A week away

I had a pretty amazing week away last week. It started with a very nice Saturday, including knitting at Diane's and a trip to Stash in Putney, where I bumped into Nickerjac, Grit and Michaela.



Sunday I drove over to Chelmsford to stay with some friends, then onto Center Parcs at Elveden Forest on Monday.

I was sharing a lodge with these two:

Yes, the nephew sprogs are getting BIG! And my brother, SIL and Mum. We had a fairly snowy week there, which made it particularly interesting clearing out on the final day. I've never cycled in snow before...

I didn't really do any activities, although I did have a rather delicious massage at Aqua Sana one day. Claudius came on holiday too so I was very actively emailing in the wifi bit in the centre every day too. (yes, I know I have a sad life).

And, on Friday, I departed to stay with Liz, who very kindly put me up for the night, introduced me to her cat and cooked a delicious meal. On Saturday we wandered round Cambridge, including visiting Sew Creative and John Lewis, before going onto the KTog, where we met up with Anne (and lots of other knitters!).

Ah. Bliss. Someone had even brought along some Wollmeise - the first time I'd seen this stuff, and I can understand what everyone is raving about!


Unfortunately I'd been energetically knitting away on my Herringbone Rib Socks, thinking "I'm not sure these are going to fit". Liz convinced me to try them on with the stitches on a circular, and, yes, indeed, they were EXTREMELY tight. So all this has now been frogged and I'm off to start again. Since when have I ever been anything but the smallest size in anything?!?!

Airplot

Go and get your bit too!

More snow!

Just when the snow had mostly begun to disappear and we were all lulled into a false sense of security, the trains began to run on time again etc etc, it snowed again last night. I'd managed to get into work every day this week, but this morning one of my neighbours got his car stuck in the car park at the flats as he returned from the night shift at 4.30am. It couldn't be shifted with that much ice around, so my car was blocked in for the day. (you can't see the stuck car in this pic, but that's my poor little car shivering in the snow).

I contemplated walking to work. Which is do-able. It's about 4 miles on foot, so about an hour and a half. But it was raining, then snowing, and slushy and slippery and horrible. And I didn't really fancy it. So I put on a ridiculous number of layers, my merino long johns and walking boots and slid down to the train station and hung around waiting.

This is the view towards London. No trains in sight. One eventually showed up after half an hour, took me into Slough, where I had to change onto another train to get to Windsor, then walked to work. I was not impressed. Although my alpaca socks were very toasty and warm.

The radiator at work was swiftly covered in cast-off clothing drying out.

And what I was going to blog about this time, was much more interesting things! Like my parcel from Sara, who used to go to Knit Lincs, but then had to return home to the US last year (well, technically the year before that now).

She sent me this yarn:

Mirasol Samp'a, which is a gorgeous soft cotton.

And this book:

"Favorite Socks" from Interweave. Which is just plain cool. And two copies of Interweave Knits magazine, which she knew I already had, so they came with instructions to pass them on. I've passed them on to Nic. Thank you!!

I can't decide where to start. I haven't got any socks on the needles at the moment, but I am working on the Suri cardigan from Mirasol Collection One:

and really enjoying it. The lace pattern makes it much more interesting to knit, and I love the feel of the yarn, and the way the colours work out.

I'm off on holiday next week, so I'll be taking Suri with me (both sleeves still to go) and then try and choose a sock to start as well.

SNOW!!

If you live in a country that does snow properly (Switzerland, say, or Sweden, or maybe Canada) you're going to wonder what the fuss is about. But, yes, the UK has ground to a halt. We have the most snow we've had in 18 years, apparently. Boris thinks people are skiving off work (how are people supposed to get to work if the buses/trains aren't running?!).

I went to work. It took me an hour to drive 3 miles.


At work things were very pretty:

A small child belonging to someone or other even constructed a snowman:

But then the snow got heavier again and we decided to close up at 3 to go home before it got any worse!