Saturday 18 April 2015

Vintage

Dull picture


Today Miss M requested that we do one of my (1000-piece) jigsaws. I haven't done a proper jigsaw for years, for fear of toddlers eating the pieces or some such thing, but it must be admitted that neither of the kids, or indeed the cats, are especially likely to eat jigsaw pieces now, and as Miss M has never done a proper jigsaw it was about time really. So we opened up the box and all the pieces were inside a Safeway carrier bag, which is a bit, ooh, vintage seeing as Morrisons took over most Safeway stores in 2004. That bag is from the days when the Boy was so young that he wouldn't even have attempted to eat a jigsaw piece (he was notoriously reluctant to wean onto solids). Good grief, it even predates Facebook, from the days when people could still distinguish between 'lightening' and 'lightning'. Miaow.

In case you're interested, Miss M's first reaction to the jigsaw was 'Ooh, the pieces are tiny', quickly followed by 'This will take forever' and, after some sorting and the ritual of the Finding of the Corners and the Edge Pieces, by 'I'm going out to jump on the trampoline'.  I've enjoyed it though. I'd forgotten about that calm meditative state of mind I fall into when I'm idly rummaging through the pieces looking for pieces of sky-with-a-bit-of-wall or somebody's-elbow.

Sunday 5 April 2015

Springy


It was a beautiful day today, sunny and relaxed. Sometimes I feel as if I've been cold for months but today was bliss. We're not talking tropical, just nicely warm for once!  My Beloved was off doing the Yorkhill Easter Egg Run, a motorbike event which raises money for Yorkhill hospital, and the kids and I went to the Museum of Rural Life with my mother-in-law and my brother. We saw my Favourite Tree:


And lots of lambs, these two only about an hour old:


You don't get much more springy than that!

Before we went out I'd done an Easter Egg hunt for the kids again. As usual the clues were in rhyme. Very bad rhyme. I'm rather regretting doing that the first time because if I don't do it now I'll feel I'm not trying hard enough. The kids did say it didn't have to rhyme though. It's just me putting pressure on myself - ridiculous! :-D


They were good bad rhymes though!


Also the sock progresses:


Actually since then I've turned the heel - it's really fun knitting, this. So quick - hurray for small feet! I think this may be my quickest ever sock actually. There's nothing like an instant gratification project..

It's been a lovely weekend. Although I've still been getting some studying in, the pace has been much more leisurely for the last couple of days. I do like a bit of leisure.


Saturday 4 April 2015

New month, new socks


I'm celebrating because our internet connection seems, today, to be okay for the first time in over a week. It's been up and down, up and down, and disproportionately frustrating, especially as I had an assignment to submit electronically. We had an engineer out from the broadband provider on Wednesday. He was as helpful as he could be, but it's only today it's seemed okay.  No idea why, but I'm so happy I've even posted in my other blog for the first time since *cough* August 2013! I'm not sure if this'll be a regular thing - it really ought to be as it was a post-a-day blog - but we'll see.


The socks for Miss M - no, not pink, that was just the waste yarn for the provisional cast-on 'cos I'm doing her a pair of Elgin socks, like the squishy socks of wonderfulness that I made for myself a few months ago.  I'm very proud of myself because I remembered to use a smooth waste yarn so the COWYAK thing went really smoothly (unintended pun). It's too dark to take a picture now but I'm well up the foot in her chosen colours of purple and blue stripes, picked last week at the Yarn Cake. I'll admit I wasn't sure about the colours but she seems to have a good colour instinct and yet again the colours she's chosen look great together. She's loving the fact that they're toe-up so she can try them on every five minutes!