Apologies

Just wanted to say sorry for not making it to knitting on Saturday, or on Tuesday. I've been hit with a wave of post-half-term teaching work/stress which I felt like I had to deal with instead. Coupled with selling the house and wedding stuff I feel under a fair amount of pressure at the moment.

On the upside, I only have 2 lessons today, as opposed to the 5 that I had yesterday, we have our first person coming to view the flat today, and I'm beginning to get to grips with my planning so I should be able to come to knitting next week.

I also offer some preemptive apologies for the lack of blog posts in the next few weeks. Easter is not that far away (thank heaven).

4.5 hours of my life I cannot get back

After spending a large part of yesterday wishing I didn't have to go and see Robert Lepage's 4.5 hour play Lipsynch at the Northern Stage (mainly due to the running time), I actually ended up quite enjoying it. The use of sets and projection were really innovative and there were some truly funny moments. I especially liked one scene which took place on a tube train. The crew used moving platforms and lighting to give the appearance of pulling in and out of stations. It was very effective.

The play was split into 7 chapters, each featuring a different character. The billing made it clear that it was a work in progress. I felt that the final chapter was a bit ropey. It was also way too long. Who wants the sit for 4.5 hours in an evening? In fact we were there for about 6 hours because of the intervals and the start. By the end I was dropping off to sleep. Lepage intends the final version to be 9 hours long, which I think is just asking for people to loose interest. I would be happy to go and see three seperate plays of 3 hours each, but I don't think I've ever been happy to sit and do anything for 9 hours. I don't even sleep that long.

I do not think that it was a wasted evening of my life. Particularly since I managed to overcome second sock syndrome during the interval, by casting on for the toe of the second Wyvern sock. I did this thinking I would have to overcome my boredom by knitting through the performance, but I was never bored.

So, in short, it's worth going, but if you do go take a picnic tea and some strong coffee.

Cracks

I'm feeling rather tired today after spending the last two days filling in cracks in plaster that, according to our estate agent "might scare first time buyers", and then painting the walls where these cracks appeared. By the end of yesterday I was cursing the people who previously lived here. They stripped off the wall paper and then filled all the holes in the wall in a very slap dash way. Then they painted right over the surface without sanding it down. So the wall is a big mess of lumpy bits and holes. There was no way that I was going to cover all this up with a bit of polyfiller, so I filled in the worst and then sanded and painted what I could. I also painted the bathroom, thoroughly cleaned all the grout and replaced the sealant on the bath and sink. I hope the potential buyers appreciate it.

Now there's just the small matter of some uni work and some lessons I have to finish planning for next week. We're also going to see a 4.5 hour play/improvised thing by Robert Lepage, this evening at the Northern Stage reviewed here. I'm interested to see what the theatre is like, as I haven't been since the renovation, but I can't say that the length is making me that enthusiastic. We'll see.

Knitting and Fridges

Finally some knitting to post. I finished this hat last weekend, but only got around to blocking it and posting it on Thursday/Friday last week. I knitted it for Dawn, who is in the middle of several rounds of chemotherapy and is also experimenting with a range of interesting head gear (I recommend having a look at her recent blog post). It's Shedir, from Knitty's breast cancer issue, in 100% cashmere (from here). It's easily the softest yarn I have ever worked with.

I finally got around to making a little skirt for my ballerina bunny yesterday. She's now waiting to be taken to the post office. Here she is limbering up.

In answer to GourdonGirl's post here are a couple of photos of our fridge. I didn't take the bottom half because it's empty. Mostly it's postcards, but there are some stickers (these are Graeme's, he's very selective) and some magnets (Korean Ladies and some I made). Not particularly interesting, but we've only had this fridge a couple of years.

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.