Home again...

Thank you for all the messages - the comments left on my blog and the people who emailed me direct. I think I've heard from everyone I know who was in London yesterday and they're all OK, thank goodness.
I've just got back! It took 7 hours (normally takes 2 between Lincoln and London) and I had to change trains 5 times (normally just once)! However, this did include a wait of an hour for a connection at Peterborough, during which I nipped over the road to John Lewis to have a look at their yarn sale (and bought 2 balls of baby DK for the Feed the Children project). It wasn't a bad journey after all as there was a great camaraderie (sp?) amongst everyone and people were much more friendly than normal. It reminded me of the people walking home on Thursday evening - it is so unusual to see so many people walking and chatting. Perhaps something good has come out of these terrible events?
I hope everyone else who reads this got home OK in the end and that all their loved ones are safe. I will post again once I've unpacked, had some sleep and worked out which way is up.

And it's Knit Lincs tomorrow!! :-) :-) :-)

London

Have borrowed a friend's laptop. I hope everyone else in London who reads this or who is a knitter/blogger is OK. Fortunately I overslept this morning and was about to get on the tube when the first announcements came through - we didn't know about bombs at that point, it was thought to be an electrical fault. Otherwise, it doesn't bear thinking about, I was on my way to the Russell Sq area where that awful bus explosion was... Anyway, I'm now stranded in London until the trains start working again and I can get to a station that's open. If anybody else is in a similar situation the BBC website is probably the best place to look. They seem to be updating regularly with travel news. Good luck to all who are trying to get home or are stranded for the night.

And I've finished all the knitting I've got with me...

Bye bye for this week

I'm about to vanish for a week. Unfortunately not on holiday this time. :-( I'm working away from home for the next few days - the wilds of Lincolnshire, a little bit of Yorkshire and a bit more of London (oh and Ranger camp at the weekend!) so will not be able to go online. :-( However, I've got HOURS on trains to look forward to and a pile of knitting awaits. Photos will be posted on my return...

LIVE8!

Well, I think I've recovered my sense of proportion. I've been listening to LIVE8 on Radio 1, and watching a bit on next door's TV too. There are all these people putting a lot of time and effort into convincing politicians to do things to alleviate poverty. And I was worried about a few dropped stitches. I think some reassessment of priorities was needed. LIVE8 was on all day (and at 22.50 is still going, even though it was supposed to finish two hours ago!), which of course means one thing - plenty of knitting time while listening! It seemed appropriate to knit my Feed the Children jumper - this is progress so far. It's looking good and knits up quickly.



Also, if you want to sign the petition that will go to the G8 leaders in Edinburgh next week, it's here. It all seems to be taking such a long time, I went on a march in Cologne in 1999 - Jubilee 2000 where we protested about getting debt relief and all held hands to form a giant circle around the city. Not much progress seems to have been made since then.

In terms of the not-really-a-knitting-disaster-after-all from Thursday - the sock is finished and is also looking good!

I promise that this is the same Regia sock yarn that appeared in two balls from my holiday last month and has been shown at various stages in the making. It looks a different colour in every photo! I know someone asked what yarn I'm using - it's Regia Jacquard and I think it's the 5180 shade.

Fondant is being ignored for the time being. Also, as part of my reassessment of priorities I looked up my dissertation regulations. The word count needs to be between 12000 and 15000 - not min. 15000 as I originally thought. Which means that I'm a quarter of the way there (to 12000 words) with the woffle I've written already! HURRAY! Now wouldn't it have been sensible to look at the regulations a bit earlier?!?!

This morning I distributed Knit Lincs posters around Lincoln. The next meeting is next Sat, 9th July between 2-4pm at The Hub in Sleaford. I popped into Needle n' Craft, with a poster for the window but managed to resist the temptation to buy anything. They have SO much stuff in there, and it's often quite crowded on a Saturday. Waterstones also opened today in Lincoln - amazing - we never used to have a bookshop at all and now there are several! It was absolutely packed as there was a children's book promotion on with Maisy the mouse wandering around. I thought Maisy was rather scary - She/it? was about 6 foot, with monster whiskers. I'm sure I'd have been terrified of her/it when I was younger. Anyway I wriggled my way through to the first floor to have a look at the craft section. This was disappointingly small, with perhaps five knitting books. Perhaps they need plenty of people to go in and order knitting books to encourage them to stock more? Maybe I should volunteer to do this?! The shop itself was large, bright and airy but I didn't get a chance to look at their fiction section as the crowd was just too big downstairs.

I also made a trip to the library, with another poster and to pick up some books. This was waiting for me to collect - Erika Knight's Simple Knits for Easy Living. Wow. Fantastic book. The pics are beautiful and the ideas are indeed really simply but look incredible. I love the way she describes the textures and colours so I'm feeling all inspired again.

This evening a TV dilemma developed. To watch the end of LIVE8 or to watch the Time Team Big Roman Dig on Channel 4? As it's Mum's TV we watched Time Team. Normally I wouldn't watch this, as it's like archaeology on speed and rather divorced from reality, but this subject is what I was woffling about on a post last week - they unearth new evidence about Roman Britain. The programme is carrying on every evening all week so go and have a look! They're filming at 10 sites around the UK and there seems to be bits of everything - from having to fill in trenches at a Roman lead mine as there was arsenic underground to a load of schoolchildren acting out a play in Latin. Oh and plenty of people running round fields shouting about "geophys." !

I needn't have worried about taking a couple of hours out of LIVE8 as it's STILL going. About an hour ago some bloke appeared on stage and talked a bit before a new act, I thought he looked vaguely familiar, then someone said afterwards he was David Beckham. Just shows how out of touch I am... But I do find the celebrity thing a bit daft most of the time and can't see the point of reading all about them in magazines etc. They're only people after all. Obviously this excludes Colin Firth, the most wonderful Mr Darcy ever...

Right, well I thought I'd end this post with a picture of the clematis I found in the garden today. I was hanging out the washing, and there it was, looking very pretty in the sun. I forgot to read its label so don't know what sort it is.