Missing In Action

Oh God, I haven't blogged for a month! Absolutely typical. You get a lovely new camera for your birthday, for the first time ever you can take proper piccies to put on your blog, and you promptly start running around like a headless chicken with no time to blog and play with the lovely new camera.

A lot has been going on. Not only the small little things like trying to plan a wedding for next year and getting settled into a new town and starting a knitting group (We have 20 members already on the Ravelry part of the group, even if that many haven't actually shown up at a meeting yet), and minor inconveniences like going to work and cooking meals.

There has been a bit of knitting. I test knitted the Arwen Cloche Hat (as modelled by Monkey) for Tabitha.

I have also knitted a glove. Its friend is still in progress. The yarn is Colinette Jitterbug, bought from Get Knitted last year and the pattern is a free adult basic glove pattern. The yarn is lovely and squooshy knitted up on 2.5mm needles. And I think I've forgotten to download the pic of it from the camera.


Then I've been doing a driving course. After last year's infamous panic attack on the A1, and then taking various circuitous routes to get to places (such as Slough to Chelmsford via Amersham, Watford, Hatfield, Hertford and Harlow or Staines to Lincoln via just about every small village in the country), as I was still feeling very panicky and it seemed to be getting worse, I decided the time had come to Do Something About It. So I found a company called Ride Drive who do courses for people who are nervous/panicky/phobic drivers. And it's really cool. They teach you advanced driving techniques (the instructor is an advanced police driver) as well as gradually confronting your fears. I've still got a long way to go, but I'm loving learning all the theory bits and I'm feeling more confident now. Most of the time. When I'm not actually thinking about the next session...

We went up to Edinburgh for a week, but before we did that we suddenly found a house we want to buy. So things started hurtling very fast as we managed to get through two viewings, three offers (the last accepted), instruct a solicitor and arrange a survey all in the six days before we went on holiday. It's the house stuff that has been taking up so much of my time, as it needs a lot of work doing to it so we've been doing a lot of research into things like re-wiring costs and having a new bathroom as well as having an incredibly lengthy and dull meeting at the bank getting the mortgage sorted out.

So no house pictures yet, but we're hoping the sale will complete before Christmas, although we won't be moving until next year once the work is done on it.

Edinburgh was fab. We did a lot of the things that I've wanted to do for years and never had a chance to, including:
Climbing Calton Hill:

Visiting the K1 yarns shop, 

 

where I bought a skein of K1 yarns sock yarn in Teal (made by Fyberspates), and the book "Sock Innovation".

 

The yarn shop is really close to Edinburgh Castle, which we also went round. Unfortunately the lovely HK Handknit shop which I visited last time I went to Edinburgh seems to have shut now.

 

Visited the Scottish Parliament, as well as the Palace of Holyrood.

And climbed Arthur's Seat to look at the fantastic views out over Edinburgh.

We also went round the National Museum of Scotland, which didn't impress us too much (it did lots of jumping around in history whilst attempting to be thematic), took refuge from the rain in John Lewis for a while, went round the Museum of Edinburgh (much better and we actually learnt some stuff). Oh and John Knox's house, where they'd got all the same books on display as I'd just chosen for an exhibition about Calvin back at work, and where there's a nice cafe in the Scottish Storytelling Centre. Plus a trip to Peebles on the bus when we got totally drenched and very fed up. But I did get a pair of boots and some shoes from the narrow shoe shop, so all was not lost.

On the way back down to London on the train we stopped off with Mum to spend a night at her new house and to see how she and Sweep were getting settled in. Sweep seemed to be completely at home.

I am also massively behind with reading blogs (so what's new?!?), Bloglines is saying something like 200 posts still to be read so apologies that I haven't been leaving comments on blogs much recently. Life has been hectic and is showing no signs of slowing down...