Lucky, Lucky Man

Morning,

My grandfather had a heart attack on Monday. He died three times. He was running for a train to go to a Ramblers meeting (he's a really fit man for his age) and had run up 2 flights of stairs, across a bridge and down 2 flights of stairs. He bought his ticket, sat down on a seat on the platform and keeled over.

Incredibly luckily there was an off duty policewoman and an asian student also on the platform. Someone noticed Dat had collapsed and they both knew first aid and went to help. They did CPR on him for 20 minutes until the ambulance came. He had another heart attack on the platform during the CPR, and another inside the ambulance where they used a defibrillator and brought him back again.

This all happened at 9am. I turned up at the same train station at 10.30am, got my train from the same platform quite happily and went home. There were no signs of anything having happened.

I then had a text from Mam at 3.30pm to say that he'd collapsed and she'd be in touch. Over the next half hour or so she told me what had happened.

He's currently in Coronary Care which is basically intensive care. They're hoping to move him onto a normal ward soon, if not already, as his blood pressure and heart rhythm are stable now. We're waiting for a bed to become available at a larger, specialised hospital. They rushed him to the nearest available one when he collapsed, but it doesn't have the necessary equipment to see whether he needs a stent or a bypass operation. He'll be moved to the larger hospital to have the tests and the operations if needed.

He doesn't remember anything from Monday. The off duty policewoman turned up at the hospital afterwards to return his rucksack which had been left on the platform in all the fuss. It had his car keys etc in it, so when Dat had come around he'd been fussing over it. This incredibly nice, good person went to the hospital and asked around to track him down and return the rucksack. She met Dat and my Auntie who was with him, and they got to say thanks personally to her for saving his life, which is an awesome thing. They are going to try to track down the Asian student to thank as well.

He was very, very, lucky.

xx

Stocking up!

Plenty of fun for the next few weeks :-)

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Postponement :(

Afternoon,

Just got off the phone with a lady from New Directions. My knitting course is being postponed for a week while they wait for a few more people to enrol :(

It now starts on the 8th instead of the 1st, which wouldn't be a big deal except that now I have to get people to swap shifts with me again, and it will involve two people instead of one straight swap.

Little bit irritating but can't be helped.

xx

Pizazz!

Howdy!

On Friday this lovely package was delivered for me in work, it certainly cheered me up! (The pictures were taken at home, not in work - no twister bed covers in work unfortunately!)

(I'd already been impatient and opened it in work, and then wrapped it up and opened it again to take pictures of it :)

Ta dah! Isn't she gorgeous?!

I'm completely in love. The colours are gorgeous (although still having camera colour issues, it's even more beautiful in the flesh/yarn). 

It didn't take very long to wrap into a ball either - unlike the 1000m laceweight yarn I bought in the Knitting & Stitching show which took Mam and I three hours to do!

I'm chuffed, now I just an easy sock pattern for me to make my first pair of socks with!!

Don't forget you can get your hands on some of this if you visit Abstract Cat Crafts on Folksy. You just need to make an account and off you go! I highly recommend it :)

xx

Manic Weekend!

Evening,

I wanted to post yesterday but life got in the way :)

I came home on Saturday morning to help decorate my brothers bedroom as a surprise for his 17th birthday. He's currently in Canada for the next week with school, and has no idea it's being done. The old Manchester United stuff has been binned, and the new stuff is coming in!

Mam first mentioned it when I asked what she'd like for her birthday two weeks ago. She replied that she didn't want anything, but it would be a big help if I could do the painting for Daniels room if they decided to do it. Based on this I assumed that I'd be spending Saturday afternoon painting!

Nope.

I got off the train and went straight up to see my Grandparents to collect Mam who was looking after Gu (she needs a carer). Neither Dadcu or Mam could decide quite how the wood of the new furniture they'd bought on Thursday looked, so Dadcu and I went to the furniture store to see it. They both remembered it as being quite dark, almost black.

Does this look almost black to you?!

(The dresser, not the chest of drawers!!)

This is the floor in his room at the moment. We were trying to match it which proved a little difficult. We figured with a red tinge (the furniture is rubber wood that has then been treated and originally looks more like pine) that a dark floor and white walls would go well.

Once we got to B&Q we decided that the walnut was the best as the mahogany would have too much red in it. Except that the mahogany has been discontinued. That's pretty much where Saturday ended.

This morning we went looking again. We eventually found a shop with the 2.5 ltr tub of varnish in stock, but he sticker for dark oak was lighter than the medium oak! So we befriended a man in Focus who made a deal with us: We could have the 2.5 ltr tub of dark oak (which was £47.99!!!) and take it home with us and test a patch. If it wasn't what we wanted we could refund it, even though we'd opened and used it. That was really kind of them, so that's what we did.

We decided that it should be okay, and tbh Mam and I were not really in the mood for any more driving! Instead we emptied and sorted through everything in the room. We hoovered and washed the floor. Then I got rid of all the blu tac off the walls, and we tackled these things while waiting for the varnish to dry:

The theme used to be football, so there are a lot of football stickers on the wall! Or used to be :)

Unfortunately taking off those pulled some of the paint off. Bit annoying but no big worry.

My foot and my painting jeans :) It's been quite hard getting my camera to pick up an accurate colour, quite frustrating.

Once the varnish was properly dry, we then started re-arranging everything so that we could clear half the room to start varnishing the floor.

We took a break to top up on some liquids! (The rose was mine :) )

And then it was time to varnish! The tub came with it's own pad-on-a-pole that we used.

It came out a lot darker using that. We did the patch using a brush because if we'd used the pad and the colour hadn't been right, there's no way we would have been able to refund it.

By this time it was 6pm and I had to leave to go and look after Gu while Dadcu went to Choir practise. Mam finished off the half, and when I came back it looks like this:

Dark oak did indeed turn out to be dark in the end!

xx

Folksy Lusting

Howdy,

Thought I'd cheer myself up by browsing Folksy - always a dangerous idea!! (I've used smaller photos as I don't want to annoy the sellers. Click on the links to see the item in full!)

I bought myself this on Tuesday (to celebrate pay day, plus I couldn't resist!):

It's available from Abstract Cat Crafts and I just love it. I'm looking forward to trying out my new dpns when it arrives. Each is hand dyed and hand painted, and I just *want*.

[I should probably explain I own about 100 pairs of socks, and each one is different. I kinda collect them :) So my colourful sock urges have spilt over into yarn buying!]

I'm lusting after the Bejewelled, Doodlebug, Gershwin, English Country Garden, Hippy Chick, Big Top and Birdhouse yarns that are listed at the moment! I'm being very good though :) I might add them to my Christmas wish list!

Next is this Nellie The Elephant photo frame from Marge Designs. I have a similar box frame that I bought when I was 11 or 12. It has a teddy bear sitting on the toilet, reading a newspaper in his bathroom. I loved it then, and I love it now. Something about it tickles me :)

I love these owl earrings from Szeya Designs, they're exactly the style of my friend Liz. She always had the quirkiest, coolest earrings in school and these would be right up her street :)

And finally this Petal print from Arty Herberts. Each print is unique and is part of their 1 million pieces of art project. This one is number 0627 :)

What have you found on Folksy this week?

Happy browsing!

xx

Emergency Executive Decision!

Evening,

I've decided to stop with the shawl.

1) I'm not enjoying knitting it any more, because I'm stressing myself out trying to knit it as quickly as possible. When each row is taking about 15 minutes to knit that's not exactly possible.

2) I opened it up fully on my 32" circs today and I have made a lot of mistakes from rushing. There are about 6 holes that I don't really know what went wrong, but I don't really want to give Gu a holey shawl! There's also a dropped stitch that I'm lucky hasn't run but stayed put. It's about 6 rows back though, and at 149sts per row, that's a lot of work to frog.

3) The killer: I don't think it's going to be big enough. I've checked the pattern again and I'm fairly sure that the designer was using a chunkier yarn than I am. I'm using DK yarn but the pattern says you should be able to get 4.5 sts per inch. That's not DK gauge. Gu's a size 16 and it's going to go around her shoulders, and I just don't think it's going to be big enough :(

So what's the plan of attack?

I'm going to take it home with me and cast off. Without cutting the thread. Then I'm going to measure it on Gu when I visit and see how much bigger it needs to be. Then I'll have fun(!) frogging the entire thing back to the start, and rewinding the yarn back onto the balls again.

Then I'll start again. But I'm going to go slowly, and aim for Christmas. I'll be saving my wrist, and my sanity!

xx

Knitting Aches and Pains

Evening,

I'm starting to be in pain now.

My job involves a lot of manual labour, which puts me at a higher risk of developing RSI. I injured my right wrist 4 months after I joined, through shaking bottles (part of the job and needs doing about 150-300 times a night). It took 9 months for the pain to disappear completely. The occupational health nurse told me to get trained in more areas - very helpful!

My wrist started aching yesterday, but I have an on-going problem with another aspect of my job exasperating the old weakness so I assumed it was from that. I didn't do much knitting last night, but I did about an hour or so this morning.

This afternoon while knitting at my tea break in work, I started getting a cramp like pain. I assumed it was because I was trying to go fairly quickly so that I could finish the row and return to work. I don't like leaving my knitting in the middle of a row!

This evening while working I noticed that the cramp pain never fully left, which is not a good sign.

I may not be able to finish this shawl after all :(

xx

Shawl Update

Morning,

The shawl is coming along nicely. I've done up to the 4th increase which means it's grown from 13 to 121 stitches which is pretty time consuming. I've been knitting for about 6-7 hours today, it's time to go to bed soon!

It's now long enough that it sits on my shoulders and is about 8 inches in length. That'll get longer after blocking which I haven't decided quite how to do yet. I know I'll probably end up taking it home on Saturday and blocking it there with Mam's help, and hopefully it will dry by Sunday or Monday morning and I can give it to Gu. If not, I can leave it in Mam's capable hands and she'll deliver it for me when it's ready.

I reckon I'm about 40% through now. The pattern states that a shawlette will probably reach increase row 8 or 9, and I'm halfway between increase rows 4 and 5 at the moment so I'm halfway technically. However seeing as it still needs to increase from 121 to 241 stitches the slowest part is still to come. Each row is taking me about 10 minutes to knit or purl. I've watched 6 episodes of Merlin and 1 episode of Mock the Week today! I have to have something on to watch or I just get bored and put the knitting down. I think it's the sheer amount of stitches per row which are putting me off slightly, I loved making my scarf!

It's 2.30am so definitely time for bed now, night!

xx

Hoarding Again

Morning,

I hope you all had a lovely weekend. Today is the Tom's birthday, and he decided that he wanted to go see his favourite team play on Saturday for his birthday treat. He supports Aston Villa, so we had a nice day in Birmingham. Wandering around the shops in the morning, then some lunch and a train to Villa Park.

I've cast on a new shawl for my Grandmother. The pattern can be found on Ravelry. It's simple enough but I think it looks pretty cool. It's my first time using circulars, which I'm kind of enjoying so far. The pattern's kicked me up the bum a few times already though! The first time I realised that I'd been doing the M1 increases the wrong way - instead of lifting with the left and knitting into the back of the loop, I'd been lifting with the right, transferring it onto the left needle then knitting into the front. Silly Sara! I spent 25 minutes on the train undoing that whole row on Friday on my way to see Tom. I've already done one row of increases like that but it's too far back and close to the neckline so I'm going to leave it.

Last night after working out how to do the M1s (and knitting using a darning needle because the increases are so tight) I realised that I had double the amount of stitches I was supposed to and had been on autopilot doing K1, M1 increases instead of M1, K2. So I then had to undo 3 rows very carefully to get back to that, using the darning needle to put the stitches back on the needle (I'm hopeless at frogging, I normally always drop stitches)  and then knit the whole three rows again.

I'm doubtful I'll get the shawl finished by the weekend as I would like (I'll be going back home for the weekend so I could give it to her then) but I'll do as much as I can. Finger tip pain permitting!

I hit the craft shops yesterday afternoon. I've been meaning to make some Christmas presents this year since around July. I finally tracked down the two things I need to make them, which was no easy matter. Thankfully one of them was reduced by an unexpected £2.50 which helped alleviate the fact that the other wasn't £7 as I'd thought but closer to £12!

Oh well :) Now I just need a bigger room to put everything in, as usual!!

xx

Family

Afternoon,

I have a small stash of scrapbook paper 6x6 that I've had organised according to colour for over a year now. Last week I wrote a letter to my friend, and decided to use some of my stash. I came across one sheet that I bought in a pack off Ebay which I love. I think it's especially relevant to her, so I've decided to post it to her, but I want to write some of the quotes here.

It's a piece of 6x6 covered in different quotes and sayings, on a brown background in different fonts, sizes and colours. Kinda like a Subway art sign.

Families are strange and wonderful
Nothing is crazier than family
Fam-i-ly n. I. A group of relatives, especially parents and their children
The family is one of nature's masterpieces - George Santayana
Nothing says home like a family together
In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future - Alex Haley
I love my family

xx

My Blanket

It was my Mams birthday yesterday so I'm back home for a few days. I took my knitting with me to show Mam seeing as she was the one who introduced me to it.

Mam has a needle case with about 20 needles in it that she's given me! It's got straight, double pointed, cable and circular needles. I'm hoping I can get her to keep some of the duplicates and get her back into knitting. Probably wishful thinking though.

While looking for the case in the attic, she found my baby blanket that Gu made me. I'm the only one of the grandchildren to have one, I was the first of 4. The blanket is gorgeous. It's made in a cream baby wool, and in an intricate leaf lace pattern. It must have taken months to complete! She was a really talented knitter. It's taller and wider than I am 23 years on so I snuggled up under it last night while watching the tv feeling loved and cosy.

For the time being it's going to stay at home safe, but when I get a house of my own its going to have pride of place.

xx

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The Knitting & Stitching Show - Haul!

These are my pictures of my Knitting & Stitching Show 2010 haul.

(Please excuse the messy bed, I was about to climb in for a nap :) )

General spread picture :)

This is the copy of Let's Knit and the contents of the goody bag it came in. Behind /under it is the copy of the book with 70+ designs.

The pile of leaflets and business cards that I picked up on my way around. If I liked a stall and wanted to keep the name for future reference, I picked it up! Fair few about ribbons and fabric, as well as knitting yarns and supplies.

The show guide. To be perfectly honest I could have done without it, as I already had a map from the workshop letter. I barely used it, but it does list the details of all the exhibitors and vendors so may be useful in the future.

I loved these mini buttons :) Not entirely sure what I want to do with them yet, but they are gorgeous. 

I picked up these stars first, then the buttons above. I absolutely love polka dots, and my favourite shape is a star. These are just me all over :) The minimum £10 for card purchases helped out a little...

This is my stash from the Beginners Knitting workshop. I chose to go for 4mm needles which meant that I had a choice of this black/grey tweed wool, the same in blue or a purple/burgundy colour. As my jacket is purple and I already have a blue scarf in the making, I decided to go for the grey/black. Might make something for my Dad someday. 

If you chose the 6mm needles then you got to choose between this rainbow coloured yarn or a light purple yarn. The rainbow yarn looks kinda natty, but is incredibly soft. I think it's a polyamid/merino blend. We were invited to take a second ball of yarn and I was the only one who chose the 4mm out of 5 people :) 

These are kits! The red polka dot (see the polka dot obsession?) makes up a cupcake which I plan on using for a pin cushion. The black polka dot kit makes up a waistcoat for a wine bottle. It made me giggle loads when I saw it, and I usually buy a bottle of wine of my Dads birthday, so I've decided to make this for him. (He'll never see this blog so it's safe to post!)

These stamps are so pretty, the heart one especially. I enjoy making cards (when I'm in the mood for it, I go through phases in everything). I'm pretty sure I've seen the butterfly stamp in a book, in a chapter that taught different stamping techniques. All the same, they were both reasonably cheap and pretty!

These are my skeins. The teal on the left is the most soft I've ever felt (and expensive at £13.99!) and the purple sock yarn on the right was close behind at £12.50. How have I gone from buying balls of Sirdar Big Softie at £2.45 a ball to these at £13.99 a skein!?

Individual shots. These have also gone on my Ravelry profile.

Now I just need to figure out a sock pattern, and what to do with the other!

xx

The Knitting & Stitching Show - Update!

Evening :)

Warning: A VERY long post, sorry!

I'm a very happy girlie tonight! I visited the Knitting & Stitching show today. I can't get over the fact that I was there for 6 hours! I left the house in such a rush in the morning I didn't eat, and I didn't want to sit down on my own and eat there either, so I had breakfast at 5.15pm which (shamefully) was a BK meal. My feeble excuse is that I needed something quick so that I could grab it and jump on the train because by then I just wanted to get home!

I found my way there pretty easily, so I must be getting the hang of the underground thing now. I only had one scary moment and that was at Kings St Pancras Station on the way home. I'd been following signs for all the other lines (there are 5) but hadn't seen any for the one that I needed yet. I stopped and double checked that I was supposed to be changing there, then carried on blindly and found the line about 5 minutes later.

I left Reading and jumped on the H&C then changed at Kings. On the Picadilly line I found a woman who was sitting and patiently knitting something in the round. Whatever it was it was tiny! Must have been for a baby. When it was our stop and she stood up, I asked if she was heading the same way and we followed the crowd of women to the shuttle bus stop. Thankfully the shuttle buses went one after another continuously (or seemed to) so I got there with time to spare. Alexandra Palace is huge!

I was the first at the Learning Curve workshop room so I sat down. Then a woman came in who introduced herself as Lisa and the tutor. She was really friendly so she stopped me from feeling nervous or anything. She's part of the Craft Guerilla group and normally teaches knitting in a pub in London, so is well used to teaching beginners!

Note: Craft Guerilla have a craft book coming out in the Spring. Each person has written a chapter on their area of expertise, and Lisa has written the chapter on knitting. We were each given a booklet which is the chapter, so we have advance copies (and got to be proof readers) which is fun.

Another person joined us and for about 10-15 minutes it was just the two of us so we choose our needles and yarn (either 4mm or 6mm needles, with different yarns to correspond). Then we started casting on but had only got as far as making slip knots when another two ladies joined us. They quickly got themselves settled in with needles and yarn, and we continued.

Everyone picked it up pretty quickly. We were shown the long tail cast on which is what I used to cast on my scarf after following a video online. It makes a really pretty first cast on, and also gives you the first row of knitting. Then we frogged it and learnt another way of casting on using both needles which isn't quite as pretty.  It involves doing the first part of the knit stitch, but pulling the loop onto the left needle instead of the right to make your stitches. During this another lady arrived. As she already had some knitting experience she picked it up really quickly and got stuck in with us.

Then we started knitting and away we went! We each did about 6-10 rows while Lisa came around to see if we were having any issues. I purposely dropped a stitch so that she would be able to show me how to pick it up again so that was really useful. I'm not 100% sure I'll remember how to do it when it comes to it but I'm gonna give it a go first before I frog the whole thing! I remember Lisa saying that my stitches were neat and tidy, because the dropped stitch didn't run and make a ladder, so that was good.

Then we started purling. Purling is my weak spot, so after I finish my scarf I'm going to have to make a 'practise scarf' and just purl for ages to get used to doing the tension like I did with knitting. Instantly my neat rows started getting a bit looser. Then we did some ribbing as everyone was picking knitting up so quickly and we had the time to do it. I wasn't pulling my yarn from the front to the back before swapping stitches, so I ended up going from 12 stitches to about 18 with lots of holes! Not very pretty! We then learnt how to cast off which was good. We had 15 minutes left at this point so we cast on again and did some more while looking through the booklet and talking about following patterns, and a cardigan Lisa's been making for the last 3 years.

Then it was 12.30pm and it was all over. We said our thank yous and goodbyes. Then I started my way through the first large hall I came to (which turned out to be the exhibitors hall). I spent about an hour wandering around. At first I didn't want to buy anything but I soon broke that! Strangely, the first things I bought were for sewing (a cup cake that can be used as a pin cushion) and not to do with knitting at all! This hall had exhibitions from various different artists, textile graduates and displays from companies.

I then wandered through to another fairly large hall which also had a restaurant, a lovely, lovely smell, and lots of tables and chairs. I wandered through the stalls which were more of a guild themes. The Quilters Guild, the Embroidery Guild etc. I then came back into the corridor I first went to, walked to the end of it and looked at my map. And realised that I hadn't yet been in the Great Hall which was twice the size of the halls I'd been in so far!!

By this point it was 2pm so I had a quick phone call to Mam to find out what size circular needles she has - Mam doesn't knit any more and has a case full of needles in different sizes that she's giving to me this weekend when I'm at home. Then I started browsing.

Oh the shops :) I spent about £91 altogether at the fair, including the £11 entry and £15 workshop fee. I found so many skeins of wool that I just loved the colours of, but were stupidly priced at £12-20 EACH!! For 50 grams!! I kept refusing to buy them and carried on wandering.

I visted the Let's Knit stand which made the very same issue of Let's Get Crafting that started me on this knitting malarky 4 weeks ago. They were selling goody bags of the next issue which hasn't hit the shops yet, and differing freebies for £3. The magazine sells for £4.99. I picked up a bag that contained 3 bottles of black fabric paint (Oooh and I also found some freezer paper, first 'shop' I've seen it in!), some 5mm knitting needles that are topped with 'luxury beads' and 2 balls of  acyrlic wool that I doubt I'll ever use. The fabric paint will be fun to play with though!! That was the main reason I picked that over other bags which contained 5 ball of wool, or crochet hooks etc. When I went to pay the guy showed me the Let's Knit book 'The Knitted Gifts collection' which normally sells for £9.99. If you bought it with a goody bag it was £2, so £5 altogether. So in it went. It has 70 patterns in it, and I've already seen a few things that I think I'd like to make.

I carried on wandering and then visited a stall where I fell in love with some 45% silk, 55% merino hand dyed yarn in a dark teal/blue colour. I asked how much it was and was told £8.99 which I thought was fairly reasonable as it knits on 3mm needles and the skein contained 1000m. I went to pay and found out it was actually £13.99. BUT I bought it anyway. I love it. It's so soft, it's like stroking my cats at home. I kinda don't even want to knit it, just keep it and have it looking pretty. Oh dear!

I then bought a skein of purple sock merino yarn for £12.50. It's very pretty but not quite as soft as it doesn't contain any silk. I'm gonna knit myself some purple socks! Yay!! I fell in love with some gorgeous purple skeins in Colinette's Yarns but it was £12.95 per skein and I just couldn't bring myself to spend any more, knitting is an expensive habit! (Note: It's cheaper on the website, but I definitely seem to remember it being more like £12 at the stall so I might have linked a different skein). Maybe after payday, or for Christmas. I have to get my hands on it sooner or later!

I'll post another post showing my haul from the day :)

It took me 2 hours to wander around the last hall, and by the end I was so tired from not eating and carrying heavy bags I was barely looking at some stands (that were embroidery etc). At 4pm I decided to leave so as to not get caught in the underground rush hour. I don't mind standing on normal trains, but I hate the crushes on underground trains.

I got back to Reading just before 6pm, sorted through my bags then went and had a nap! I was so tired, I ate on the train and it made me very sleepy. I woke about an hour ago and started typing this up, so I can post it and get on with some knitting now!

xx

Just Because Card

Howdy,

I'm quite a big fan of the Let's Make Cards magazine. I don't have much money to build up a stash of goodies with, and each issue has a fairly big stash of freebies with it. I may not use all of them, or hate some of them (hehe) but there are usually quite a few bits that I like.

It's love/hate relationship though, because every issue is themed, and sometimes the theme is good/bad/ugly. An old issue (33 I believe) was Flower Fairies. I'm not a fan but my grandmother is. I'm never sure when the new issues come out. I haven't been able to find a definite shipping date online and I can't afford a subscription to issues I don't like!

A previous issue that I picked up (as at £7.99 it isn't cheap and I therefore only pick it up every now and again) was a Wallace & Gromit theme. My family are all fans of Wallace & Gromit so I know that I'll be sorted for both my Dad and brother's birthdays which is brilliant.

When I picked up an issue 6 months ago they had a spotlight on Owls. As noted before, I find it hard to be creative sometimes, and this time I decided the card was lovely as it was, so I would make one to have it to hand for a nice surprise card to a friend. Here it is :)



While in Swansea for my birthday in June, I borrowed a necklace from Leah to wear with my dress. Unfortunately at some point (probably during my energetic dancing) the bottom half of the necklace detached itself and flew off. I never saw it again, I hunted and hunted!

A few days later while out shopping I found another necklace that was a similar style but I didn't like the length of the chain. I thought it might be nice to replace the one I had lost, so I bought the necklace for it's pendant and then had some fun with pliers opening up the links and transferring them. I got there in the end!

So I sent this mini present for Leah to say thanks for her lovely birthday present (which you can see here) and an apology for having broken her necklace along with a letter I wrote last week. I'm just glad the necklace didn't have any sentimental value because that would have been irreplaceable.

xx

The Scarf is Doing Nicely!

Afternoon!

I've got a cheeky half day off this afternoon after completing everything in work super early. So I thought I'd come home and get some jobs done. I'm backing up to my external hard drive and burning to DVD all of my photo files. It's needed doing for a while, and seeing as it's only got 3.5GB free of 160GB there's no wonder my laptop has been struggling lately!

My scarf is coming along nicely :) Very happy, there are some rough looking bits where I've introduced the new ball of wool (there are 4 in there now) but to be honest I'm not sure how to avoid that without spit splicing - and that isn't possible with a 51% wool, 49% acrylic mix! I believe it only works for 100% wool or similarly high percentages of wool.

It's now as tall/long as me! I read on Ravelry after I'd reached this that is the ideal length for scarves. It's all based on personal preference though, and I've decided it's a little short for doubling so I've added the last of the 4 balls in, but I haven't decided whether to use all of it yet. At the moment I'm thinking of adding a fringe or something on the end (not pom poms! Knitting websites that sell knitting utensils seem to be obsessed with pom poms, yeuch!).

I'm also thinking of doing some hand knitting, which would give me a good excuse to go back and buy the Sirdar Big Softie wool I made my scarf from in all the other colours I love!

My 'Beginners Knitting' workshop is on Friday and I'm looking forward to it. At the moment I'm focusing (read: worrying) more on how to get there, as I hate travelling somewhere new on my own. Thankfully the tube strike is on the weekend, and not the Friday so I can follow the easier set of travel instructions on the Twisted Thread website!

Hope you all have a lovely Monday afternoon!