Monday, October 20, 2008

My birthday!

I am now so old my nephews can't count as far as my age (they did try). That is REALLY old. Fortunately they were on hand to help me blow out the candles on my (first) cake:

This year my birthday fell on a Saturday, so I hopped onto (several) trains and headed up to Nottingham for the weekend. On the Saturday we walked in Bramcote Hills Park where there were plenty of leaves to play with.

and some beautiful views.

Afterwards some of us may have been accidentally diverted into Yarn, where we bumped into a crowd from Knit Lincs on a shopping expedition. The nephews had gone home with my brother (for some reason they don't find yarn shopping an exciting prospect?!) so my SIL, Mum and I had plenty of mooching time.


I bought seven skeins of Mirasol Hacho, to make Suri, from the Mirasol Collection Book One. Yarn diets don't apply on your birthday, right?

And then, when I went into work this morning, one of my colleagues had made this:


Birthday cake no. 2!! This one is lemon (the first was chocolate). Between the two of them there were 16 candles so I have declared that I am 16 (again). And I'd booked the afternoon off work, so spent it having lunch with friends, then showing them round the area. Oh, and maybe eating some cake too.

I've been making impressively fast progress on my Irish Hiking Scarf:

I seem to be knitting much faster these days. I also seem to be developing a thing about cables as I've finished off Noah's tank top for his birthday in December.


Thank you for all the birthday greetings I've received - in the post, by email, on Facebook and on Ravelry. I've been a bit overwhelmed by the number but I *think* I've managed to reply to everyone. Apologies if not...

Thursday, October 09, 2008

I FOUND A KNITTING GROUP!!!

Yes, finally, after only TEN MONTHS of living in this desert-of-knitterly-activity I found a local(ish) group!! After making good use of the Buckinghamshire knitters forum on Ravelry (I don't technically live in Buckinghamshire, but I'm only just over the border, and it's closer than any of the Berkshire groups, which is where I technically do live). So off I drove to Marlow on Monday evening. Marlow is supposed to be really nice, but as I only saw it in the dark and mostly just a pub (plus a petrol station that had petrol 5p a litre CHEAPER than in Slough!!!!!) I can't really comment on the niceness of Marlow. But it was a very nice knitting group. Sue, who I "met" on Ravelry looked out for me (very scary walking into an unknown pub in an unknown place to meet an unknown group of knitters at the time of year when your glasses steam up as you walk into places) and there were six other knitters, whose names I mostly can't remember (not good with names, even when I haven't got steamed up glasses) but one of them was Wendy who came and found me on Ravelry the next day. Everyone was nice and friendly, and it was SO nice to be with some normal knitterly people for a change. And now I can't wait until next month for the next meeting!!

Then, the next day I had to go into London for a meeting at probably my least favourite place (not giving much away, but it's got a big dome on top) and then wrestle with the British Library to get my reader's pass renewed (more ID needed than to open a bank account...) before I headed over to the Royal Horticultural Halls (yes, the Iknit day venue!) to meet a friend for coffee and have a look at the Autumn Harvest Show.

OK. So the apples aren't a patch on the Yarn Harlot, but they're still pretty cool?! The pears are pretty cool too.

And these are the biggest onions I've ever seen. In a moment of extreme madness I volunteered to cook the Harvest Lunch at church at the weekend (80+ people...) and I'm thinking with an onion this size you'd probably only need one to feed everyone?

And then I walked back to Waterloo station via Iknit and bumped into Liz! Yay, lots of nice knitterly people!!

We have news from over the Pond! Big Monkey, who came to stay a couple of weeks ago, has arrived safely in his new home and is making friends already:

And Michele sent me some fab honey and yarn in exchange:

Wildfoote sock yarn. Yum. Which currently seems to be unobtainable in the UK as Get Knitted don't seem to sell it any more?

And this gorgeous skein, which is from Ranch of the Oaks and is called "zoo" yarn as it's a mixture of alpaca, llama and silk. And it's sooooooooo lovely.

And finally, these are the socks I knitted over the summer:

They're Cross-over Rib from Sensational Knitted socks, using naturally dyed yarn from Indigo Knits. I'm a bit sad as I knitted them for the Secret Prayer Sock Swop, and, although I know they've arrived (the swop organiser let me know) the recipient never got in touch to say thank you, which seems a bit off really. I'm trying to be charitable and think that something probably came up to stop her emailing, and, hey, the important thing is praying, not knowing what happened about it, but I can't help being a bit annoyed. I sent them off six weeks ago, so decided it was high time they got a picture on here anyway!

And I think that's all for now. The tank top for Noah is steaming ahead so I might even have a finished pic next time!

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Greenbelt

I just rediscovered my Greenbelt post! Bit out of date now (it was the August bank holiday weekend) but, hey, at least it'll prove to Anne that I was there really! ;-)

Greenbelt was a bit muddy.

Fortunately it mainly only rained during the night when I was safely tucked up in my sleeping bag. And we did civilised camping involving fruit bowls, cafetieres...

and porridge.


I was volunteering in the Angels Lounge, but only for two hours a day. And the Lounge was conveniently situated right next to the Divine Chocolate Fountain:

And Prue's cafe, with their cream-smothered-hot-chocolate.

I got loads of knitting done, this was started two days before Greenbelt, and I finished the first sock not long after I got home from it!

The pattern is Welt Fantastic, from Sensational Knitted Socks, on 2.5mm needles. The yarn is Lana Grossa Meilenweit 100 Cotton Festa, from the sale section at Get Knitted. The DPNs ended up in the mud a few times, but it's machine washable yarn so I'm not too worried...


The Greenbelt knitting group "Purls and Wisdom" met twice (although I missed the first one due to some slightly convoluted car driving which I'm going to blame on Monkey) and it was great to meet some more knitters, including Mandy (*wave*), who's in the photo below. They were knitting hats for sailors, more info here.

And I got some more bootees finished for another ex boss' baby.