Feasgar Math!

And that's good afternoon/evening in Gaelic, because I needed a post title and sometimes it's easier to follow a theme.

Chilly evening in fact - I went for a very quick walk to get some air earlier. It was frosty and foggy, and there was a sprinkling of snow last night, so I wasn't out for long. There was however that brilliant crunch crunch you get walking on a thin layer of snow that's frozen harder. 

The sock did not get finished. It took a bit longer to get to the toe shaping than I had anticipated, but it should go a bit more quickly tomorrow if I get the opportunity.

So close...

 According to my phone I started these socks five years ago, so it's about time really! I'm looking forward to wearing them, it's definitely woolly socks weather just now. I have noticed there's an annoying gap at the side of the heel flap. I always seem to get that no matter how hard I try not to. I don't know if that's just my quirk but I suspect it's a common problem.

Right, it's late, I must sleep. But look three days posts in a row - pretty good!

Noswaith dda!

 (And they say you can't learn anything from reality tv*)

I am so ready for my bed! I don't even know why I'm so tired today - I think I slept alright last night, though I did that annoying thing of waking up half an hour before my alarm was supposed to go off. So I'm at least half an hour short!

Nothing of import to impart - have a picture of a Zombie Apocalypse: 

Town centre, three weeks before Christmas. Lights and decorations up, hardly anybody around, most things shut. I was down there to go the Post Office and it was eerie walking through the centre. Ah well, hopefully things will change on the 11th, though I feel a bit superstitious even thinking it. In the meantime I have a sock to finish. Well, lots of other things to do as well obviously, but I have a second sock that is almost almost at the toe shaping. Maybe tomorrow's post (look at me, committing to another post..) will be a Pair of Socks!

* It's Welsh for 'good evening'. Ant and Dec taught me that.

Let's see

I had  this mad idea that I'd get back to blogging in December - and I just remembered at ten past ten while watching IACGMOOH!  So here we go..

Still binge-knitting Fair Isle hats! 

We're in level 4 restrictions where I am which is sort of lockdown again so I'm furloughed again, though hopefully only until the 11th. Silly telly has perked me up recently - Bake Off, I'm a Celebrity, and Strictly overlapped briefly, truly a golden age! And then there is the non-silly televisual bliss that is The Repair Shop. Honestly I haven't watched this much tv in years! 

The Elder Offspring (now really too old to be the Boychild) and I went for a walk this evening to have a look at everybody's festive lights. Turns out our street is the best for outdoor lights in our immediate area - largely due to the lovely Retired Contingent scattered around the street who are big kids when it comes to Christmas lights, and it's not all because they have grandchildren! No inflatable Santas or Snowmen thankfully - they creep me out a bit... It all looks lovely - it's earlier than normal but I think we were in need of some twinkliness in the gloom.

Wandering back

I didn't really mean to have a whole year's break from blogging. It was partly technical - most of my photos are on my phone these days, and getting them from phone to computer has been a bit of a faff, but the other day Miss M (now an actual teenager! Teenager!) discovered how to transfer pics an easier way, so that's good. I'm actually writing this from my phone at the moment as I can't get to my pc just now, but it's difficult to type and to see what I'm typing in fact. Anyway, that's neither here nor there..

What have I been up to since I last posted? Well, a lot of Fair Isle knitting - that square I did with my plant-dyed wool set me off again, and then the Shetland MRI Scanner appeal released the fund-raising Harriet's Hat pattern (followed by Harriet's Headband, Harriet's Cowl and I think mittens and gloves patterns too), so I knitted one and then another, and then a headband, and so on. And so it came to pass that I had a ridiculous number of items of headwear. 

Looking back on my blog I can see that a few years ago I actually said something along the lines of 'but there's only so many hats I can reasonably wear'! Apparently I forgot that. Equally apparently I was completely wrong! 😀

In other news, just before New Year our smallcat Hester, lover of fine knitwear,  died having been diagnosed with lymphoma in December, which broke my heart. And then 2020 has happened and we all know how flippin' marvellous that's been don't we? Through it all I've been knitting this and that, mostly Fair Isle, and designing a bit, so I should try to get that written up properly and into pdf format. 

Last weekend I did a bit of dyeing, using an iron modifier for the first time - that's the results in the pic up there somewhere (pointing vaguely upwards) - so that was a positive. The dyestuff was sage leaves I have loads in the garden), so at least it smelled delicious.  It would be good to do a bit more, but although I'm currently furloughed and ostensibly have the time, it's space I'm short of with us all here, so any dyeing will be when it fits in with everybody else. 

Oh, and although I may have only have Boycat available for sitting-on-knitting duties now, you'll be glad to hear he takes his responsibilities seriously and has extended his remit to cover sitting-on-knitters'-graph-paper-while-it's-in-use. That's my boy... Hester would have been proud. 

So if anybody still reads this, hello, hope you're well! 

And some more knitting

Hello universe! It's me!  Among the many things going on recently I finally got round to doing a bit of knitting with my plant-dyed yarns - about time really, I've been saying all along that I'd like to try some Fair Isle with my own colours. It's just a sample to try out the way the colours work together - the yellow (dyed with marigolds) turned out to be a bit strong and dominant really, and I think it probably would have a bit better with the horsetail yellow that's the yellow skein at the top in the picture above. However it was fun to knit - fun just to do a sample actually, knitting for the pleasure of knitting rather than to make a specific thing.

And the reverse is always kind of fun too!

It was an absolute pain in the bum to knit flat though - I've always knitted Fair Isle in the round, but couldn't find my DPNs, and the circ I found was too long for looping so I just thought I'd knit flat. The main area was irritating but do-able, but knitting the rib was so frustrating! I'm always astonished to see Fair Isle knitting patterns that are knitted flat - it's just making it harder for yourself. Yes, if you've never knitted in the round before it means you have to learn that first, but it's not difficult and so worth it when you come to do Fair Isle - you get to see the pattern growing before your eyes, and most importantly, you spot almost immediately when you've miscounted/been distracted by Doctor Who, and can rectify it straight away.

In other news, the Boy has just finished his Nat5 exams, which is a huge relief as they seemed to last forever and he'd got to the point where he couldn't see or even imagine beyond them (remember that feeling?). His last exam was yesterday and today was his last day of study leave, so although I was working this morning we were able to celebrate by watching two episodes of Doctor Who that he vaguely remembered but that I had Never Seen - how can that even have happened?!

Oh, look - it's some knitting!

It feels like forever since I last blogged about knitting! So here's my current work-in-progress - a razorshell lace scarf in the same wool I made a hat in last winter, so I will be matching!  I did one of these scarves a few years ago - it was one of my early attempts at lace and it took me f-o-r-e-v-e-r, partly because it used 4-ply (this one's in aran), and partly because I hadn't done a lot of lace knitting and although it's a simple pattern I had to concentrate. It shows how much of knitting is just down to practice and becoming familiar with a technique, because the latest scarf seems amazingly easy compared with the old one. I can pretty much knit it without paying attention and if I do go blank for a moment it's easy to 'read' what I should be doing. So it's very nearly mindless knitting that I can do while watching telly - currently we are watching Bones which we managed never to see while it was on (yep, we missed 12 whole seasons).

Anyway, enough knitting - look what Miss M sewed! The Great British Sewing Bee is back and Miss M felt inspired by it, so she sat down and made a needle-case yesterday!

Isn't it fab?

She's very proud of it because it's the first time she's sewn with 'actual fabric' rather than 'tea-towels and old curtains'. She's made a few things using tea-towels as the fabric (her swimming-bag for example) and I gave her the lining from an old pair of curtains to mess around with and practice her 'driving' on the sewing-machine. I should really do that myself - I'm not very good at sewing curves on a sewing machine!

Calm January

My aim for January was for it to be relatively calm. It hasn't really been calm of course - life tends towards busy after all, but after the frenzy that was December it was nice to calm down a bit.

It was very cold today, by the standards of this neck of the woods - my car said it was -7°C, and it felt it. But it was (mostly) clear and bright and it was my day off so I went for a quick walk, and the colours were lovely. Very soothing. It's a funny thing, but the difference between -1 or -2 and chillier numbers like -6 or -7 seems really palpable. Freezing, is well, freezing, but in a sort of 'hat and gloves will sort it' kind of way, whereas today was definitely 'could be doing with thermals under my clothes, oh my god my thighs have gone numb' kind of weather. In fact I got a bit chilled trying to get one of the cats back in this evening and have been wearing a bobble-hat and scarf ever since...

I read something yesterday about enjoying January and appreciating the calmer colours after the glitter/tinsel/fairy-lights of December, and thought that perhaps I approach January in the wrong way, trying to plough through it. I always try to enjoy what I can but maybe I should try to appreciate its inherent Januaryness in some way. Still, a bit late now - a thought for next year maybe!