I can’t believe it is October already, the last few weeks seem to have just zipped by, and it has definitely grown colder and darker. Good knitting weather, but I find the darkness does make me feel more tired. The last couple of weeks have been full of little bits and pieces, so a few updates in no particular order:

Ravelry

I’m in! My username is HeatherMurray (I am so original!). After an initial flurry of activity I have stalled rather, but am looking forward to doing some more updating. It seems a great resource from what I have investigated so far. I particularly like being able to look at all the projects people have made from a particular yarn, and also seeing all the different yarns used for a particular pattern.

Stitch and Creative Crafts Show at Sandown Park

On Friday 21st September I went to the Stitch and Creative Crafts Show at Sandown Park, Esher. This isn’t as big as the Knit, Stitch and Creative Crafts Show that they hold at the same venue in January, and there isn’t as much knitting as you could probably guess from the title 🙂

Nevertheless it was an enjoyable morning, and I managed to find a few things to take home with me 🙂 (as usual click on the picture to view yarn in even greater glory)

The package is 20 balls of Jaeger Matchmaker Merino 4ply in purple (actually the photo only shows 10 of them), bought from Black Sheep. The red and white are DK weight acrylic from NKM Shows (no website as far as I am aware). They are for a christmas stocking for Ted (born a couple of months ago), the son of a friend. I knitted stockings for his two older sisters (pre-blog so I’m afraid no link) so he is getting one to match – except obviously it will have his name on it rather than either of theirs :-)I also met Tess and Les from Silkwood Angoras who were organising the knit and relax area, and had a nice chat to a couple of ladies who dropped by while I was volunteering.

Random other things

Does anyone know what has happened to BlueFaced, their website doesn’t seem to be working at the moment.

Found you!

• You signed up on July 8, 2007
• You are #15012 on the list.
• 80 people are ahead of you in line.
• 18968 people are behind you in line.
• 43% of the list has been invited so far

I think tomorrow will be the day. With the help of Dawn I have set up a flickr account, and already managed to use up 63% of the uploads allowed this month for a free account.

Speaking of tomorrow, I am going to the Stitch and Creative Crafts Show at Sandown Park. Anyone else going?

You probably all know that I am the technical editor for Yarn Forward Magazine. Kerrie has been very busy and hasn’t had time to put the corrections I have been sending her for Issue 1 up on the Yarn Forward website yet, so as an interim measure I have set up a page here where you can download a pdf of the corrections so far. Please let people know if they are interested. I haven’t read Issue 2 properly yet but hopefully will get corrections for it up soon.

Welcome to my new blog!

I am still getting the hang of how all this works so if you find anything which looks strange or doesn’t work let me know, either leave a comment or email me at: heather AT heatherknits DOT com (you all know how to decode that one).

Thank you all for your comments on the hat-in-progress, I will be doing some more on it once I stop playing with all this website stuff 🙂 I have also become unfortunately addicted to scrabble on Facebook – this is unfortunate because I am truly bad at it. Anyone on Facebook who would like to demonstrate their superior scrabble skills, feel free to challenge me to a game.

I am off now to knit a bit more hat, and see if I can work out how to sort out the links in the sidebar …

I saw this test on Annie Modesitt’s blog and since book 7 is out on Saturday thought it might be good fun.

The answer wasn’t really a great surprise 🙂

The sorting hat says that I belong in Ravenclaw!

Said Ravenclaw, “We’ll teach those whose intelligence is surest.”

Ravenclaw students tend to be clever, witty, intelligent, and knowledgeable.
Notable residents include Cho Chang and Padma Patil (objects of Harry and Ron’s affections), and Luna Lovegood (daughter of The Quibbler magazine’s editor).

Take the most scientific Harry Potter
Quiz ever created.

Get Sorted Now!

I am such a Ravenclaw that I scored 92 out of 100 for Ravenclaw! What was a surprise was that I scored 88 for Gryffindor. I always wonder whether these tests are skewed towards Gryffindor because everyone wants to be in the same house as Harry. I scored 62 for Slytherin and 60 for Hufflepuff.

While we are on the topic of personality testing, I spotted there was a lot of the Myers-Briggs personality test stuff going round. If anyone is interested I am an INTJ – which explains a lot of things 🙂

Knitting

I’ve been knitting a little sample in stocking stitch with the Debbie Bliss Rialto yarn, and it is lovely, a really nice yarn to knit with and beautifully soft. I used my Knit Picks interchangeable needles in a 4mm and had no problem with the yarn splitting even though the points of the needles are quite sharp. Last time I was at the Interknit Cafe I ordered enough of the Rialto for a cardigan in a kind of teal shade. A couple of days ago I got an email from Kareen to say it had arrived (very speedy!) so I am going to pick it up tomorrow. I have to go tomorrow because tomorrow also happens to be the start of their sale 🙂

The new washing machine is marvelous and I have done 5 loads of washing since it arrived yesterday afternoon! The next load is going to be a wool wash so once they have dried I can take some pictures of the Rialto swatch and the little sweater I knitted at a workshop with Debbie Abrahams.

I’m off to go and watch the washing machine go round …

I spotted this on Dee’s blog and thought I would have a go.

4 Jobs I have had in my life:

Entry specialist (I always think this makes me sound like a burglar, actually it was computer programming)
Administration assistant at a University
Co-ordination assistant for events
Knitting technical editor

4 films I can watch again and again:

Hello Dolly
One of our Dinosaurs is Missing (a childhood favourite and I adore the music)
What’s Up Doc
Casino Royale (the old one with Woody Allen, I haven’t seen the new one)

As you can probably tell music plays a big part in the films I like 🙂

4 places I have lived:

Hertfordshire
North Yorkshire
Oxford
Surrey

4 TV series I watch:

Grand Designs
Location Location Location
Time Team
Actually I don’t watch much TV and I can’t think of anything else at the moment. I am better with series’s where it doesn’t matter if you miss one!

4 places I have been on holiday:

Brittany
The Loire
New Jersey
Hadrian’s Wall

4 things I do every time I go on the Net:

Check my bloglines to see who has updated
Read my emails
See what specials Elann has today
Follow the links other people have mentioned in their blogs

4 things I would NOT eat for anything in the world:

(I’m going to limit myself to things which actually class as food here 🙂 )
Oysters
Raw meat
Raw egg
Eels

4 places I would love to be right now:

Actually I am quite content to be here now, so I will fill in 4 places I love:
RHS Garden Wisley
Locquirec Brittany
Just about anywhere with Roman ruins
Oxford

4 people to tag:

If you would like to do this then consider yourself tagged 🙂

I am very flattered that Diane has nominated me as a ‘Rockin’ Girl Blogger’ ! This may well be the first time I have rocked at anything 🙂 I am savouring the moment. It is very hard to decide who to nominate. My bloglines has 159 feeds at the moment, and I love them all for different reasons. Today I will nominate Fiona, Mary, Liz, Dawn, and Sue. These are all bloggers who I met first in real life and then discovered they had blogs.

PS. Sue I did manage to get home before it got dark, but have since worked out how to put the car lights on anyway so I am saved from turning into a pumpkin.

It has been a busy few weeks, with some very long days at work. Not a lot of knitting has been done. For quite some time I have been just too tired in the evening to even knit a row which is a pretty poor state of affairs! Things are starting to look up a bit here now and I have been plodding on with the never-ending patchwork sweater – photos of the progress soon.

It hasn’t all been doom and gloom here you will be pleased to know 🙂 I have managed to find time for a few fun knittery things which I will write more about soon.

Well I think I have just managed to sign up for Stitches East . This is part of my birthday present and I have been looking forward to going to something similar for ages. I found the registration system somewhat stressful, as it took me about 1/2 an hour to actually choose all the classes I wanted and put them in my basket (no doubt due to a large number of the knitting population all trying to do the same thing). Then when I finally came to log in to pay it turned out I couldn’t login using Opera (my internet browser of choice). When I switched to Internet Explorer of course it didn’t remember any of the classes I had chosen so I had to do it all over again. Luckily I have managed to pay and hopefully I have signed up to all the classes I meant to. Time will tell, since it is another couple of weeks til the confirmation should arrive in the post.

In the mean time I think I shall go for a bit of a lie down …

This is the view from my computer this morning before I went to work:
Its quite exciting because we don’t get snow often. I think we had about an inch or two, which is about as much as we have seen since we moved here 6 1/2 years ago.

I’ve just popped home at lunchtime and it has nearly all gone now, it was snowing when I left home this morning, and it is now gently drizzling (a lot less interesting), and there is slush everywhere.

It would be a great day to be inside knitting but alas the day-job calls. Speaking of which, I had better go back.