And now, the pictures work again

The view as I trotted across the bridge over the Thames on my way back from the gourmet ready meal shop one evening. That was last week. This week was just howling gales and downpours so I didn't see any skies like that one.

Up in Lincoln last weekend, Mum was dogsitting for a friend who's gone on holiday for a fortnight. This is the daft thing she was dogsitting:

It kept demanding to be cuddled (I didn't oblige. I told it I preferred cats) and I had to take it for a couple of walks (all the time telling it I prefer cats). It also unravelled a ball of wool. I was not impressed (even though a cat would probably have done the same thing). Anyway, I've decided dogs are far too much like hard work, and much prefer cats. It did have moments of looking quite cute though.

I took it for a walk through the Arboretum:

and on up to the Cathedral.
The dog didn't really seem to appreciate all these places. Maybe it was fed up with being told how cats are altogether better?

I made it to a Knit Lincs meeting for the first time since moving south. It was good to catch up with everyone, including Nic and Kathleen (who is new to the group & has some fab pics on her blog so go & have a look.)

Meanwhile, back over in Newark the daffodils I planted in the Autumn were putting in an appearance. I planted them the day before I went down south for my job interview, so there's probably something delightfully symbolic about them springing into life now. Or something. It's also quite fun only seeing the garden once a month because the differences each time are so dramatic.


It will also be interesting to keep up with the weeding soon when I'm only there once a month! Hopefully Mum will move into the house before too much longer so I won't have to go there quite so often. But she has to sell her house first... Anyone want to buy a four bed house in Lincoln with a granny flat on the side?!

I'm just back from a weekend visiting cats (and humans) in Bristol, but more of that in a future post, otherwise this one will be enormous. No knitting photos this time, mainly due to my being out every evening last week so no knitting happened (quite apart from the knitting being in Lincoln for most of the week too. Thankfully Les (who'd come down from Lincoln for a meeting) dropped it in to work for me on Wednesday). I'm loving the new Knitty (and especially having time to look at it properly). There were several patterns which will be perfect for me for work, as I'm meant to look smart these days. Anyone who's met me will know that I generally wander around in Doc Martens, jeans and jumpers, and my previous job meant wearing them in abundance as it was so cold. But we have heating at The Job That is 3.5 Months Old, and an expectation that we will look smart so I need to do something about that! Fortunately I started looking at the Knitty patterns a couple of days after they were published, by which point they'd appeared on Ravelry, so I could add some to my queue straight away!

I went out on a soup run for the homeless in Slough on Monday night. It was a bit of a discomfiting experience. We were right opposite one of the biggest Tesco stores in the country (so I've been informed, I can believe it, it took me ages to find a pint of milk in there a few weeks ago) which felt downright weird - on one side of the road were loads of people pushing laden trolleys around filled with food, on the other side were people with no food or shelter. As with the soup run I did years ago in London, there was an intriguing mixture of people - some with health problems (mental and/or physical), drug and alcohol problems, several ex-service personnel and some who you just couldn't work out how they'd ended up there. I've decided to keep on going to it, even though I found it difficult. There was a good atmosphere underneath the slight weirdness.

Think that's all for now.

I've done something really stupid.

Not only is my stash 150 miles away, but now my knitting is too! I went up to Newark and Lincoln for the weekend, to check my house was still standing after the earthquake, and managed to forget to bring the knitting I'd taken with me back down again! Which is a problem as the little socks I was knitting for my colleague's daughter's birthday need to be finished by Friday. My Options set was with it, so, although I have some yarn down here, there are no needles!

Fortunately my super hero spiritual director is travelling between Lincoln and Windsor this week and had been planning to visit me anyway on Wednesday, so he picked the knitting up today from Mum's and will hopefully be bringing it with him on Wednesday!

I have got some pics for the blog, but Blogger won't let me upload them. Grrr.

Personally, I'm going to blame Monkey for all of this.

Leamington Spa

I've just got back from a weekend in Leamington Spa (see, fab new job, means I have the time and energy at weekends to go and visit friends!) visiting a couple of friends who live in the area. It was surprisingly quick to get there, only about an hour and a half up the M40. It's weird how the country seems to have smallified itself since I started zooming all over the place in the car (yes, I know, carbon footprint...). I went to stay with Edward on Friday night, and on Saturday accompanied him to horse-riding. I could have joined in, but with a really snotty cold (Anne, writing-with-a-cold-effects please) decided I'd be better off sitting in his Land Rover. But that did mean my sock knitting got a ring-side view...

This is another pair of Garter Rib socks (from Sensational Knitted Socks). The yarn is the unbranded green mixture I got from the Skep on last year's Skip North, and I'm magic looping on 2.5mm/100cm Addis. These will be for Fiona, who gave me her old ipod last month when she upgraded. She didn't want anything for it so I thought I'd make her a pair of socks as a thank you.

This morning I visited Baddesley Clinton with Helen, and we walked around the grounds, admiring the daffodils just beginning to put in an appearance. This is part of the moat:

and from t'other side. It was a bit weird being there as a punter, rather than coming to catalogue books...

And, one of the other projects I have on the go at the moment is a tank top from the Twilleys Freedom Spirit pattern book. This is in the Freedom Spirit (colour = Fire) which I also bought on Skip North last year!

I have started the Wrapover cardigan from the same book, but that's on hold at the moment as I have several other things to knit for other people.

I think I mentioned last time that I'd found a reading group in Windsor to join too. Last month we read "Kafka on the Shore", which was kind of bizarre but very readable and enjoyable. It easily filled an hour's discussion at the group! I loved the way the two parallel plot-lines intertwined round each other. This month's book is "On Chesil beach", which I've already read, and really really enjoyed. It's one of those unputdownable ones, where every single word counts. At the moment I'm part way through "Affluenza", which is interesting, a bit disturbing. Does money buy happiness? Probably not, but people seem to be sucked into a cycle of wanting more and more things, so that, no matter how much they earn, it's never enough to have everything. James travels around comparing attitudes towards possessions and money in various countries. He doesn't seem to touch on how this applies to yarn (and books) though.

I also read "Helpless" a few weeks ago - a bit disturbing, again. This one is about a child abduction and portrays the story from several points of view, including the child, the mother and the abductor (and his girlfriend). I didn't quite get as far as empathising with the abductor, but it was chilling how close I came. The book was released around the time Madelaine McCann disappeared last year, so wasn't really promoted at the time.

For Christmas I received "The gentle art of domesticity", which I loved. I am still reading it, as it's definitely a book to be dipping into. The photographs are as good as on her blog. I'm also still reading "The Christmas stories", which was meant to be my Advent book, but Advent got a bit taken up with starting the job and moving (three times!), which is why I'm still reading it in Lent. I decided against starting a Lent book...

I'm going to be away for the next six weekends (Newark, Lincoln, Bristol, Exeter, Keswick, Penrith amongst other places. Anyone want to meet up? Let me know!). Unfortunately I'm also attempting the Tearfund Carbon Fast for Lent, and failing miserably as I'm zooming round the country. But I have still reduced my mileage from the previous job, and I have done some of the other things (turned down the heating, only filled the kettle with the right amount of water, re-used envelopes). And I do walk to work, it's just at the weekends it goes a bit wrong. Well, that's my excuse anyway.

150 miles from my stash

I'm BACK!!! I've just completed move number four (yes, that is since December) and am now living somewhere that has broadband, instead of with a dippy housemate who says we're getting broadband and then does nothing about it. And is totally anti-social. And just generally weird. And is completely and utterly clueless (she said, when I moved in, "oh the vacuum doesn't work very well". Well, it certainly worked a lot better once I'd put a new bag in it and cleaned the filter...). But enough of her, I've left there (although I haven't got the deposit back yet...) I'm now a lodger with a nice couple and a dog, 10 minutes walk from work. Yay. It's certainly improved life a lot. I'm amazed how much difference it's made just being in the same routine every day - yes, getting up at the same time every morning means that I wake up at the same time every day, instead of having to get up for work at anything between 5am and 8am. So I have LOADS of energy and I've been out most nights and every weekend AND to work every day (which, if you knew me IRL before you'd know used to be unusual ;-) ). Before anyone thinks I've suddenly acquired a wild party animal social life. I haven't. There is a lot more going on around here than there was in Newark - I found a wonderful church within 24 hours of arriving in Windsor, got sorted with a Guide company, a youth group and now a house group at the same time. Then I found a reading group, and there are lectures and drama and music on just about every night at work (oh, and a swimming pool). So, I haven't turned into a wild party animal, it's just been really really easy to find the sort of things I enjoy doing. Diane (who I met last year on Skip North, and of Inside Loop fame) invited me along to a spinning and knitting group too - which I really enjoyed and met some fab people. And there's another one on Saturday!

So, what's been going on (other than moving house several times and taking over the entire youth at church?). Well, inbetween packing and unpacking and loading and unloading some knitting has taken place. This might look like a lot, but bear in mind I haven't blogged properly since the end of November...

A Kureyon Kozy, made for my great-aunts for Christmas. I used Lang yarns Mille Colori, which is nice n' soft, has interesting colour combinations and also reasonably priced. These balls were from Heath's Country Store, purchased before I left Newark. The cozy was mostly knitted at the second place I lived in in Windsor, a flat at work which I occupied on my own for about 10 days just before Christmas.

This is another Matilda scarf (last year's default Christmas present). This one was for my Godmother for Christmas and used two balls of black Cashmerino Aran and 1.5 balls of Twilleys Freedom Spirit. I didn't actually finish this one until almost New Year but as I didn't see my Godmother until then that was OK!

A Big Digger jumper for Noah for Christmas. Mostly made with Patons Diploma Gold DK purchased at Get Knitted when I visited Bristol in September, along with a few other DK weights thrown in for good luck. Finished whilst the sprogs etc were all at church on Christmas Day. Oops.

Jaeger cable & rib jumper for me (this one I actually finished knitting months ago, then never got round to sewing together). I'm really pleased with the way it's turned out, and it's been worn to work several times already. The yarn is Jaeger Matchmaker Merino 4ply, purchased in Edinburgh 18 months ago.

Yep, another Matilda scarf. This one was for my SIL, and knitted in three different locations in Windsor as I moved flats in December. This used Mirasol yarns Hacho (VERY nice!) and Lang Yarns Silk Dream, purchased at Spin a Yarn in Bovey Tracey in Devon, last September.

From a previous post a Loooooonnnng time ago, I had finished this jumper. Then I went to Dylan's christening (YAY I'm a Godmother again!) and realised that he was going to grow out of it within 30 seconds. So the jumper from that post got frogged and the whole thing was done again. Grrrrr. I knew it was a mistake congratulating myself on starting my Christmas knitting in such good time... Yep, this one got finished on Christmas Day too. The pattern is Ship Ahoy and the yarn finally used was King Cole Anti-Tickle merino DK.

I think that's all the knitting for now. I have got a few projects under way at the moment but they're packed so I'll get them out and photo them soon.

Meanwhile, Monkey made a new friend at Paddington station. I don't think he was intimidated by the size difference...

I revisited Royal Holloway (where I did my first degree) one weekend. It's only a few miles from Windsor, which is kind of bizarre, as I never imagined I'd be back living in the same area again. It has changed quite a bit, even though it's less than seven years since I left. The halls I lived in in my first year have been demolished and it's a lot smarter there now (well, that wouldn't be difficult, they were a bit of a dump.)

I've been enjoying walking and cycling along the Thames, and around Windsor Park.

This pic of the trees reflected in the water (isn't it still?!?!) was taken at Savill Garden, which is part of Windsor Park. I met up with Debbie (who I started Knit Lincs with threeish years ago, and who now also lives down here) and her husband and their dog and went for a walk round here one Saturday. It also has changed beyond all recognition since my student days.


Getting the bike down to Windsor was one of the more hair-raising times of my life. If you want a recipe for instant, total paranoia, try attaching a bike to the back of your car and then taking the whole lot down the A1 and onto the M25. You become more and more convinced the bike is about to fall off the further you drive...


And, no, I didn't deliberately set out to have a colour-coordinated bike, cycle carrier and car. It just happened that way.

There are some downsides. I'm still having to travel up to Newark for the weekend once a month as I still have my house there and the house insurance goes invalid if it's unoccupied for too long. The drive up after work on a Friday is a bit of a nightmare. This is the traffic in Slough as I attempt to leave... It took an hour to drive 2 miles. At the moment I'm still moving too much stuff around to do the Newark trip by train.


And I'm having a bit of a space crisis. I am a bit too used to having a 3 bedroom house all to myself, but there is a small (ahem) price differential between property prices in the East Midlands and down here, so I'm currently living in one bedroom as a lodger. Which is a bit over-stuffed and why my stash is 150 miles away:


Eeeek! I'm going to attempt to catch up with everyone's blogs. I haven't had proper internet access for months now, and Bloglines was telling me I had 1500 unread posts to get through. Then I pressed the wrong button and lost all of them anyway. So I'm starting from scratch...

That's it for now. I don't know when I'll post again as I've somehow managed to arrange seven weekends in a row away without realising it.

And this is my walk to work!