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. |
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 🙂
We are having a nice quiet New Year, with some knitting and the latest experimental chili from the book Paul got for Christmas (today’s was good but we have even higher hopes for tomorrow’s!).
I don’t really go in for new year resolutions, my plan for 2009 is to become a bit more organised, and a bit tidier. I will be able to better enjoy all the lovely yarn that I have if I can actually get to it, and know what is where.
Happy New Year! I hope that you will all have a wonderful 2009, full of interesting things you want to do, and great friends to share it with.
I hope that you are all enjoying a very happy and knitting-filled day.
I plan to do quite a lot of eating, a fair bit of board game playing and possibly even fit in a little bit of knitting too.
Hello, I’m afraid Heather can’t come to the blog right now as she has developed an unfortunate addiction to educational physics games. In the interests of your health, do not click on this link, or this one, unless you have already finished all your Christmas knitting, or have managed to work out how to knit and play games at the same time. Heather should return soon, and is hoping to have some actual knitting progress (!). If you would like to leave a message please do so after the tone.
Beep.
Terri has tagged me (actually a little while ago, but I have been slow at thinking up things which are at least vaguely of interest but which I haven’t mentioned 40 times before).
To participate you
Link to the person who tagged you.
List seven facts about yourself.
Post the rules on your blog.
Tag seven more people to do the same and link to them.
Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
Let the tagger know when your entry has been posted.
So here we go:
I am never very good at the tagging thing, so if you would like to do this then consider yourself tagged! Let me know and I will enjoy reading it.
It is all Fiona‘s fault that I have developed an unfortunate obsession with knitting garter stitch slippers. It all started with her posts about her husband’s slippers, and a link to a pattern (in Finnish), where you knit a strip of 6 squares, then knit two squares onto the side of this strip, do a spot of origami, sew it together and voila! a slipper. It all looked intriguing so I made a little model in paper first to see how it worked (my Finnish is not too hot so I was relying on the pictures).
Looking at the picture I kept thinking that I am sure it could be worked so that you knitted the seams together as you were working, and so wouldn’t have to do any sewing up. So I gamely cast on, having no idea how many stitches I should use so I used 18, the same as Fiona, and used 3.5mm needles, again the same as Fiona, and some shetland 4ply weight yarn doubled. However I think I am a tighter knitter than Fiona, and although the principal worked, indeed there are no seams, it is a bit small for my foot, and also the heel is considerably pointier than my heel.
So I measured my foot, and thought I could amalgamate two of the squares to give a squarer heel, so one and a half squares measured diagonally would be the length of the foot. In all my little calculations (I used Pythagora’s theorem and everything) I failed to take into account that because knitting is stretchy and my feet aren’t actually square that I should have made the slippers shorter than my foot length. So here is the yeti slipper.
And just for scale, all three slippers together.
Intellectual curiosity satisfied. Luckily I think I have got this out of my system now since I need more slippers like I need a hole in the head.
I got this from Anne, and thought that it sounded fun.
Grab the nearest book.
Open the book to page 56.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
“There must always be at least one stitch between paired increases”.
From Knitting in the Old Way: Designs and Techniques from Ethnic Sweaters
Several fun things have arrived through the post this week. First a little order from Ravelry.
The bag is a really useful size, big enough to get lots in without being cumbersome.
Also in the parcel was my T-shirt.
This was more turquoise than the picture on the ravelry site, which I think is a good thing since I love turquoise (at least on my monitor Ravelry’s picture looks more royal blue).
My second parcel was The Dyer’s Companion (Companion (Interweave))
Last but not least I have a new computer! My first laptop (only my 4th ever computer – the first one was being used as a doorstop in some University offices and they let me have it for free because they were concerned it was damaging their floor). So I am writing this from the comfort of the settee while watching Jeeves And Wooster : Complete ITV Series (8 Disc Box Set) [1990]