A Sale Frenzy

I have to admit it - I am to blame for the deflation thingy the government has been going on about. I saw things I wanted in the shops and then deliberately waited until the sales to buy them. For instance, this coat...

Caught my eye a few weeks ago. Today it was 50% off. Score!

I also got a pair of jeans and this top/dress.

Normally I hate buying jeans as they never fit right, but the woman in the shop was SO nice. Really helpful. Not patronising. Not too in my face. Awesome. There is a website here and the shop in London is just off Carnaby Street. I will definitely be going back.

Now for the good stuff.... I've always liked Rowan Tapestry but hated the £4.50 ish price tag. I found myself liking the 50% price tag. Woo hoo! I ended up with three packs from John Lewis. I know three is quite a lot, but I plan to cast on a jumper in one lot tomorrow so I will definitely be using it all up soon. I got the rainbow, antique and highland colourways.

The last one, the highland, is rather lovely and seems to be a semi-solid colour. Didn't know they did that.

I also got a pack of 4-ply soft from Liberty - also half price.

I intend making this.

Both Liberty and John Lewis had similar yarns. Some scottish tweed aran. Some little big wool. Some biggy twist. All 50% off. But take abook - the queues were huge!

Something witchy for the weekend

I have been experimenting with motifs for my afghan. This one is the front runner but I'm wondering if it is a little witchy. I don't want to sleep under it and wake up with a frog.

These are the other possibles.

I did these this afternoon, but the big crafty news from the holiday period has to be this:

Completed in just 5 days from swatch to edging. It used 7.5 balls of Sirdar Escape and is pretty lovely, though I say so myself.

It has left me in the rather odd position of having nothing major on the needles. In fact, according to ravelry I only have 7 WIP and a mere 9 UFOs. This is a record for me and essentially amounts to having nothing to knit. Tomorrow I'll probably the Moonstone cardi, but then again you never know.

Xmas at the in-laws was lovely - especially the food. No one can feed you like a northern mother. I must be at least half a stone heavier than I was a week ago. Here I am opening presents:

...and here is Pooch outside with one of his - a coconut.

I got some awesome presents - 2 Barbara Walker stitch disctionaries, SPM book and page a day calendar, mili knitting bag and....

Yum.

The surprise hit of the festivities was Pooch's choice of present for little Leanne, his baby cousin. It is an aquadraw mat. If you have a child aged 1.5+ you probably already know about these things. If you don;t you should get one. They are awesome.

You fill the 'pens' with water - just tap water - and when you draw on the mat with them it creates a blue line. You get stencils and stuff too. Awesome. She was totally hooked. Isn't she cute? This is her with her grandad, pooch's uncle jack.

Lastly, a couple of people asked if I used a pattern for the stocking. It is a free one from Schoolhouse Press. I adapted it and changed some of the motifs but that is where I started. I am very tempted to make one for me!

We are definitely all going to die

'We are all going to die' is my stock response whenever anything vaguely bad or very bad happens. I just mention this because I didn't want the titel of this post to be 'another meme', but actually I have been tagged by Donnac from "From Little Acorns".

Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

1. What was I doing 10 years ago? I don't think I can say with any accuracy. Years on meds has made my memeory somewhat unreliable. But...I would have been at Uni still. Middle of my second year doing BSc Physics. I hadn't yet met David so I was still going out with Vitas - in fact I may recently have moved in with him or have been trying to pursuade him to. Note to self - a man you have to persuade to move in with you isn't worth persuading.
2. What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order)? Eat chocolate, avoid watching the football, try on new dress, go out for some fresh air, think about elephants.
3. Snacks I enjoy: Chocolate biscuits, chocolate mini rolls, chocolate cakes, chocolates in boxes, pretzels.
4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire: Stop working and invest enough to give me income for life. Buy a house with a walk in yarn closet. Top up parent's pensions. Give siblings sensible amounts. Give anything left over to charity.
5. Places I have lived: Herne Bay in kent, most of the areas of north and east london within zones 2+3, Palo Alto (California) (only for a month)
6. Regrets, I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention. Except... not snogging Ed Lewis, losing touch with Oliver Shaw, not snogging Sam Rae, not being more decisive about the elephant in the corner events of the last few months.
7. 5 people I want to know more about: I am too lazy to go and tag people - so if you fancy it go for it.

The true number 6 was missing when I copied it over so I have invented one. I have been pondering recently whether it is better to regret not having done things or to not have any regrets over the things you have done. Does that suggest a life lived too hesitantly, or just too much navel gazing?

And now, the end is near
And so I face the final curtain.
My friend, I'll say it clear,
I'll state my case, of which I'm certain.

I've lived a life that's full.
I travelled each and ev'ry highway
And more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Regrets, I've had a few
But then again, too few to mention.
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption.

I planned each charted course
Each careful step along the byway,
And more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Yes, there were times, I'm sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew.
But through it all, when there was doubt,
I ate it up and spit it out
I faced it all and I stood tall
And did it my way.

I've loved, I've laughed and cried.
I've had my fill, my share of losing.
And now, as tears subside,
I find it all so amusing.

To think I did all that
And may I say - not in a shy way,
"Oh no, oh no not me,
I did it my way".

For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught
To say the things he truly feels
And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows I took the blows
And did it my way!

A very merry kitsch christmas to you all

I love visiting my in-laws. Especially at xmas. Food coming out of my ears and the kitchest xmas treed decs. Look at these.

One Pooch made when he was a tiddler.

And my personal favourite:

I've brought some xmas knitting with me - another ten stitch blanket. The parents to be requested blue. They actually asked for pale blue - but that sounded a bit boring. This is sirdar escape. Nice stuff.

Happy Christmas Everyone!

On the somethink day of christmas, my true love gave to me - flu

He hasn't actually given it to me yet, but he is in my bed huddled in all my lovely handmade blankets sniffing extensively and looking like death. We're off to manchester tomorrow and I envisaging having to shovel him onto the train with some sort of poopascoopa.

To cheer me up, I have managed to complete all my christmas knitting. Here are a few...
Arun's hat. This is Arun and the Pooch as Arun's hat is an exact copy.

The tardis socks. (I am rather pleased with these.)

And finally, my piece de resistance, Pete's stocking. I really love this.

I wanted to hand it over when I met Nic and Lucy but didn't finish it until the last minute. But when we did meet up I managed to score this:

It is from the amercian diner in Romford. To be recommended.

I have also managed to score a mahoosive box of bits from Knit Picks curtosy of my aunt and dad, who brought it back from my aunt's. Why don't knit picks ship to the UK? Insanity. Mind you, I got this before the pound only bought you $1.47. Think it was about $1.90. Amazing. We're all gonna die. Anyway, I got the cat bordhi sock architecture book and tonnes of yarn. Enough swish dk for another blanket (since pooch has made my other one infectious).

Plus lots more. Oooooo, lovely.

OK, finally. I have done something slightly out of charactor - and bought a pair of 5" heels on ASOS. Killer.

So much for packing in the posts

Time has flown and xmas is nearly upon us. I have been knitting like crazy but haven't yet managed to get camera, cable and laptop in alignment so nothing to show for it, but believe me - it's all gold.

Just a quick thing to share. Don't look here unless you are ok with cartoons containing naughty words. But look anyway, because it is very funny. One of my colleagues just sent it to me.

Jingle bells, jingle bells...

Big Read Meme

Saw this over at Doodles and have nicked it. It's getting towards the end of the year and I always make my blog into a book (curtosy of the ingenius software that basically does it for you at Blurb) and I'm thinking that there's not much for 2008 so I'm going to have to bulk it up some how. So it's meme city from now on. Maybe.

The Big Read meme

This meme is originally from the Big Read. Apparently they reckon most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.

Instructions:

• Look at the list and bold those you have read.
• Underline those you intend to read. (I had to make them a different colour instead - no underline on Blogger)
• Italicise the books you LOVE.
• Post your list so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them.
• Heather marked with an S the books she started and couldn't finish so I did that too.
• Because I am a child of the 80s I've also asterixed (is that a word) the ones I haven't read but have seen a film or tv adaptation of. Hell, it's practically the same thing. Maybe.
• I have put multiple question marks - ??? - by the ones I've never even heard of. Because I am ignorant.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen **
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien **
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte **
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - Awful bilge.
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible Bits of it.
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens **
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott **
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy **
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller S
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare Bits of.
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - J D Salinger S
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell **
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens **
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh S
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens **
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis About 3 books of the set.
34. Emma - Jane Austen **
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery **
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy **
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons **
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen **
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon ???
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ???
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding **
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville S
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens **
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker **
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola ???
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry ???
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams **
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole ???
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas **
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo **

Notes from a Small Island and Bridget Jones are essential reads nowadays? Wow. And the Da Vinci Code? Now I am sure somewhere along the line this list has been tampered with. Possibly by Dan Brown. So what does this tell us? My list I mean, not Dan Brown's moral code... Mainly that I seem to have watched a lot of bad tv. Feel free to steal for your own blog...

Ha! Just realised...I've read more than 6. Eat that Big Readers.

Mermaid - the results are in!

Hoorah hoorah - Nightcrickett! I have pm'd you on ravelry. Natalie at the Yarn Yard has donated her donation page so you just need to donate 20 squid to medicine sans frontier and then register it with the Yarn Harlot here. If anyone else feels like making a donation then good on you. Think how much it will mean to someone plus it will make you warm and fuzzy inside.

I have been knitting furiously on a plethora of hats. Two hats. Ok, only two. But they're good. But then I only have a picture of one. But here it is. Oh yeah.

That is Pooch modelling it, but it is actually for my office secret santa recipient. The other hat, which is a red beanie and the third I have knitted like it, is for another secret santa. I knitted most of it during the KCG Board meeting yesterday. It took place at my workplace since they lent us the meeting room for nothing and my CEO was there working. Half way through he stuck his head in and said goodbye and I just know he's going to say something about a roomfull of knitters when I get in tomorrow.

Christmas fever has broken out chez byrne. My sister came round yesterday and we put up the tree and I have been wrapping presents today.

Still not feeling very festive though. Must download some carols.

Christmas projects still to finish are the tardis socks, rob's cursed jumper, and something for dad. Apparently he has commented that I have never knitted him anything. This is because the two times I have offered he wasn't keen on socks and laughed and then begged not to receive knitted golf club covers. Just goes to show - be careful what you don't wish for, or something.

I think I'm being read.

I do like these posters from the latest Art on the Underground campaign.

Then not in the same series but similarly effective...from a wall in Greenwich.

It's been a funny old couple of weeks. To be honest there's an elephant in the room and so everything has gone to pot a bit. I haven't been doing half as much knitting as I would like to. However, I have been doing some xmas projects, one of which is a Tardis sock. Singular so far but it's pair is on the way.

I've also finally dyed the sock blank I got from etsy. Koolaid as ever and it came out very nicely.

Yum! Even nicer in a ball.

You don't actually have to ball it - you can knit straight from the scarf, but I want to make some stripey socks so it will be easier like this.

I've got plenty queued up to knit now, especially as this little gem has arrived.

I say little, but it is MASSIVE. Stuffed full of patterns and I immediately want to make at least a dozen.

In non-knitting news I've been out and about. 2 nights ago it was Stephen Fry at the V&A. This is the only crummy pic I have to show for it.

It was a Q&A with a BBC interviewer about his America series and book and it was fascinating. He is a charming man, very intelligent, funny, lucid, able to link the most obscure topics together, an excellent speaker. Basically it was brill.

Then last night I went to see Dylan Moran at the Dome. He was very different but also wonderfully brill. He also linked together bizarre subjects but it was, as the Pooch remarked, very well observed. I don't have a picture of him, sadly.

To finish, I give you my entry into the now weekly work bake-off. Ginger cupcakes with lemon icing. Though I say so myself they were rather fine. I'll find out how I fared on monday but I was up against chocolate ones with edible glitter, and edible glitter is a hard thing to beat.

Tagged by Nickerjac

My creation
Originally uploaded by Littlelixie

If you want to play too, type your answer to each of the questions below into a Flickr search. Using only the first page, choose your favorite image, then copy and paste each of the URL’s into the mosaic maker (3 columns, 4 rows) at http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php –
The questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you attend?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What do you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One word to describe you.
12. Your Flickr name.

So here’s mine:

A dead fox on the doorstep - a possible good omen?

Last night I was still awake at 1am for various reasons. At exactly 1.00am, according to my ipod, a fox started screeching like a banshee at what sounded like a distance of 2 metres from my bedroom window. For the first ten minutes I assumed it was just getting some stuff off its chest, having sex, marking its territory type thing so I lay there and thought about werewolves and so on. After 15 mins I got up and saw that it was actually standing right in the middle of the road and was looking in my direction (more or less - not actual eye contact). I banged the window and shouted a bit and waved my arms. It moved back about 2 cm and carried on. By now there was similar activity all over the place with curtains twitching and lights going on in neighbouring buildings. At 1.30am I opened the window and threw three potatoes at it. Small potatoes, not baking potatoes. My intention wasn't to hit it, just get it to bugger off. I howled at it once too but it seemed to like that so I stopped and went back to bed. None of this seemed to have phased it at all. I kid you not - it carried on until 2.30am.

I eventually fell asleep about 4, cursing all foxes.

Imagine my horror... when I left for work this morning... and found a dead fox lying on the ground underneath my bedroom window. I haven't felt this guilty for a long time. I threw potatoes at a fox in mourning. This dead one looked smaller and weedier than the howler so it could have been its child or younger sibling. Even worse - what do you do when there's a dead fox on the pavement? This is london, baby. There aren't any badgers or hawks or vultures waiting to clear up, like you get in the countryside or america. It was weedier than the other one but it was still quite big - like an average dog. It turns out that Lewisham Council has teams of people waiting for your call to come and rescue Lewishites from these situations. That probably explains why our council tax is so high.

A friend has suggested it could be a good omen, but I can't help feeling I am in for some serious bad karma. I'm already starting a cold. But that could just be a result of hanging out of the window at 1.30am in my pjs, throwing potatoes. I really do feel awful about that poor fox.

Mermaid Give Away

Yep, I have knitted Hanne Falkenburg's Mermaid, and it doesn't fit me, so I am offering it as a giveaway.

It's just too big. Poo.

Datials - It's knitted from three shades of jaeger matchmaker. Machine washable at 30 and pure wool. Nice stuff. I suspect it would fit a UK 16 or possibly an 18. I was a 16 when I started it. Am now a 12, so I suppose that's a good thing but it is still bloody annoying.

Finishing isn't perfect and the back of the collar looks a bit scrappy, but apart from that it is pretty nice. Pics on ravelry and a few here.

If you would like it there are some rules...

1. You have to have a postal address in the UK.
2. If you get it you have to promise to send a donation of £20 to medicine sans frontiere. And then register it with Knitters Without Borders.
3. You have to leave a comment on THIS POST (not any other post) saying you want it by 30th November 2008.

I'll pull a name out at random. I want it to go to someone who will appreciate the months of work that went into it.

Onot other things - I have been tagged by Cate. I did this in May 07 but have changed some of them.

The Rules

1) Link to your tagger and list all these rules in your blog.

2) Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.

3) Tag 7 people at the end of your post by including links to their blogs

4) Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog

The Facts

1. When I was 3 I got run over by a Lehane 50+ seater coach outside my house. I went between the two back wheels when it was reversing.
2. My left foot is bigger than my right.
3. I think that everyone was born for a reason and therefore has purpose or a role to fulfil or maybe even a destiny.
4. I have been trying to pay more attention to my instincts rather than just doing the obvious/rational/sensible thing. Especially where knitting is concerned. I think that if you are knitting and keep wondering whether it is going to come out too big, then it undoubtedly will. You might as well stop and rip rather than finishing and then giving it away on your blog a few months later.
5. I still have trouble believing that Prince Harry's real name is Henry.
6. I have a Physics degree.
7. I hate the noise of a phone ringing. It's like nails on a blackboard for me. It winds me up at work when people forget to put their voicemail on and their colleagues just ignore it. I often have to walk over to the other side of the office just to answer someone else's phone. Anything to stop it.

7 people to carry on....

Nickerjac, Jane's Probably Knitting, WyeSue, and.... 4 other people. I dunno.

Keep Calm and Carry On

I have always loved this WW2 poster.

So how could I resist when Threadless brought out a t-shirt with the following on it?

It's in the post....And since I'm talking about signs, I saw this when logging into photobucket and thought it was worth sharing.

Knitting has abounded here. I've finished some xmas socks. No blogging about them but they are here on Ravelry. Nice pattern, and free. I've also done a washcloth for a swap. The recipient loves flamingos!

Now onto some serious knitting. The new edition of Twist Collective came out. Now is that a good idea of what. I'm very impressed. There's one item in particular that caught my attention. It is AMAZING. I have nicked the photo from Ravelry but only out of deep respect and to encourage you to pay for the pattern and knit it.

The detail is amazing. This is it on Ravelry. More than 300 people have it queued already, including me. I am in love. Seriously. Gorgeous.

On a slightly less amazing note, but still pretty cool, here is my handwriting.

Not that amazing. But...that is my handwriting as a font. That's a screenshot of what I had typed on the screen. Hoorah! Anyone can do it for just $9 here.

Growing a Mo

More for Erqsome than for me, but one of my mates is growing a Mo for Movember. You can donate by clicking below.

The love of a good mule

I have been raising my spirits with home made mules.

The scissor monster was shocked. Capfull of sugar syrup (from waitrose and probably lots of other places), 2 caps of bacardi, liberal amounts of lime juice and top up with jamaican ginger beer. Mmmm. Feeling good.

I've been having a bit of a book binge on ebay. The latest to arrive was 'French Style - Fashion Knitting' which is an eighties gem full of blocky cardigans and jumpers with puffed sleeves. I was flicking through with a smile on my face when I saw this....

It is horrible. Yep. It is. But think of it as a fitted cardigan with the wave on the back and without the wave on the sleeves. Uhuh? What do you think? I'll probably never do it but I've always liked that drawing so maybe once christmas is out of the way I will get it started. I also like this one, although not with the white.

The colours use dmc tapestry wool. Cunning.

The path to good knits never runs smooth so of course something has happened to upset my step-dad's jumper. The neck is about twice as big as it should be.

I don't know. This jumper is doomed. No it isn't, positive thoughts.