make a jumper for myself. I wanted to have a go at knitting a short row shaping bust, because I often find it difficult to increase enough for the bust without making everything look weird and out of shape. I'm really happy with the way it turned out. I made up the pattern myself. It's perhaps not the most flattering colourway I could have used. Stripes are hardly slimming. As a first attempt at making up my own jumper pattern I don't think it's bad.

A couple of weeks ago I also knitted this shrug from ribbon twist that I bought in the John Lewis sale. I really like the colour and wish there had been enough to knit a whol jumper. Not being a particularly fashionable person I'm still not comfortable with the idea of wearing some sleeves. Maybe I'll get there eventually.

Finally, here is my contribution to the glittyknittyknitty knitablog, which has been around the world and ended up back in the toon.

Hatters Block

Apologies for the lack of posts in the last week. I don't really have any explanation for it, other than the general lack of interest I've been showing in most things this month. Personally I'll be really glad when January is over. It's been a month of laziness and apathy for me. I just can't be bothered to do anything including uni or housework. I'm even finding it hard to motivate myself to get dressed in the mornings and leave the house. This is not like me at all.

The only positive thing I can say about this week is that I did manage to go to the gym on Monday for the first time in about 6 months. I will try and go again tonight (otherwise Mondays visit won't mean anything).

Fortunately this malaise hasn't affected my knitting at all. I've managed to knit a couple of things of my own design, which I shall show you once I have taken some photos.

It's turned cold here and this has made me want more hats. I've tried knitting a few different hats this winter and I've been finding it much more difficult than I expected. I always end up frogging what I've knitted before I get much higher up than the ears. I can't really figure out why that is. Surely it's no different from knitting anything else??? My only explanation is that I don't care enough about hats to put the effort in. I've never worn hats that much myself. Perhaps I just can't see myself wearing it and so I can't see myself knitting it either. There must be some sort of therapy I can employ to get me through this???

The Pledge

I have decided that it is time that I took the pledge. I have enough yarn to keep me in projects for several months. Since Graeme and I are planning to move some time in the next few months I should be decreasing, not increasing my stash. My only reason for not doing so before Christmas was that I still needed to buy yarn to make particular presents. Now this has passed I feel that I really should do something. So here we go.

The Pre-Woolfest Pledge

I do solemnly swear that I Hannah Scoffield, will not purchase any yarn for myself from this day until Woolfest 2007 (or until everything is used up).

Visitations

Well it's Monday morning again and the weekend just seems like a blurr. We drove down to Leicester on Friday night in the howling gales (fortunatly the Southbound side of the A1 stayed open). It was my first trip back since moving properly to Newcastle in September. It felt like I'd never been away. My friends Ade and Sarah put us up (thank you very much) and we managed to fit in a curry at the Nila (yum!), visits to the Milans (mmm... pizza), the Yeomans (mmm.. red wine) and the Wrights (ahhh.. baby) and coffee with Lisa (ooo... gossip). As always when visiting Leicester, our livers have taken a bit of a battering. It was really good to see them all after 4 months of being away. Hopefully it won't be so long before we get to see them all again.

In my excitement at seeing everyone again I completely forgot to take any pictures. I didn't think about it till I was heading home. To make up for this here is a picture of the gloves I knitted my future sister-in-law, Michelle for her birthday last week.

And a picture of my ring for people who were asking. The stone is amber. It may or may not be replaced by something flashier at some point. We'll see....

Spool

I'd just like to draw your attention to the EP which has recently been released by my very good and talented friend Christophe's band Spool. You can listen to some of there music here on My Space. It's relaxing stuff. Chris is the one playing the fiddle.

I have known Chris for many years. We went to sixth form college together and he shared a house in Newcastle with Snaterkat and I for several months. He's since been galavanting all over Europe doing all sorts of exciting musical stuff that the rest of us can only dream of.

Book Review

In the excitement over getting married I ordered this book from AmazonWedding Knits by Suss Cousins, thinking that I would like to knit some items for my wedding. Maybe a shawl or some lacy items.

This book promised to have patterns for everything a bride might want including a beautiful wedding dress. I can safely say that I was totally dissapointed. There are only two or three patterns in the whole book that use something more complicated than simple stocking stitch. Even the garter is knitted in stocking stitch with lace sewn on. The dress is entirely stocking stitch and even makes the skinny model in the book look fat. Goodness knows what it would do to me. I was expecting lacy patterns or at least something more interesting to knit.

Another thing that irritates me about this book is there are several photographs of each item, one of which will be blurred. This book is written for people who can't knit, or maybe as Lucy suggested, for people who can't knit to give to people who can knit because it looks nice. Just to give you an idea of the sort of things in the book here are a couple of examples. These 'lovely' arm warmers.

Or this 'gorgeous' dress:

At the end of the day I'd rather poke myself in the eye with my needles than spend the next 6 months knitting items in stocking stitch and there's not much in the book I couldn't knit without the pattern (if I would knit it at all). So I've printed off the returns label and this thing is going straight back to Amazon this afternoon. Shame on you Suss Cousins for this blantant money-making lazy-arsed excuse for a knitting book. Rant over.

Feeling Very January

I'm feeling very January this week. That is to say that I feel rather glum. The holidays are over, everyone is going back to work and it's still a bit gloomy and dark. I also have a stupid assignment to write for uni and am having trouble getting over the feeling that it is just a total waste of my time.

I have been doing some knitting but it's a bit secret, so you'll have to wait a while to hear about it.

Next week I'm back in uni and I get to meet the teachers who'll be mentoring me through my next teaching practice. It'll be nice to actually know more about where I'll be and what I'll be doing. I'm also planning a visit to Leicester next weekend. I haven't been back since I moved up North, so I'm looking forward to seeing all my friends and having a good curry.

Thanks to everyone who's sent engagement cards and given us presents. It is much appreciated. I'm off to do some concentrated knitting on the secret items and then to meet my fab knitting homies at the Centurion.

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!

Middle Aged Weekend

Last night Graeme and I went to see I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue (the long-running BBC radio 4 comedy) being recorded at the Empire Theatre, Sunderland. I've never been to the Empire before. It's unlike any other theatre I've ever been in. It reminds me slightly of the Lyceum in Sheffield, except that the interior plausterwork is painted rad and gold. It's less open than the Lyceum, giving it a very Victorian, music hall feel. Arriving at the theatre gave me a similar feeling to arriving at the Knitting and Stitching Show. Most people there appeared to be over 50 (at least).

Because I'd booked early, thanks to Rob's encouragement, we were sat in the middle of the stalls. We actually ended up sat almost directly behind some friends from uni (Sam, the famous pyromaniac from bonfire night and co.). We had a cracking view of Humph (Humphrey Lyttelton), the pannelists (Tony Hawkes, Graeme Garden, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Barry Cryer), Colin Sell and of course the lovely Samantha.

They recorded two shows during the evening, each taking around 45 minutes to record. The whole thing was quite entertaining and only slightly marred by the Captain Birdseye-a-like sitting next to us, who laughed raucously with tears streaming down his face for the entire performance. It was funny but it wasn't that funny.

The only low point of the evening was spending half an hour waiting to get out of the multi-storey car park. However since Graeme and I have been working like mad for the past few weeks it did give us chance to have a chat. (It comes to something when your only quality time together is spent waiting to get out of a multi-storey car park). I'm glad I went, though I'm shattered now. Better get on with tomorrow's planning if I'm even going to get some knitting time tonight.

Ran out.....

Yesterday I went to the Kitting and Stitching Show in Harrogate with Snaterkat, Pinkphish and Impressionist. We set off bright (well drizzly) and early at 8.30 am. Because I've been recently getting up to drive to school ever morning this was still a lie in for me. I woke early anyway and couldn't sleep because I was thinking about all the lovely things we would see at the show. We got there in good time and after a bit or argy bargy managed to find a carpark with spaces (we got one of the last few). We negotiated the crowds outside, eventually found the right door, paid and went in.

The place was massive with four halls of stands, each with a section devoted to exhibitions of textile art. There was a 5th hall downstairs with seating and food stalls and a 6th hall with fashion shows going on. Unlike WoolFest there was no straw on the floor or livestock to gawp at.
The whole thing was a bit commercial. There were quite a lot of sewing stalls in there two. As Snaterkat pointed out to me, it was a good thing we were only interesting in one craft or we'd never get round everything.

I was a lot less overwhelmed than I had been at WoolFest (my first experience of this type of event). But as time wore on the place got bussier and bussier. By the afternoon it was heaving. Elbows were out and the old biddies weren't taking any prisoners. Whoever said that the older generation is more polite has never been to one of these events. Whatever happened to saying 'excuse me'? I finally decided I'd had enough when I got myself into a mobbed button stall and couldn't get out again.

I didn't spend too much money. I got a couple of reduced books and some magazines. I was particularly glad to get Yarn Forward magazine as I've been wanting to have a read of it since it came out.

I got some nice 4.5 and 5.5 mm wooden DPNs for a small amount of money. I bought some cashmere (so soft), angora (uber-bargin!), some silky stuff in greens, enough hemp to make the Linda cardi from the House of Hemp book and some star shaped buttons to go with it.

I also got some tiny knitting needles.

The only bad thing about the day was that my camera wouldn't work. The lens wouldn't open and pop out like it's supposed to so I couldn't take any pictures. I'll have to take a trip down to Jessops next weekend. Anyway, that's why there are no pictures from the show and why these ones are so rubbish.

We were all feeling pretty exhausted by the end of the day. I got home at about six, had dinner and settled down to watch The Time Machine, which I'd borrowed from one of the teachers at school.

I quite enjoyed the film. I was desperate to play with my new yarn, but being a sensible young lady without much free time to knit, I decided that the best thing to do was try and finish my digger jumper. I got part way up the second sleeve and promptly ran out of yarn. My experience of knitting kids' patterns is that the yarn amounts are always underestimated. Who comes up with the amounts? I could understand it if I didn't knit at the right guage but I do. Grr..... I predicted this from the start, so I can take comfort in the fact that I was right!!! However it's annoying to have to order an extra ball just to do half a sleeve and the neck edging.

Still being sensible I decided to make a start on another knit for Christmas. It's meant to be for a little boy. I'm still not sure about the colour though. Is it a bit girly? He's only 1 year old. What do you think? I could save it for someone else.

It's my last week of teaching practice this week. I'm finding it hard to motivate myself today because I only have one lesson tomorrow. I should probably make an effort to get on though, because I will be grateful for it later in the week. I've enjoyed the experience, but I can't wait to finish and be able to relax a little. Right now all I want to do is vegetate and knit.

Diggers

I feel much more relaxed this weekend. I think it helps that I have a lighter teaching load next week. I'm also feeling more confident because I managed to deal with some behaviour issues last week that will make my life much easier this week and next. 3 out of 5 weeks of my teaching practice are done and the end is in sight. I can't wait for my lovely long 3 week Christmas holiday (can you imagine!!!).

I managed to get the digger design on my jumper finished last night. I just need to put in the french knots and tie in the loose ends at the back, but I'll do that once I've finished the stripes at the top. It's my first bit of successful intarsia using more than 2 colours.

Graeme's mum and dad have been visiting us this weekend. It was lovely to see them. They recently travelled across Russia and Siberia on the Trans-Siberean Express. They brought us this set of Russian dolls. The smallest one is just a couple of millimetres tall.

In case anyone was wondering, I did manage to make some monsters after my last post. Here they are sitting happily on the fridge.

The parental visit meant that I missed out on the Centurian and the planned post-knitting Turkish bath this weekend. I hope everyone enjoyed it. I'm hoping to make up for it with a visit to the Knitting and Stitching show in Harrogate next weekend. I will be following a strict budget while I am there. Can't wait!

Blogalog

I feel like I should start by apologising for my lack of blogging. Mostly its been laziness. I was waiting till I got round to taking some photos and that took longer than I thought.

I've had some lovely birthday presents from my fellow knitters. Including this Frog Tree yarn from Suzanne. It's so soft I could just sit and cuddle it.



And this lovely silky sock yarn from Sarah with sparkly bits in it. Very glamerous. Just the ticket for some lacy gloves or socks.




Sarah also gave me this fantastic Curious Yarns sock yarns, with an extra small skein for doing the heel in. Very cool.




Becca gave me this necklace and earings, which have already made the trip out to the pub on a Friday night. I'd like to say they were much admired but I was out with boys and they didn't even notice. I felt good in them though.



Becca also got me a monster making set with modelling clay and magnets for sticking them to the fridge. I'm planning not to do any work tonight, since everything is planned already for tomorrow. I think I might try my hand at moster creation.

On Saturday evening I started knitting this digger jumper from Lucinda Guy's Designs for Kids. I'm using Rowan Cotton Glace. This is the back. Hopefully I'll be able to get this section almost finished tonight.

Job Titles

I don't have much exciting stuff to talk about at the moment. The Forth has been very odd recently. I don't think I've been two weeks in a row where the same people have been there. I like seeing new people but I miss seeing everyone else on a weekly basis. Autumn seems to be quite a busy time for everyone.

One of the good things I've found about training to be a teacher is that you get a good response when people ask what you do. When I was working in research explaining my job to people led to a wide variety of responses. Some people say 'you must be really clever' (what do you say to that?) and some people say 'that's interesting' (meaning they have no idea what I'm on about), but most people just look at you a bit funny. Everyone knows what a teacher is and most people see it as a worthwhile thing to do. Also it makes people feel like that can talk to you rather than thinking they're addressing the next Albert Eintein (which they're not). I quite like it.

Bon Fires

Today has been a good day. I went to knitting this morning, picking up two birthday parcels on the way, that had been sitting in the post office all week. One of them turned out to be these fabulous slippers from Graeme's brother and family.


I'm wearing them now as I type and they lovely. Cosy and warm.

This afternoon we drove up to Druridge bay to meet up with some friends. One of them, Sam, had planned a fabulous firework display and barbecue. I love watching fireworks and I always feel a bit cheated if I don't get to go and watch some around Guy Fawkes night. I think I've had more than my quota for this year :) Photos don't really do it justice, so I decided to finally have a go at using you-tube. I couldn't figure out how to change it round from being sideways though.

We also got to see the sunset.

This week feels like it's going on forever. I'm so glad it's Thurday. I teach in the day and when I'm not teaching I'm talking about teaching or thinking about teaching. In the evening I'm preparing my lessons and then at night I dream about them. The only knitting I've done was on Tuesday at the Forth and then I was so tired I made a mistake, pulled out everything I'd knitted and had to pick the stitches up again. I ended up only doing couple of rounds total knitting. I can't wait for the end of Friday so I can come home, go to the pub, get all my teaching gripes out of my system and have Saturday off!!!

On a different note I went to the Forth on Tuesday to see Rachel Henderson (as advertised by PurlPower). It was meant to start at 6. I was late back from school (staff meetings and traffic, grrrr....). I got their about 6.30pm and there was a group of 7 people. Two regulars and 4 people I hadn't met before. The 7th I recognised as Rachel from the cover photos on her books, though she never introduced herself. After a while 4/5 more knitters arrived (including Sarah). The coffee table was covered in yarn and books though I wasn't sure whether they were for sale or use??? Rachel appeared to have lots to talk to people about on her phone. I sat their for a hour, making a mess of my knitting. At 7.30 I had to leave because Graeme was cooking me birthday tea. In that hour Rachel had moved seats but nothing appeared to happen. I put some money in her charity tins, announced to everyone there that we'd be there again next tuesday from 7 if they wanted to come and left.

I don't really understand what was supposed to be happened. I thought she was going to give a talk, or demonstrate something and take photos for her book. None of that happened while I was there. Did I miss it by leaving early? If anyone stayed and something exciting happened later can you let me know. I must admit that I was disappointed by the whole thing and sort of wished I'd stayed at home to open my presents instead.