Stuff

Thank you for all the emails and messages I've had checking that I'm OK, whilst the riots were going on this country. I was really touched! It was all a bit bizarre really, as I saw all the riot footage on the news and some of my work colleagues had an unpleasant time getting home on a couple of days, but I didn't see any sign at all of any trouble. I saw a lot of the reaction to it, the upset when friends saw shops they'd used and loved for years burnt down. And the sense of unreality about what was going on.

I followed a link on Ravelry to this blog post about someone's commute to work - she walks across a fairly historic part of London to get to work, with lots of landmarks to photograph. My journey isn't quite as exciting, but these are the highlights(?). It isn't normally as quiet as this, but a lot of people are on holiday as it's August.

Cycle/footpath on the way to the station:

Walking through the town centre:

Empty seats (!) on the train. These usually fill up at the next few stations!

The station, first thing in the morning. Yawn.

Hordes of commuters at London Waterloo, waiting for the train to come in (we are such Super Commuters we know which platform it is, even before the train is announced!). Always entertaining when they change the platform at the last minute and everyone stampedes back the way they came...

 Trains racing out of Waterloo.

Hmm. That's not really very exciting at all.

More exciting was extracting my tent from the garage and putting it up in the garden to check it's OK for the festival I'm going to in a fortnight's time.

 Considering that I got it when I was 15 it's doing pretty well. Which reminds me that, now I'm of advanced years, getting an air mattress to sleep on might be a good idea. Really looking forward to going to Greenbelt. As usual, loads of great speakers I want to hear, and I seem to have volunteered for teaching knitting one evening too. I've taken a couple of days off work either side of the weekend to travel there and to sleep afterwards and do the washing (hmm, in my younger days I used to be able to stay up all night then go into work the next day no problem whatsoever. Don't think I want to try that now). I really am turning into an Old Fart.

And this is the OH's jumper. As you can see, I'm nearly there now, just one sleeve to go so I should have plenty of time to get it finished before I go to Greenbelt, as it's his birthday immediately afterwards! This has been a really enjoyable knit, nice pattern with clear instructions, and he's been able to try it on as we go because it's on circulars. And my interchangeable knitting needles have been excellent - I've been able to switch between sleeves and leave things on the cables using the end things whilst I waited to cast off until he could try it on.

I suppose I could have edited my foot out of the photo, but those are some of my sheep socks. And they're cool.

The train journey from hell & a tea cosy

I got the tea cosy finished in time to take to church this morning and give it to the recipient - who loved it, thank goodness! It wasn't a bad knit, just tough on the fingers keeping the tension right. Still, I'm pleased with the way it turned out. I put four pompoms on the top instead of two (looked more fun) and it fitted our teapot perfectly so should also be fine on hers.

And I got started on the (January) blanket square for the mystery afghan blanket knit-along. So, it's mid-February now, never mind. At least I've started it. This yarn is one from my collection of British sheep breeds - Pure Hebridean wool, aran weight in dark brown. It looks like one square should take about 50g of yarn.

I did have a go at making the square using some Peaches & Creme from my stash, but it wasn't happy on that size needle, and as I was knitting it on the train to Lincoln and back on Wednesday and Thursday I didn't have any other needles with me to try it out on.

 The first part of the trip went well. Journey north after work on Wednesday was fine, my great-aunt's funeral on Thursday was also fine (although it threw me as the coffin came in and Pachelbel's Canon started up, which we also had at our wedding as we signed the register!) and everything was going swimmingly until I boarded the 17.00 at Newark to head south and ended up in a load of total chaos caused by the signals failing at Finsbury Park. After spending a lot of time sitting at Peterborough station, that train was cancelled and we got shifted to another one, which eventually made it down to Kings Cross hours later - this was the scene at Kings Cross, as every train had been cancelled and the place was filling up with people and police trying to stop people getting squished.

So much fun. I eventually made it home at almost 10pm, in just enough time to fall into bed. And I was very zombie-like at work the next day.
But the trip up north did give me a chance to see Mum's cat, Sweep (as well as Mum too, obviously).

Meanwhile, back at home, the amaryllis is venturing closer and closer to flowering. One of the buds actually got so heavy it fell off, which I'm not convinced is meant to happen?

 I set up some tomato and sweet pea seeds in the mini propagator on the spare bedroom windowsill and this is the sight a week later!

 And for all those people who've been waiting with bated breath to find out exactly what it was coming up in our garden at the beginning of January, all can now be revealed. It definitely wasn't grass seed - it was little tiny crocuses! Bizarrely in lilac and purple (our wedding colours, I didn't plant them and they weren't there last year?!?!?)

I tried to read Any human heart but got fed up by about page 100 and gave up. I just couldn't bring myself to be interested in what the main character was doing so it seemed pointless carrying on any further. Since then I've been reading Philippa Gregory's The red queen which is much better. Not great, just better. I'm finding the main character, Margaret Beaufort (Henry VIII's grandmother) a little one-dimensional though and it definitely isn't as good as The other Boleyn girl. It sounds as though it should be read alongside The white queen though (which follows Elizabeth Woodville) to get a more rounded story.