A Hogmanay post. Contains wool.

 From this...

 .. to this..

..via this!

Thanks to my parents, who gave me some money for Christmas, my new toy is a ball-winder! (I'm sure I've spent Hogmanay winding wool before; slight deja vu here.) I have a nostepinne but I can never wind a ball evenly, so the ball-winder is fantastic! And so quick.... Plus it entertained the kids. And the little cat was fascinated too.. No pouncing though, thank goodness.The bigger cat is more inclined to pounce on things like that but he's asleep upstairs.

We're at home for New Year this year, for the first time in about seven years I think. It feels a bit strange. In fact I don't even know what happens at midnight here though we've heard a few fireworks so I'm expecting more later on. We're usually in the Highlands staying with my parents (watching the village's organised firework display from the upstairs landing at midnight), but I left it too late booking the cattery, so here we are. However as I've had a chest infection and Miss M has a cough it's possibly just as well.  We've spent the last few days generally doing as little as possible, which has been nice but I've been losing track of the days a bit. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

I have no idea what I'll knit with that newly-wound ball of wool. I picked the skein from my stash more or less at random (it's Malabrigo Sock in Primavera) just to test-drive the ball-winder, but it's so lovely and soft I kind of want to cast on now. I have a cowl to finish first though, so I think I'll go on with that this evening. The kids are deciding whether they want to stay up until 'the bells' (it's 9.55pm now, past their usual bedtime, though not necessarily their usual sleep time). To be honest I'm pretty tired myself so I'm not that fussed about it. But happy 2017 to everyone!

Time travel

Hello world, I'm still here! And enjoying a few lazy days after a hectic couple of months.

Dad was getting rid of some books a while back, so I acquired a vintage 60s Penguin copy of The Divine Comedy, Part 3, i.e. Paradiso. I'd read bits of the others but never this, and I've got to say it's hard going. I'm just dipping in and out really.  But aside from that, it was interesting to find Dad's bookmark from when he was reading it - a Sainsbury's receipt.  Instant time travel to Croydon, 1965! How exotic..

Using the power of Google I've discovered that that address is still a supermarket, but it's a Waitrose now. Which isn't what you'd call stunningly interesting, I must admit! But one of the pleasures of second-hand books is finding tiny snippets of social history in the form of random improvised bookmarks.

I'm trying to write this while the kids are watching television so my mind is wandering rather a lot, so I'll just wish you a happy New Year in case I don't manage the Hogmanay post I'm planning!

Of pumpkins and turnips

Hallowe'en has been and gone, and this year I carved two neepie lanterns, although I don't seem to have a photo of them together, and knitted a pumpkin. The pumpkin pattern was one I saw in a magazine, just when I fancied a quick, easy knit. The wool is Wendy Ramsdale, which I'd never used before, and is absolutely gorgeous.

Neepie lantern dribbling wax

I hung one lantern up outside the house and the kids took the other with them when they went guising:

Neepie lantern in action

When I took the lantern down from outside the house I managed to spill candle wax all over my hoodie so I've learned how to remove candle wax from clothes now! Actually I knew in theory how to do it but had never had cause to try, and now I know that ironing the item between layers of brown paper does actually work! Well, up to a point anyway - it got most of it out and I've just put the hoodie through a wash to see if the rest comes out.  See, you're never too old to learn something! Talking of which...

Usher Hall, Edinburgh

I graduated on Saturday! BA(Hons) in Humanities with Literature, and a very lovely graduation ceremony it was too.

Open University graduates are of all ages and, as was pointed out in one of the speeches, have almost all been studying under awkward circumstances - while working, while bringing up children, while caring for someone - so there was a real sense of achievement. I graduated from a traditional university 22 years ago having had a traditional student experience  - study, party, study, kid myself that sitting on the beach with my notes meant I was studying, beach party, study, repeat... As a young student I had a great time, learned a lot (not all from the studying part of it), and wouldn't have missed it for the world, and I did have a sense of achievement then. But really my only responsibility then was to remember to feed myself - and I wasn't even very good at that! Studying when you have actual responsibilities is a different kettle of fish entirely and I was taken by surprise at how amazing it felt to graduate with all these other people who had squeezed studying in here and there, fitting it in around families and commitments and responsibilities. So, it was a really nice, happy day!

Inky stuff

I really did aim to blog more regularly this autumn - so much for that! It's been a busy few weeks one way or another, and Friday swings around with the inevitable thought 'What? Already??'

One thing I've been doing recently is Inktober - a drawing a day with ink for the month of October (obviously), which you then share on Instagram for the delight (or secret supercilious amusement) of the masses. I'd resisted Instagram up until now because I was put off by all those filters that people got excited about when it first became popular - the ones that made them all look like duff family photos from the '70s. I have plenty of genuine duff family photos from the '70s of my own thank you very much. But that seems to have worn off now, and I can see why a lot of ex-bloggers go for Instagram and the like for a micro-blogging experience as it's instant (and yes, I only just got that) and very easy. I quite like rambling on a bit though, which I can't really do from my mobile, so I think I'm a blogger at heart.

I'm not going to share any more of my drawings on here because most of them are a bit rubbish really, but if you are interested I'm Peeriemoot on Instagram. Rubbish or not though, I'm really loving Inktober. I'd heard about it on a Ravelry group and thought it could be a good way to get myself to do a bit of drawing. And so far it's worked as I've managed every day - whether drawing, sketch or just a doodle. I've been doing publicity (posters, flyers etc) for the PTA's Hallowe'en disco recently so rather than just using whatever free clipart I could find I've been inspired to do a bit of my own stuff to use as well, such as my friendly bat:

I must admit to being very very pleased with the fluffiness of my bat!

I'd better finish now. It's Miss M's birthday and I've still to ice her cake, no doubt to appear on Instagram later!

Ooh post!

Yay, the Shetland wool week annual arrived - time to sit back with a mug of coffee and a chocolate biscuit!

It's spaghetti time

Spaghetti time is when you cast on a million stitches (okay, 307, but that's bad enough) and your knitting looks like bedraggled spaghetti for the first eight or nine rows. At least the circular needle makes it curl up in a pleasing shape!

Things have been busy at Casa Peeriemoot and there hasn't been a lot of time for knitting, or not for the kind of knitting that requires concentration which is a little unfortunate because this particular pattern has a lace row every fourth row, and being me, I need to concentrate on this. And count. Very, very carefully. However yesterday I got a bit of time so the first lace row is Done. Yay! This will be a shawlette somewhat like the turquoise one I made in June, though it might take a little longer as I rashly threw caution to the wind and chose dark blue yarn. It's lovely actually - dark blue with flecks of turquoise and purple - but I really need to get the lace bit done before the equinox because this will require natural light and plenty of it! Remind me to pick a light colour next time..

Very minor acts of creativity

Sometimes there's not a lot of time for being creative, but occasionally I can cram a very minor act of creativity into five minutes. Ages ago I bought a shopping-list notebook that had a magnet on the back. It lived on the freezer and was very useful but far too big. I think it was designed for people who do one massive weekly shop, but as I live within a five minute drive of a Lidl and a Morrison's, I'm more likely to do a smaller shop several times a week, and consequently my shopping lists are a lot shorter. The notebook was handy though because I could jot things down as soon as I realised we were running low on something. When it eventually ran out I got a very small (A7?) notebook and used that instead, tearing the magnet off the back of the old notebook and sticking it onto the new. I'm onto my third tiny notebook now and I really disliked the cover of the latest one. They're just cheap notebooks from the supermarket so they're ripe for a smidge of personalisation.

The kids had just had to cover some school jotters (notebooks, exercise books, whatever you want to call them - in Scotland a school notebook is always a 'jotter') and I had some gorgeous map-print wrapping paper left over from this so I made the boring, practical notebook a bit prettier. And transferred the magnet yet again - eventually there'll be so many layers of giftwrap attached to it that it'll be thicker than the notebook!

The trouble with a spiral bound notebook of course is that I can't get the cover completely, well, covered. But I like to tell myself that the blue strip behind the spiral binding almost matches the sea on the map..