A little time out to mourn the passing of an era

When I was mad an exercise my therapists were fond of and I loathed was "Putting things on a scale of 1-10 where 10 is where everyone you love is dead". My reaon for loathing this exercise was that it seemed obvious to me that if all my loved ones had just died I wouldn't be in whatever situation would cause me to panic because I'd be at home grieving. But depsite this I do recognise that it has its moments.

Let us for a moment consider orange squash. I assure you this is not a deviation. When I was weaned off mother's milk I was put onto orange squash. Robinsons Special R orange squash with no added sugar. It was orange. It came in a bottle with a blue cap. It was good stuff. Over the years Robisons decided to try out the occasional new recipe but somehow my love for it always managed to see the silver lining in this dark grey cloud of marketing and find something to love about each new slight variation that came along. Until now. Now Robinsons has discontinued Special R and replaced it with.....Robinsons no added sugar Orange. Yuk. And believing the picture on waitrose's website and ordering what I thought may well turn out to be some of the last stocks of it surviving on the planet I thereby ended up with 6 litres of the yuk being delivered to my house last night. Thank goodness I decided that any more than 6 might seem a bit unseemly.

So here we come back to the exercise - this is obviously a disaster. Not only do I not have any special r, I now have 6 litres of yuk. Also I squandered what turn out to be my last ever glass of special r thinking I had another 6 litres to go. How could I? So you can see that for me it goes in at roughly an 8 on the scale.

I have emailed Robinsons and asked them to reconsider but just got a standard reply saying my comments would be passed to the brand manager. 'Woe is me' doesn't even come close....

Has it come to this?

I was cruising for a bit of tv action when I came across "The Most Annoying Pop Moments We Hate to Love" at 7pm today on bbc4. Not only that, but this was episode 5. The mind boggles. By the time you get through episodes 1-4 what can still be left to cringe over? And as if it's not bad enough that they've gone through every conceivable "100 greatest/worst (insertnamehere)" in the last 12 months on british tv we now have entire series built out of these ghastly things.

Pooch is out tonight so I was resolved to put my feet up with a decent film and what I sincerely hope will be the last of my secret project. A few sewing in of ends and it should be ready to hand over, even though it is rather late.

Before leaving work this morning I made a row counter bracelet for my secret pal. I really wish I could post a pic of it as I am really really chuffed with it but it is personalised so it would be a bit of a give away. I am almost definitely going to be teaching people to make their own row counter bracelets at SkipNorth next year. They are so cunning and yet deceptively simple to put together.

So no pictures today as it's secret knitting all the way. But soon it will be over! And then it will be knitting as far as the eye can see...

New blog alert

It has finally happened. Pooch has entered the blogosphere. Go over there and leave a comment. You just know he wants you to.

So in other news, you know how I was going on a bit about how I didn't need to buy stuff to make me happy? Well let's just reel that back in a little bit and have a little shoe-love. Now bear in mind when looking at these pics that it was *pouring* with rain in london and they are a bit on the soggy side.

These shoes....are It. Oh yeah. I love them. And I wore them for a whole day and they didn't hurt or rub or anything.

They've got a kind of little nose at the end. And most of all they are exactly the right height to wear with long length trousers.

I think their acquisition may be a direct result of my training course last week as I have been pondering the johari window. The 'unknown' 4th quadrant is said to be where all those intuitions and lucky guesses come from. I like to think it was my 4th quadrant that was picking up signals that these shoes had arrived on Oxford Street and yesterday was the optimum moment to meet up with them.

Speaking of optimum moments, let me bring some sock yarn and needles to your attention. This yummy parcel arrived last weekend after an unfortunately long stay at the post office due to their random strikes.

Now that is a rubbish photo so here is a close up of the two coloured ones.

Oh yeah, it's good. The blue/purple is 75% wool and 25% bambus, which I am choosing to believe is bamboo, and is called Admiral Bambus. The stripey is 75% wool and 25% Poly and is called Admiral R Druck. There was also a skein of undyed which I'm thinking of dyeing for my secret pal, and not 1 or 2 but 3 sets of dpns! Purple pins (which are obviously purple) and metal, hiya hiya which I have been hearing mutterings about and which are steel and some Pointy Sticks bamboo ones. The yarn is satisfyingly soft and squidgy without the slight harshness of mixed-fibre sock-yarns like trekking and opal.

The whole lot came from Knit'n'Caboodle whose tagline is rather satisfyingly "where only the sheep are fleeced" and who I see will be at Ally Pally. I can see the Admiral R Druck having a pleasant stay with me but I fully intend to share the goodies and the blue bamboo mix and some of the dpns will be the competition prize on the next podcast. Don't forget there's still time to enter the last competition...

400th post

since March 13th 2005. Almost 67,000 hits and still going strong. I've been discussing life with pooch and and co recently and feel that I've reached a point of consolidation. I no longer have the same urge to go out and shop my socks off. In "How Proust can change your life" AdeB talks about how in modern society once you're earning a certain amount there is no need to yearn for things any more because you can go out and buy them. I don't want to be big headed and sound off but I reached this point a couple of years ago. If I wanted something I could just go out and buy it. Made life a bit boring really, which probably says more about my life than it does about my earnings. Recently I have slowed down my acquisition of things and am thinking more about what, besides shopping, makes me happy. Geez, how hollow does that sound?

One of the things that does make me happen is sorting stuff out. So today I've been making lists and thinking about things that need sorting out. I've set myself a deadline of ally pally to get the proudtobecrafty.co.uk website sorted out and the spreadshirt shop finished and ready to be publicised. I'm planning to make the PTBC website into more of a portal so not just for Skip Holidays but also for the podcast and also as a distro for crafty bits and pieces I and others want to sell. I've also been talking to Pooch about restarting the zine as I did like doing it - but that depends on making a decision about whether to continue with the MBA which is a whole other can of worms.


But there has definitely not been enough knitting content in this post so a little teaser for you - SkipNorth will definitely be taking place in 2008 and the dates are Friday 7th March - Sunday 9th. I will be letting the SkipHolidays yahoo group know first when Nic and I finalise the price. It will still be well below the £200 mark but costs have risen this year so be prepared for a bit of a hike.

Isn't she pretty? (and a podcast)

Chuck's cabled socks by Eunny Jang.

Very well written pattern. Have warbled about it a bit among many other things on the podcast. Listen if you dare. It does include a competition this time too! More details here.

Audible.co.uk

We take a break from our usual feature to hear from this week's sponsor.... audible.co.uk

In fact they're not sponsoring me (sadly - sponsors? hello?) but they should be sponsoring knitpicks podcast as that is where I first heard about them. Take a look at this...

I joined yesterday for £14.99 a month. I first checked on itunes to see how much buying the audio books from there would cost and audible came out cheaper everytime. Then I looked at their library and general website and liked what I saw. Then I saw that by joining the two-a-month package I get 2 free and thought "wa-hey" and got in there.

So now for £14.99 I've got £56.89 worth of listening, including the great SPM who I adore (AKA the Yarn Harlot) - and it is even read by her. And I didn't even choose the longest or most expensive ones. The unabridged one is about 19 hours long! I am a bit of an audiobook junkie so this is fab for me.

PS: Don't judge me, just because The Blair Years is in there. I am curious - I can't help it. Which reminds me of something I am sure I must have mentioned before. On a training course a few months ago a man was talking about the LGBTTQ group. LGBT I am au fait with as my little sis is their social sec at bristol uni but Q? Q? I finally asked him what it stood for. "Questioning" he tells me. So there you go. I guess I'm not curious, I'm questioning.

Another weekend, another cold

Once again I am cursed again by the cold that only strikes at the weekend. My freeeeee time! But you've heard me go off on one about this once or twice before so suffice to say that I am pissed off.

Spent the weekend up north with Pooch's family. You know you're going to have a good weekend when there's something like this going on in the seat in front of you on the train.

Had a lovely time, head cold aside. I saw the blackpool illuminations for the first time. Photos from a car don't do it justice in any way at all but they give an idea.

Also met up with one of Pooch's old school mates in halifax which contained the promisingly named "Woolshops" shopping centre. Although as it turned out there was just the one market stall with mostly acrylic.

I had a lovely parcel arrive just before I left from knittingmama as part of the ravelry summer camp swap. There were some really cool things in there - not the least of which were the tortilla chips and dip which both survived the journey wonderfully!

The yarn is as delicious as the dip!

Here is the whole haul:

I was reading the book - one of the Lord Peter Wimsey stories - on the train this weekend.

Probably my favourite thing is this knitted headband. I have honestly hardly take in off since it arrived.

It's so simple but I really really love it. It puts calorimetry in a whole new light for me as I'd assumed they wouldn't stay on my head. I can see my future containing some of these sometime soon. (And don't you just love those above the head shots which somehow disguise, at least in my mind, the rotundity of the overall face?

On that note diet starts again next week which I'm not looking forward to but which I do have some new motivation for. I found a picture last week of me in Jan 2003, just before my entrance into one of the finest loony bins private healthcare can buy. I was mega thin. Now I am mega not. Ah well. It all focuses the mind nicely...

How do you lose a stitch dictionary?

I just don't get where the bloody thing has gone. It was one of those big'uns - a hardback and many pages and some pounds in weight. Not the sort of thing that would be easy to mislay you'd have thought. And I've been looking for it for more than a month now. Now that is some ditsy tidying on my part. All this means that I am in the market for a new one and I'm not really sure what to go for. Here are my options:

• Vogue Stitchonary amazon link
• Harmony Ultimate Sourcebook amazon link (this is the one I have lost)
• Some sort of Barbara Walker one
• Something else..

Does anyone have any advice/guidance for me? I think I'll hold out til ally pally to see whether there are any on offer and if I don't find one then I'll go with whatever you guys recommend.

In other news I have been relieved to hear that my ravelry queue is in fact nothing to be worried about and not a sign of my impending deterioration into madness. I liked one comment that it was a place to use to be able to find things again so in that spirit I really ought to make it a great deal longer than it is at present!

The other thing weighing on my mind - other than the whereabouts of my stitch dictionary, the length of my queue, the circumference of my stomach and the location of the nearest chocolate - is the podcast. I *really* enjoy doing it and I've had loads of lovely messages from people who seem to like it as much as I do. But I'm having terrible trouble finding time for it. I will be continuing with it for definite but it may be one of those annoyingly irregular ones that just happen to pop up now and again. In the meantime I can not recommend strongly enough my all time favourite: CraftyPod by Sister Diane which is just amazing. For pure knitting I've been listenging to all the knitpicks podcasts on my trusty ipod and they really are very good. Both are on itunes.

Oh yes, that reminds me. There has been a lot of emails flying about SkipNorth - that fabulous knitting and spinning holiday that takes the hardcore knitters and spinners to Haworth every year. I can confirm that there will definitely be one! The date and cost are currently being confirmed by Nic and I. The cost is going to be a bit higher this year as we have two small coaches instead of that huge one from last year (not doing that again on those tiny roads!) but it will still be remarkable for a weekend including bed, meals and transport. Give me a week or so and I'll know the exact price and open up the bookings.

Kew and Queue

Knitting first... the 2-needle socks progress nicely. Turned the heel on the first one.

Ah, actually that's the only knittign I can show as the rest has been secret knitting. But you can go and look at it on ravelry (I'm littlelixie btw). I do however wish to highlight this little bit of it...

A while ago there was a big fuss about knit clips to hold knitting together while you sort out the seam. These are hair clips - about a £1 for 20 in matalan and other more reputable establishments. Work really well. Or why not break out the patterned ones...

Very cute!

So lastly on the knitting front - queues. I now have 74 things in my queue on ravelry. Is this normal? I suppose I ought to go and poke around in someone else's and find out. I just keep seeing things I like and want to make. The new knitty.com has also added a few items to it. There is a circular yoke in brown/turquoise I rather like the look of.

And so to other things - Pooch and I went all the way to Kew today. I looooooved it - Pooch didn't. He'd expected there to be animals. I really love a nice plant, especially some variegated foliage. Pooch and I both agreed that the waterlily house was the best. Amazing to see them so big and surrounded by every type of chili you can think of growing on bushes. Enjoy...

But what would this blog be without the weekly wine inspection. Tesco have a sale on so the collection has grown somewhat. We're well into third row territory. I haven't yet enquired whether it is red or white, but as soon as I find out I'll report back.

PS...new shoes!

Those who can, do.

There are several rather unattractive insults that start like this but in my case it is very true. For if I could I would, but I can'[t so I'm going to get on with my knitting which is what I would be doing if I had any choice in the first place. Ah yes, can you hear the delightful overture played on kazoo and nails-on-blackboard that is the start of one of my moans about this goddamn MBA? The thing is - if it were easy there'd be no point doing it. But if it's so hard and time consuming why do I not find it is worth anything in the real world?

Ok, OK, I'll shut up. And all this distracting myself form what I can't do has meant quite a bit of knitting has taken place recently. Yes because the ugly duckling that was this..

is now all grown up into this...

Observe the sticky-uppiness of the seams, which I did indeed backstitch in the end.

Yeah baby.

So yes, a very good knit and very enjoyable. Good pattern and well written. Is one of web of wool's own ones. Can see myself making it again in years to come.

The other FO is the never ending jaywalker socks which I find I have actually only been knitting since July.

The yarn is Stroud from Violet Green and really is lovely to work with. Haven't worn them yet so not sure what will wash like but will keep you posted. The service i got from them was really good too.

Then I've just started a 2-needle pair of socks in this lovely stuff that my sp10 sent me. Is Loooooovely and soft!

And finally I have begun the long-awaited u-neck fairisle jumper from vogue about a year ago. Loved it on first sight and the yarn is pukka jamiesons so none of your rubbish. Not sure about the very dark blue but have decided to just go for it and see what happens.

I happened to pick up Rowan's book 10 which looks like an early nineties publication. The patterns are not remarkable although the pattern designer list reads like a who's who of today in knitting terms. What really caught my eye was the model. For yes, that is a young Kate Moss. I've never seen Pooch pay so much attention to a pattern booklet in my life!

Speaking of him-indoors, there have been some classic Pooch moments recently. He spent some time doing his weekly wine-rack inspection on saturday.

Yep, still empty. He did explain to me how he had had to start a new row for the whites or might put a white on the red row, although obviously he'd rather not. The problem was neatly solved by quite a quantity of wine being consumed last night during a poker evening. The picture below shows Joe, sporting his lucky afro, and Dann with 2 n's and ladies - if you're liking the look of him, are clean and live in london I might just be able to put you in touch. He does something complicated with hedge funds in the city and has a flat in pimlico that only needs a few balls of wool to make it look complete. He didn't actually say he'd prefer a knitter but I'm taking that as implied.

Pooch didn't have a lucky afro but did have his trusty kermit.

I, of course, had my lucky date cake - made in one of my heart shaped tins.

Although as the cake dwindled so did my good luck - I came out £4.50 down - I could have bought a ball of wool for that!

Infamy! Infamy!

They've all got it in for me!

I speak, of course, of the germs in my throat. Once again I've been struck by the weekend-only bug which insists on keeping me fit and healthy when I have to work and only ever makes me ill in my own sweet, free time. In my hour of despair Pooch did a good job looking after me, bringing me flumps, dolly mixtures and heinz spaghetti with pork sausages (small size). However, you know how Nero fiddled while Rome burned? Well this is Pooch fiddling while Byrne moaned.

To be slightly more precise this is him reading me information about Nigella Lawson while I lay on the bed in pain. Apparently she has 32G breasts and never wears pants. There's a woman looking for a chill in her kidneys if ever I saw one.

All this finally served to remind me of something that caught my attention on the Knitting Daily newsletter from Interweave. Now this newsletter is really good stuff. Recently they've taken to getting women from around the office to try on the knitted garments they've got in their magazines to see what they look like on 'real' people. Now admittedly a number of these random women look like they've never seen a chocolate muffin but some of them are more familiarly shaped and it is interesting to see how the garments hang on them. But the thing I was really reminded of was a debate they've been following on what size knitters really are and what sizes their patterns are. And a very interesting fact was revealed. I had always assumed that when a pattern said 36" chest it was designed for someone who was a 36A, or 36B or...you get the picture. But no. It is the actual measurement in inches around the fullest part of the breasticles. It seems from their results that about 50% of you reading this are going "yeah? so what?" and the other 50% are saying, as I did, "OH MY GOD! I NEVER KNEW THAT! THAT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING."

Some of you have asked for an update on the sock wool jumper but there isn't really much to say. I'm on the last panel so will hopefully block these last two bits and start joining the rest this afternoon. Here is a shot, much the same as all the past ones!

In others news I've got my hands on the wool for a fairisle jumper I saw in one of the Vogue mags about 2 years ago. Real shetland stuff. Am going to start that, maybe, once I've finished the sock wool one. Nic helped me choose the colours and I really like them! She is so clever with all that kind of thing.

And so to leave you with some yarnstormesque pics of dolly mixtures.

There weren't any of the round ones left to take pics of as I always eat those first!

I'm a man who likes to talk to a man who likes to talk

When I was in america I bought a copy of The Maltese Falcon, one of my favourite films. I watched it again last week and was reminded of this quote (by 'the fat man' when talking to our hero sam spade) just this morning when two of my colleagues were yacking away behind me. There is a new boy in the office and you know how some people recruit in their image? I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it but he and his manager have been yacking away non stop for about 4 hours and it's getting on my t*ts. Which just about sums up everything at the moment.

Think I have a bit of PMT as everything seems to be annoying me at the moment. Also doesn't help that I feel like I'm coming down with something and have ghastly quantities of work to do for the even more ghastly MBA. Anyway, we will not be diverted by such dreariness from the main raison d'etre - the love of the knit.

I have got so far along with my sock wool jumper that I have actually blocked the back sectioons and both sleeves. I'm determined to have the seams on the outside and have been pondering how best to do it. Anne at NWKTog was talking on wednesday about a jacket she is making in panels of garter stitch. The panels are joined by picking up along the sides and then doing a three needle bind off. I've done this before on a couple of things and I do like the effect it gives but the more I think about it the less I like the idea of picking up along the edges and then binding off. This leaves me with two options in my eyes-

1. Crochet
2. Backstitching the seams with the wrong sides together and doing this about two stitches in from the actual edges.

Crochet would be easier but I don't think the seams would come out suitably bunchy (technical term, as Kate would say) so although it leaves more scope for disaster I think I'm going to go for option 2. Also it doesn't make any sense to do this on the arm seams so will just do it for the body and the armhole itself. Sorted.

I'm also on the homeward stretch of these bloody jaywalkers that I started years ago (or was it just june?). I have a craving for some comfy two-needle socks using the yarn my sp10 pal sent me in pink and green. I neeeeeed them.

Lastly, on my way to the tutorial last night I scored an obscene amount of buttons in a charity shop. Truly awesome. Started looking at them this morning and there are some real beauties. Photos at the weekend...

Colour, colour everywhere

Well that was a rather exciting day. I had my colours 'done' this morning and then spent a rather pleasurable if hot afternoon splashing the cash at those well known bastions of fashion, matalan and primark. I did try and go a bit more upmarket but if you are venturing out into the world of ....purple.... why spend £15 on a top when you could just chance £3.

Yes, so purple is now a part of my life. A colour I have positively steered clear of since the debacle with the loop-d-loop cardigan. And I wouldn't have then if it hadn't been that that was the drunk yarn Pooch landed me with. But here it is. My 200% top rated star plus colour is a grape purple reminiscent of aubergine. I think it is officially called smokey aubergine although I was in a bit of a daze that she seemed to know the proper names for all these crazy colours so can't swear to it. It is an exoerience I would thoroughly recommend. You can find out more here and the woman I saw was Morag and was really impressive.

So has all this changed my life? Wardrobe before:

Wardrobe after:

Overall I think it was definitely worth it and it definitely made a change for the colours I went for in my shopfest. Expect me to be wrestling Yvonne for the purple yarn any day now...

Of course here I am blethering on about colours when my last parcel from SP10 arrived. My spoiler was fbz who did quite the most amazing job of it. It's almost like she read the future with the whole colour thing too. Take a look (and bear in mind the first two parcels were equally amazing thus realising how truly spoilt I have been) :

So that's a copy each of MAKE and CRAFT (which she mentions she got from one of the guys who does it because she actually knows all these crafty useful people) and a DVD! Of crafty gems. Yet to explore that as have been drooling over...

Ooooo

Ahhhhhh

Weeee!

That middle one is actually sock yarn on the bottom and panda wool on top, which just happen to be in the greens I've been told I should wear more of. I had been coveting panda wool from Gill's site so how cool is that that I've now got some and in the colourway best chosen to go with my 'brown summer' appearance? I think the colourway is 'ultramarine'. Is so lovely and soft...

And that wasn't all - there were candle and chocolates (which lasted all of about 2 minutes after being uncovered and a badge and cute stickers and a present for Pooch which was really thoughtful. Hoorah for SP10!