Startitis

I appear to have got a bit carried away with starting new projects, although there is a reason for the craziness, especially now I have more knitting time. I started off working on a Mini Mania Scarf, which is looking good, but the linen stitch was making my hands hurt if I did it for more than an hour, so I needed another project to work on alongside it. I decided to cast on a different lace shawl, as I was struggling with the South Seas Stole pattern, so decided to switch to something else. One of the other librarians on our knitting librarian jaunt in February was wearing a beautiful Aeolian Shawl, so I have started one of those instead. So far, so good, although it turns out I can only knit lace when I'm the only person in the house and nothing else is happening (other than the Cazalets on Radio 4), which has limited the amount of time I've spent knitting it.

I thought a nice contrast to the lace would be some aran, so I cast on Velvet Morning, which I'd planned to knit after acquiring 9 balls of Araucania Toconao in a sale from Norfolk Yarn whilst on holiday in Norwich a couple of years ago. I then acquired three more balls in contrast colours in an online sale from Stash Yarns later on.

This is lovely squishy yarn to knit with and feels wonderful. I got gauge and happily knitted away, until I checked gauge again on the Fair Isle section and realised I was way off. So, having got this far, I had to go back and start again.

 Although it turns out the variegated colour works better on 5mm needles as the pooling's been eliminated. I'm really enjoying knitting this, and using the two handed Fair Isle technique I learnt on a workshop at Get Knitted in Bristol back in 2009. I can still remember how to knit continental!

 Whilst the Fair Isle is OK for TV knitting, it really wasn't suitable for taking to a conference (too many colours, too many balls to consider alongside taking notes, and lots of aran not a great idea for on the train), so obviously I needed to start another project. This one needed to be small and portable, so I went back through my queue and chose Froot Loop, some socks that I've been wanting to do for a while. I got my 4 ply boxes out and chose some stash (funny how that's easier with the actual yarn out, rather than going through my stash catalogue). I matched it with some cheap n' cheerful Woolcraft Superwash Sock Yarn (they must have spent ages thinking up that name), purchased at the Knitting Box in Barton-upon-Humber. Actually, I'm rather pleased with the yarn, as it's nice to knit with and the colours are great.

So, I have somehow ended up with four projects on the go. Oh well, they all seem to be progressing well and variety is the spice of life...

Giant custard creams, Cambridge and another Puerperium

Well, I'm not quite sure where January disappeared off to, but it whizzed past. I have done various Very Exciting Things, including meeting up with 17 other knitting (or crocheting) librarians in London for a day of coffee, giant custard creams, yarn shopping, librarianly chitchat and then to the pub. We had all "met" via Twitter, and it was great to meet them all for real too.

There were also giant chocolate bourbons, but I decided to stick with the custard cream. Yes, that is a normal sized plate and knife.

We went yarn shopping at Loop (in three batches as there were too many of us to fit in the shop all in one go). It was looovvveeely. I hadn't been there for several years and it seemed a lot more friendly than last time, with more space for gorgeous yarns. I indulged in a skein of Madeleine Tosh sock yarn, to make a shawl with. It is gorgeously squishy, very soft and comes in beautiful colours.

One of the others brought along the knitted archbishop she'd made last year. I hope he likes tea. I think the pattern is from the Knit your own royal wedding book. Amusingly one of the comments on Ravelry about the pattern says that he's not wearing any pants under his cassock!! Another one of the comments said that everyone kept looking up his cassock so she'd knitted him some gold disco pants!!

I have also made two trips to Cambridge. One was just for the day, to do a masterclass at the University Library. I was surprised how much more snow there was out the other side of London. I also had lunch with Caughtknitting, whom I hadn't seen for ages.

Remains of a giant snowman outside the library.

The other trip was for a conference at Gonville and Caius College, so I stayed overnight with KnittingontheGreen, where we stayed up late chatting and drinking wine. It was lovely to see her and she cooked me the most amazing meal of spelt risotto with goats' cheese, followed by homemade ice cream. Of course, I forgot to take any photos whilst I was with her, but here are some nice shots of Gonville and Caius:

I got a bit of knitting done on the trains to Cambridge, although I'm currently reading a book I need to review for a journal by the end of February so that's taking priority at the moment.

I did get my third Beyond Puerperium completed in the nick of time, as the Mum-To-Be appears to be about to go into labour any second now. This took exactly 2 balls of yarn.

And, having got frustrated with the lace shawl (no, I haven't made any progress, as I haven't had any quiet-knitting-time-at-home-when-there-are-no-distractions), someone at the librarian knitting extravaganza pointed me towards the Mini Mania Scarf as a good way of using up odds and ends of sock yarn. So I started one of those. It took me an entire episode of Call the midwife to cast on 500 stitches, but now I'm well away, and enjoying deciding which colour to use next.

I'm aware that I haven't taken any garden pictures yet this year, mainly because the weather seems to be alternating between rain and snow.

Marmalade

We get a veg box (and sometimes a meat box) from Riverford each week, and last week I couldn't resist adding a marmalade kit too, now that I have more time in the week. It consisted of a bag of Seville oranges and a couple of lemons, plus a recipe.

I'd never made marmalade before and had intended to include some more pictures of the chopping up process, but I ended up with two builders in the kitchen at that point so didn't feel like taking photos of oranges whilst they were there! ;-)

It turned out that I could have done with a proper preserving pan, as the largest saucepan wasn't really big enough.

 Still, it set fairly easily and went into sterilised jars (with a bit of splodgy orange goo landing in various places it shouldn't. If I do this again it will involve a proper preserving pan AND one of those jam pouring gadgets).

Knitting-wise I finished my Everyone outta the pool socks and am pleased with the effect of the stitch pattern. I deliberately went for fraternal socks rather than completely identical. It's a nice pattern that I'd definitely use again as it was easy to memorize and fun to knit.

I've cast on another Beyond Puerperium (my third!) for a friend's baby, due in a couple of months. This will be the 6-12 month size, and the yarn is Rico Baby Classic DK. It's synthetic but it feels lovely and soft and not plasticky, as well as reasonably priced.

The lace knitting has stalled as I haven't had much time to sit and concentrate on it - looks like I'm going to have to frog this attempt though as I struggled with the pattern and whether to knit or drop all of the yarn overs in the second section.

And I've realised that I forgot to do garden at the beginning of January  - as in totally forgot, as I haven't even taken pictures! But thanks to the astonishingly mild weather we already have lots of bulbs coming up and here is our first snowdrop:

And the temperature's now dropping down to the minuses!

High water

Back in November the Thames got very high and I took some photos, intending to blog about it and never got round to it. This is the path in the local park leading down to the Thames path. The benches and rubbish bins were just about visible (it had been a bit higher than this).

It rained a lot whilst we were away. Up north (well midlands) there were a lot of rivers that had turned into lakes. North of Bedford the Great Ouse had oozed spectacularly for miles on either side of the road. On the Notts/Lincs border the Trent was so wide you couldn't see the other side. We had a day trip to Lincoln on Boxing Day and must have been one of the last cars over Dunham Bridge on the A57 before the road was closed. Our side of the road was clear at that point, but the other side was under water. There's a picture of it on the BBC website totally under water.

And this is what we came back to when we got back home after Christmas away. I couldn't even get close to the no BBQs sign this time.

And the park seems to have turned into a lake.

I don't think this is what was intended by "overflow car park".

Further up the river, this is Staines bridge, and what was the Thames path running outside a pub with seats for people to admire the river view.

And the Thames path a bit further up again. Yes, the river is usually to the right of the trees and lamp posts.

Fortunately most of these places aren't too near anyone's house, although the river's showing no signs of going down yet, and it's been raining all of today. Our house is well away from it.