Bye 2021, Hi 2022

Hello again my dears, I hope you've all survived the nomans land of twixtmas with minimal damage to anything save your waistline.

It is currently 9:45pm on New Year's eve, I'm drinking tea, watching The Last Leg of the Year, and updating my blog.  Best of all, I'm not even sad about this fact!  I'm comfy, I'm warm, the loo is clean, and there's plenty of loo roll, there's fizz in the fridge for later, and we won't have to re-mortgage the house to pay for a taxi home at 3am!

So first of all, let's do an update on the regulars:

FO's

Hand Knitted socks in blue and purple self-patterning yarn.

I made these for my sister as a Christmas present, so obviously I couldn't show them at all until after she'd opened them on Christmas day.  I've never made socks for my sister, and she's never sent me her measurements either.  Fortunately, she has basically the same sized feet as I do.  She also suffers with Lipoedema, and because her profession means that she has to be on her feet a lot, she suffers far worse than I do with Lymphoedema too.  So I made sure that the cuffs were extra stretchy.

The pattern is my usual sock pattern, and the yarns are West Yorkshire Spinners Signature 4-ply in the colourway "Blueberry Bonbon", and King Cole Zigzag in the colourway "Bilberry Pie".

Hand knitted socks in green, black, and white self patterning yarn.

These ones were for Stephen, and he's actually wearing them right now!  I started knitting these in November, and fully expected to have plenty of time to get them finished, as Stephen was in the final weeks of a huge project at work, and therefore expected to be in the office every day until his birthday at the end of November.  He then had a week off to celebrate, when we intended on going on holiday, and expected to be back in the office for the whole of the week after we got back too.

Well, if you read my post at the end of November, then you know how that turned out!  With Stephen unable to work, for a month, I had little enough time for knitting at all, and even less time when Stephen wasn't around to see what I was doing.  Yes, I know that his eyesight was badly affected, but not quite enough that I was willing to risk knitting his Christmas present right in front of him!  So I basically ended up working on these while Stephen was in the bathroom, late at night after Stephen had gone to bed, but also when I was so knackered that I could, in fact, mess up knitting even this pattern that I have knit approximately 60 times before! Or, when I was in hospital for an afternoon, when it turns out that knitting with a canula in the back of your hand is remarkably difficult!

Knitting socks while in hospital.

I think I managed maybe half a dozen rows in the 3 and a half hours I was there.

I did manage to finish them in time though, and without any late night Christmas eve knitting too!

The yarn for these was Zwerger Garn Opal Rainforest 4-ply, in the colourway "9904".

WIPs

Well, WIP.  There's only one yarn craft project that I've been working on in the last week.

T-shirt with partially knitted lace neckline.

I've not made a lot of progress on my Skein Austen t-shirt amendments.  I'm almost finished the neckline, then I have the sleeves to do too.  I'm still hoping that the lace blocks out nicely, so hopefully I can show you that in my next update.

This is adjustments I'm making to a t-shirt made by Skeinhead, simply because I find normal round necklines on t-shirts quite uncomfortable.  So I've cut a much wider neckline, and I'm adding lace edging according to a motif from The Magic of Shetland Lace.  The yarn I'm using is Mothy and the Squid Superwash Sock, in the colourway "Water like a Stone".

Stash Acquisition

Made by Penguins 2021 Advent Calendar.

First, although you've seen them all individually already, here is the full glory of my Made by Penguins 2021 advent calendar!

Christmas present yarn!

These were a Christmas present for me off Stephen!  Finn did try to open this present for me, but Stephen managed to rescue it before any damage was done.

These are both King Cole Zigzag, and the colourways are "Dragonfly", and "Bumblebee".

Finn

Klepto pup causes chaos.

This is how I wake up most days.  With a cocker spaniel, and a pile of "gifts" that he's brought for me.  Most of those "gifts" come from the baskets on the bottom shelf in my yarn cave, or the shoe pile in the front hall.  On this particular day I have been bestowed with 2 tangled balls of merino, an empty project bag, and one of Stephen's Tiger 2 slippers.

Can I play too?

One of my gifts to Stephen for Christmas was a card game called "Canine Kleptomaniacs", which seemed appropriate.  Here we are learning how to play it, while Finn considers stealing some of the cards, but realises that he can't do that while he's carrying his rubber caltrap around.

New Rabbit Hole

Christmas Haul.

These are the things I was given for Christmas.  I'll show some of them in more detail in the next section.  However, I need you to be aware of one thing in this photo, and that is the Epoxy Resin Kit.

When I struggle to sleep, I usually watch videos on YouTube until I fall asleep.  Most recently I've been watching videos about casting dice from resin.  So as well as pretty yarn, Stephen got me a set of moulds for making dice, and a resin starter kit.  Which goes some way to explaining why I've done so little knitting in the last week!  I've been playing with resin casting instead!

My first home made dice.

These are the first things that I've ever cast from epoxy resin, and I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out.  It's not as easy as it looks in most of the videos, but because I did a lot of research, and my background in chemistry means I'm familiar with some of the techniques necessary to ensure a successful cast, I think I did ok.  They're not perfect, there were a few bubble voids, but they were small enough to fill, so these are perfectly useable dice.

So depending on how long my obsession with this particular craft lasts, there may be occasional photos of my resin craft creations.

Penguins!

Resin Penguins.

With the resin kit there were a selection of dyes, but I also learned that there is significant crossover between resin crafting and nail art.  I had already decided that I should make a selection of colour references so that I'd know exactly what each dye looks like when it's in the resin, as I am well aware that the colour in the bottle, or the colour in wet resin, doesn't necessarily bear any resemblance to the colour in cured resin!  I thought that I should also do some references for some of the glitters and pigments that I already had amongst my nail and makeup kits.  

Since I had a penguin silicone ice mould that I don't use because the penguins are too small, and melt too quickly, I decided that I should use that, then all of my colour references would be penguins!

Penguin shaped resin colour references.

This is the full collection of reference penguins for every dye, glitter, powder, and pigment that I have so far!

Lego Penguin.

My gift from my lovely nieces was this brilliant penguin Lego kit, which I then spent a fair amount of Christmas day afternoon making, when I wasn't cooking anyway!

Penguin presents!

It is a tradition for 2 of my godchildren, Krissy's kids, to spend December hunting down their favourite silly penguin related items to be my Christmas present.  I am especially pleased with what they've foraged up this year!  Penguin chocolates, penguin mashmallows, a pen with a penguin topper, an RNLI felted penguin decoration, and just about the most 2021 item imaginable - penguin hand sanitizer!  I love it!

Now, it is 11 minutes past midnight, and therefore officially 2022!  (I did pause for a while in the middle of the Lego penguin bit so that Stephen could First Foot for us, and so we could do First kisses and cuddles of the year.  So now I intend on watching the end of Jools Holland, eating my bite of game pie, and my slice of stollen, drinking my prosecco, and chilling for a bit. I shall make an effort to post my Goals for 2022 sometime in the next week.

Here's hoping for a happy, healthy, and more hopeful year than we've had for a while for all of us.