webuyanycat.com has valued my cat at £14.33.

I think I’ll keep him a while and see if he appreciates – I spent more than 200 times that on him last year, and I need to make some of that back somewhere. ;-)

That’s the two of us together when I was small.  He died a few years ago now, and for another few years before that wasn’t really ‘himself’ due to Alzheimer’s, but other than that he was busy and active his whole life.  He was a fireman in London during the Blitz.

He then stayed on in the fire service for the rest of his working life.  He’s on the far right in the above cartoon – I think the date on it is 1949, but it could be ’48 or even ’40.  I won’t go into some of the stories he had to tell now, but there were some dramatic ones!  He travelled a lot, too, I think mostly after he’d retired.

So that’s it, really – happy birthday to you, Poppa, and Happy Centenary!

I’m going to the gym with the bro and also sometimes with my upstairs neighbour.  It’s definitely a good plan to have gym buddies.  We’re planning to go to pilates, too.  Should be fun!

In knitting news, I’ve finished my first project for 2011: the Snapdragon Tam for my sister-in-law:

Pattern: Snapdragon Tam by Ysolda Teague [Ravlink]
Yarn: Elle Family Favourites DK in Gold.
Needles: 4mm metal circulars.

I am pleased with it, and it was fun to knit, too :-)

The scarf for Mum was the Branching Out pattern [Ravlink], and I knitted it in a lovely Merino / Tencel blend that I spun on the wheel – the first time I’ve knit with my own handspun.  I just left it as a single, and it worked really well (imo, anyway!) and I like the way the colour repeats came out.  Mum says she really likes it too, which is the main thing!

I also joined two Christmas swaps, one through the Limegreenjelly group, and one through Plurk.  The post was / is still being less kind where those are concerned.  It seems to have eaten the parcel from the latter altogether, but I have now had my LGJ parcel from Cal, and a fabulous one it is too:

Two braids of LGJ fibre (one Merino/Silk, one Merino, yum!), a beautiful skein of Posh Yarn Elinor, an Orange Blossom perfume stick which I think is from Lush, mini Green & Black’s choccy bars (om nom nom!), a set of Knit Pro interchangeable needle tips and a cable for them (which spookily I’ve been wanting for ages), and an adorable Lego keyring. :-D  I just hope she likes her gifts from me as much as I do mine.

See you next year ;-)

Because all I’ve been working on recently are the Christmas things, I don’t have any pictures to post in case someone comes across this.  Well, maybe this one:

And now I’m going back to the Christmas crafting.  TTFN!

Today, it’s a tad snowier than it was yesterday, and it’s snowing again now.  No buses are running, and there’s very little traffic in general.  My brother’s friend was mostly OK in his Jeep, but I wouldn’t want to drive in this weather.  It’s a bit deep on my road, and we’re not likely to get gritted:

Brrr!

Thank you very much.

In weather news, it snowed.  Luckily it didn’t start laying on the ground until I was back home again today, but now there’s a good covering out there.  Brrrr!

I hope I can make it to the library tomorrow!  I’ll get up early and check the bus info page.  Which means, I think, it’s time for a cosy early night under my nice warm duvet! Goodnight, internet.