Hurtling

I realised as I was driving home from work on Friday that I resemble an ant. You know those streams of ants you get going from somewhere exciting back to their ant-nest? Well that's what it was like on the A1. Nobody was overtaking or turning off or doing anything remotely interesting. The outside lane was full of lorries, most of the cars were in the inside lane and we all just hurtled along, no one getting past anyone else, as everyone was doing at least 70 mph. It was the same on Monday morning, when I left at some obscene hour, to find that a heck of a lot of other people also drive south at that time (surely they're not ALL commuting to London?). There was one redeeming bit where the A1 turns into the A1(M) around Peterborough, and suddenly there are 4 lanes in both directions and all the traffic vanishes (to where?). Anyway, if anyone else was also hurtling north along the A1 on Friday, I was the one singing very loudly and tunelessly along to my Abba CD (in an attempt to stay awake) in a mud-caked Fiesta with lots of knitting bouncing around on the back seat.

This week I've been working near Cambridge. Work has been spectacularly dull (19th century German imprints WITHOUT A PUBLICATION DATE and in HORRENDOUS GOTHIC TYPE anyone?! I dropped German at school to do Latin. Hmm.) but I got to go along to the Cambridge KTog one night which was excellent and fab! Anne very kindly invited me to have tea with her family beforehand (which was very cool quinoa bake and scrummy chocolate cookies, but not together). I also met Rosie, who is also going to Skip North, so I'm gradually meeting people before we go!

Me and Anne at the meeting, which is in a pub in Cambridge (does anyone else think I've got teeth like a vampire in this pic? I do):

and an extremely cool cat, who was also in the pub, but not knitting as he was very busy doing other things.

I've also found some of the pics I took the week before at Center Parcs (grrrr, CENTRE PARKS). This is Dylan wrestling Monkey to the ground.

and me and Noah being altogether more civilized and reading the paper over a cup of tea (me) and water (him): (please note, I do not normally read the Telegraph. My Mum gets it and it was raining so I didn't want to walk to the shop to buy a Guardian.)

Monkey, meanwhile, as been behaving disgracefully. Now that he has Baby Monkey to look after he is meant to be behaving in a responsible fashion. So I left a large pile of washing up behind when I went to work on Monday, came home on Friday and he hadn't done it.


And just to prove that I do knit occasionally ;-) these are my finished Mermaid socks (I gave the other pair to my SIL):

and Coronet hat. I used some of the Cascade 220 which Amy sent me in the SP exchange in 2005 and it's lovely and soft and snuggly!

Have you seen the pictures of Get Knitted's new REAL shop? I need to go to Bristol ASAP. Except I'm on a yarn diet. Oops.

That's all for now folks! My unread bloglines thingy is now at something like 500+, but never mind...

Another yarn shop!

I spent last week at Center Parcs (I assume they actually mean "Centre Parks" and just were too lazy to change the spelling when it came over here), the Sherwood Forest variety. It felt very strange going on holiday only 15 miles from home, although nice ironic timing as Tony Blair was in the middle of saying it was impractical for his family to stop taking flights for holidays!

Whilst we were away my glasses disintegrated, so we had to make a quick trip to New Ollerton to find an optician. And a yarn shop!

This is Heath's Country Store, which has a very impressive set of rooms leading into each other, and all stuffed full of yarn, fabric and similar goodies:



Totally amazing. And did I mention it's only 15 miles from me?! I did buy three balls of yarn there, but without breaking my yarn diet! Haven't had time to take pics of them yet though.


This ball of yummyness is my first skein from the Fyberspates sock club. It's 90% alpaca, and is lovely, soft and squishy. Can't wait to knit with it. It also came with a pattern, and a little sock blocker key ring with a mini sock pattern for using up odd bits of sock yarn.

And I returned home to find an RAK from Carrie Anne in my postbox! It's a little ink stamp of a ball of wool & two needles, think you can just make it out in the pic. She made the card too, isn't it fab? These will be on sale soon, but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say where, so I won't just yet! ;-)

That's all for now. I was going to do a much longer post with loads of pics, but just haven't had time. I'm not sure when I'll next get to post as the next few weeks are quite busy. And sorry if I haven't commented on people's blogs for a while, I've hardly had time to read any in the last fortnight (that's not bad going, I'm about 4 months behind with podcasts!)

Countries...

Oh dear. This is a bit pathetic. I haven't been very far at all. And not even outside Europe. Must do something to rectify this...



create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

1st January

A fairly quiet start to the New Year last night, with some family friends and a horde of bell ringers, who all disappeared at 11.15 to ring in the New Year at the cathedral.

I've got some "unofficial" resolutions, some of which I don't want to share. Some are just ideas of things I want to do, which might not happen this year but sometime in the future.
So, the things I'm thinking about (for public consumption) are:

- to improve my driving and become more confident. I think driving is a fairly essential skill (well, I couldn't do my job if I didn't!), and I'm a reasonable driver, but I would like to be much better. I would encourage others to do the same - my mum has come across a large number of people (mainly women) at her bereavement group who let their partner do all the driving. Some have now had to move house to get near to shops or a bus route, or depend on friends for lifts, making it much harder to be independent. So, after a discussion with a neighbour (who's in the police) I'm going to join the Institute of Advanced Motorists sometime this year. Not just yet as my cash flow needs to improve after having time off sick in November and December! I have made quite a lot of progress in the last year as I've done so much more driving for work - a year ago I'd hardly ever driven outside Lincolnshire!

- to spend considerably less time online! I mean when I'm at home. Wireless broadband is dangerous as I can be online anywhere I feel like. I'm now going to attempt to keep my laptop in the study and use it much much less! And this should mean I have more time to go out and see friends, or relax with a book or whatever. So expect to see a lot less blogging this year.

- I've also decided to start the process to become a Chartered Librarian. I didn't think this would be possible as I'm self-employed, but it is, it's just a bit more long-winded and complicated to get the necessary work and formalities completed. The organisation I usually work for is supportive, but the work will have to be done in my own time because I'm freelance. I'm also not sure how long the process will take, but that doesn't really matter as long as I keep up with it. Again, spending less time online and more time doing this will help!

- and I'm signing up for Knit From Your Stash 2007, first seen on Sue's blog and now various others have signed up too! This is partly because my stash is getting big and I don't want it to be, and partly to save money.
These are my "guidelines", adapted from Wendy's:

1. The Knit-From-Your-Stash-a-Thon will start January 1, 2007 and run through September 30, 2007 -- a period of nine months.

2. I will not buy any yarn during that period, with the following exceptions:

2.a. I joined the Fyberspates sock club last month, so some yarn will arrive from that, but it's already paid for!

2.b. If someone asks for a specific knitted gift that I really and truly do not have the yarn for, I may buy yarn to knit that gift.

2.c. If I'm knitting something and run out of yarn, I may purchase enough to complete the project.

2.d. I get one "Get Out of Jail Free" card -- we are each allowed to fall off the wagon one time. For me this will be Skip North in March.

3. We are allowed to receive gifts of yarn.

Have a Happy New Year everyone and see you sometime in 2007! I'm not back at work until next week but I'm going down to London for a few days in the meantime...

What kind of reader are you?

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm You're probably in the final stages of a Ph.D. or otherwise finding a way to make your living out of reading. You are one of the literati. Other people's grammatical mistakes make you insane.
Dedicated Reader
Literate Good Citizen
Book Snob
Non-Reader
Fad Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz

Well, kind of right. A PhD is very expensive and a massive commitment of time, energy and intellect. And not for me at the moment. And I don't make my living out of reading (contrary to what most people think of librarians). In a few months time it'll be tourist season again and the ****** people will be wandering past me saying "how lovely, it must be wonderful to sit reading books all day long"! No folks, I'm CATALOGUING, that's why my LAPTOP is here too! I don't read them, I CATALOGUE them!
But otherwise, a fun and quite perceptive quiz for a change...