Dear World,
The number of hours in the day appears to be inadequate, please adjust the rotation of the Earth accordingly.
Love Heather
PS. I have tried using the hours usually reserved for sleeping to get things done, but the results weren’t pretty.
Your Word is “Think” |
 You see life as an amazing mix of possibilities, ideas, and fascinations. And sometimes you feel like you don’t have enough time to take it all in. You love learning. Whether you’re in school or not, you’re probably immersed in several subjects right now. When you’re not learning, you’re busy reflecting. You think a lot about the people you know and the things you’ve experienced. |
I actually finished these over Christmas but have been very slow at taking photographs.
When I finished the knitting part of the Baby Surprise Jacket (I still need to find some buttons, so it doesn’t count as properly finished yet), I had nearly a whole ball of yarn left and thought it would be rather nice to have matching booties.
The pattern is Multicoloured Sockies by Maude Smith from Socks Socks Socks: 70 Winning Patterns from Knitters Magazine
I also didn’t work the holes for the drawstring, and decided to go straight into 2×2 rib for the leg. Hopefully this will make a good practical cross between a shoe and a sock, which will be easy to get on. They are so cute!
Like the rest of the UK we have had unaccustomed snowiness over the last few days. It started on Sunday night:
and by Monday looked like this:
This is definitely the most snow we have seen here since we moved in. Paul’s work had emailed and told everyone to work from home unless it was critical that they made it into the office so we put on our warm clothes and stayed indoors. At lunch time we went for a walk around the village to assess the situation.
The station was closed:
But there was some surprisingly industrious snow enginnering going on. Unfortunately I failed to photograph the large igloo in progress on the village green, but did photograph the snowman on the common (for reference Paul is about 6 feet tall – that is one tall snowman! Click the picture for the full effect).
It was very beautiful but a bit cold, so after a circuit of part of the common we came home and dried off and had hot chocolate 🙂
The snow is definitely on its way out now although I am surprised by how well it has lasted.
And now to justify the knitting blog part – well not actually knitting, but ingredients for knitting at least. I mentioned that I had been doing some more dyeing while my parents were visiting. Here are my latest efforts. They are for some more experimenting for my next City and Guilds project, which is coming along, although slowly.
I am very pleased with the oranges, they have come out pretty much as I planned. The green was a bit of an experiment. This is the first time I have had a go with Kemtex acid dyes, and this is their green. It is quite a bit bluer than I was expecting, and too blue for this project, though it is a lovely colour. I have also been playing with the acidity again (me, obsessive, heaven forbid!), and I made the solution for the green a little more acid than my last experiments. One of the reasons for this was the discovery that if you make up dye solutions and then leave them for 3 months, the less acidic ones go a bit mouldy (although they do still dye the yarn fine). However since the acid fixes the dye to the yarn, and the stronger the acid the faster the fixing (this means that the colours don’t run as far), in this case the colour has hardly had a chance to get onto the yarn before it is being fixed to it, resulting in the inside of the yarn if you unply it being considerably paler than the outside. It is an interesting effect, and makes the yarn look slightly heathered which is pretty, but I think I will reduce the acid next time and aim for a more solid colour.
My parents have been visiting for a week and we have had a very nice and rather busy time. Amongst other things we celebrated Christmas again, complete with roast chicken, stuffing, etc, crackers and party hats 🙂 We have done this several times now, spending Christmas itself with Paul’s parents, and then having mine to stay at the end of January. More Christmases can only be a good thing, any excuse for lots of eating and some board games 🙂 Also everything seems so frantic in December. It is rather nice to have something to look forward to at the end of January and by then you can face the idea of turkey again (although admittedly this time Tesco’s turkeys looked a little tired so we opted for chicken). As always with having people to stay there is a great temptation to cram in as many exciting things as possible. We had a lovely time but are now rather exhausted! I have just about got caught up with the washing and cleaning, and am making inroads into my email inbox. My parents have gone home equipped with possible holiday travel options to work on, information on restoring some of their furniture, and in my Mum’s case some newly dyed wool for a capelet – we managed to wedge a lot into a week!
In completely unrelated news I have reached the dizzying heights of You Tube, though not in a knitting related fashion. The dance class I go to is run by the University of Surrey, and each December they put on a show where each of the classes does a piece. I am on the far right, luckily the camera angle means that you can’t see me most of the time 🙂