things wot we 'ave been doin'

The trouble with having a little unintentional blogging break is that I find I have loads I want to talk about but I'm too overwhelmed by it to be bothered - besides which it is the school Easter break so I'm either rather busy staving off bickerfests or trying to prevent the kids from spending all day playing Minecraft or watching back-to-back episodes of Lazytown. I appreciate musclebound Icelandic men as much as the next woman but there are limits.

The first week of the holiday was great because we tootled up to the Highlands to see my mum and dad for a few days. The weather was lovely and Cairngorms National Park is pretty wonderful at any time of the year:

We were all impressed by this caterpillar.

Since we got back I've done a bit of dyeing, with daffodil heads this time, resulting
in this:

 Ah, yet another yellow! Nice one this time



And I've ripped back the green shawl I'd just started knitting because something had gone not-quite-right and it was bugging me:

So I've started again and now it's going better. She says cautiously.

And I thought I'd show you my little knitted bee.

He brightens up my spotty bag beautifully. I knitted him because Miss Mouse's class recently did a bee topic at school and we-the-parents were all invited in at the end of term to see some of the stuff they'd been doing. I'd offered the bee to Miss M to take in if she wanted but she declined - however she was delighted when I arrived with the bee on my handbag. I think it'll stay there, it makes me smile :-).

Following the crafty theme, I've also become hooked on the Great British Sewing Bee, despite (or perhaps because of?) being completely inept at sewing myself.  I do like watching competent people being competent.

And now, for Mrs Micawber, some of my egg-hunt clues. Apologies for terrible poetry!

'Finding eggs is hard, you'll agree/The next egg is with things that help Mama see' - the egg was hidden on my bedside table behind my contact lens solutions.

'The next egg is hidden from sight/ In a place that might be home to a knight' - in the Boy's old toy castle.

'Magical transport that comes when it's bidden/Is the place to find an egg hat is hidden'  - behind Miss M's Lego Knight Bus. This one had them stumped and I had to give them some fairly unsubtle hints in the end.

'The next egg is the cutest by far/ Find it where the small people are' - in Miss M's doll's house. I'd put gem stickers  and googly eyes on the foil for that egg to make it the 'cutest by far'.

And so on!

Equilibrium

 I woke up on Friday morning to discover that my sense of balance had stepped out for a bit. I assume it's some kind of inner ear thing - I didn't feel light-headed, faint, sick or anything like that, I just wasn't clear on what was up, down or sideways. I found myself clinging to the floor, thinking 'the enemy's gate is down' which isn't much help when you're trying to get to the bathroom. I'd be rubbish in space.

It eased, and sleep helps, but I'm still a bit off-balance and spinny. It's all very odd, and has meant I haven't done some of the things I've meant to do over the last few days.

However I have made bread (above) - on Saturday, from a packet mix admittedly, but it was quite nice and I feel inspired to make some more, this time not-from-a-packet-mix.

Today I did some spinning.

I've had a spindle or two since my re-enactment days. The light one got sat on by somebody and snapped but this one, my 'good' spindle survives. I don't know if it's 'good' in a spinning sense but as an object it is lovely. However I've never really got to get grips with spindling. Somebody kindly showed me the basics at a re-enactment event years ago - at Scarborough Castle actually, after a largely sleepless night in a tent pitched in the castle grounds. Scarborough Castle is on a headland sticking into the North Sea, and the wind was quite 'fresh' that night. So I didn't take it all in that day. But I've had a go a few times since and yesterday I actually got round to looking up a helpful Youtube video, which has helped. As you can see the 'yarn' is quite lumpy but believe me it's way better than it was. It suddenly started getting almost even instead of insanely thick immediately followed by insanely thin. I was quite proud of myself and went downstairs and said to My Beloved 'I've been spinning' and he looked confused and said, 'What, your head?'  Actually my head was surprisingly unspinny while I was spindling. The same cannot be said for the Powerhoop class I was at this morning - all those hoops spinning round and round and round did not help my balance issues :-D. Apparently I looked like a rabbit in the headlights. Hmm.

This evening, while watching last night's Top Gear, I've been going on with the yellow stripey thing, which I should have finished by now as we're onto Green (March/April) in the Project Rainbow spectrum, but there you go, these things happen. I should never have tried to knit it while watching engrossing subtitled Danish crime drama last week!  Talking of which, slightly tangentially, the next thing to get excited about is Shetland (showing next Sunday and Monday), which I am so looking forward to, even if Douglas Henshall is nothing like my idea of Jimmy Perez. I shall be squeeing at familiar places though, and looking out for one of my friends who was an extra for a day. And no, on a clear day you cannot see Norway..

Winter colour: green

I feel the need for a bit of winter colour. Yes, the dreaded January has passed (yay!) and surprisingly quickly too, but I'm craving colour so I thought I'd have a winter colour week and find some brightness. Today I'm going for green, mainly because I've just got this gorgeous green laundry basket .

I've spent way too much time admiring this laundry basket. I like to think it's not that I have no life, it's that I can appreciate beauty in the mundane. When the sun comes out anyway.

The boy-cat likes it too. Although mostly he was sitting in it because it was by the back door and he wanted to go out. Alas the weather is not cat-friendly today. It's doing every kind of horrible in short bursts (rain, icy-rain, sleet, hail, snow, all with a side of wind), interspersed with patches of blue sky and sunlight just to keep us on our toes. To say that the cats are confused is an understatement. They have been out but they didn't stay out for long.

My hyacinth is flowering on the kitchen windowsill. I know a lot of people don't like hyacinths because of their smell but I quite like the sharpness of it.  I like the smell of daffodils too which are also sharp though not quite nose-puckeringly this sharp.

Daffs:lime::hyacinths:lemon  - that's right isn't it? Something like that anyway. Daffs are to limes as hyacinths are to lemons, if you follow me.

I also really like the foliage - the way the leaves wrap around the stalks and their texture, the rich colour and the way the sunlight shines through them.

Looks quite springlike really. As does my current knitting:

It's so greeeeeeeeeen! Actually it's my yellow Project Rainbow stripey thing but I'm doing green contrast stripes at the moment and the wool is so lusciously green it makes me happy.

Tomorrow's colour will be, oh I dunno, yellow I think.

Making Monday - Project Rainbow and a Fair Isle thing

It's been such a knitty-ish week - where to begin?

Well actually today has not been much about the making, though there was a little wool-winding and a brief bit of knitting this afternoon.   No, the big event of today was visiting my friend and her beautiful baby daughter this morning! And she was lovely - yawning, sneezing, posseting and gazing around in that dark-eyed tiny baby way, with her little hands doing that beautiful stretching starfish thing that newborn babies' hands do... aww..  It really is so much easier to appreciate other people's babies isn't it? I adored my babies but let's face it I was a sleep-deprived zombie at the time!  I can appreciate them so much better in retrospect.

So anyway, my first ta-da is the thing I was casting on last week, which was a teeny tiny baby hat for her:

Baby cashmerino for softness and washableness - that red in fact is left over from a jumper I knitted for my son when he too was teeny tiny. 'Scuse me while I go misty-eyed...

Anyway the hat fits her - phew! It looked so small when I was knitting it but of course we all forget how tiny babies are when they're freshly-minted.  This was so much fun to knit! It was roughly based on the Purl Bee's Giacomo baby hat but I made the ribbing deeper and changed the Fair Isle bit completely.

And then there's Project Rainbow - Nov/Dec Orange finally finally completed:

Also a lot of fun to knit though! I went my own way with the pattern a bit, giving it a different toe just because the one in the pattern (star toe?) didn't sound as comfortable.

And now there's Project Rainbow part three on the needles. Jan/Feb is yellow and I'm making a stripey thing inspired by Flowermouse's amazing stripey things. The 'background' colour will always be the yellow (buttercup yellow Clan) assuming there's enough anyway - I have carefully weighed all the yarn!   And the stripes will be various other bright colours I have. So I started using some of the orange Bonny left over from the circle socks:

These pictures were taken yesterday. Since then I've added some red stripes using the Clan left over from my red Dalkey mitts (Project Rainbow part 1), and now I'm onto some bright green clan which has been sitting patiently in my stash waiting to be used. After that I'm not sure what I'll use, I just now it has to be bright and strong.

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I'm not normally into bright colours but I fell in love with the red, yellow and green skeins of Clan at a 'Yarn Yard yarn party' a few years ago. But although the colours called out to me I didn't have the foggiest what to actually use them for. I think this is working out perfectly though, it's just the kind of thing that suits the colours and is the perfect antidote to Januaryness!

Optimism

I'm not a pessimist. Neither am I an optimist really - to me that suggests some kind of insanely positive extravert (which I most definitely am not), thinking that everything will be fantastic. But mostly I think things will work out more or less okay.  I don't have high expectations of them, so my expectations are relatively easily met. I'm like Hobbes wishing for a sandwich.  So I suppose I'm a cautious optimist. Or a realistic one.

I didn't have high expectations of January, in fact I had uncharacteristically pessimistic low expectations*, but so far it's going just fine.

The weather is mild, meaning mostly it's grey and wet - the usual dreich January in many ways. But it's so mild that I've been pottering round in the garden, very belatedly planting bulbs. I've been able to get out in the fresh air, walking, running, whatever.  Yes, it's been windy and rainy but the wind hasn't been the cold kind that cuts through you so it's been invigorating more than anything.

I bought myself some tulips and freesias and they're in vases on my kitchen window catching any random rays that appear and brightening things up.

Who could be anything but happy with sunlight shining through tulips, even if it's only for a few minutes?

I love the texture and delicate patterns on the petals.

I also bought a Filofax.  I suppose it was Natalie talking about hers on her blog sometime before Christmas that put it in my mind. I always carry a diary around with me and usually a notebook for my many lists and, having not thought about Filofaxes in years, it began to occur to me that perhaps a diary and notebook in one might be a good idea. I had a non-Filofax personal organiser years ago (it was a Citroen one actually, a freebie when dad bought a car I think), of the standard ('personal') size which was too big for my current needs. But a pocket one is only marginally bigger than the diary I had last year and possibly more practical, though less aesthetically pleasing - and was reduced in Sainsburys, so that was handy. We shall see how I get on with it. I am an inveterate writer of lists, partly because I'm more likely to remember something once I've written it down, regardless of whether I actually refer to the list or not, so this appeals to the way I do things.

Also keeping me sane is one of my Christmas presents from My Beloved - a DAB Radio which I keep permanently tuned to Classic FM, sitting on my bedside table. I can retreat up there with my knitting and happily listen to music while downstairs everyone else is killing orcs, jumping through portals, watching the CBeebies pantomime for the 500th time on iplayer and so forth. It's my little shrine to peace and quiet. Murder mysteries set in the 1920s are obviously an absolutely vital part of 'peace and quiet'...  Oooh, and look at my sock! Coming along nicely, heel turned, though it doesn't look it there, and it's the home straight now.  Woohoo!

* Based on experience - it's always a month that I find hard work.

Beginnings

I may loathe January but spending New Year with my parents, besides being fun, means that My Beloved and I can abandon the kids to my parents (or vice versa, depending on your point of view) and walk the trail around the village. A lot of people do this on New Year's Day, some take the clockwise route, some anti-clockwise. We chose clockwise, omitting the lower half of the route which, like last year, was under water, and off we set through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier. Also sheep.

It was a beautiful day this year, with only occasional very light showers, and the light was beautiful.

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There's not much to say really, the pictures speak for themselves. This bit was particularly boggy, having been partly churned up by grazing animals. Apparently there was an alternative route avoiding this bit, but we were too busy looking at our feet I think and missed the turning for it. Ah well, we managed!

This was about halfway round probably, high above the village, and looking further up. It was pretty cold and breezy at this point and we stopped for a snack:

I hadn't noticed until just now that the wrapper says 'Enjoy Your New Day' - thanks Tunnocks, I did!

Crossing the burn as we started to head back downhill. In summery circumstances I'd be very tempted to stick my feet in the water at this point, but not with snow on the ground I don't think. I have paddled in a glacial lake though (bottom of the Briksdal glacier in Norway, many years ago).

Funnily enough the worst bit of the walk was plodding back along Main Street. I wore my snow boats as they've a waterproof foot part and are padded above. They're very comfortable on uneven ground - bog, heather, grass, any of it - but really uncomfortable on hard surfaces such as tarmac or pavement. But then we were back, and in front of the fire - bliss.

It was a lovely and invigorating start to the year, and a good reminder of what a beautiful country Scotland can be, and how great it is to be out in the fresh air. As long as you're appropriately attired! So I've decided that fresh air is one of the answers to the January blues. Well, it's worth a try!

Another January beginning was that I cast on my second orange sock (I did in fact spend the remainder of 2012 after my last post winding the orange Clan into a ball on a spurtle while eating shortbread and drinking whisky, thus hitting all the cliché targets in one). As I should have finished both socks by now I'm spending every spare moment trying to catch up. I've got onto turning the heel now and once that's done it should be pretty quick. And a good thing too as I'm quite keen to get on to Jan/Feb of Project Rainbow...

Hogmanay

 Invigorating!

I really should be wearing my slippers. We're at my parents' house and the floor downstairs is concrete under the carpet. The picture above is from yesterday when we were on our way here. It looks worse than it was actually - it rained most of the way and was only sleety snow at Drumochter, the most chilly and exposed bit of the journey. But on the way I saw deer, coming further downhill due to the snow, and lots of pheasants.

 Today. Chilly.

Christmas turned out quite frenetic in the end.  No matter how organised you are (not that I was) this can happen. No point worrying about it, though obviously I did, because I wouldn't be me if I didn't. We had an untraditional Christmas really. Although my Beloved and I like roasts, though not turkey, the kids don't really, and my mother-in-law (vegetarian) was coming over for Christmas Day, so we had homemade pizza instead. Everybody chose their favourite toppings, it was all quite quick and easy and there's minimal washing-up, so all in all it was ideal.  And delicious. Mmm pizza...

I made a mincemeat traybake from the Be-Ro cookbook, rather than than mince pies and it came out really well except that I baked it in a silicone 'tin' and I always forget that silicone doesn't conduct heat in the same way so the pastry didn't crisp up properly - oh noes, soggy bottom! Still tasted nice, but I must remember to use a tin next time.

And now it's Hogmanay. I spent some time this afternoon winding some Yarn Yard Clan into a ball. On a spurtle as I'd left my nostepinne at home. I couldn't have been more of a Scottish cliché if I'd been eating shortbread and drinking whisky, which I'm planning to do shortly of course.  The yellow Clan is for the next stage of Project Rainbow, though actually I've only finished half of 'orange' - a single lonely sock. I'll cast its mate on shortly but thought it'd be nice to have the gloriously sunny buttercup Clan ready to go in dreich January. I'm not really a fan of New Year as a celebration, never have been. It's all so arbitrary. And has the distinct disadvantage of ringing in January, my least favourite month, but when I'm feeling Januaryish I'll look at that yellow and forget it all!  I don't have very much (65g) so it's going to be the main colour in a thin stripy scarf, and I'll use up various leftovers from socks and other small projects, including 'red' and orange', as the contrasting stripes. In my head it looks fantastic!

Well, happy new January everybody - my Kiwi friends are already waking up with a hangover, my USian friends are probably eating lunch and I'm off for a glass of whisky with my parents and my Beloved!

Oh frabjous day, callooh callay!

My sock turned up! I finally got back to the last place I'd definitely had it and there it was, camouflaging itself. The problem, as I think you can see, is that I managed to leave it in the one place where it was hardest to spot. I have a talent for doing things like that.

 Front of project bag, visible.

Ooops, bag gets flipped over, instant chameleon! 

And it was tucked almost behind a cushion so it's no wonder my friend didn't spot it when she looked for it. So yay, back to the sock. I'm supposed to be done by the end of the month but I'm still only on the first sock - better get a wiggle on then..



The trouble with December of course is that's full of social occasions, like the school Christmas disco:

at which I helped out, doing the chocolate fountain and managed to splash chocolate all down the front of my hoody.

This has been a loooooong day - I'm off to bed!

Things, Stuff, Things and Stuff

Oooh, I managed twenty-five days out of thirty for the November Blogging  - I'm quite proud of that! Towards the end of the month I just ran out of steam, especially as we had more on. Miss Mouse had her gymnastics display last week (went well),  and she's been doing an extra dance class for the last few weeks in the run up to her dance exams. Not because she's rubbish, naturally she's brilliant *rolls eyes*, but she needed to practise the cheer stuff with the bigger girls who go on a Thursday. Or something.

Anyway, I'm a glorified taxi driver at the moment. Except this morning when it was very icy and I made the kids walk to school. Actually they seemed fairly happy to, until the Boy slipped and fell on his bum. 

I was sure the car would get down our road, I just wasn't certain it'd get back up again. We've only had a very light sprinkling of snow and actually it mostly thawed again during the daylight hours yesterday but it's been very frosty at night so the snow and the slushy bits that were left were frozen solid. The road was fine a couple of hours later, just not at school run time which at the moment is pretty much just after sunrise.

The kids had their revenge - when they got out of school this afternoon they reminded me that I'd said we could go to the swimming-pool. I'd completely forgotten of course. I can't say I was enthusiastic at the thought but we went and had a very quick swim and it was lovely! We had the pool to ourselves initially and the pool was slightly warmer than usual - usually it's bit on the chilly side, especially if you're 'swimming' with children, i.e. mostly standing around in the water.  

But enough chilly stuff! Here's some bunting!  I've been meaning to make some for Miss M's room but never got round to it, and my mother-in-law saw this bunting when she was out somewhere and bought it, so there we are, the perfect cheerful thing for a little girl's bedroom:

Miss M loves it. Her room is very small and not all that warm and Miss M is not keen on going to bed at the best of times so anything that makes her happy to be in her bedroom is a good thing!


Project Rainbow: don't ask. Still on the first sock...

Plan for tomorrow: Bake Christmas cake. Should have done it weeks ago.

Skies

 This was the sky just as I picked the kids from school at 3 o'clock.

And this is the sunset just before we set off for Miss M's dance class, so at about 4pm.

We don't often get beautiful sunsets here as cloud tends to be the dominant feature, but tonight's was a cracker - it got even better, and at one stage the horizon was a really delicate apricot colour, but obviously I was driving and couldn't take any more pictures. But really, driving into a beautiful sunset made up for not being able to take pictures. I should have had some kind of stirring soundtrack, but actually it was the usual low-grade bickering from the back.

Success! Tonight, while I watched I'm A Celebrity and had my feet numbed by a sleeping cat*,  I have Turned A Heel, having done some arithmetic to get it right as I'm doing a 72-stitch sock and the pattern is for 64. I'm perfectly capable of arithmetic, it's just I'm still at the stage of thinking that turning a heel is Magic, so working out what the decreases and turns are actually doing is a bit... intimidating.

 (Dubiously) But it looks as if it's worked.

I have no idea what the next line of the pattern means though. I keep re-reading it, hoping that the meaning will jump out at me.  I'll have to dig out the pattern I usually use and compare it.  I really do need a pattern that's written for the completely clueless. But, the rest of the foot should be pretty quick and easy anyway!



* You should have heard the cracking noises as I walked upstairs after having had Small Cat sitting on my ankles for two hours. Quite alarming really.

Eye of partridge

Oh blimey, I'm so slow on these socks! And this is only the first one.. But I'm onto the very lovely eye-of-partridge heel now.

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I'm liking the effect it makes with the hand-painted wool. Only trouble is not sure which slip-stitch row is next. Best leave it to the morning and daylight I think.

Here's Larger Cat burying his nose in the blanket last night. My feet are just below his nose so that's okay then, vote of nasal confidence from the cat.  Both cats love this blanket. It's Small Cat's turn tonight. Larger Cat just tried to pick a fight with her but the lady wasn't for budging.  My spot of an evening, like that of Sheldon, is one end of the settee.  But mine is better because on the small table next to me is my 'puter.  My feet are on a foot-stool, there is a  blanket on my legs (I get cold) and a cat on the blanket  - because I am the cats' spot. Decadent eh?   I can write my blog, watch television and be a piece of furniture for my pets all at the same time. On that comfortable note, good night!

Brightness

It's getting gloomy now, there's no getting away from it. So I bought myself some flowers for the kitchen windowsill - freesias this time, and as luck would have it, we had some sunshine today, bouncing on to the kitchen windowsill at just the right angle. There's nothing quite like sunshine on yellow freesias for cheering me up. Except perhaps daffodils of course..

I had a bit of time to myself late this afternoon while the rest of the family communed with computers and the like, so I lurked upstairs reading and knitting for a bit. The restarted sock is coming along nicely now though it's hard to see at this stage as it keeps rolling up. Quite fiddly to photograph, I could do with an extra hand.

If you're curious about my reading matter, I'm re-reading Ben Aaronovitch's Moon Over Soho for something like the third time.