Birthday bonanza

Well let's get to the juicy stuff straight off...

This is the whole haul. Pooch gave me the boye needle master set of interchangables, which so far I've only played around with and stroked a lot.

Aren't they beautiful? But what I don't understand is how they can bring themselves to put such beautiful needles in such a fugly case.

What's with that? Plus he got me the pink knitlite needles that have little light bulbs in them for those cinema-dropped-stitch-episodes. Genius!

Pooch also took me out for a lovely sushi dinner, and while I was waiting for it to be time to meet him I just happened to be near Liberty. And I just happened to go into their wool department. Abd I just hapenned to come across some crazy bargains. That's what all that yarn is in the photo. But bearing in mind that I got 38 balls of jaeger for £50 I don't feel so bad about it, and I was due a day from stashalong anyway. So I came out with...

• 10 balls jaeger aqua in butter yellow
• 10 balls aqua in bright orange
• 8 balls jaeger siena in green
• 6 balls in purpley blue
• 6 balls in cream

Now I did not just go crazy, because believe me I could have bought at least another three colourways of the siena. Also I have a plan. Kind of. The yellow and orange is for a baby blanket. Am thinking squares and probably crochet. The green/purple/cream combo was inspired by the highly inspirational Nickerjac who was crocheting with those three colours at SkipNorth. She was using james c brett merino, which I still haven't seen any of so let me know if you know of a london pusher, or rather don't. Jan had made Nic a baby blanket that was quite stunning - you actually couldn't see where she'd joined the rounds. Has all prompted me to add the 200 blocks book to my wishlist.

I have been going great guns on the sideways sock adventure, and it ended recently with me wearing this.

Now I know my eagle eyed readers will have noticed the slight sag towards the toe end. Lets just look at that in more detail shall we?

That's the end of the toe folded over. This is the downside of a sideways sock. I made it about 2 inches too long and whereas with your conventional one you could just rip back, with this one you're stuck with it. I considered keeping it as a lesson for the future but then there was this as well:

That's the front of my ankle looking very much norah battyish. I had mitred the heel but not used any shaping there and so with two major design flaws I did the decent thing and frogged it out of existence. The mark 2 version is going along very nicely.

Finally, I've been making flowers for my wedding bouquet - and this one is definitely not going to be thrown to the crowd. I have been doing them on the tube on the way to and from work. These are all the tapestry ones. I do like this yarn although I have a feeling it would pill like crazy with wear. If anyone has any experiences of this let me know.

I did get lots of other presents which were all wonderful but haven't photographed them yet. Thanks to everyone who sent emails and things too. Horrah for birthdays!