Another week

Ok so the computer is working but now having problems with Picasa so instead of the nice pictures of knitting you will have to do with this picture of something I almost brought (I restrained myself).
We just happen to pop into Milletts today because I have become all excited about Greenbelt after talking to daisychains about it in Thursday and I think I have worked out a way in which to attend, they offer a rental service on tents so it means it might be possible for us to get there by train.
So I really don't need a new tent but doesn't this look great, I always love the tepee village at greenbelt and one year I am going to rent one. The other choice was a paint your own but it was a little small.

As for the rest of the week, we had a great time in the store with lots of visitors from Annarella to Noblin knits who got to see the booties I was test knitting for her (pictures when possible) go check out the free pattern on her blog. Mary also dropped by who taught me a new start to my long tale cast on and Nathelie started her second sock. I also cast on the knucks gloves from Knitty in rooster DK in the caviar colour, and am just about to start the cuff on the first one so any suggestion for appropriate words to embroider on so far I have thought about 'SKIP 2007'.

I have also managed some spinning this week again will wait for pics to show.

We've also just been to see the new superman, it wasn't my first choice but it was something that we could all go and see as Andy's son is staying at the moment. The first half of the movie was a bad as I thought it was going to be basically a repeat of the christopher Reeve superman but it improved towards the end and of course the special effects were amazing.

On the cooking front with some help from a cook book that Fred suggested I manged to cook a Toad in the Hole last night.

Hopefully if I can get Picasa to submit I'll have pictures later 

We're baaaaccckkkk

So we survived just and yes so did all the kids although very tempted to lose one or two.
We ended up at Brocketts farm near leatherhead which seems to have lots of things to do but there seems to be a lot of added extras you have to pay for on top of your entry fee.

So after catching up on my sleep last night as of course very little sleep was had on the sleepover, mostly due to the fact one of the parents had failed to warn us that her child had nightmares and sleep walks so I spent the entire night worried that he was going to try and get out the fire exit, we decided to fight with the new computer once more with success we now have sound and have running programmes so now the challenge will be the internet connection that will be fridays job I feel.

The picture was going to be of a book I had just started but unfortunately as normall have finished it already, I do love this series, its never going to change the world but they are one of the few books that I don't want to put down and make me laugh out loud, I defy anybody not to be amused by Lula and Grandma. If you haven't read any before check out the Evanovich website as she uploads the first couple of chapters of her books the only problem is that I want to have another book now.

I have also joined a lace swap after seeing it on Yvonnes blog, I have missed out on a couple of swaps recently so this will be a nice one to do . Will try and put a button in the side bar but we all know how good I am at this computer stuff.

Bruised Ego Day trip

This is bruised ego at the tattooist as you can see I have turned the heel and am heading up the cuff in a 2 by 4 rib to make sure it stays up.

Not having a great day, things seems to be conspiring against me today, firstly had to jump out of bed and get dressed very quickly this morning as we had slept in due to a very late night and Scott's mum gave us a call to let us know she was on her way. Never a good start for me don't do quick starts need at least ten minutes to just lay there for my head to focus.
Then the heat still seems as bad and am just hot and sweaty all the time at the moment, not pleasent.
The good news was that I finished a part of the test knitting for Noblin Knits but Yahoo has been down all day so can't send her my notes which is very frustrating as the knitted item is so cute (pictures to follow).
The new computer is sitting opposite me and taunting me because it still doesn't work.
I have just found out my ebay parcels which I thought had been sent on Saturday weren't so now have to get up extra early tomorrow morning to post as we are off to the youth club for a couple of days and we have to be there at ten so with a lovely hot sticky 2hr tube ride before that it looks like we'll be leaving around 7:30am (see earlier to see how I feel about early mornings) to spend the day at the farm in the sweltering heat followed by cooking for the five thousand (slight exaggeration) and then many hours trying to get them to settle (normally we don't bother and just make them stay up till they are begging to go to bed) and then getting some of them up in the morning to feed them and get them to school on time. Then coming back and doing something with the remaining kids until about two or three and then another two hour journey home. I haven't even mentioned the sleeping on the floor bit yet let alone sleeping seperately from Andy.

So to all of you waiting for an email or a response to an e-mail I am sorry but unless yahoo sorts itself ot in the next couple of hours I may not reply to you until Wednesday so anything urgent I will have my mobile with me. 

Other Good things

I also got this in the post yesterday from Woolly Wormhead, it is absolutely beautiful a mix of wool and silk noil. The colour isn['t too accurate as my bigger camera is on charge will get a good close up soon.

We also finally got the lead for our new computer yesterday, we have been saving for this as you know the one we have been using is a little infuriating. So we set about setting it up and whilst trying to install the sound it asked us to restart so we did and then it locked itself up, finally with the help of the wonderful Matt who I owe an entire Korean resturant to by now we unfroze but still can't get the sound working so a very angry phone call is going to be happening on Monday as not only were they a lot later in their delivery time than they advertise but when it did arrive it was missing a vital lead so I am not happy.
Will let you know what happens and if I don't get a satisfactory solution I will let you know the name of the company.

Ok back to knitting after a wonderful day in Stash's AC with lots of wonderful visitors to talk knitting and gussets with (you had to be there) I am now off to knit a bootee as part of a race so better get knitting as I will probably be last to finish. 

This is it

This is what I did, now I know that tattoo's aren't to everyones taste but I have been thinking about this for about 20yrs and the time was right. It is not huge and sits just below my neck between my shoulder blades. Its still a little red and feels a little like sun burn but it wasn't bad at all. It only took around half an hour, the inner cross will fade out to a more grey colour but it has just started to scab over but apparently should take a couple of weeks to heal.
I was so worried that I was still going to be unwell but thankfuly on the day of the appoi9ntment felt a whole lot better. I think there will be definetly more in my future. 

I Did It

After 20yrs I have actually done it, pictures tomorrow.

I am feeling miles better still a little tired but much more myself and actually went out yesterday and today.
I've done a little more knitting but it is absolutely boiling here, I know it is everywhere but this flat seems a little over the top I actually considered sleeping in the garden as it is cooler than in here.

Anybody interested in winning some of my handspun yarn Andy is holding a blog birthday competition over on his blog. You get a choice of prizes and one of them is a hank of hand spun.

Talking of handspun go and check out Woolly Wormheads shop with her new handspun up which I have to admit I have sucummbed to purchasing one as it was calling my name.

And the best news of all Skip North 2007 planning is underway. Me and Little Lixie are putting our heads together and aiming higher this year, for a start we have an upgrade option this year with a hotel option as well as the youth hostel, but start saving for a knitting trip of a lifetime. 

Knit knit

Sorry its been a while, really haven't been feeling too well the
last couple of days , not helped by this awful heat. Feeling a little better, helped no end by sleeping for twelve hours Sunday night, went to bed for a nap Sunday night as was feeling a bit dodgy but didn't wake up again till 8am the following morning and still could have stayed there a few more eyes.
Unfortunately didn't feel well enough to go to youth club Monday so missed out felt very guilty about it but felt sick to the stommache everytime I stood up so the thought of riding the tube for a couple of hours each way wasn't on the agenda.
So have spent a quite couple of days napping on and off.
I've done a little knitting, I have turned the heel on bruised ego and it fits beautifully, the added bonus of toe up socks, I have finished the main body of the north west pacific shawl and aboout to start the edging and have worked a little on this scarf for stash out of Lorna's Laces Swirl which is a lovely mix of wool and silk and I thought it might be a bit stripey but here it is in the vera colour way, I know you can't see much detail of the scarf , still not happy with the design, but isn't the colour coming out beautifully more Tweedy than stripey and a really nice yarn to knit with.
Thank you for all the help with the beetroot we did a combination of the recipes in the end roasting them with potatoes and whole cloves of garlic and served with cream cheese (no sour cream available) and spring onions (no chives to hand either). Sorry no pics was all eaten to fast. 

Distractions

So here is the knitty pattern that has been distracting me
from my other projects its Perdita, the lilac version. I didn't have any Perle to hand but I did have this Koigu left over from a project and the only beads that I found in the house were these lovely red glass ones. I am really pleased with them so far and am going to get a couple of mother of pearl buttons to finish them off, but I also thought that maybe for another one I would leave the centre panel blank and sew little buttons all the way doen the middle.

Thank you everybody for the recipes I am going to tackle them tonight and if all goes well I'll take a pic.

Yesterday didn't all go to plan and didn't get places we were supposed to and remembered to late about my brother-in-laws party last saturday but I did make an appointment for something I have always wanted to do for next Thursday but more of that next Thursday. 

Vague mutterings

Here is bruised ego in action, as you can see I have
used a fan toe pattern and am working toe up on a magic loop. I am really plesed with the colours because they are still fun but still manly if you know what I mean. I am almost at the gusset increases but have been sidetracked a little by a Knitty pattern more of which tomorrow.

I forgot a couple of important details about Saturday mostly the fact that on my way home after finishing at the store I was walking to the station and who should I see walking towards me but Mary who had popped down on the off chance that the store might still be open, unfortunately not so instead I had the wonderful pleasure of her company on half of my tube journey and she gave me one of her beautiful handmade beads which I am trying to work with into something (I know thats a bit vague but I have all sorts of ideas sparked off in my head and am not ready to limit them yet).
If you want to see us in action on Saturday check out Mumblings 

Look what we did last night, I managed to get some
free tickets to see a pre pilot of a possible new show
at Jongleurs in Camden. We got to camden a little early and wandered around for a bit and met Martin and Kim outside. We were still a little early as I am now paranoid after the Johnathon Ross experience and not getting in but this gave me a chance to catch up a little with Kim as now I am not in the studio that often we don't get a chance very often to chat.
So the show was made up with two parts, firstly a kind of interview section with a celebritory and then a troupe of improvisers act out sections of they're life story. I am making it sound far more complcatd than it is but it does actually work incredibly well.
Phil Jupitus was the compare and because it wasn't an actual recording for a show that was to be broadcast we didn't have to keep stop starting and it was just a straight run through, it was hilarious, of course I have forgotten all the names of the stand up comedians that took part, I should really start taking notes but the two guests were Anneka Rice and David and Carrie Grant and both were definitley game for a laugh as sometimes the improvs weren't always that flattering but they were good sports.
After we said good bye to Martin and Kim me an Andy decided to eat in Camden before we came home and we finally fell through the door at about quarter past midnight absolutely exhausted from all the laughing we had done. 

Look at these aren't they wonderful, they are fresh from
Andy's father-in-laws allotment or they were a couple
of days ago, I have yet to meet all of
them but they seem really nice as we get sent regular
vegtables, his mother -in-law sent me an
article on knitting and his ex-wife found me a copy of
Dawn French's Big Knits, I keep
thinking how much worse it could have been but they
have all been really sweet.
Now a question about the beetroot, I have been given the
instructions for boiling them but somewhere in my past I have read a recipe I am sure about baking them and serving them with sour cream and chives, anybody got any suggestions as I want to do these beetroot justice. I am fine with the courgettes they are so beautifully tender and sweet we have been using them in very simple stir frys and they are gorgeous. 

Knitting

Thank you all for your comments yesterday, I had a couple of questions about the knitting and have tried to e-mail the answers to jac-in-a-box and Piglottie's Parlour but for some unknown reason my computer doesn't want to play that game.
The piece of knitting is a sample for the adventures in knitting course and was either aimong for a cushion cover or a bag not sure where its going yet. It is made up from a variety of yarns from my stash including some Silkwood 4ply some hand dyed biggy print a ribbon yarn I picked up from the states (of course have lost the label) and some ripped up silk scarf which was hand dyed. All I have done is knitted a panel all on the same needle size (8mm I think) and then using the naturally undulating sides I have used some of the four ply and gone in woth my crochet hook and filled in the spaces.
Hope that helps, more later I have a youth group to go and play with. 

What a Fantastic Day

I had a really wonderful day yesterday teaching the adventures in knitting class at Stash. Hello to my three students who were wonderful, really enthusiastic and really had the right idea and I really enjoyed spending the day with them.
I have now so many ideas of my own I don't know where to start, actually I know what I want to do first and thats do some spinning, after reading about everybodys experiences at Woolfest including Woolly Wormhead, Gourdon Girl and Spinning fish Wife all I have wanted to do for the last couple of days is spin but have been good and concentrated on the class. But now that we have potponed the sock class next Saturday I can get the wheel out and have some fun.
I am feeling a bit guilty about it though as I didn't see much of Andy yesterday being at work and now all I want to do is things that I enjoy so may put off getting the wheel out till tomorrow.

I am so glad yesterday went well I was a little worried that I would struggle as it would have been Robin's birthday yesterday, and yes I did think of him and was sad for a little while but it was ok. Now I know its silly and just a TV programme but Dr Who yesterday was kind of appropriate as it seemed to be about grief and death so had a little tear in my eye that maybe I wouldn't normally do.

I hasten to add that I am still in that wonderful warm and snuggly phase with Andy, I still have to smile when he comes into a room, and I can tell when he comes into a room even if I can't see the door and I have never been happier, mind you I am not saying we don't have our ups and downs, misunderstandings happen but we seem to sort them out, this all sounds very strange after writing the previous bit but its how I feel. Ok I'll stop with the sickly sweet stuff now. 

Third reason

Sorry about the delay in th e third reason but blogger seemed to have eaten the last entry and I didn't have the patience to continue, but apparently it hasn't been eaten so here is the third reason for frogging these socks, I have a hole, can see no reason for the hole but there it is, now I could rip it back and redo that bit, not even going to try and drop down the stitches and pick them up but as I had two other very good reasons to not continue these socks they are now very happily frogged and a pair of socks for Andy in bruised ego are getting the magic loop treatment.

Well after a reasonably quiet day in the store yesterday I am spending the day putting the packs together for tomorrows adventures in knitting which I am really looking forward to as this kind of knitting really excites me.

I am about to cover the living room floor full of wonderful goodies including feathers and silk and beads and wire already for a day of experimentation.

I see that the new knitty is up and as normal there are a cuple of things that I want to knit including the fingerless gloves with the writing on the knuckles, I now just have to work out what eight letters I'm going to use. 

Socks socks everywhere

Ok this is one of the socks that I have on the needles using one of my dyed yarns and a pattern from Knitty which I keep calling Hippopotamus but is in fact is something like Potamus from Knitty, I loved the lace pattern and once you get into the rhythm of them they aren't too complicated to knit but I think I am going to be frogging these for three reasons.
Firstly although I love the colour of this yarn it is far too busty for this pattern and you can't see the beauty of the lace in it.
Secondly It is knitting up to small for me (I have quite large feet) so really need to insert another repeat of the pattern to make it fit. 

Nameless

Ok last one, you may need to go back a couple of entries to make sense of all this, I'm to tired to try and work out the legistics of swapping them all round.
This one as yet remains unnamed as still have to try and reproduce this colour way as this wonderful autumny colours come from a two stage dyeing so not as controllable.
I am also knitting, I have been working on samples for both my adventures in knitting class and my beginners sock class but enough pictures for now more tomorrow. 

Bruised Ego

And another colourway, a beautiful combination of rust and turquoise with the odd hint of lilac in there, this one was designed by Andy himself with technical supervision and obviousley he'll be the first to have a pair of socks in it.

So after all these wonderful plans for the day have managed to achieve... let me see... well absolutely nothing, I slept in really late and I mean really I just about managed to wake up for lunch and then managed to waste the day away managing a couple of loads of washing and that about it. I'm sure I'll make up for it tomorrow witha food shopping trip to Lidl's and Farm foods in the morning and an afternoon of writing up teaching notes for my class on Saturday at Stash 'Adventures in Knitting' which I am so looking forward to as I always learn new things and am inspired by my students. 

Thorn in my Side

Ok so not quite knitting, I thought I would show you some of the new colours that I dyed at the weekend for my upcoming sock kits, this colour is 'Thorn in My Side' , the picture is pretty true to colour and is a beautiful mix of pinks greens and browns and as you can see in the background I couldn't resist dyeing some lace weight boucle for myself in the same colourway.

Talking about thorn in my side, you know the newspaper article that printed my blog without asking a couple of weeks ago, well I found out that that article had been republished by a freebie local paper last week complete with blog entries. So I got over that when Andy pointed out to me that the article had been shown again online this time, admittedly without my blog entries but still giving my full name and blog name, I know that it is great publicity for both Stash and me but I am so careful not to use my last name because as we all know there are some strange people out there and I work with kids so I am over cautious about it all. Hopefully that will be it for a while fingers crossed. 

Home Again

Have finally returned home from a long weekend at Silkwood looking after the bunnies, in this weather I really don't envy them there thick coats.
I managed to get some dyeing done, some for stash, some for my upcoming sock kits.
I would post the pics but at the moment it is rather a long winded process of downloading pics from my camera onto my laptop then saving that to CD (Andy's computer doesn't accept my memory stick) and then loading them onto his computer and so on and so forth, you can imagine it kind of stops the flow of my blog entrys but we are working on this so hopefully eventually we'll get it sorted.
I even went to youth group tonight, I must be mad in this weather, you how children get in this weather well multiply it by fifteen, I am happy to report they all went home in one piece even though tempted on a couple of occasions to throw one of them from a first floor window.

Talking of the youth group there has been something bugging me for the last few days, in our youth club we do have competitive games as we believe it teachs children good sportsmanship and the ability to loose gracefully and know they are not always going to suceed (or get what they want) and how to deal with that. The most important of these for me is good sportmans ship, and as well as awards at the end of term for tournament winners the biggest prize is for the child that we feel showed the meaning of good sportsmanship. I have to say at this point we make sure that the tournaments cater for all different abilities from Connect 4 for the more cerebal to table tennis for the more active we also usually have some sort of art or craft award to.

Getting back to the point I was making about good sportmanship, well whilst watching the England v Equador game I couldn't believe my ears when I heard one of the commentators congratulate the referee on making the wrong desicion because it was in Englands favour, at that moment I felt he had destroyed many years of work that me and my fellow youth workers have put in by this guy celebrating cheatingthen I thought lets be rational its just one guy this might be a one off, but time and time again this happened, much to my frustration and then what finally topped it all off was a commentator in the England v Portugal match said that we were to nice and needed to play the game a bit more. I give in all hope I really do.

Ok so now I have that off my chest I promis actual knitting pictures tomorrow.