Catching up, and Tidying up

Hello my darlings, I hope that you are well!

As you may have noticed, it's only been a month since my last update!  I'm actually catching up on keeping track of my life, finally!  This post is going to include a few things that should have been in earlier updates, but because I've mostly been living at Stephen's house, rather than my own, I haven't had everything available to take photos etc.  After that, I should be up to date as far as last weekend.  I'll be doing a separate post about that, as last weekend was Bakewell Wool Gathering!

FO's

I feel as though I haven't finished very much, but then I remind myself that this is only a month of knitting this time, so I can't expect to have finished everything!

My most recently finished project is a pair of socks for Gemma.  I always enjoy knitting for Gemma, because I know that the appreciates, and uses the things that I make for her.  

As usual, these socks are knit according to my own internal sock pattern, which involves 3&1 ribbing, a reinforced heel-flap, and size adjustments according to whoever I'm making them for.  The yarn I've used is Regia Design Line Jazz Colour by Erika Knight, in the colourway "Somethin' else".

Stephen's parents came down from Shetland to visit for a few weeks, and his mum brought me a giant ball of bright neon yarn.  I really wanted to knit something up with it before they went back to Shetland, so that she would get to see what it looks like, but I was struggling to think of a project to begin with.  I don't have any babies in my life anymore, as my nieces and godchildren are all growing up with alarming speed! and I wouldn't use anything this bright to make charity knits.  Then I was idly browsing Ravelry one evening, and saw a pattern for a Japanese Knot bag.  By the next day, I had this!

The pattern is Japanese Knot Bag by Louise Higgins, and the yarn is King Cole Melody Super ball DK , in the colourway "Fruit Salad".

When Stephen's mum saw the knot bag, she asked if I could make her something to carry her iPad in.  So I measured it up, and got knitting.  This took me just a couple of days.  I'm annoyed with myself about the strap though, because I've managed to twist it before kitchener stitching it, so it now has a permanent twist in it.  Fortunately, Stephen's mum doesn't mind, and because I deliberately worked it all in stockinette so that it would roll up on itself, the twist isn't really noticeable unless you know it's there.

I didn't use a pattern for this, but it's a really simple construction. 

WIPs

So far this month I've been very good at resisting the urge to cast on All The Things, so I've only been working on 2 projects, other than those that I've finished.

I had hoped to finish this before Bakewell, but because Stephen's printer isn't working, I'm having to rely on reading the charts on my phone, which is too small to see them clearly, and the screen goes dark after 60 seconds.  So instead I've been copying the charts by hand into a notebook, but my handwriting is abysmal, so it's very easy for me to make mistakes.  Which I definitely have!

Firstly I tried to put in a lifeline before starting the lace section.  With astounding lack of foresight I managed to thread the lifeline through every one of my stitch markers.  I decided after this to just not bother with a lifeline, and to risk making mistakes in the lace section.

The lace section on the right of this photo is correct.  You can't see it clearly, because lace never looks great until it's blocked, but you can at least see that there's a nice symmetrical shape to it.  The lace repeat on the left is a mess.  One row went wrong, and I didn't notice until 4 rows later.  I can't bring myself to rip out 5 entire rows of beaded lace, especially without a lifeline! and right now dropping back just that section is beyond my concentration span.  So I've put this to one side until I can decide if I'm just going to live with the mistake, or if I'm going to bite the bullet and fix it.

With a bit of luck, and a lot of diligence, I might just about get this ready for Nottingham Yarn Expo next month.

The pattern for this is Hazy Daze by Boo Knits, and the yarn is Tuxedo Lace by Penguin Soup, in the colourway "April Showers".

Yes, it's going to be another pair of socks.  Yes, it's purple and grey yarn, so obviously they're going to be for Gemma too.  I figure that with 2 young sons, a very boisterous dog, and a husband who works a fairly physical job, Gemma already has plenty of laundry to do, without always trying to be sure that she has at least one pair of proper wool socks clean when she only has 2 pairs.  4 pairs should make life a little easier when planning scouting weekends, and family romps around the countryside.

My usual sock pattern, and the yarn is Ice Yarns Super Sock, and the colourway doesn't appear to have a name or designation, at least not one that I can find on the ball band.

Stash Acquisition

I wish to start this section with a disclaimer:  Not all of this yarn was bought in the last month!  Some of it was bought back in July!  So I haven't gone as crazy as it might appear!  I confess to having gone a little bit crazy though.  When I'm stressed, I get decidedly laissez faire with my money, and I become very prone to comfort shopping.  Not a good combination for my finances, but excellent for my yarn stash.

These are 2 of the skeins that I bought back in July, and somehow managed to put away before taking photos, recording on Ravelry, and showing off in a blog post.  They're by Chromatic Yarns, the yarn dying business of Hannah, also known for The Corner of Craft online shop, where she sells her beautiful hand made beaded stitch markers, and The Corner of Craft Podcast, where she tells us all about her knitting exploits, while having immaculate makeup and fabulous hair.

I met Hannah at a Knit Nottingham birthday party a year or 2 back, when she was just starting her yarn dying business, and she is definitely my kind of person.  I think you can tell that by the way that her Yarn business is named after a spell from D&D, as are many of her colourways.  The 2 above are "Vampiric Touch", and "Rage".

More July purchases.  This time from Mothy and the Squid.  Apparently when she first began dying yarn, Jillian used to dye a lot of rainbow pop colourways.  But as artisan craft supplies became ever more popular, a number of other dyers began using very similar techniques, until Jillian felt that the market was pretty much saturated with that style of colourway, so she stopped producing her own, and concentrated on the colourways inspired by nature (in particular, colourful moths and squids, obviously!) that we know her for now. 

Back in July this year she decided to revisit a few of her original colourways, then she decided to combine the rainbow pops with one of her new colourways, which resulted in this gorgeous skein of forest greens and browns with a bright splash of rainbow, which is appropriately called "Autumn Rainbow".  

The 2 mini-skeins are to be included in my mitred square blanket, and they are the colourways "Peacock Flower", and "Ruby Tiger Moth".  All 3 skeins are BFL sock yarn.

Now we're back up to recent purchases.  These were bought while Stephen and I were on a short trip to York.  At first he was slightly reluctant to visit yarn shops with me, then we discovered that this particular yarn shop (The York Makery) has a shop dog!  Then he was very happy, fussing the dog, who was very waggy, and licked his face.

2 momentous things happened in this shop.  Firstly I spent a small enough amount that I could pay for it using contactless payment.  This has never happened to me before!  Secondly, I had to drag Stephen out of a yarn shop in order to visit a historic building before it closed!

Anyway, these yarns are Opal Energy in the colourway "Tatkraft", and The York Makery BFL DK in the colourway "Puck".  The DK is to be part of my memory blanket, and yes, I did deliberately look for the most offensively bright colourway that I could possibly find!

I think that Barbara of Ring-a-rosie's has some sort of psychic knowledge that means she knows when I'm going to be up north, and she times her instagram photos of freshly dyed, beautiful, one of a kind colourways especially so that I will immediately run to her shop as soon as I get up there!  I think I'm going to make another of Susan Ashcroft's shawl patterns with one of the 4-ply yarns, and the mohair lace.  Of course the mini-skeins are for the mitred square blanket.  The mini-skeins, and the variegated skeins, are all Marvellous High Twist merino 4-ply, and the bright magenta is a mohair and silk laceweight that Barbara calls Flooty.

I have discovered something wonderful, and it is called KnitCrate!  

So, you may, or may not know, that I am a fan of surprises.  Especially mildly indulgent surprises.  This is why I like advent calendars that give me a month of tiny little surprises every day!  But you can't get advent calendars for the rest of the year, which is sad.  However, you can sign up for a little box of smooshy to be delivered through your door once a month, complete with a little pattern booklet that details a knitting pattern, and a crochet pattern that you could choose to make with the yarn that you've been sent.  You never know what colours the yarn you're going to get will be, so it's a good way of pushing yourself into trying something a bit different if you like that.  Depending on which type of crate you choose, you might not even know what kind of yarn you'll get!  It might be DK, or 4-ply, it might be merino, or silk, or cashmere... I'm not quite ready for getting that much out of my comfort zone, also, when I'm being sensible, I have to remember that I do have very limited expendable income (I literally only buy yarn and penguins!) so I opted for the Sock Crate, which is always wool/nylon 4-ply, but I can tell you that it is very, very soft!

Miscellaneous

As I mentioned above, Stephen and I went to York for a couple of days.  I would have loved to be able to wander around York Minster for hours, examining every detail, but my body has different ideas on that subject.  So after I'd wandered as much as I could manage, I got to sit and knit with this marvellous view while I waited for Stephen!

Then in the York Minster gift shop, they had these beautiful drawstring bags in a fabric reminiscent of a medieval tapestry, and I thought they would make perfect project bags, especially as the roleplaying game that Stephen is currently running for us is based in a medieval-like setting, and my character is proficient in fibre crafts, so I can legitimately knit in character!

Part of my treatment for my newly officially diagnosed POTS is to drink 3-4 LITRES of fluid a day.  And you thought that trying to drink 2 litres a day was difficult!  I've got myself a graduated bottle with a straw, and using that I can manage almost 2 litres, then I start getting resistant to drinking just plain water.  I've always had a love for really good quality loose leaf tea.  So now I'm collecting loose leaf teas, and infusions, and pretty tea caddies to store them in, which I thought you might like to see, because there are few things finer than tea and knitting together.

Penguins!

I am aware that there are several penguins in this photo, but the new one is the one lying down with the little chain dangling below him.  He was an impulse buy, just because he was very inexpensive.  And cute.  Unfortunately I've had to remove him from my handbag, because his pin clasp keeps falling off, leaving me at risk of losing him too.  So I'm going to find him a new, less risky place to live.

In York we stopped for tea and cake (gluten free carrot cake!) in a little tea shop called The Mad Hatters Tea Room, which was located on the top floor of a charmingly quaint old building.  What this translates to in disabled person speak is "dangerously precarious and exhausting to get to, if not downright inaccessible."  But the lower 2 floors were a teddy bear shop, that had penguins. Also I'm stubborn, so I mountaineered up the stairs anyway, ate my gluten free cake, and bought a penguin on the way back down.  We also got a dinosaur for Stephen, because it kept leaping off the shelf at him.

My wonderful daddy taught me that one should always carry a torch.  And a bit of string.  I figure that I pretty much have string covered in the form of yarn.  To be honest, I do also have a perfectly ordinary mini maglite in my handbag, but that did not stop me from deciding that I desperately needed this head torch when I saw it in the sale from the online store that I buy my cheap fat girl clothes from.

We decided that we hadn't been to the Royal Armouries in Leeds for too long, so we went.  There we heard tales of Waterloo, the Tournament at the Field of Cloth of Gold, Duels of honour, and medieval plate armour.  In the gift shop Stephen, who long ago chose his online handle as Smaug, and is known among our friends as "The Dragon", found this book.  I don't think he's ever done anything more sweetly romantic than bringing this book to my attention.  

It's that time of year!  I was actually very restrained when I got this, as there was also a bigger hollow chocolate penguin!

I've bought these before, but I can't remember if I was blogging back then.

This is what they look like when in use.  They please me greatly :)

Last time I went to visit my sister, she presented me with this marvellous little package.  Penguins and craftiness!  

I decorated them like this :)  

The last time I went to Meadowhall to buy more tea, Stephen came with me, which meant we ended up in the Lego store.  They have their Christmas bauble sets in stock, and this year the finally are doing a penguin!

I briefly thought about waiting until December to build my Lego penguin, but then became impatient, and built him straight away.  This is the perogative of adulthood.  If I have to do grown up stuff like plan, cook, manage finances, and tidy the house, then I have to be allowed the advantage of choosing not to wait to build my Lego.

I think that this year there will be many more Christmas decorations in Stephen's house than usual, (usually there is a single 6 inch tall tree) and most of these decorations will be penguin related.

Now, I think it is bed time.  I shall be back again very soon with a report on Bakewell Wool Gathering.  Sweet dreams my dears!

Progress! And Socks!

Hello my darlings, I hope that all is well with you?

It's been a little longer than I would have liked since my last update, but not as long as I worried it might be, so I guess it's not too bad.  I've also made a lot of actual progress!

I'm remarkably chipper right now, all considered.  Perhaps because I've had a particularly productive weekend.  However, health has been an issue - my own health, dad's health, and Stephen's health.  I'm not going to go into too much detail, but suffice to say, life is busier now than I'm entirely comfortable with.

However, there has been good news about dad!  His most recent scan results show that the cancer is being kept at bay.  While it hasn't shrunk very much, it is shrinking, and there is no sigh of the metastatic tumours reappearing.  So he has started his 4th round of 6 chemo sessions.  His oncologist was very impressed, because apparently when dad completes this round, he will be the first patient his oncologist is aware of who has survived 24 rounds of this particular chemo! His chemo is due to finish at the end of November, so I'm looking forward to another Christmas with my daddy :)

FO's

So, on with the regulars: 

I promised last time that I'd show a picture of this sweater once I'd properly finished it.  I could pretend that I finished it very soon after my last post, but I'd be lying!  In fact, I wore it for the first time today, having sewn on the buttons, and blocked it last weekend.  The sudden arrival of autumn, along with more typical British weather, finally gave me the kick up the arse that I needed to put the finishing touches to a knit that I actually finished months ago!

The pattern for this is Smart and Stylish Sweater, by Pat Menchini, published in the October 2017 issue of Let's Knit magazine.  And the yarn is King Cole Luxury Merino DK, in the colourway "Mildew".

Daddy's socks.  Can you spot the deliberate mistake?  Of course you can!  It's glaringly obvious that the toe of one sock is made of an entirely different yarn!  I lost at Yarn Chicken :(  Being used to the sister-yarn (crazy Zauberball) of this one, which is sold in 100g balls, and is plenty to make a pair of socks, even for someone with quite large feet, I hadn't considered that this 50g ball might not be quite enough.  Because it's a rather light 3-ply yarn, that 50g was almost enough.  Almost, but not quite.  I searched my stash for a green 3-ply sock yarn to finish the toe of the second sock, and the only one I could find was a much lighter shade of green, with orange splashes in it.  Not ideal, but as Dad pointed out, nobody is going to see the toe, it's inside his shoe, and he assures me that he can't feel the join, or the difference between the 2 yarns, so I guess that's ok.

As usual, I didn't use a pattern for these, I simply adapted my own internal sock pattern for smaller needles, and finer yarn.  The yarn in question is Schoppel-Wolle Edition 6.0, in the colourway "Waschtag".

This was a bit of a "spare time" project that I only worked on when at Stephen's house, and when in between other projects.  It started off as a handful of blanket squares that were intended to be sent up to Shetland to join squares made by others, in a number of blankets to be given to the charity organisation From Shetland with Love.  However, my enquiries as to whether it would be ok for me to post my squares, rather than deliver them in person during Shetland Wool Week, were never answered.  So in the end I decided to slowly create enough squares on my own to make a small blanket, and then give that blanket to a local charity.  I will probably donate this to one of the local animal rescue shelters, to comfort a cat, or small dog.

There is no pattern, it's simply 12 squares, roughly the same size, in a variety of different stitch patterns, sewn together, and a simple crochet border.  All of the yarns are double knit, acrylic, or acrylic/wool blends, and all left over from other projects.

Yasmin has commented a few times now that she would like me to make some socks for her.  She is a knitter herself, but she tends to end up making gifts for babies, and doesn't have the time to make very much of her own.  So I asked her for her foot measurements, and made these for her.  She was very pleased to find that "they fit like they were made for me!"

As usual, my internal sock pattern, adapted for Yaz's tiny feet and ankles.  The yarn is King Cole ZigZag, in the colourway "Waves".

No, it's not a yarn or fibrecraft.  When I'm staying with dad, we spend Tuesdays at Ashington Woods, where my dad teaches a green woodworking group.  Often when I'm there I knit, or crochet, rather than join in with the carving, but sometimes I try my hand at carving as well.  This is a spoon that I finished recently, with the pocket tissues for scale.

This is how most of the things I carve start.  Just a plain chunk of wood.

This is my most recent carving project, and you'll have to use the stitching on the arm of my dad's chair to get an idea of scale.  My dad has carved a number of very tiny spoons, just as an exercise in technique really.  I thought I'd give it a go myself.  This spoon is about 6cm long, and unfortunately I do think that I carved it a bit too thin at one point.  If you hold it up to the light, you can see through a small patch in the bowl of the spoon, and the grain of the wood is coarse enough that it's possible the spoon would not hold water.  I haven't actually tested it yet though, and it is really only meant to be decorative.

WIPs

About 4 years ago I started making crochet squares out of left over cotton, or wool, double knit.  This was a long-term project, intended to use up little bits of really nice yarn that weren't big enough to make anything useful with.  Over time it has become more than that, as I've visited various yarn shops on my travels, but haven't always had enough money to buy enough yarn for a full project, instead I would buy a single ball of a very pretty dk.  This yarn then becomes a memory of that trip, or holiday, that will be crocheted into the blanket.

The intention is to make 100 squares in total, then crochet them all together with a plain black yarn.  I took this photo 3 days ago, and the square on the hook was number 31.  I'm currently working on number 34.  This is a bit of an unusual spike in progress on this particular project, brought about because all the sock knitting I've been doing was making my left thumb try to dislocate.  Crochet is a different series of movements, and different pressures, so I've been able to continue crafting, while resting that left thumb.  Unfortunately, too much crochet makes my right thumb try to dislocate!  So I'll be back to knitting again soon!

This is my pitiful progress on the lace shawl that I cast on during my birthday holiday.  Even though this section is basically just stockinette, the pattern of increases is worked on both knit and purl rows, over 4 rows.  So in order to keep track of where I'm up to, I have to be able to complete a multiple of 4 rows at any time I pick it up.  I can't always guarantee that I'll be settled without distraction for long enough to do that, so this project is not progressing very quickly.  I have however decided to add beads when I get to the lace section, and I've got the beads, and the tiny crochet hook all ready.

The pattern is Hazy Daze, by Boo Knits, and the yarn is Penguin Soup's Tuxedo Lace, in the colourway "April Showers".

I only cast this project on today.  This will be the latest pair of socks for Gemma, because she's always so lovely about telling me how much she likes the socks that I've made for her, which makes me want to make her more :)  She likes grey and purple,  my stash has no shortage of these colours, I enjoy knitting socks, so this seems like a winning combination.

In addition, these socks will be my first entry into a Knit-a-long set up by Corner of Craft called "StashmasKAL2018".  The aim being to knit as much as possible from stash between September 1st, and December 31st this year.  I think it's also intended to get people started on their Christmas knitting, but I know for a fact that I won't wait until Christmas to give these socks to Gemma!

Pattern from my own head, as per, and the yarn is Regia Design Line Jazz Colour, by Erika Knight, in the colourway "Somethin' else".

Stash acquisition

I freely admit that this section is missing some entries that really should be included, because I bought them some time ago.  However, I evidently forgot to take photographs at the time, and I've left them at home, while I am currently at Stephen's house.  So they will have to be belatedly included in my next update.

There is no lack of yarn porn though:

This is another yarn box by Yorkshire Dales Yarns, at Homespun Wonders.  Well, it's most of it, because before taking this photo I had already taken out one of the items and started using it regularly:

Homespun Wonders do these gorgeous themed yarn boxes.  This time there was a choice of mystical creatures, and I chose Faery.  The themed boxes always contain yarn (usually you chose the weight of the yarn, and if you'd like 1 or 2 skeins), some sweet treats, stitch markers, and a selection of little gifts related to the theme. I know that Katie is my friend, but I'm honestly not exaggerating when I say that these boxes are extraordinarily good value for money!  Literally the perfect gift for any yarn lover in your life (including yourself!)

I always choose 4-ply, because it's my favourite weight of yarn to work with, and I usually choose to receive 2 skeins.  As you can see, my box contained 2 beautiful pinky-purpley skeins of yarn, some yummy heart-shaped chocolates, a little faery stitch marker that can be used either as a needle marker or a clip marker, a very shiny trinket box (I have a minor obsession with trinket boxes, I actually have a small collection of them, so I was especially pleased with this!) a scented candle, a ceramic re-useable coffee cup, and a very large and sturdy tote bag.

Yes, I've been back to Ring-a-rosie's!  What can I say?  I love that place, I love the lady who runs it, and I love the yarn that she dyes!  Plus, she has a habit of putting a fresh batch of one-of-a-kind colourways out just before I head north for a visit!  

This time it was the mini-skeins that really caught my eye.  I may not have actually done any work on my mitred square blanket for a while, but I'm still thinking, and planning, and preparing for when I do!  I saw this little bundle, with that bright pop of pink, and the pale speckles, next to my usual purple, green, and turquoise, and thought that this was a perfect opportunity to force myself to use some colours that I wouldn't usually choose, which will make the finished article look that much more vibrant.

There'd been a fresh re-stock of all colourways of Crazy Zauberball too, which is definitely one of my favourite commercial sock yarns, so I couldn't pass up the opportunity to get a couple of the colourways that always seem to disappear quickest.

Of course, I couldn't leave without having at least a little look at the full-sized skeins too, and with the arrival of autumnal weather, I couldn't resist this skein that reminds me of a photograph my dad took when my sister and I were really little, looking out over the West Allen Valley in Northumberland.  Every tree was a different colour, with all of the usual autumnal shades from palest green, through to deep, russet reds, but there was also one tree that had gone dark purple.

When I was chatting, and finding my debit card, Barbara must have snuck in a little free gift as well, beautifully wrapped in a Peter rabbit pouch was the final speckled turquoise mini-skein :)

We had a very busy day that Saturday up north.  Starting with the trip to Ring-a-Rosie's, then meeting dad at Pegswood, where he was teaching a group of Young Rangers about green woodworking, then driving up to Felton, where we had lunch with dad at the Northumberland Arms, then taking a slow walk across the river Coquet to Fine Fettle Fibres, which is where I bought this little haul.

I was hoping to be able to get some of the fabled Northumbrian Rose yarn that I'd read about, but sadly it has all sold out, and can't be re-stocked until the mill can spin some more.  However, I did know that this place stocks Triskelion yarns, which I absolutely love, but who don't come to any of the fibre shows that I'm able to get to these days.  So of course, the first skein I chose was this gorgeous green sock yarn from Triskelion. 

I'm not usually a fan of single-spun yarn, but this Marina yarn by Manos del Uruguay is such a beautiful colour, and has such a lovely sheen to it, that I decided to give it a go.  I do have to admit that single-spun yarn does tend to feel much softer against the skin than most plied yarns, but it biases terribly in garments, and is prone to weakness if you have to frog it and re-knit it.  This one just begs to be a super soft and luxurious shawl though, so I'll just have to be careful, and use lots of life-lines!  The bias problem shouldn't be an issue for a shawl.

This bright orange though!  Orange is so not my colour!  But this one called to me, looking like spun fire.  It's by Ginger Twist Studio, who if I'm being honest, I'd never heard of before, and it's called "Melon Balls On Fire".  How awesome is that?!?

Finally, the book - Cast On, Bind Off - has been on my Amazon wish list (Officially the cheekiest link I've ever made!) for ages.  I figure that I'm a fairly accomplished knitter, and I do know a reasonable number of different ways to cast on, and bind off.  But I nearly always use the same 2 or 3 techniques, because they're the ones that I'm most comfortable with.  I really want to be able to do more, things like making my cast on, and bound off edges look the same, or finding a really stretchy ribbed bind off that doesn't create a "frilly" finish.  This book will help me do that.

Another book

Something that I forgot to photograph, so couldn't include in my last update (happens too much!) was this funny little book:

The dust cover has already become a little tatty, because this sits in the cubby by my nest at home, where I can read little bits of it at random.  Some of it is useful, some of it is funny, some of it is educational, most of it is interesting.  It was entirely an impulse buy, because when I have mood wobbles, sometimes I fix them by buying stuff that I probably shouldn't.

Penguins!

It's getting to that time of year again... The "C" word has been used in my knitting magazines, in the YouTube videos that I watch, even in this very blog... And we all know what that means!  Penguin tat is creeping onto the supermarket shelves!

These things are not tat at all!  These were my birthday present from Liz.  A sweet little penguin keyring, that I'm using to make gripping the zip on one of my project bags easier, and this marvellous penguin pen, that now lives in my holographic organiser, and gets used nearly every day :)

Look at him!  Isn't he brilliant!?!  My goddaughter hand sewed him herself, especially for me!

Our strawberry plants are getting a bit out of control, and have produced loads of creeper shoots.  So we went to buy another pot to plant the shoots into, so that next year we will have even more strawberry plants.  While we were being all adulty, comparing the relative merits of different types of plant pot, Stephen spotted this garden ornament, then the garden ornament found it's way to the checkout with us, and now he lives among our strawberry plants.

I don't know how well you can see what this actually is, because I didn't want to climb out from under it to take the photo.  It's so soft, and snuggly, and it has penguins on it, and it's big enough that both Stephen and I can sit on the sofa underneath it.  We saw this blanket on a top shelf in the "seasonal" aisle at Asda (during our most recent trip north, when it felt like we spent so much time at Asda that we could get our post re-directed there).  Anyway, when we looked, the label on the shelf said "spare stock", and these blankets were not to be found on any other shelf.  I departed a sad and deflated penguinophile.

A couple of days later, on a day when I found myself at Asda alone (Sunday? I might have been looking for sage and onion stuffing to go with our Sunday roast) I just happened to find myself on the same aisle (you have sage and onion stuffing at Christmas!  It's totally a seasonal item, and could totally have been on that aisle!) and there were the blankets, available for sale!

Just a little thing that I added to my cart when I was buying the next thing.  You might think this is a penguin, but it's actually hand cream.  I use a lot of hand cream, because my skin is crappy and delicate, and because dry skin snags on my yarn.  This is supposed to be lavender scented, which is debatable.

When I bought the hand cream, I was actually really buying this, and I only bought this as a cheap way to find out what this colour really looks like.  Which is red.  I mean, it's not just me right?  This colour is indisputably red, right?  It looks red in the pictures on the website that I bought it from too.  But it's called Pink.  I actually want to buy a backpack from the same collection as this (you can't use shoulder bags with crutches, really, you just can't.) but the price of the backpack made me think twice about ordering it if when it arrived it was going to turn out to actually be magenta, which is very Not Me.  But this smaller bag was very affordable, so I thought I'd order one and see what the colour is like, and what the construction quality is like (I overload my bags a lot, if they aren't sturdily constructed, they don't last long).  I actually love it.  It has many, many pockets (to make up for the fact that the Patriarchy are controlling women by not putting pockets in our clothes).  It is large enough to contain all of the myriad items that I routinely carry around with me, including purse, meds, hair brush, makeup, diary, sunglasses, hand cream, house keys for 5 different houses, car keys for 2 different cars... and still have plenty of space for a knitting project too.  I am pleased.  I shall be buying the backpack.

Right, it's exactly 2am now.  In 6 hours I have to get up, because Stephen and I are going to York.  So I'm going to bed now.  Sweet dreams my dears!

I can't even...

Sooo... Hello again everyone.  Apparently it's July.  I'm not even sure how that happened.

Yesterday was my birthday, this is why I'm pretty sure it's July.  I'm a bit confused, because it's been relentlessly hot and dry for over a month now, and I live in the UK.  We don't get summer.  What usually passes for "summer" here is one randomly lovely week in April that get's everyone's hopes up, followed by a lot of rain, then 2 oppressively hot and humid weeks in August, then some more rain.

When I last updated this blog it was still snowing.  But then it continued to snow until well into April, but by the time we reached May, we already had the sunshine.  It's messing with my brain.

Anyway, I am still alive, and I am still going to be blogging, but I have to apologise for how infrequent it is/has been.  There have been several reasons for this: my health, dad's health, my small laptop needing a reinstall, my gaming laptop being too big to carry up and down the country, most of my knitting energy going into just one big project, and hardly doing any yarn shopping, so I had nothing new to post about, sorting out the garden, being too hot to think...

But! I'm alive now!  The weather has cooled down a bit.  I haven't heard anything at all from the DWP in months, so I'm just hoping that they haven't lost my PIP appeal paperwork (I have been told that it might take several months for an appeal date to be set). I have a shiny new gaming laptop that is light enough to travel with, at least a little bit, and I have recently been awarded a little bit of money from a claim for mis-sold loan insurance.  So of course I've spent this on yarn.  And a new laptop.

FO's

I'm going to include the sweater here as finished.  I have in fact been putting off writing this blog for almost a month longer than I should have, because I finished the sweater, except for blocking, and sewing on 2 decorative buttons.  I still haven't blocked it, or sewn on the buttons.  However, I have decided that if I don't do this post now, it might never get done, so here is the (almost) completed sweater:

I will try to put a better photo in a future post, once I've blocked it and sewn on the buttons.  I don't know when that will actually happen though!

This is the Smart and Stylish Sweater, by Pat Menchini, published in Let's Knit! Magazine, issue 123, from October 2017, and the yarn is King Cole Luxury Merino DK, in the colourway "mildew".

I wasn't going to bother including this, but it is a thing that I made, so I may as well.  Using some of the left over yarn from the sweater, I knit this simple cylinder, to protect my fingers (or my dads, as he's back on the chemo, and it makes him sensitive to the cold) from freezing cold cans, fresh out of his over-zealous fridge.

These are socks for me.  I finished them while sat in the park enjoying the sunshine. The first sock is perfect, the second sock has a number of mistakes, mostly where I accidentally missed out cables in a few places.  They're for me, and only I am ever likely to notice, so I decided not to bother ripping back to fix the mistakes.

As usual, these are knit according to my own internal sock pattern, adapted to fit my feet, and in this case with cables, rather than plain 3&1 rib.  I've been thinking, and I might actually write up my sock pattern, and some instructions on how I adapt it for different sizes of foot and ankle.  If I ever get the time and energy at the same time.

The yarn for these is Shoppel-Wolle Crazy Zauberball, in the colourway "Indisch rosa".

Remember that I said we'd been working on sorting the garden out?  Well this is part of that.  The photo shows the framework of the lovely gazebo, and garden table and chairs, on our lovely new deck.  Hurricane Hector came along and destroyed this gazebo 3 days after we built it.  We have built a new one.  The project however, is this little crocheted peg bag, because finally I have a washing line outdoors for drying our laundry!  Yes, I'm middle-aged, I get excited by things like this.

I didn't use a pattern, this is just a simple granny square of individual doubles, to make a fairly tight fabric.  3 rows from the end I made a chain to form the base of the stitches above this on the next row, and rejoined the row leaving a large enough gap to put my hand in, and this became the hole to put the pegs in.  The back of the bag is a square made of straight rows, and the 2 squares were sewn together, leaving a small gap for the hanging hook to go through.

The yarn for this is Lana Grossa Cotone, in the colourways 108, and 308.

Most recently completed are these socks for Gemma.  She has temporarily misplaced the last socks that I made for her (she has 2 small sons, a cat, and a crazy dog, any one of them could be responsible for the missing socks!) and she was distraught, as apparently these are the best socks that she has for keeping her feet warm in winter, and cool in summer.  So I thought she should have some more, especially as she is one of the leaders of a scout camp this weekend, when decent socks are a must have item.

I did have one issue with these socks, and it wasn't in the knitting itself, it was the yarn.  This yarn has the longest self-patterning repeat of any yarn I've ever come across.  I finished the first sock without encountering a pattern repeat at all, so I had come to the conclusion, that like the crazy zauberball, this yarn has no repeat.  So I started knitting the second sock, only to finally find the beginnings of a colour repeat after knitting about 2 inches.  On my own socks I don't care if both socks are a perfect match, but when I'm knitting for someone else, I prefer to make them match if I can.  So I ripped back to the start of the colour repeat, and started the second sock again.  I've kept the little bit of sock that I'd started knitting, because I can join some other scraps of yarn to it at a later date, and make ugly scrappy socks.

As usual, my own sock pattern was used, and the yarn is Schoppel-Wolle Admiral R Druck, in the colourway "Magic".

WIP's

I've been working on only 2 projects, other than those that I've finished.  The first is the blanket that I started for my youngest niece almost a year ago.  I reported in October last year that I'd made a mistake in the sewing up, and the project was set aside in disgust for a while.  I have now repaired that mistake, but I promise you that knitting, and sewing up, a large blanket in persistent temperatures around 30°C, with high humidity, is not a fun task.  This is also not a convenient project for carrying around, so progress continues to be slow, but at least it is progressing again, and will hopefully be ready by the time it gets cold enough for my niece to need it.

This is the project that I'm working on whenever I have to travel anywhere.  This is a pair of socks for my dad that I cast on before Christmas, but they were set aside while I worked on knitting presents.  

I'll be honest, they've been picked up again partly because last week daddy gave us a major scare.  As I mentioned earlier, he's back on the chemo.  His scan results in June showed that the cancer had begun to grow again, but as he was still otherwise fit and healthy, they decided to put him straight back onto the 3 drug regime that had been successful before.  We were warned that it might not be as effective this time, and that the side-effects might be more severe.  We don't yet know how effective it is, but certainly the side-effects have been worse.  Although it is also possible that there were other contributing factors, last week dad was exceptionally ill.  He couldn't keep any food down, he became very weak, and lethargic, he was nauseous all the time, and was having great difficulty just taking his regular medication, he visibly lost weight in the space of just a couple of weeks.  It terrified all of us, as we worried that he'd re-started the chemo too late, and that this might be the final decline caused by the cancer.  I am absolutely NOT ready for that yet!  (I probably never will be). However, it seems that dad isn't ready for that either, as after a bunch of medical appointments, including rescheduling his next chemo, to give him a bit of time to recover from this dip, and altering the dosages of several of his medications, including the chemo, he's back to normal, and working his ticket at full strength again.

However, seeing him so poorly made me decide that I wanted to get these socks finished as soon as possible, because the yarn is so soft! He needs to get plenty of opportunity to wear them! 

This is my usual sock pattern, but adapted for finer yarn, and smaller needles, as well as to fit dad's feet.  The yarn is Shoppel-Wolle Edition 6.0, in the colourway Waschtag.

Stash Acquisition

Until a few weeks ago I had literally bought no new yarn since February.  Then I received the payment from my mis-sold loan insurance, and the first thing I did was go yarn shopping!  I should also say that I haven't been totally frivolous with this unexpected windfall, I have spent a fair bit of it on things for the garden, I've put a significant chunk of it into savings, and I've bought my new laptop, which while not essential right now, is something that I would be looking at replacing within the next 12 months anyway.

The lighting in this photo absolutely does not do justice to the colours of these yarns.  

On the left are 4 skeins of Fyberspates Vivacious in the colourway "Plum Imps", and I actually have a plan for these.  I intend to turn them into a nice summer cardigan/shrug/bolero for myself.

Then we have 1 full sized skein, and 6 mini-skeins by Ring-a-Rosie, all in one-of-a-kind colourways.  The full sized skein is a 4-ply Donegal with colourful neps, the mini-skeins are all 4-ply high twist merino.

You may recall that in July last year I bought myself a birthday present from Homespun Wonders, as they were doing a monthly box themed around birth stones. This year they are doing the same, but the theme is birth flowers.  I didn't know what the July birth flower is, but I decided to buy myself a birthday yarn box anyway. It turns out that my birth flower is Delphinium, and so I received this gorgeous tonal purple yarn, and box of goodies, which does of course include seeds to grow my own flowers, as well as buttons, stitch markers, sweeties, a decorative candle, a beautiful necklace, and this:

I love this butterfly ornament for our garden!  Stephen loves it too, but a bit less than me, because he is tall enough that he walks into it quite often!

Miscellaneous

We all know that the internet spies on us, collects all of our data, and builds up a profile of us.  We assume that this could be for some dark and nefarious purpose, but actually it's just so that retailers can target their adverts at the people most likely to want to purchase their product.  Knowing this should make me less susceptible to their wiles.  Mostly it does, I think, but not when what they're selling is this:

A dog paw print, yarn and knitting needles, and a cup of tea!  It could only be more perfect if it also had a penguin on it!

Penguins

Speaking of penguins, I actually have very few of those to show you too, penguin products are less prolific in summertime.

Contrary to popular opinion, this is NOT a sex toy.  This was a gift from Kelly, and if you pull the head off, it's a container designed to contain toothbrush and toothpaste, keeping them safe from bathroom dust and germs.  So it appeals to my neat-freak side, as well as my penguin obsession.

While Knitting and Penguins are definitely my top 2 obsessions, I have several others too - puppers, and tea have both been mentioned, but I also have a mild (non-sexual) stationary fetish.  Obviously I've included this photo because it has the penguin themed sticky notes, but I do love my holographic organiser, and rainbow pompom pen!

That's all for now my dears, hopefully it will be less than 4 months before I post again!