Hiding out, offline style

It's amazing how nowadays if you avoid a few keys sites, such as hotmail, blogger and for the youth of today, facebook, you can basically vanish. I have been feeling particularly antisocial recently though which has also led to my hiding out away from social gatherings of knitters as well as their online presence. My small altercation with the Pooch made me miss the pink project afternoon at Stash and since then I've barely been anywhere. However, even on my tod the knit continues.

So where did I leave off? Well the buttons socks are finished.

I think they're rather nice and they have been worn with pride. I might even wear them with my new shoes which I just couldn't resist. You know the pattern for saartje's booties (look under 'free patterns')? These are my adult version, curtesy of Clarkes.

There has been some stash enhancement too - Peaches and creme cotton from the craft cottage. It really is nice looking stuff and I do like the colours. This one is called sunshine or something like that and is my favourite.

Jane had a new book at the one NWKTog I managed to get to. 50 sensational crochet afghans and throws and I immediately fell for at least three of them. I have started one in baby blanket size. I can't say the colours are quite as I'd wish but it just goes to show - don't do a striped blanket in variegated yarn (james c brett marble DK) and expect it to look like the picture.

I do like it though.

I have also now three times cast on the adult surprise cardigan and each cocked it up (technical term). This is one of those attempts. Note the teeny tiny armhole.

I do like the colours though. James C Brett Marble chunky this time. I like my james c brett. I also made some shrinky dink stitch markers to help me remember the decreases. Not that that has actually helped me, obviously.

I've never shrunk a dink before and really rather like these. So I'm making some more. The ones on the left are going to be buttons. You can see how much they shrink.

My main progress has been on the Mermaid cardi where I have almost done the back. Just the right front and sleeves to go. I've completely changed my mind about the colours too. I really like them now.

To finish up I went to a conference in bristol zoo last week. It was tres cool with pygmie hippos, penguins and more. But the best thing were the bats. They were Johnson bats or something like that. Not those little fruitbat things you normally get. There was a net over the top of a fairly large enclosure so they were actually flying around over my head. And then they'd use hooks (?) on the end of what I am going to call hands and feet until someone educates me otherwise. So they'd land on the net like this:

...and then basically crawl across it to get to wherever they wanted to be. Was very cool. One was hanging above me for ages just looking around. It was hugging itself. So cute. There was another lying on a radiator in the enclosed bit. A mum told her child it was dead (the kid seemed fairly ok about it - they breed them tough in the south west) then it got up and flew about. She told him it must have got better. That's one kid who's going to be confused when he loses his first gerbil. Here's the thoughtful one just hanging around looking cool.

I haven't podcasted for ages and I haven't announced the winners of the last competition either which is pretty crap. I'm not going to commit but I am almost inspired to do another one this bank holiday weekend. You never know!