Snippety Snip

The specialist tells me that on a scale of small, medium and large, the bulge on my disc is enormous. So it's an operation on Tuesday and I'll be in hospital until Friday. Then it's 6 weeks to recover enough to get back to work. Hardcore. I am teeny weeny bit nervous but it will be so much better not to be in constant pain.

Meanwhile there is lots to prepare. I'm not going to be able to move about much so I've prepared some 'project bags' with everything I need in them for projects like embroidery and knitting. Then I can just station them strategically near the sick bed and pick them up as I want them. The same with reading books, ipod, phone etc.

In between little bouts of slow moving preparation I'm working away at my Kauni. I've finished the first thistle. Although I think they look more like lillies than thistles.

I absolutely love it, especially the colour combinations. The blue and orange are like goldfish in water, the red and green are like geraniums. I'm looking forward to yellow and purple - I've always liked them together.

I should have time to blog again before the chop. If not I'll get back to it in a week or so!

Stingray, Stingray, dudda der da der da

I have now watched 35 episodes of Stingray on lovefilm. This has resulted in my Titan hat and also my fascination with how they make the non-human life forms look 'alien' by gluing 70s ric rac type embellishments to them. Take these ones for instance. Silver lampshade fringe. Awesome.

I've also really enjoyed how some of the episodes have been described in the little bit of blurb that accompanies each one.

God knows where that came from. In fact Titan kidnapped Marina. But their description sounds much more exciting.

Yesterday I made dinner for pooch and sian and decided the time was right to try the jam doughnut muffins I posted a link to a while back and for which the recipe is here.

Oh yeah. Warm - these are divine. Cold - they're just very good. Heartily recommend them and they are amazingly simple to make.

The only hard thing is waiting for them to cool down before eating. Burnt my tongue on the jam with my first one. And they're not the only good thing I ate yesterday. Love Hearts by post!

I can definitely recommend doughdough for munchies by post. And for helium balloons I'd recommend Balloon Monkey. There are few occasions that a helium balloon by post isn't suitable for. Possibly not funerals though.

Yesterday also saw alphabet stitchmarkers.

I'm getting ready to try some of Cat Bordhi's socks and I understand you only need A-F but I thought - why stop there? I think I went up to 'I'.

Today was actually a very exciting day because I finally got to see the specialist. Pooch hobbled me down to a taxi and off we went together. He poked me a bit and then confirmed what the physio had said and sent me for an MRI. He insisted it had to be that day and so all of a sudden I'm in an MRI tube in a backless gown listening to sixties classics in a pair of headphones. I'm back to the specialist tomorrow and keyhole surgery is on the horizon. All happening very quickly now.

Since I was actually out of the flat I did a tiny bit of shopping - 2 notebooks for which I have plans, a cherry patch and some more embroidery threads. I'm thinking of doing embroidered pants for christmas presents.

I love embroidery cotton - like crafty jewels.

Kauni Kauni Kauni!

I've been sitting on the kauni yarn since I bought it for myself as a birthday present in July 2008. I swatched last year and have been hesitating ever since about which motif to use and whether to go top down, bottom up, raglan, round yoke yadda yadda. But finally I've cast on.

Everything you've heard about this stuff is true. Watching the colours change is highly addictive making this the most "just one more row" object I've knit so far. At the same time I've got about 280 stitches cast on and this is 3-ply on 3mm needles with a 32 stitch pattern repeat and fairisle on every single row - so this is not going to be done in a week.

This is the first day of my week of holiday from work. Actually holiday, not being signed off. I had planned to do loads of london museums and galleries and to make the Amy Butler Weekender bag. Now none of that is going to happen. On the plus side I retuned the digi box thing at the weekend and we now have a new channel called 'Quest' which is full of TJ Hooker, Mission Impossible and other choice moments of 70s drama. I have been watching a LOT of tv recently because I can't move about much. So new stuff is always welcome. There's only so many times you can watch the lopped repeats of poirot on itv3.

On the subject of tv this woman was doing the weather last night. (Taking pictures of the television is a sign of excellent mental health btw)

Don;t those look like balls of yarn around the edges of her cardi? I suspect they were intended to be roses or something but still, gives one furiously to think, as poirot would say.