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.