Garden Photos again

After last week’s ‘happy happy garden’ post I got a big shock.  When A got home from work, we both went back to bed for a nap, forecasting a long evening at a friend’s party.  On waking up, I pondered out to water my pots and found the lavender pot, with it’s 6 or 8 tiny seedlings, dug over by the neighbourhood cats!  I was furious.  We went out, got back late as predicted, got up late Sunday morning and found one of the other pots dug over too. 

This is one of the suspects…

He’s cute, but not that cute.  He’s also one of the range of 5 regulars who now appear in our garden whenever A tops up the bird feeders.  Damn cats. 

Speaking of bird feeders, our tallies are now getting impressive – and these are those we have seen in our tiny garden, and mostly feeding:

Sparrow – 1

Pigeon – 6

Crow – 1

Blackbird – 2

Magpie – 1

Yay!  That ’s much better. 

Now I think of it, I forgot to mention a brilliant sighting a couple of weeks ago, when I went to the open air service at Oxford Crematorium with my Mum.  We were folding the chairs and wandering back to the car, when Mum looked up and asked what that bird was, the big one flying low overhead.  It was only a red kite!  They were pretty much extinct in this country, but have made a bit of a comeback.  It’s the first time I’ve ever seen one, and it was so close!  We both stood staring, absolutely gobsmacked.  It was just drifting around over the treetops, eventually disappearing behind the trees with a weird kind of screech.  Wow!

Anyway, back to the garden.  My window-box herbs are still doing well, even though I haven’t yet got round to moving them to t heir new, bigger pot:

See that basil bursting out of there?  It’s smelling fantastic now too. 

That’s the smallest of my bee-flower pots.  The plants are coming up well, still struggling with slugs and snails and goodness knows what else.  The bit of broken protractor on the floor next to the pot is my slug extraction tool.  Well, I’m not touching the slimy little beasties! 

This last picture is the dill pot.  The plants are coming up thick and fast, despite the sprinkling of peanuts donated by the birds on the feeder!  Still no mint, but we’ll see. 

So, what else has been going on this week?  Yesterday was A’s Uncle’s funeral.  It was sad, as expected, and A’s Mum was clearly devastated.  But that’s what funerals are for I guess, and at least she had a chance to get some of that grief out into the open.  I hope she feels better. 

No knitting group this week, but hopefully we’ll get together soon.  In other knitting news, well there is no news really.  It’s still plod plod plod with the cardigan – still on the sleeves.  And for light relief I do a few rows on the scarf. 

I’m thinking I really need a smaller project, maybe socks, to give me short term satisfaction.  The risk is, if I’ve got something more interesting on the go, I’ll give the other stuff up completely.  I can tell myself that knitting should be fun. I should be enjoying it, so I should give up on the stuff I’m bored of…but I really want the cardi and I’m loving the way the scarf looks, they are just taking so long to finish! 

So, this week coming…hmmm, not much to say really.  Nope, can’t think of anything but work.  Exciting!

A wierd week.

It’s been an odd one.  I’ve had a stomach bug for most of it, feeling rubbish and tired and with much-worse-than-usual pain.  I worked in the office Monday morning, then at home until Weds afternoon when I gave up, feeling grotty and miserable. 

Weds was our niece’s first birthday, so we’d arranged to go out for dinner with A’s immediate family.  It wasn’t quite the cheerful occasion it should have been though, because it turned out A’s uncle died on Weds morning, unexpectedly, in his sleep.  Understandably, A’s Mum didn’t feel much like celebrating.  I felt thoroughly unwell anyway, and everyone was a bit subdued. 

We caught up with A’s Mum again yesterday, and she was much more cheerful.  Hopefully we’ll find time to see her over this weekend, maybe tomorrow. 

Apart from that, there isn’t really much to say.  No hospital appointment.  No work news.  nowt much really.

I’ve been pottering in the garden again.  We got some more compost yesterday, and a packet of teazel seeds, so I dragged some more pots out of the shed and got planting again. 

There are three pots, all approx this size, in different spots around the garden.  We’ll see if they grow! 

The window-box-herbs are still doing well – the basil seedlings are growing fast, there are now a few parsley seedlings, but still only 3 or 4 chives.  I’m a bit concerned about drainage, as there are no holes in the container and I didn’t think to add gravel when I had chance.  I’m planning to move them into a much bigger pot, with better drainage. 

The wild flower pots are doing well, growing fast.  Sadly, they seem to have a fight on against slugs and/or snails, but in our natural garden, that’s their battle, not mine. 

The pot I planted with dill is doing well, lots of little plants peeping out over the past few days.  And a few lavender plants are coming through too.  Only the mint is still missing from last week’s pots, but I’m sure it will get there. 

It’s kind of soothing to have that evening watering routine.  For now, at least. 

Knitting is still a bit dull, and not worth the photos…the stripey cardi is plodding along, it has a back, two fronts and two partial sleeves (which are rather boring).  The entrelac scarf is also plodding at the moment.  It’s good switch-off knitting, but not very exciting. 

This coming week…we’re off to a friend’s for the evening tonight.  Then catching up with A’s Mum tomorrow.  Then work next week.

Photo Saturday – mostly not knitting!

This week’s photo Saturday, as the title suggests is not all about the knitting for once.  There are of course a couple of knitting pictures…but only of the little dog I made for my friend.  I’ve re-done the spots as patches, complete with new ears and tail:

 

I have been knitting other things, of course.  They just don’t make for very interesting pictures.  I’ve been working away on my stripey cardigan, which now has a complete back and a nearly done left front.  Still lots to do though. 

I’ve also restarted my entrelac scarf…again.  I realised that I would run out of yarn before it was anywhere near long enough, so I’ve started again with just 3 squares across instead of the 5 or 6 I had before. 

I’m beginning to think I need some socks on the go?!

The rest of this week’s photos are all about the garden.  Yes, I’ve been at it again.  I’ve been watering stuff all week, when it hasn’t rained anyway.  I’ve planted some more:

There are two of these, one planted with dill and the other with mint. 

This big beastie has lavendar seeds in it.  I held back a few seeds for one of the pots in the front garden, but ran out of compost before I could plant them. 

Now, an update on last week’s plantings…some impressive results…

That is the window-herb-box…the many seedlings to the left are basil, and on the right (too small to see in my photo) are the first 3 chives!  No sign of parsley yet, but we’ve never had much luck with parsley for some reason. 

Next up, a sample of the pots I planted with wildflowers:

See that?  Seedlings!  All of the pots I added these seeds to last week now have at least a few seedlings, and of different flowers by the look of them. 

The next few pictures are of established pretty things in the garden, which I can’t take much credit for at all.

Those are our two roses.  The big red one in the foreground is called Royal William.  Apart from helping to select him, he’s all A’s work.  In the background (and turning up all over the garden) is our wedding rose.  It was a gift from my Dad when we got married, and it’s actually named ‘Wedding’ or ‘Marriage’ or something like that.  It has been moved once or twice, ruthlessly cut back on various occasions and always comes back stronger than ever.  It’s much more like a wild rose and is more to my taste than big flashy flowers like William.  That said, William makes a lovely contrast and truly stands out.  Plus, his scent is beautiful. 

On to my red hot pokers…

I call them mine, because I chose the seeds (or bulbs?  or whatever), I planted them, I watered them maybe twice, then I left them to get on with it.  I am a bad gardener. 

It turns out that red hot pokers don’t mind being ignored though.  There was just one flower the first year, one the second and then nothing for a couple of years.  But this year, well see for yourself, there are no less than 6 flowers there (one is hidden at the back, and smaller than the others)!  It’s so pretty.  The pot probably isn’t really big enough for it, but it seems to be thriving anyway. 

Finally, for photos anyway, we’ve added a couple of feeders to our bird-feeder pole. 

In addition to the original fat-ball cage, we’ve got a seed-feeder and a wire-mesh tray. 

Now, here’s the big news…we have birds visiting our garden!  I’m so happy .  We put out peanuts on the wire tray, and they started to disappear after a day or so.  So we started paying more attention, looking out of our bedroom window.  Unfortunately, the cherry tree completely obscures our view of the feeders, but we can see birds coming in and leaving again.  So far this week, Ive seen big fat pigeons (twice) and a sparrow.  Nothing really exciting or rare or anything, I know that, but still – it’s a start. 

Okay, I’ve rattled on about the garden for long enough, what else do I want to say? 

Oh yes, I finally spoke to a real person at the hospital.  I was so surprised when she answered the phone that I forgot what to say!  I haven’t yet been booked in for surgery, but I should be on July’s list.  I’ve also got my record amended to state that I’m available for cancellations.  It’s worth a try. 

I’ve been a bit bad this week – I ordered 3 new books.  Two of them should be arriving any day now, the other is released later this week.  They are by Terry Brooks, and as I understand it are the connection between his Shannara series and his Word/Void books.  I’m so excited – not only do I get to read new Brooks books, but they might answer a lot of questions and link some of my favourite stories up.  I’ve started re-reading the Word/Void books in preparation for a massive Brooks-a-thon.  I’m going to read them all through one after another, all 20 of them!  I’m looking forward to reading the original Shannara books in a new context – it’s more than 20 years since I first started reading them!  That’s scary, am I old or something?  Don’t answer that! 

Finally, tomorrow I’m going on an outing with my Mum.  Oxford Crematorium has an annual open air service, to which we always took my Nan after my Gramp died (that’s where they were both cremated and their ashes are buried).  When Nan died, we went to one more service, but it just wasn’t right.  We’ve been to the crematorium since, with flowers, for birthdays, after I got married, that sort of stuff, just never for the service.  This year, it is 10 years since Nan died.  It’s hard to believe, I still miss her so much.  Anyway, Mum and I both got the idea to go to the service this year, so we’ll be there tomorrow afternoon.  It’s a kind of happy/sad thing.

Photo Saturday – and not just knitting pictures!

This has been a good week, again.  I have had a few bad days (today is definitely one), but I have been waking up early even when I don’t have to, and actually getting stuff done.  This is a massive improvement and in turn makes me feel even better.  Until I overdo it and make the pain worse

I went to the team meeting as planned on Tuesday, in Bristol.  I met with my friend T for coffee beforehand and had a lovely catch-up.  I went out for lunch with Caron on Wednesday, and gave her Maya’s birthday present.  I haven’t heard anything since then – I hope she likes it. 

The I took some time off – half a day Weds and all of Thurs and Friday.  A had an extra afternoon off on Weds, and all day Thursday too, so we made the most of the weather and went out walking.  On Thursday we made it over to Coate Water, on the other side of town.  Because it involves driving (still not easy) or combinations of buses, we haven’t been in ages, so it was lovely to get there and have plenty of time to enjoy it. 

Then yesterday, well, I don’t know what got into me.  I got up earlier than I would to go to work, for a start.  Then I did some gardening!  I have never before felt any kind of urge to garden.  At least, not strong enough to get out there and do it.  Although, I say gardening…all I really did was put some seeds in pots.  It’s probably even too late for them, but I enjoyed it anyway. 

I planted herbs, parsley, basil and chives, in a window box:

Then I found some wild flower seeds on a shelf, and pottered around our tiny little garden finding pots to plant them in:

Please bear in mind that our garden is intentionally untidy.  I like it that way, and so does A.  We would one day like to attract some kind of wildlife other than a hundred spiders and the gazillion worms who live in the compost bin.  Oh, and all the neighbourhood cats.  In fact, to that end, we have recently added a bird feeder:

There isn’t much evidence of anything eating it yet, but hopefully something will find it soon.  I’m no bird snob, anything will make me happy, just a starling visiting my garden for a meal would be lovely.  I realised just how many birds fly over our entire neighbourhood yesterday while I was messing with compost and seeds.  It’s a bit depressing, but hopefully if we fill the garden with green and flowers, not to mention food, we’ll attract something. 

After my weird gardening hour or so, I started baking instead.  I made some lovely ginger biscuits, which are nearly all gone already.  I also got carried away with plans for dinner.  We had taken chicken wings out of the freezer, to use them up.  Neither of us are particularly keen on wings, but we got them in the meatbox delivery so had to eat them.  I started looking for a recipe for chicken wings, and stumbled across a spicy baby potato dish we used to make loads.  I decided that would be a nice accompaniment.  Then I found a dish that consisted of runner beans in soured cream.  Now I love soured cream, and the veg box this week included some really tender, young runner beans – perfect for this.  Finally I settled on a spicy coating for the chicken.  It all turned out lovely…only the chillis in the potato dressing were much hotter than I expected, so after a bite or two, everything tasted mainly of chilli!  Still, it was nice and we cleared our plates. 

Anyway, on to knitting news…I’ve been working away on my stripey cardigan:

It’s coming along nicely…except I got so absorbed in the new episode of NCIS last night, I forgot to change colour, so I’ll have to undo the last 4 rows and re-do them in blue! 

I re-started the entrelac scarf I was working on in the middle of the week, just cos I decided it might look better with bigger squares.  Not only does it look better, it is going along so much quicker:

Finally, I have to re-do the spots on the knitted dog I made for Ali at work.  She has lent me some photos of Ziggy so I can get the patches right.  I might make a second one for her daughter too, if I can find the enthusiasm. 

That’s it for this week.  In the week coming I haven’t got much on.  I will be hassling the hospital for a surgery date again.  I’ll try to make it to knitting on Weds.  And that’s it, I think.

The usual Photo Saturday thing

It has felt like a long week.  Which is odd because it was a short one really, due to the bank holiday at the start of it. 

Firstly, our friends didn’t come round for dinner last Saturday after all.  They had some personal issues to deal with and weren’t up to socialising.  Big karma hugs to both of them. 

I’ve done fairly well work-wise this week.  I not only made it in to the office 3 mornings out of 4, I managed to time those days for when the fairly-high and really-high bosses were there.  Result!  I had a down day on Thurs when I didn’t get up on time, in lots of pain from the start of the day and couldn’t quite think clearly all day.  I made up for it with a good day on Friday.

This morning I woke up at 7.30am…but for no reason!  I lay in bed for a while, waiting to go back to sleep, then gave in and got up at 8.00.  The post lady knocked on the door 10 mins later (good timing!), to bring me this:

It’s the new sock book by Cookie A, who designs some lovely socks.  Part of the book is about designing socks, which is really interesting and could be useful.  I’ve waited weeks for this, since before our holiday.  In fact, I ordered it in time to take it on holiday, or so I thought.  I don’t know what went wrong, but almost no-one was able to get hold of a copy for a while, and as recently as yesterday my order status said ‘we’ll let you know when we have the faintest idea when we might send this to you’, or words to that effect. 

Hooray!  I got my prize! 

This week I have a team meeting in Bristol on Tuesday, and lunch planned with my friend Caron on Wednesday. 

The start of the team meeting has been delayed by an hour, but T from Plymouth and I have decided to catch our usual trains and meet for coffee before the meeting.  It’ll be nice to catch up, and have longer than the brisk walk to the office for once. 

I haven’t seen Caron for a while, and although I’ll miss knitting group this week, I really need to catch up with her.  She only works part time now, and doesn’t live in Swindon, so when she suggested Weds I said yes anyway.  Caron’s little girl celebrated her second birthday this week, and it was for her that I made the ladybird pyjama case.  We’ve now bought some ‘jamas to go in it too…

So cute!  I’ll deliver ladybird and ‘jamas to Caron on Weds and hopefiully get a couple of pictures in return. 

In knitting news, I’ve finished a couple of things this week, starting with the socks which were nearly complete last week:

I’m pleased with how they turned out. 

I also started and finished a little dog for my friend at work, whose dog was put down last week:

Ali was really happy with it, even though the spot pattern isn’t quite right.  I have offered to re-do the spots, but she just wanted to take it home. 

The second start this week was on my stripey cardigan.  I haven’t made much progress because I stopped for the dog…and to start a scarf (not sure why, the weather is suddenly lovely), but here’s where it is:

And finally, the scarf.  It’s an entrelac pattern, which is the only thing I’ve found to suit this particular sock yarn.  I love the mad colours of it, but the colour changes are just a bit too much for all the sock patterns I tried.  The intention was that I’d have this as a smaller project for travelling with…but now I’ve got the new sock book…maybe some socks are in order?!

I had a discussion with my niece a few weeks ago.  I was showing her some of the things I’ve knitted recently, and some of the things I’m planning to knit, and she asked me why I don’t knit for her any more.  I always used to include a hand made gift in their birthday presents, but haven’t for a year or so now.  For a start, we have 13 nieces and nephews, and several we include as step-relations.  Secondly, they just don’t appreciate them.  I pointed this out to M, and she went quiet.  An hour or so later she started raving about the cushion I knitted for her birthday one year.  Did it take her that long to remember the last thing I made for her? Or was she just trying to decide what her favourite gift was?

Anyway, M herself put a successful end to the conversation when she said about the cardigan I was showing her ”I don’t know why you don’t just go to Primark and buy one for £6″! 

Nuff said.

Photo Saturday

I hadn’t realised how important emotion is in my life.  I just read back through the post I wrote yesterday, and it is astonishing how different I feel now, compared to say a week ago. 

Yesterday I made a comment about enjoying work, and I gave that a lot of thought yesterday.  I do enjoy work, especially when there is so much to do, and I’m the one who knows how to do it…I’m busy and driven and..yes, I enjoy it. 

That is such a difference to a week ago.  I was still as busy, had as many deadlines and problems with the data as I do this week, but I just couldn’t quite care.  I plodded through the day and finished as early as I reasonably could. 

Of course, all that aside, I’d retire tomorrow if I could (come on, lottery win!). 

Anyway, I promised photos and here they are…nothing exciting, but some knitting stuff as usual:

That is the progress on my made-up socks.  Not much really, for a week, but I’m working on both at once (magic loop) so they should be done in a day or two. 

This is the yarn I bought yesterday to make myself a cardigan:

I’m excited about starting it, but holding back until I’ve finished the socks.

That’s it though, just two photos.  Hopefully by next week I’ll have finished the socks, started the cardi, cast on a  new pair of socks and maybe even made a small dog for my friend.  She made the final decision yesterday, and was having her dog put down last night.  So I’m sending a big swirl of thought karma her way this weekend.  I’m also sending a big old swoosh of karma to my friend D, who needs it too at the moment.  I only wish I could help in some way. 

Last night turned a bit manic on us.  We went to Gorse Hill after work (A actively encouraged me to buy yarn, I wonder what he wants?), then strolled over to Sainsbury’s, taking the scenic route through the River Ray Parkway.  It was a lovely walk.  We got a few bits of shopping, but not much, had a drink in the cafe and strolled home again.  On the way back we got picked up by my Dad, who was on his way round to deliver some baby albums and scrapbooks which he found when clearing out at his house.  He wanted them out of his soon-to-be-ex-wife’s reach.  He stayed for a while. 

Then we realised we had just 45 mins to make and eat dinner before our Sainsbury’s delivery arrived.  It seems odd that we went shopping there when we were getting stuff delivered anyway, but it makes sense really.  We order online once every 4 weeks, when A gets paid.  That stocks up the freezer and the tins and non-perishables.  Then in between deliveries we just get fresh stuff like bread, milk, cheese – the sort of thing you want to pick out for yourself and check the date on. 

So we considered take-away, but had already defrosted a plate full of prawns.  A came up with a master-plan to just warm them through in a pan with some mushrooms, then chuck them on a plate with chips and curry sauce from the chip shop.  Voila – easy prawn and mushroom curry!  Of course, we had no cash.  So A plodded off to the cashpoint 5 minutes away, intending to get the chips and curry sauce on the way back, while I started preparing the prawns and mushrooms.  The cashpoint was out of cash.  So A came home and we considered our options.  There was no time to get to the next nearest cashpoint, prepare dinner and eat it before the shopping delivery.  So bizarrely, on payday when we should have most money, we scrabbled around trying to come up with just £2.60 to buy dinner! 

We managed it in the end, but 5 minutes after we sat down to eat, and 15 minutes before we expected them, the Sainsbury’s van pulled up outside!

Dinner went cold while we unloaded the shopping, but by that time we were both so tired we didn’t care.  It was only 8pm but we seriously considered going straight to bed.  Instead we had to stay up to watch the new episode of NCIS on FX…how could we miss it?!

Tonight our friends Alan and Kat are coming round for dinner and a good natter.  We’re taking the lazy option and ordering pizza, especially as one of the big pizza chains put a leaflet through our door which gives us 50% discount when we spend £30 or more.  And we had the foresight to include a big box of lager in the shopping delivery.  Hooray!

Improvement

I’m feeling a bit better.  I’d almost say a lot better, but that would just be getting carried away. 

Since I have stopped taking the amitriptyline, I’ve rediscovered emotion.  That sounds a bit odd, but bear in mind that amitriptyline is an anti-depressant as well as a painkiller.  And like all other anti-depressants (at least the ones I’ve taken) they don’t make you happy, they just strip away feelings. 

Unfortunately, as well as the good feelings, I’ve got an excess of all emotions going on – yesterday I almost had a tantrum because the data I was working with didn’t add up as I expected it to! 

On the whole though, I think it’s a big improvement and I’m already happier.  Once I’ve settled back down properly I’m sure it’ll be good. 

That said, I still have pain, even more since stopping the extra drugs, but I’ll live with that. 

Another positive is a rediscovery of my knitting inspiration.  I want to finish the socks I’m working on now, buy some yarn for a cardigan, re-start an entrelac scarf which I ditched because I thought the back might be ugly (it deserves another chance), knit a small dog for my friend (whose dog has to be put down ) and…oh so much more. 

Also, I can drive!  At least in the mornings when I’m not on co-codamol from the minute I wake up.  I went to work in the office yesterday morning, for the first time in more than a week.  I lasted until 1pm, and wasn’t even grey-faced when I left!  Today of course I’m paying for it, but it’ll pass.  Remember the pacing from the pain clinic?!

Anyway, back to work – which I’m even enjoying – photo Saturday as usual tomorrow.

Nightmares

I agreed with the doctor-man yesterday that I can stop taking one of the painkillers I’ve been on for the last couple of months.  I’m sleeping 10+ hours per night, napping in the afternoon and still feeling too tired to function all day.  I really shouldn’t be driving, not at all. 

Part of the problem is the nightmares.  All night, every night.  I wake up repeatedly and find it hard to go back to sleep.  Last night I wasn’t allowed a sandwich for lunch until I’d eaten a whole loaf of dry bread.  By which time I really didn’t want a sandwich anyway.  I then wasn’t allowed dinner until I’d eaten a pair of trousers and two pairs of socks!  It sounds silly now, but at the time it was just distressing. 

Then, when I got back to sleep, I was the Queen of somewhere or other, but only because I was married to the King.  Sounds good?  At the point that I started dreaming it, the King had just died and a rioting mob were looking for me.  Not so good.

The night before last, I was chased by, then fighting with the Terminator.  Both the scary Arnie one and the even more scary molten metal one.  I slashed the metal one’s throat with a knife, twice, but he just laughed at me and healed over.  The Arnie one just stood there grinning, neither attacking nor defending me.  I was shaking and sweating when I woke up from that one and it took a very long time to get back to sleep! 

I don’t even remember a lot of the nightmares, but they’re very vivid at the time.  I read once that to remember dreams, you should write them down immediately, even if it is the middle of the night. 

To be honest…I don’t want to remember these ones! 

So anyway, I’ve stopped taking the amitriptyline and hopefully things will start to improve.  I still had to sleep for an hour this afternoon, but I don’t remember any dreams at all.  Seems like a small thing to be so pleased about, doesn’t it?!

Where’s my mojo?

My knitting mojo!  Where has it hidden itself away?!

Seriously, I’ve hardly been knitting at all.  I finished my last pair of socks, I finished the ladybird pyjama case for Maya, and I couldn’t think what to cast on next. 

I thought “That’s easy, I’ll just make me some more socks”.  I picked out some lovely Tofutsies yarn, mmm pretty blue yarn.  So soft.  I picked out a pattern, couldn’t get gauge.  I picked another pattern, didn’t like the look of it.  I picked a third pattern, which had options for two sizes.  The large one was way too large.  The small/medium was way too small. 

I trawled Ravelry.  I searched my queue…ransacked my favourites…scoured the forums.  I rummaged through both of my sock books.  I could not settle on a pattern. 

I decided to make a plain, simple stocking stitch sock. 

I knit the cuff then thought to myself “I could just take a peek in the book of stitch patterns I have upstairs”. 

Then of course, the only problem was deciding on one stitch pattern!  I’ve ended up with something kind of odd looking, but I like it.  It involves wrapping the yarn several times around the needle before knitting stitches on some rows…

And the close-up on the pattern:

Of course, I’ve realised since I finally settled on these that the Tofutsies yarn isn’t the 4-ply fingering weight yarn I usually use for socks…it’s 3-ply light fingering.  Genius! 

When I’ve finished these I’ll hopefully be able to afford enough yarn to make me a cardigan.  I love cardigans, wear them all the time, and I’ve got a few patterns in my Ravelry queue. 

After that, I’m hoping that my new sock book will have finally turned up.  I ordered it weeks and weeks ago, and I’ll have had so far is repeated e-mails apologising for the delay.  The only consolation is that I’ve seen lots of other Ravelers complaining of delays too, so it’s not just me, there is a problem with it. 

On to non-knitting stuff…our 11 year old niece is staying over with us tonight.  I offered her a choice of birthday treat – a shopping trip, a fancy restaurant dinner, a trip to the cinema, a sleep-over with take away of her choice…or anything else she could think of.  The strange child wouldn’t even consider the other options, she desperately wants to stay with us.  So we’ll be ordering pizza and trying to keep her entertained for the evening. 

Hmm, apart from that…can’t think of much news…nope, that’s it, for today anyway.

The return of Photo Saturday!

Okay, let’s get straight on with the good stuff…all knitting, but at least they’re photos.  I can’t remember when I last posted photos, or what they included, so I’m just going to launch in with the last few pairs of socks and hope that covers it (too lazy to check)…

Yarn: Violet Green’s Burnt Orange Solemate

Pattern: Primavera

 

Yarn: Tofutsies

Pattern: Tidal Wave

 

Yarn: VG Stellar 1403

Pattern: Fools Rush

And, after all the lovely sockiness…my creative masterpiece (?!)…a pyjama case made for my friend’s little girl, who will be 2 this month.

The 3rd picture is just to demonstrate where the ‘jamas go.  Neat, huh?

Yep, that’s just one big pile of weirdness disguised as creativity, but hopefully Maya will like it.