Advent days 6-8 - Infected!

Bleurgh!

So, remember how I told you that we had guests on Sunday?  One of those guests very thoughtfully brought us a lovely gift of The Plague!

Well, maybe not the actual plague, but a horrible cold anyway.  Nothing has been achieved during the last 3 days other than the generation of immense piles of soggy tissues.

Mindfulness rituals have been skipped, or not completed, and I think Stephen just sneezed his brain out onto his keyboard.

Yesterday we made our way back to Stephen's house as a sort of self-imposed quarantine from the rest of our friends at the other end of Sheffield.  Today I've managed to catch up on my advent rituals, although I have achieved nothing else.

I didn't eat my day 5 chocolate, so I had 2 for day 6, but as I could barely taste anything, and just wanted to lie down more than anything, Both got left until day 7.

The candle seemed to be the Christmas Cookie flavour that hadn't impressed me previously, but I thought also that maybe I just couldn't smell it properly because of the cold.

The tea was an infusion of peppermint and melon that I left until day 7 too, and even then I couldn't taste much other than the mint, but I'm blaming the cold for that.

The yarn is another rainbow, but this one much more muted.

By day 7 I had 3 chocolates, and did finally manage to eat one, but I felt that it was a bit of a waste with my tastebuds not working properly, so I saved the others.

The candle was another "All is Bright", and I chose to burn that instead of the cookie one from the day before, then regretted doing so, because I couldn't smell it properly!

The tea was called "Moroccan Spice", and I really didn't want to waste that, because it sounded lovely!  Cinnamon, chicory, licorice, peppermint, ginger, and orange.  I drank that one this morning when I was starting to feel a bit better, and it really was gorgeous, until I forgot about it and let it go cold!

The yarn was a variegated, muted brown, which I wouldn't normally choose for myself at all, although it would be an excellent camouflage colour for dad's socks.

Remember that I said I'd like to try joining some squares together soon?  And that I'd like the bright rainbow colour to be on 2 adjacent squares so that the whole rainbow would be visible together?  Well I did that.

The square on the right is the very first square that I made, and I especially want it to be in the bottom right hand corner.  It's not a colourway from the calendar, just one of the many and various mini skeins that I've collected over the years.  I wanted to test the square pattern and see how easy it would be before committing to the whole blanket!

Today's candle was my first Star Anise and Orange.  Predictably is smells like spice and citrus!  The website tells me that the full range of scents should be: Juicy orange, anise mandarin, clove, sandalwood, and vanilla.

I caught up with everything, including chocolate (yes, I ate all 3 at once, then I ate 2 mince pies, and another half a box of Lindor, and I don't care!!!) 

Today's tea was "Oolong, Lemon, Raspberry", and I bet you can guess what was in it!  I'll forgive you if you didn't get the Calendula.  I was expecting something more from this, but I'm not really sure what to be honest.  It was nice enough, but nothing stunning.

You can't see today's yarn that well in this photo, but you can in the next.  I think it must have been inspired by watermelon.  Sadly it suffers from the same problem as the rainbow yarn, in that the full range of colours doesn't come out in a single square.

Look at how beautiful they look all joined together!  I am loving how this is building up!

So, yeah, still no big missing post... Maybe this weekend?  *fingers crossed*

Keep well my dears!

Advent day 5

No, still not the missing post, but I'm pleased to say that the advent calendars that I've been knitting are finally finished, except for sewing the numbers on!  All being well, I should be able to post them tomorrow!  Which means that I will then have time to write the missing blog post without feeling guilty that I should be knitting instead!

For now though, it's just another show and tell about the contents of my advent calendars:

Look at how beautiful that yarn is!!!  This is definitely my favourite colourway so far.  Beautiful rainbows!  I'm actually not sure if I want to use it all for making squares.  I think I'd like to find something to make with this that shows the full spectrum of colours in one item, because sadly the squares are too small for all of the colours to appear in just one.

The beautiful bright red candle is called "Festive Cocktail", and to me it smells bright and fruity, with a hint of vanilla.  The internet tells me that it's made up of citrus, cranberry, blackcurrant, pine, and vanilla.

The "tea" today was an infusion of lemongrass, cinnamon, ginger, garcinia, hibiscus, and lemon, that was called "Unwind me for the Season".  It was lovely, I could drink this, or yesterday's infusion all year round I think. 

Usually I'm not convinced about the efficacy of the various ingredients and their ability to create energy, or calm, or whatever, but this one did actually seem to help me relax.  Or maybe it was just the effect of having finished the calendars before starting my little ritual this evening.  Or it could be that just at this point my friend Tony popped in for a brief visit, so I got to have a lovely chat while he made my tea, and I knitted at him.

I haven't even eaten today's chocolate.  The tea was so nice and refreshing that I didn't want to spoil it with the richness of chocolate.  So, 2 choccies tomorrow instead!

Sorry for using flash, it means you don't get to see the lovely penguin shadow pattern on the candle burner, but I really wanted you to be able to see the colours in that ball of yarn, and they just didn't show up very well in our dimly lit front room.

As you see, the full rainbow doesn't fit into one square.  I think I'll have to make sure that the rest of the rainbow appears on an adjacent square.  When I see how that looks, then I'll decide if I want to use the rest of the ball for a different single project.

Bed time for me now, so night night my dears!

Advent Day 4 - Nope, it's not that post.

Yeah, so, energy crash in the middle of the afternoon means that the Big November Blog Post has been post-poned yet again.

The advent calendars were opened though, to reveal this lovely blue and red, which actually has purples and oranges hidden inside too.

I think the candle may be Christmas Cookie, but I confess that I didn't find this one especially exciting at all, it just smells vaguely sweet to me.  Mysteriously, it seems to be very popular, because it's sold out on the Yankee Candle website, which made finding a breakdown of the olfactory notes more difficult.  I did find it though, and it's supposed to be: creamy vanilla bean, nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar, vanilla, butter, and baked notes.

The tea was actually another herbal infusion, but I liked this one very much.  It was called "Energise me for the Holidays", and contained rosehip, hibiscus, apple, licorice, cinnamon, and rose petals.

Today's chocolate was a little round Lindor ball, with the super creamy, melty middle.

As you can see, the decorations went up at home today.  It's starting to feel a lot like Christmas, which is making me tense because as usual I'm behind with my knitting, and too poor to be buying presents, plus all of my friends and family are hopelessly middle class, no matter how much some of them want to pretend that they're still working class, which means that they all basically have everything they need, and quite a lot of what they want...

Aaaannd.... I'm going to stop there before I go off on one of my rants about the crass commercialism of Christmas, and how stressful it is for the poor.

This little ritual is supposed to be about giving me some time to myself every day so that I can escape for a while from exactly that stress.  I'm pleased to say that it works very well at the time, it's just a pity that reality has to return!

So here's today's little square.  I might start the second row of squares in the next couple of days.  Even though I've not made all 20 for the first row yet, I can still start the second row with the first few, if I like the colour combinations that present themselves anyway!

That's all until tomorrow.  Night night my dears.

Advent day 3

Super quick post tonight, because it's after 1am!

As you know, we had guests today.  Usually our gaming group plays at some of the other players houses, but this time we were the hosts.  I am not a morning person, especially on a Sunday, so I was still opening my advent calendars as we were setting up for the game.

Today we had a very nice pale blue colourway.

The candle fragrance is called "Macaron Treats", and to me it smells mostly of hot sugar, with a bit of vanilla, and maybe something nutty (I like to try and guess what's in the fragrance blend before I look it up!).  The website tells me that it's made up of: raw sugar, confectioners' sugar, cookie, almond, and vanilla.  

The tea wasn't really tea today, it was a herbal infusion of rooibos, cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, garlic, turmeric, and echinacea.  It is called "Chai Immune Boost".  I really hope it does have some medicinal qualities, because although it was drinkable, the garlic flavour was a bit too noticeable for it to be really pleasant, which is a pity, because I really love cardamom.

Today's chocolate was another simple square.  Clearly the tiny reindeer are for special days only!

Back at home tonight for my mindful half hour.  Kelly made my 'tea', and brought my spare knitting needles from upstairs, because I was stupid enough to leave the ones I had been using at Stephen's house.  Fortunately I have a set of short-tips in this size, as well as the normal tips.

A couple of years back Kelly gave me this beautiful device made of such fine ceramic that when you place a lit tealight inside (as you're intended to do!) it creates a sort of shadow relief of a penguin colony.  It seemed obvious to me that my scented tealights need to be burned inside of this whenever I am home for my mindfulness moment.

I've photographed this after just one decrease row on the mitred square, so you can see how it starts as one long row that is gradually pulled into place by the central double decreases.

Today's finished square.

I've already been thinking about how to work the border of the blanket when I finish the squares, although this will take quite some time, as I need 400 squares!  I'm considering testing out my idea by making a mitred square cushion cover.  Once I've finished my Christmas knitting, obviously!

That's all for tonight my dears.  Wish me luck for finally getting the missing post done tomorrow!

Advent Day 2 - still not that post

Today I have achieved many things; I have tidied Stephen's living room in the expectation of guests tomorrow. I have "decorated for Christmas", by which I mean blown the dust off the 6" tall tree then put it on the mantelpiece, and draped some tinsel over some pictures.  I have planned, shopped, and prepared a huge amount of lasagne for tomorrow.  I have made progress on the belated knitted advent calendars that I will tell you about in much more detail when I do write that post.  But I have not found the time to actually write the missing post.  Tomorrow, clearly, I'm busy with our guests, but perhaps Monday?

In order that an already very large post doesn't become totally unwieldy, I shall at least cover the subject of advent today and tomorrow.

I love the colours of today's yarn, I think it looks like fire.  

The tea, confusingly, is allegedly a "Post Festival Cleanse", so I'm really not sure what it's doing in a box right at the start of the festivities!  The blend is green tea, garcinia, cinnamon, ginseng, and acai berry. 

The candle is called "All is bright", and I'm afraid I couldn't separate any particular scent from it, and could only describe it as 'citrusy'.  The website tells me that the blend is grapefruit, orange, redcurrant, and sweet musk.

Today my chocolate is just a simple square of lovely milk chocolate.

Contrary to the thoughts of Kelly, I am not knitting a tiny bikini! Because of the way the mitred square works, this is what a single square looks like when only partially completed.  Tomorrow I'll show one when it's only a few rows in, because you start with a flat line that is actually 2 sides of the square, then as you work the central decrease, the square gradually forms.

Beautiful, isn't it?

Back again tomorrow my darlings!

Advent 2017

I am so sorry!  I know, I'm just useless at actually getting the posts done when I plan to!  I have been stupidly busy for the last couple of months though, so much that I can't remember the last time I woke up and knew where I was before opening my eyes.  In just the last 6 weeks it could have been Kelly's house, Stephen's house, my dad's house, my step-dad's house, a holiday house in Whitby, or a hotel in Scarborough, and not a one of them for more than a week at a time.

Anyway, all of this means that this update is the first of this year's Advent series, but there is a post yet to come that will cover Bakewell Wool Gathering, and the not insignificant growth of The Colony.  This post does not cover those things.  This post introduces a little daily Advent ritual that I hope to perform every day until Christmas day, and like last year, I'll be making a little post every day or so to show what was behind the door of my calendars.

Yes, calendars, plural.  This year I have 4.  No, I refuse point blank to feel guilty about the absolute indulgence of having 4 advent presents every day.  This Christmas is going to be fabulous from start to finish, and I feel that I deserve it.  Nothing can "fix" the events of the run up to last Christmas, but without a doubt I can make the most of this one, and enjoy happiness while it's possible. 

This is my chosen selection of calendars.  The adult advent calendar seems to be much more of a thing this year than in previous years.  If I'd felt like going the whole hog, I could have had a calendar of gin, one of wine, one of various beauty products, even one filled with sex toys!

Instead I obviously have this year's Opal sock yarn calendar, bought for my from Knit Nottingham by the very lovely Yasmin (I promise that I will remember to send the money to you Yaz!)

I also have a more standard chocolate calendar, although you may note that I chose a decent chocolate! Rather than gin, or wine, I thought that tea might be more appropriate, and while I drink the tea, knit the yarn, and eat the chocolate, I also burn a scented candle by Yankee Candles.

Last year I just kept the balls of yarn.  I hadn't decided what to do with them at the time.  This year I've decided to start using the yarn every day to make at least one square of a mitred square blanket.  I also intend to use my selection of calendars to encourage a little bit of "me" time every day.  I tend to spend December frantically knitting gifts, and it often causes the kind of stress that spoils my hobby.  With this little ritual, for the space of time it takes to burn a tealight candle, drink a cup of tea, and knit a small square, I can be entirely focused on my own happiness and well-being.

Today the yarn is this lovely blue gradient interspersed with short variegations of brown and white.  The tea was white tea with cinnamon, cocoa, coconut, and lychee.  The candle has a fragrance called "Snowflake Cookie", there's nothing on the box to explain what that actually means, but I thought it smelled like vanilla, cinnamon, and white chocolate.  Out of curiosity I actually looked up what it's supposed to smell of, according to the website it's: fluffy marshmallow, whipped vanilla icing, cinnamon, nutmeg, sweet buttercream, and sugar cookie.  Unsurprisingly, the Lindt calendar contained a tiny chocolate reindeer.

So this is the first mitred square from my Opal advent calendar.

Tomorrow, hopefully, I'll manage to write the missing blog post, as well as performing my little advent ritual.  Until then, take care my dears!

Slow going

This update is overdue, and it needs to be done before I head to Bakewell Wool Gathering this weekend, but the problem is that I've not actually got a lot to put in it!

There's a few things that I've been up to over the last month that I can tell you about instead though...

Part of the reason that I've achieved so little is that I went on holiday.  Stephen really needed a break, and more than that he needed some selfish time.  So he booked us into Wrea Head Hall for a few days of R&R.  While staying there we visited Scarborough Castle, Whitby Abbey, and Eden Camp.  That's a lot of walking in 3 days for a girl with a broken body.  I paid for that holiday in pain and exhaustion afterwards, but it was worth it!

I also decided to be part of the MacMillan world's biggest coffee morning.  I planned mine to be a Cake and Craft.  I'm not skilled at baking, you can tell this by looking at that cake.  The buttercream was supposed to be purple...

My amazing friends, Heather and Nigel offered to host, and between us we organised a lovely chilled afternoon of chatting, crafting, and eating too much sugar, and in doing so we raised £100 for MacMillan.  Of course, not everyone there was a knitter, one chap was knitting with a loom, a couple of people brought their crochet, but my personal favourite craft was Stephen's "knitting", or as normal people would call it; making chain mail.

FOs

I've not really finished anything this month, unless you count this:

This was a gift off my sister, a little kit for sewing a felt penguin decoration.  A nice, simple little thing to spend an evening  making, plus he's super cute :)

WIPs

As usual, I've been working on various crochet squares for the memory blanket:

This one is made using Rowan Purelife Revive, in the colourway Scree.

I've also been working on the blanket I'm making for my youngest niece.  I'm barely a quarter of the way through, and I've hardly even started the sewing yet, but I've already managed to make a mess of this.  At some point I'm going to have to unpick that square that's in the wrong place.  When I sew something, it generally stays sewn.  This isn't going to be as easy as it looks!

The yarn for this is Rico Design Baby So Soft, in the colourways 001, 007, 015.

I promised Kelly that I'd make him a new pair of gloves to replace his old space invader mitts that are definitely a bit the worse for wear now.  He chose purple and grey skull patterns.

You might notice the pins on the completed glove, these mark the space that is flat across the back of Kelly's hand when he's wearing it, because I'm intending to add a little pocket that can be used to store a little emergency cash to cover the possibility of an injury while out running that means he needs to get public transport back home.

These gloves are a mash-up of patterns, partly because the pattern with the skull chart is no longer available, and partly to add the pocket.  So I've mushed together Fingerless or not gloves, by Paula McKeever, Skully fingerless gloves, by Camille Chang, and Runner's pocket mitts, by Jennifer Beever.  The yarns used are a purple, un-named 100% wool 4-ply that I bought at Whitby last year, and Izzy Lane Wool 4-ply, in the colourway Natural Grey.

Finally, I've also just started on my Christmas knitting.  

WARNING!  Rant about rank materialism!!! 

For a long time I've had a problem with gifting at Christmas.  I don't have the money, or the physical and mental energy that are required for the modern day commercial Christmas.  With the obvious exception of anything penguin related, I despise pointless tat.  I see no reason why anyone should waste their hard earned money on something that has no purpose other than to take up space, and collect dust.  So I try, where possible to give useful items, or consumable items.  This is harder where children are involved, because they're very specific in their desires, and have not yet learned the true cost of the things they want.  The children in my life in particular already seem to own everything.  I think that they've all got to the stage where they're still opening presents several days after Christmas day itself.  

However, what I do have is endless love for these children, and a useful skill.  So I'm currently knitting the prototype for what will doubtless become another project that takes at least a couple of years to complete one for everyone, and that is an advent calendar with pockets that I shall fill with tiny little presents such as sweets and small stationary items.  Along with this I'll give each child something small and as meaningful as I can to open on Christmas day.

I've only done one pocket so far, and the only reason that I did that before finishing the rest of the background knitting was to check that this pocket knitting technique would work.  

The yarn I'm using for this prototype is Hayfield Bonus Glitter DK, in colourway 226, and Knitting Essentials Sparkle, in Purple Sparkle.

Penguins

Yep, straight to penguins.  I have acquired absolutely zero new stash since my last update.  I've been attempting to save my yarn budget for Bakewell Wool Gathering, but mostly I actually have no money left because I've spent too much of this year comfort shopping.

I did get this amazing book though!  And this teeny, tiny penguin cushion!  These were presents from Stephen's parents that they brought down from Shetland for me.

You may recall that I decorated my crutches in huge amounts of pink for the Race for Life back in July.  Of course, they couldn't stop that way forever, pink just isn't my colour!  So now they're decorated with red, and penguins, which made my physiotherapist laugh.

For a long time I've been wanting to treat myself to gel nails.  So I booked myself in to Spoilt for Choice to get them done, then I had a massive crisis with my phone breaking, unexpected expenditure of buying a cheap replacement urgently, and in the end had to beg money off my dad for the first time in my life to pay for these nails :(  However, since this particular photo was taken almost a week after they were first done, and at the end of a day helping dad cut wood, I think they were well worth it!  In the end they lasted over 2 weeks before a couple of tiny chips, and growth at the nailbed made me decide to remove them.

As I mentioned above, my phone broke.  It did so when I was in town, on my way to catch a train up north.  I desperately needed a function phone in order to coordinate with dad and Davie at the other end of my train journey.  So I ended up buying a cheap phone that none-the-less basically emptied my bank account.

Dad and Stephen came to my rescue though, as they both offered to buy me a decent phone as an early Christmas present.  I wouldn't have let either of them do it alone, but together isn't so bad.  Of course, a new phone means a new phone wallet!  I love this one :D

These were my birthday present from my sister and her family.  We're very bad at passing on birthday presents on time!  Her birthday was at the start of June, and she finally got her cards in August, mine was in July, and I got these a couple of weeks ago.  I love them though.  This was the little kit that I made up in to my only FO this month.

Finally, penguin season is here again!  The shops are full of cheap penguin cushions, blankets, duvet sets, and all manner of tat!  I have been relatively good though, because this is all I've succumbed to so far!  It's sparkly and everything!

That's all for now my dears, back after Bakewell!