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!

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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.

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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.

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Ahoy there!

I'm currently blogging from the middle of the North Sea! Oh, the joys of technology.

We decided to upgrade our cabin on the crossing to Amsterdam, and are making full use of the free wifi and the complimentary snacks. It's an excellent opportunity to relax with a bit of knitting. I brought my cowl and my vanilla/cinema socks with me as they both seem like the prefect travel knitting projects. Both are small and portable, and require minimal concentration. Perfect!

I'll be on the hunt for free wifi in Amsterdam, but I'm not going to hold my breath! Hope everyone has a great weekend. I'm going back to my cowl and plate of olives :)

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