Score!

I may be wrong but I think Royal Mail is getting worse. They are making a habit of keeping my parcels from me. I ask for them to be redelivered and they don't come. I go to pick them up and they're not there (apparently it can take 4 days for a parcel to go from being a metre away from my postbox but undeliverable to getting 20 mins walk away to the sorting office, not the 24 hours they always write on the card). That asie, I finally got my amazon order today and here they are, tra la!

Nickerjac got a copy of the lace one at last year's SkipNorth (2 weeks to go!) and I finally gave in. Some of the circular ones are just divine.

Then opposite the sorting office is a charity shop and they had a load of old knitting books. When I say old I mean 80s. I got these two.

Someone was talking about the Patricia Roberts one on Ravelry the other day. I got them because although the shapes are a bit boxy or baggy there are some quite inspiring designs and patterns. For instance from the Roberts book comes this lot.

1. Polka dot bows sewn on afterwards. OK, I'm not actually going to ever do this but you've got to love it.

2. Again the design is odd but I do like the collar.

3. Lovely jacket. With a bit of shaping it would be lovely.

4. Lovely fairlisle patterns

Then from the Sweater Book.
1. I just love it. I'm not going to apologise.

2. Lovely harlequin effect. Not with long sleeves though.

3. The effect of the pattern and the fibres is lovely.

4. Like the side to side fairisle. They mention DK in the pattern but then it is on 6mm needles and looks a lot chunkier.

5. Love the little flashes and the stripes.

My other major score is curtosy of ebay and is quite an amazing deal. No sign of a catch so far but will keep you informed. 2 pairs of addi needles in any size and any length for £9 odd including postage and mine arrived next day. This seller.

And look - I got an addi sweet too!

In amongst all this capitalist consumerism there has been a bit of knitting. Have picked up my Mermaid again and done a chunk more.

I've decided the 3rd colour, the lilac, isn't that bad afterall and so am slogging through the rows again. Got a chunk done when was watching WWE Raw on thurs night. Honestly - did you see when Jeff Hardy did that back flip off the top rope and totally missed Snitsky but he fell over anyway? Don't see HHH making those kind of errors. Mind you, don't see HHH on the top rope much nowadays. None of us are as young as we used to be.

Finally we have a picture of Darth Mould getting ready to tackle the mould in the kitchen. The landlord has suddenly jumped into action after I mentioned our moving out and a plumber is coming tomorrow to assess the problem. There's obviously a leak further up as the flat below us have a problem too but at least someone is actually doing something about it now.

A litle burst of creativity

I remember being rather irritated at someone who wrote an article saying that people who follow patterns aren't creative and are just copying someone else. My response to this statement is part emotional and therefopre hard to put into words. Or was until I joined the Coconut Grove group on Ravelry and looked at the thread about phrases people are now using in general conversation. The news that one raveler is now regularly ending arguments with "How would you like a face full of cockney urine?" cheered me up no end and I shall be using that riposte frequently from now on when challenged by annoying people such as the hitcher or chief shaman's wife. Or people who say there is no creativity in making something from a pattern.

(Incidentally you know how I was having a hard time deciding between Vince and Howard? Well I came to a conclusion - why decide? They're good friends. The extras to series three confirm they have kissed a zillion times so why separate them. You can never have too much of a good thing they tell me.)

So what got me thinking about this? Well I have had an urge to crochet and the only square I feel comfortable making is the one from the babette blanket that I finished last year. So I've made some. And I was trying to decide whether endlessly making the same square, even in different colours, was creative or not.

Only 7 so far but coming along. Using three left over balls of dk superwash. Going to be another offering to the skipnorth charity project. Which reminds me - someone asked for the preemie patterns so here is the site with all the links.

Apart from those it has been sock central here. I finished my discworld swap socks at the weekend. I sooooooooooooooo want to keep them. Might make myself some although I don't think I've ever made the same pair twice before, apart from standard unpatterned ones that is.

Then I also made another plain sock on magic loop using some of the Fabel I got at Ally Pally. Just like regia really.

Only to keep things interesting I decided to throw in some beads. Despite the fact you can't see them, even if you know they're there to see.

There's a zigzag of them in there somewhere.

So that just about raps it up chez byrne. Podcast in the wings for the weekend with a special new sponsor which is going to be awesome!

The Starghan

Introducing the Starghan, made using this pattern which I can thoroughly recommend for even a beginner crocheter. Here it is on ravelry. This is how it has turned out:

And here on our 2-seater sofa, trying to give you a sense of scale.

As you'll see from this post it certainly started out tiny but has grown and grown. I was going to put all the pics on here of it getting bigger but half the photos are on Pooch's laptop so instead I've got a flickr set for you too look at.

I tried to take a picture at the end of each day I worked on it but it didn't quite work out like that towards the end. Partly because I forgot and partly because in the final stages the rows were using 40g of yarn each and so sometimes I didn't do a whole one in the time I spent on it. I did really enjoy it though. The first bit of fun was choosing colours I thought Lou would like. The key one is from Jamieson and is their DK in teal. Then I got some noro in the sales and then there were bits and bobs from stash. One of the rows is what I used for Fu and Michelle's baby blanket, some of the blue is from Lucy's wedding afghan, other bits and pieces remind me of other projects - all happy things so I could crochet all that happiness into it. Ugh. Ignore that last bit. Bit too schmaltzy. The full list of yarns is on ravelry.

The FO made its way to Canterbury yesterday and is now very happily in use according to the recipient. I think that's the best thing about making stuff for people - hearing that it's been useful afterwards!