birthday hauling

Yesterday was my birthday, and to celebrate my lovely Boy drove me down to Yorkshire and treat me to a little wool hauling. I had planned to bring my camera along, and show you pics of all the lovely places we visited, but in the rush and excitement of the morning I forgot to pop it in my bag! But I did manage to snap the occasional phone pic…

So here goes. A snapshot wool filled birthday tour…

Giant needles at Texere. These things were ridiculously large!

Beautiful snowy Bradford on the drive to Coldspring Mill. It’s nice to see pictures of Bradford being beautiful because I lived there for 5 years as a student, and the area that I lived in by the university was thoroughly awful. I won’t bore you with the details, but needless to say my last couple of years there were miserable. Hopefully my bad memories can be overwritten with images as lovely as this!

More of the drive to Coldspring Mill, followed by…

a nice cup of Yorkshire tea at the Mill! And a lovely lunch of giant Yorkshire pudding, sausages, gravy, mash and peas (that I was far too hungry to stop and take picture of) for the utterly bargainous price of £3! I’m a bit of a sausage snob, so I was dubious when I saw the price, but it was completely delicious, and I still can’t believe how cheap it was.

We rounded it all off with a stop at Whitby on the way home, and an obligatory visit to the Magpie Cafe for fish and chips and mulled cider, followed by lovely moonlit walk along the pier. There really is nothing nicer than being wrapped up in deliciously warm handknits, staring up at the stars with the sound of the waves crashing against the shore, and the wind whipping around your face. A perfect end to the day.

Well actually, the perfect end to the day was coming home to the birthday cake that my Mum had baked for me! Vanilla cake with lemon buttercream is my Mum’s specialty, and it is delicious.

But I suppose the important part of this post is the haulage, so here it is!

Some King Cole Riot DK, which is touted as being a Noro dupe. This ticks (almost) all my boxes (grey? Check. Jewel tones? Oh yes.)

Mystery yarn from Coldspring Mill. It’s a beautiful rust colour, looks like a DK weight, feels like merino and I’m pretty sure it’s Debbie Bliss but I haven’t a clue what line it is. Might have to do some investigating one of these days. They had a larger pack of this yarn, and I’m kicking myself for not getting it because it’s such a lovely colour!

Chocolatey brown Debbie Bliss Rialto, in what I think is an aran weight.

According to the pack this is Extra Fine Merino 4 ply, so although I initially thought this was a Debbie Bliss yarn, I now think it’s probably Sublime Extra Fine Merino 4 ply. Yellow is not a colour I’m usually drawn to, but I love this. It’s not quite dark enough to be a mustard, not bright enough to be lemon, and not brown enough to be biscuit. It’s just lovely and buttery, and I’m surprised at how much I love it.

There was more haulage. I picked up a couple of balls of colourful acrylic for my best friends daughter as I’m giving her knitting lessons for Christmas, and a few balls of Stylecraft 4 ply for knitting dolls clothes and accessories. There was also a huge amount of fibre haulage!

I’ve been a little obsessed with dyeing tops at the moment, so I’ve stocked up on undyed merino as well as picking up a few other fibres and blends so that I can try my hand at spinning wools other than merino. It looks like 2012 is going to be the year of the wheel!

Pin It

Bettys

Last Tuesday the Boy and I took a trip down to Harrogate for an impromptu day out.

No trip to Harrogate is ever complete without a visit to Bettys Tea Rooms, and to be honest that was the main reason for our trip!

I had the most delicious pumpkin and spinach tortellini for lunch, but I was so hungry and it looked so good that I dove right in without even thinking to take a picture. Instead, here’s a photo of the homemade lemonade we were drinking.

Dessert for me was my favourite jasmine tea accompanied by a yummy fat rascal which I could eat all over again from looking at this picture!

The Boy had a serving of cream tea all to himself, although I did help myself to half a scone loaded with clotted cream and jam – impossible to resist!

After Bettys there was shopping, coffee and hot chocolate. Perfect end to the day!

Pin It

fuelled by sugar

I’d intended this post to be published on Monday, but my attempt at installing a portable Live Writer app on my USB stick failed miserably, and although I could have used blogger to post, I just don’t like the way it publishes my pictures. I can be incredibly fussy about some things!

So here it is, 4 days late. A Sunday fuelled by sugar!

Stroopkoeken and tea. Always a good combo, especially when there’s a bit of knitting action going on too!

We brought these back from Amsterdam with us, and they are delicious! They’re almost like rich tea biscuits sandwiched with caramel. Perfect for dunking. We did bring stroopwafels back as well, but since we can get those easily in the UK we didn’t bring back as many as we did stroopkoeken. That sounds like we did a massive import, but in fact it was only one packet of stroopwafels and two of stroopkoeken.

I even managed to fit some knitting in, when I wasn’t stuffing my face with deliciousness.

The cowl has come on leaps and bounds. Not that it’s hard, it’s a very straight forward pattern. I did feel like I was in a black hole of knitting for a while, and then all of a sudden looked down and realised that I’m nearly finished! I think I’ll carry on with the spirals for another inch or two, and then finish off with the garter border. I should still have a bit of yarn left over, so I’m plotting what I can make with it already! I’m a little tempted to buy a second skein of it and make a luscious thick shawl.

Pin It

Home again.

Just a quick post before I head out for a cheeky Starbucks eggnog latte (YUM!).

We’re back home again in cold, sunny Blighty. My little Dutch mini break was over far far too quickly (I don’t think any holiday can be too long!), but I had an absolute blast.

We walked ‘til our feet ached, ate lots of delicious Dutch pancakes, stocked up on stroopwafels and pancake syrup and took hundreds of photos. The picture above is one of my favourites, but there are a few more for a future blog post. And there was knitting…

There hasn’t been a huge amount of cowl progress because the Cinema Socks ended up being the project of choice on this trip. I managed to complete the heel turn and the gusset decreases on the crossing to Amsterdam…

And on the way back I knit a little further up the foot.

I think I’ve got about 2 or 3 more inches of foot left before I can start the toe decreases, and then these will be ready for the Boy’s Christmas box. We’re having Chinese take out round at the Boy’s parent’s house tonight, but after that I’m looking forward to hunkering down with some hot chocolate, snuggly pjs and the dulcet tones of Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter to me whilst I power on with these socks.

Pin It

A Perfect Evening

Well hello blogland, I’ve missed you guys! It’s certainly been a while. I cannot believe it’s November already. Crazy. So much Christmas knitting to do!

Sad to say, there hasn’t been an awful lot of knitting action going on during bloggy absence. The odd row here and there on my cinema socks (currently up to the heel turn) has pretty much been the extent of it, but on Friday night I finally got round to caking up this skein of deliciousness,

and cast on for the Spiral Cowl. (Thanks for everyone’s comments regarding my cowl vs shawl post, they were all duly noted, and the cowl is definitely the way forward!)

I’ve made a couple of slight modifications already – I cast on fewer stitches and have abandoned the picot edge in favour of some nice squishy garter stitch. The pattern is delightfully simple, but since I’ve only been able to snatch the odd minute to knit a few rows at bedtime, progress has been a little slow. It also didn’t help that I had somewhat troublesome start with this pattern, despite it’s simplicity.

Firstly, I cast on using my preferred Old Norwegian/Twisted German cast on using both ends of the yarn ball. Joined to knit in the round, was careful not to twist, and carried on knitting. I was far too lazy to get out of my nice warm bed and snip one of the cast on ends. Mistake number 1.

Of course, when combined with knitting in the semi dark and watching a film whilst not being entirely awake, this was a recipe for disaster. Naturally I got my yarn in a big old tangle, twisted here and there, thought I’d freed it, felt very pleased with myself, and merrily carried on knitting. The next morning rolls around, and it’s very apparent that in all my twisting I’d managed to wrap the working end around the join several rows back. That’s probably as clear as mud, but the important thing is that it resulted in me having to tink back several rows, unravel the wrapped yarn, and reknit.

Then, I couldn’t decide how many rows to knit for the garter border. 6 looked too few, 8 would result in 4 garter ridges which just seemed wrong (I have a weird thing for odd numbers and borders) so I decided on 10. But when I’d finally knit 10, it seemed too much. Cue more tinking as I swallowed my weird odd-number-border tendencies and tinked back to 8 rows. Mistake number 2.

I finally thought everything was on track and started on the spiral pattern, only to discover that somehow, despite having counted, recounted and re-recounted my 120 cast on stitches, I’d managed to pick up another 2 along the way. Infuriating. And definitely Mistake number 3. I couldn’t be bothered to tink any more so I did a couple of sneaky triple decreases in place of some double decreases to vanish the pesky stitches away. Problem solved, and I’m hoping that it’s plain sailing from here on out.

And this is my plan for this evening…

The Boy is out at the Tyneside Cinema film quiz, so I have the night alone to knit and catch up with the new Murakami book. Bliss.

I’m not usually a fan of hardback books, they’re so cumbersome and a feel lot less cosy than paperbacks, but Haurki Murakami is one of my favourite authors and I’ve been dying to read this since it was published in Japanese in 2009. Plus the covers just looked beautiful. Besides, I’ll probably just end up getting the paperbacks eventually anyway, since all the rest of my Murakami books are paperback and I’m one of those strange people who likes to have matchy matchy things…

Despite having had this for a couple of weeks, I’m only up to chapter 2 so far, but I’m loving it. Definitely looking forward to getting through a bit more of it tonight.

In other news, I bought myself a new camera as a (very!) early birthday present, so excuse my while I adjust. I absolutely love it, but it’s a lot more complex than my old point and shoot so it’s taking some time to get used to everything. I’ve been lamenting the lack of daylight hours I’ve had to play with it, but I’m slowly getting the hang of it. It is far better than my old camera in low light conditions, so hopefully (especially with all these dark nights starting again) I’ll still be able to take some decent  photos this winter. I’m off to Amsterdam tomorrow for a long weekend, so I’m really looking forward to lots of camera play!

 

Pin It

untangled.

Check out this knot-free beast! What a change from a few weeks ago. I am inordinately proud.

It was actually quite quick and easy to tame. I finished untangling it all the night before I left for Spain (it took precedent above packing!), but by then it was dark and there wasn’t time to take a decent photo. Blogging about my triumph over the knot gods has been high on my priority list since I got home, but life seems to have gotten crazy busy lately.

It started last Wednesday evening, when I got a phone call out of the blue from the company who made me redundant a few months back asking me if I was interested in doing a few temporary shifts for them. They asked me if I could pop into the office the next morning, and with my bank balance being as depleted as it is I would’ve been a fool to say no, so along I toddled bright and early. And therein lay the start of a 48 hour week.

I am shattered! I’ve been in the office every single day from Thursday until yesterday, and the only reason I’m not there right now is because today is the Boyfriend’s birthday, and tomorrow we’re heading up to Glasgow for a long weekend. And starting on Monday, as long as everything goes to plan, I have 60 hour weeks to look forward to until the end of September! I didn’t quite realise how much I was signing up for when I was sitting in the meeting room glibly nodding my head to all the hours they were throwing at me. Oh the joys of client deadlines! Here’s hoping I’m still alive by the end of the month…

Still, I do feel very fortunate to finally have an income (as short lived as it may be) again after so many months of nothing, and my bank balance will be looking a little healthier after my month of insanity. But it has meant that all my knitting and blogging has fallen by the wayside as I’ve been far too tired to even pick up a needle since last Wednesday. Can you believe that I didn’t even know where my knitting was until I sat down at this computer and rediscovered it tucked in next to the monitor (clearly where I must have left it after last weeks blogging)?! I usually always know where my knitting is! I really have no idea how all you full time workers have the energy to churn out such fantastic knits and regular blog posts in the way that you do. I am filled with a newfound respect for you all!

The upshot to all this is that my Glasgow trip will be even sweeter. I am so looking forward to knitting and wandering around the Botanic Gardens and the yarn shops and Fopp (if it’s still going…). I’ve been itching to cake this untangled yarn up and start knitting with it, but I’ve been holding off until I’d blogged about it, so I think this mini break is the perfect opportunity. My plan for this evening (as well as packing) involves caking the yarn, printing the pattern and getting my knitting bag in order so that I’m completely ready to get my knit on during the three hour drive up to Glasgow tomorrow.

Bring it on.

Pin It

Hola! y los peligros del cine de tejer ...

or rather, Hello! and the perils of cinema knitting… and apologies for my butchering of the Spanish language! Any Spanish speakers out there care to correct? My command of Spanish isn’t particularly great.

Ferrol Harbour, minutes before a downpour!

I can’t believe it’s been 2 weeks since my last post! The primary culprit has been a brief sojourn in the Galician city of Ferrol, in North Western Spain. It’s a little off the beaten tourist track so there isn’t a whole lot to do there other than people watch and drink some seriously good coffee, but considering how bloody cold and awful the weather in the UK is at the moment I am seriously missing the heat!

We got back home on Saturday night and enjoyed a pretty chilled Bank Holiday weekend, and although I had intended to bash out a post on Monday, I’ve managed to pick up some kind of stomach flu so haven’t really felt like doing anything other than lying in bed under a blanket feeling sorry for myself (and wishing that good old Blighty wasn’t so damn cold)! I still feel pretty rough, but a little better than the past couple of days, and I’ve progressed to sitting under a blanket in front of the computer! Happy days.

In knitting news, there hasn’t been a lot of progress. Newcastle Airport rather ridiculously doesn’t allow you to bring knitting needles in your hand luggage, so I was without my knitting for the whole trip(although I did find a knitting shop in Ferrol!). Only my vanilla socks have shown any kind of advancement, thanks to some cinema knitting before we left the UK.

I managed to get a good 2¹/₂ inches inches done whilst watching Super 8 (enjoyable but somewhat underwhelming) at the Tyneside Cinema, but when the lights came up I discovered a tiny little mistake had crept in in the dark.

A sneaky little yarn over at one of the magic loop row ends!

If so many rows hadn’t been worked after this little mistake I wouldn’t have hesitated in dropping the extra stitch back down and leaving it to the magic of blocking to even everything out. As it is, I think I’ll just do a sneaky little decrease to get of that pesky extra stitch, and then sew up the little hole later on. Ah, the joys of fudging!

As always, head on over to Tami’s Amis for other WIP Wednesday posts.

Pin It

WIP Wednesday

I’m giving toe up socks another try.

I’ve tried knitting socks from the toe up before, but 9 months later, they’re still on the needles. I’m not quite ready to resurrect my first attempt from hibernation yet, so here are toe up socks v.2: The Sliding Leaves socks.


I hand-dyed the yarn for these in an autumnal russet-y orange a few weeks ago, and cast on the night before the Boy and I set off for Scotland, intending them to be my holiday knit. Alas, my aversion to gauge swatching reared it’s ugly head, and about 2 and a half inches in I was forced to admit that they were in fact too big. I couldn’t quite convince the boy to wear lacy orange socks, and having only printed off the chart for the size I thought I needed they were sadly abandoned for the rest of the trip.

I couldn’t quite bring myself to frog them all the way and start from scratch, but luckily the next size down used the same number of cast on stitches with just one fewer increase row, so I managed (by some minor miracle) to frog back to the right row on both socks, and knit on afresh. Big improvement. My feet are no longer swimming in russet orange wool :)

I'm up to the heels now, so I probably should have taken an updated progress post, but I really wanted to get this post up in time for WIP Wednesday!

Pin It

Catching up

I have no real excuse for my blogging absence other than I was away in Scotland for a wee week, and then came back and felt incredibly lazy!

However, the realisation that it is now Socktoberfest season has spurred me into action.

I do have finished objects and knits in progress to post about, but for now I have the yarn, I have the clue, and I shall spend a lazy Sunday snuggled up and casting on for the Through the Loops Socktoberfest Mystery Sock for 2010 in delicious chocolate brown wool.

Colour me happy :)

Pin It