Lou – Page 8 – Enchilada Sunrise

D is for DIY

My brother is here today to do some DIY for me… which perhaps means it’s not strictly DIY since all I’m going to be doing is directing proceedings a bit. It’s going to be less stressful all round this way, though. Or at least, that’s the plan! At the moment he’s gone off down the road in search of rawl plugs and masonry screws (and a 9v battery) while I continue tidying up in preparation for Charlotte’s visit this weekend. Or, OK, while I sit here blogging. But I’m going to go and get on with the tidying in a minute!

Actually, I should probably do that now, since she’ll be here soon. Wish me luck, and firmly-affixed-to-the-walls mirrors!

C is for (The) Crazy

Or to be a little more politically correct, (my) mental health. I don’t have all that much to say about it, really, but I suppose it has been the reason for my sporadic posting over the ten months or so. I started the long slow slide into a depressive phase probably in last August, but because it was gradual (and not constant), I didn’t notice for a while. It wasn’t much fun towards the end of last year, but this year I’ve been gradually picking up again, and I’ve been feeling properly myself again – it’s funny how you don’t notice that you weren’t until you suddenly are again – since some time in April. Hoorah! I have a really nice new psychiatrist (the previous one moved on to a neighbouring area) too, and I’ve been getting other support from the community mental health team which has been an enormous help in getting back on my metaphorical feet. In summary, I feel better, and I’m looking forward to the Bipolar Group course that’s starting next week, which is a self-management and education … thing. It’s going to be useful.

Today’s NaBloPoMo prompt is: Define “freedom”.

Hmmm. Freedom is… standing near the sea on a stormy day, salt on your lips from the wind whipping off it strongly enough to almost blow you off you feet; just jumping in the car (or on the bus, or on a plane) and going; living how you want to live; most importantly, freedom is being able to make your own choices – whether by yourself or in conjunction with others, as long as you choose the method – voice them, act on them, without persecution or oppression.

So yeah. I guess C is also for Choice.

B is for Books

Books… I love books. I’m sure I’ve mentioned that before. I love reading books (obviously), and owning books – this last is becoming more of a problem since I have less than no shelf space left. However, my reading does tend to be within a fairly narrow group of genres: sci-fi, space opera, fantasy, urban fantasy, paranormal, and historical (romance). Or any combination thereof. I did try the seasonal reading challenges on Goodreads with the intention of broadening my reading somewhat, but I just ended up fitting the books I already wanted to read to the challenges for the most part. Now, I’m doing the 144 Books in a Year challenge, but that has no restrictions whatsoever apart from a minimum length.

So, recommend me some books? Anyone? Also, one of the girls at KnitJam tonight invited me to come along and join a book group that they’re starting up through the library where she works. She said they want some people to come along who aren’t staff so they don’t end up talking shop all night. So yay, that should be fun!

Today’s prompt is: What’s your favourite poem? (And if you don’t have one, why?)

Actually… I don’t really have one. Mainly because I don’t actually read much poetry. Whenever I do, I like just about everything I do read, so why I don’t read more I don’t know. I do really like a lot of the Shakespeare sonnets, and I’m rather fond of “Kubla Khan” by Coleridge; partly for it’s lyricism and partly because it’s nuts!

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

Marvellous!

A is for Ambition

I’ve decided that a good way to keep myself going with the daily posting is to do the meme / exercise that I’ve seen on some other blogs, and do a letter of the alphabet each day. Obviously that leaves four days, so I’ll do a week of alphabet then a day of either something random, or doubling up on a letter. I’ll decide that part when I get there!

So, A is for “Ambition”. Which can be broken down into both short and long term goals:

Maintaining the daily blogging through this month, and also doing IComLeavWe at the end of the month.
Possibly do 750words.com (depending on time).
Sort out the photo album on this thing!
New site design (also for here).
Finish at least one knitting project – try sewing up the Menace jumper, for example. And keep working on the Clapotis.
Make some blog posts updating my knitting progress – what I’ve been doing over the last few months as well as what I’m doing now, since I haven’t posted for so long.
Write up the patterns I’ve designed. Finally!

“Ambition” also works pretty well for the NaBloPoMo prompt for today – I may or may not do these every day, it depends what appeals to me. But the one for today is:

When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I wanted to be a teacher. Boring, I know! Specifically, I think I wanted to be an English teacher, because I loved reading and writing. On slightly more mature reflection, I decided that the idea of dealing with a classroom full of teenagers was an appalling one, so I changed my mind to librarian. Needless to say, I’m in neither profession now, although I have done some one-to-one music tuition and enjoyed that.

And I’m back again

Oh dear, I haven’t posted for far too long! A billionty years!! Or to be more precise, just over five months. Whoops! I don’t know where the time’s gone to. I’ve obviously been busy doing… stuff. Yeah, that’ll be it.

One of the things I have been doing is knitting. I’ve actually got a bit of decision-itis at the moment. An inflammation of the decisions, oh noes! I’ve been feeling impatient to finish things, but having trouble choosing which one to pick up. For now, I’m mostly knitting on my Clapotis [Ravlink] and planning to sew up my Menace jumper… but not actually doing it.

Anyway, I’m going to try to blog more often, and to that end I’m going to try NaBloPoMo for June. I think I actually have some possibility of finishing it, because I have actually been writing regularly on 750words.com, and if I can manage that for a long streak, then I can do a daily blog post. My problem might actually be not going on for too long, in fact. Now, I shall go to bed so that I can get started properly tomorrow.

Merry Christmas everyone :-)

I’m just popping by to wish everybody a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from both me and the Xandermog.

Happy Christmas from Lou and Xandermog

I’m looking forward to spending a lovely day with the family¹, cooking together, eating til we feel slightly ill, giving pressies², and of course watching the Doctor Who special and other Christmas telly. I hope you all have an equally excellent one planned if you’re celebrating, and if you’re not, then have a lovely day regardless.

Do I have a New Year’s resolution? Try to post more often, of course! ;-) Probably also some others, but I’ll go in to that more in January.

In other news, if you’ve been here before you might notice that I have a new seasonal theme for the site. I was going to do a little bit of tweaking to get the Ravelry progress bars working with it, and change the non-blog pages a little, but I haven’t had time, and I think it looks fine as it is anyway. Hooray! Thank you to the Amberpanther team for making it available :-)

¹ Mum, brother and new sister-in-law.
² Which is more fun than the receiving to be honest, since I pretty much know what I’m getting already.

All Hands on Deck

I haven’t blogged much recently because I’ve been knitting. Which means I don’t have enough hands to type at the same time! I should at least be mostly done with the things I’m knitting as Christmas presents. Ahem. I might be completely done, who knows? I probably would have been fine, but Mum asked me for mittens which I then had to factor in… and it all went a little bit wonky. Not too much though.

Other than present knitting, I’ve finished my gloves (pictures soon), done a bit of spinning at the 1066 Spinners group, and of course have been Christmas shopping. There’s an open air ice rink in town for the festive season, so Jo and I are hoping to go down there at some point. Although it’s just started snowing today, so I spose it depends how bad that gets. I also did an hour of carolling at the local hospital last night with choir. I really love singing carols, so that was lots of fun. Even though I did have to stand in the front row where people can – oh no!!! – see me! Happily for my ridiculous stage fright, most people didn’t stop and stare: we were in the foyer, so the majority of the people just passed through.

Anyway, I’d better go and have dinner before KnitJam tonight. I’m sure there was something else I was planning to blog about, but I’m sure it’ll come back to me. If not, it probably wasn’t important!

I killed it!

My photo album, that is. Ooops. And yes, this time I think it really is gone – I was attempting to set up the new version of it using the NextGEN Gallery plugin within WordPress, and I guess that clashed somehow with the Coppermine script, because it’s all fallen down and the photos themselves won’t even show up as direct links. They’re definitely physically there on the server, but I’m getting 404s when I try to reach them. I don’t know why that is (though I have a suspicion). So strange.

Anyway, that means that pretty much all of the photos on the blog are broken for the time being. I’m going to try to get that fixed over the next couple of days, but I doubt it’ll happen tonight. I have a concert to sing in! But I might be wide awake after that, so I might make a start then after all. Now, though, I’d better finish getting ready. Concert blacks, here I come…

Crimble Shopping

Yesterday, I went Christmas shopping with the family in Canterbury. I had some kind of idea in my head that I’d blitz through and buy presents for everyone. Uh, no. I managed to buy cards, wrapping paper… and a new dressing gown and slippers for myself, since my old ones had pretty much died. However, I think I do now know what I’m going to get for everyone. I’m just going to buy it online!

We did see some reindeer, though, in a pen outside BHS. Okey-dokey! They seemed quite happy with all the attention, though, and two of them kept pushing their noses though the fence and getting their heads rubbed by the people who’d come to see them (anti-septic hand gel was provided to use afterwards, probably because of that thing with kids catching E.coli after stroking farm animals). I just took a couple of photos:

Reindeer in Canterbury

Aww, look at the baby one!

Let There Be Glove

My “Damson Gloves” [Ravlink] are my current main knitting work in progress. I have no gloves, you see! I lost mine a couple of years ago, and it seemed silly to buy new ones when I could make some, so I started on these. And, um… I finished one plus just past the cuff of the second! It wasn’t even like knitting the fingers were as fiddly as I’d been afraid they might be. I think I got distracted with gift knitting and things with deadlines, and just lost the momentum on them. And of course, every time I remembered them again since, it was already cold weather. I do have nice warm fingerless gloves, although that’s not quite the same.

This year, however, I’ve picked them up again. Or picked up glove no.2, to be more accurate. I’d actually knitted up to part of the thumb gusset, but I didn’t actually know exactly how far up. So I ripped it out (it was only a few inches, after all) and started again. Honestly, I don’t know why I didn’t do so sooner. Well, I do – I had lots of other knitting that I was concentrating on, and these didn’t have a deadline. But now I want gloves, and the weather is getting colder! So this is how I’m doing:

Actually, I’ve now got a little further than that – those photos are from a couple of days ago, and I’ve now knit the little finger and started on the ring finger. If I concentrate on them for another couple of days, I should be finished. Hoorah!

I don’t think I ever did a project info post for these gloves, so here it is now:

Pattern: Basic Glove Pattern (from The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns) by Ann Budd [Ravlink] using a 1×1 rib cuff, Wavy Rib up the thumb and Claw Pattern Cable with Bobbles on the back of the hand (both from The Harmony Guides Vol.2, pp.70 & 76).
Yarn: Yarn Yard Hug in ‘Damson’.
Needles: 3.25mm Addi Turbo bamboo circular (80cm)
Ravelry Project Page: Damson Gloves

With a bit of luck, my next post about these will be to show off the finished versions!

Oh well

Well, I had intended to keep on posting as much as possible for NaBloPoMo, but it turns out that wasn’t to be! My landline was dead as a Dodo for a few days, and my internet connection with it. BT fixed it today – they didn’t have to come here, so I assume it was a problem at the exchange – so at least I’m back just in time to take part in IComLeavWe instead. Or sort-of as well: I might as well have a go at posting every day for the rest of the month, at least. NaBloPoMo does keep running year round anyway, so I might try again next month. I think they have themes for months that aren’t November, which might also be a help if I run out of inspiration! Or I could borrow an idea from Paula, who has been using an alphabet theme for this month. That could definitely be fun.

Anyway, IComLeavWe is the name-smush for International Comment Leaving Week, so starting today and continuing until 28th, I need to leave comments for at least five people every day, and return at least one comment (assuming I have any here to answer back to, I guess!). Off I go!

Spinning again

As well as not having blogged since July, I haven’t done any spinning since then either. During the blogathon, I posted that I was spinning some gorgeous merino fibre. I got maybe 10g of the 100g braid actually done, and the spinning wheel has been in a corner ever since. I suppose I sort of lost my spinning mojo / motivation, then I was busy with other things. But I’m now feeling much more motivated, and I suddenly felt like actually finishing that. So, yesterday I hoiked the wheel back out of the corner, sat it in front of the telly, and spun all through Strictly Come Dancing and Casualty. And then, because I was on a bit of a roll, I put on the last two eps of Flash Forward which I still had to catch up on, and kept going. I’d split the braid into two approx 50g sections so that I could spin two roughly equal bobbins full, and I’d been aiming to finish the rest of the first 50g. In fact, I finished that first bobbin, and now I’m half way through the second:

I’m going to see if I can get a bit more done tonight before I go to bed. I’m still on a little bit of a sci-fi high from the new Doctor Who episode / special tonight, “The Waters of Mars”. Can’t wait til the next one at Christmas! But I need to wind down a bit more, so a bit of podcast listening and spinning should do the trick. Hopefully, I’ll get these singles bobbins finished and then plied within the next couple of days. I might use the remainder of my birthday money to get a niddy noddy, too. That’ll make winding the finished yarn back off the bobbin much easier.

D’oh!

It all went wrong! I completely forgot to post on Sunday and Monday because I was pretty busy both days and not in much – over at Mum’s Sunday evening, and out doing various things on Monday, including an appointment at the CMHT and choir in the evening. Then on Tuesday I remembered, and wrote this post (or most of it so far, anyway). And oh dear, I forgot to hit the actual “Publish” button, didn’t I?

I ended up going out unexpectedly on both Wednesday and yesterday, so blogging slipped my mind yet again. So here we are on Friday, and I’ve just noticed that this post is still sitting in Draft state. Ooooooops.

Must Try Harder. Yes.

Battle Bonfire

Hopefully I’ll be off to Battle Bonfire tonight with the family – I have to ring my Mum and brother to confirm if they’re all going, but at least according to the Beeb Weather, it’s going to be a clear night for it. I was a bit worried yesterday, but so far November seems to be alternating rainy and bright days.

I wish I’d got those gloves finished (I have one!) but I am working on them again now at least. Maybe I’ll actually get them done in time before spring this year. I think second glove syndrome is even worse than second sock syndrome, even if it isn’t as nicely alliterative. I do have some nice thick armwarmers / fingerless mitts to wear for tonight, anyhow, and I’ll be warmly wrapped up otherwise. Um, is it weird that one of my favourite things about bonfire night is being out in the cold but all wrapped up warm against it? Well, that and the procession and effigy exploding. Ahem.

Insufficient Yarn Error

The main project that I’ve been knitting on recently has been the Ishbel scarf, and I was using some really lovely soft, squishy yarn for it: some BFL sockweight by Nimu.

[thumb:1150:c:t=]

Isn’t it preeeeeeeeeetty? I know you can’t see it terribly well in that picture because it’s only some of the stocking stitch portion. But trust me, it’s lovely – the colour of ripe blackberries. The pattern calls for 300m of yarn, the skein was 365m. I used the suggested needle size because I liked the drape of the fabric that gave me, although it put my gauge a little bit off. That’s not important in a scarf, triangular or not, right? Well, I knitted all of the stocking stitch section, and thought I still had plenty of yarn. The I started on the lace charts: chart A, then B, then as I started A again I began to get a bit worried. I kept going though. Right up until I ran out of yarn with essentially 8 rows to go. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Has my dodgy gauge has eaten more yarn, or something? I’m not sure that makes sense – I haven’t knitted more stitches, after all. I’ve got more stitches to the inch than I should have: that means that to get suggested gauge, I’d have to go up a needle size or two, thus making larger stitches, and therefore less per inch. My stitches are smaller, so they should be using less yarn, right? The resulting scarf must be a bit smaller than intended, that’s all.

As I see it, I have a couple of choices: rip out the whole thing (noooo!) and start again with different needles or yarn, or knit the remaining few rows in something else. But what? I only have this one skein of lovely Nimu ‘Striding Edge’ BFL, and I love the way it’s feeling so much that I do want to use if for this project. Bah. My first instinct is to edge it in a black yarn, since it’s such a dark colour to start with. But the only black yarn I have in what to my naked eye looks like a comparable thickness (I mentioned that it’s a very squishy sockweight, and it’s relatively loose-spun) is acrylic DK. No. I also have some similarly squishy sock yarn by the Yarn Yard – their merino ‘Hug’ yarn, in a couple of colours that might do:

[thumb:906:c:t=Mysterion][thumb:612:c:t=Damson][thumb:823:c:t=Damson knit up]

I don’t know which, if either, would be better though. So I’m posting a poll. Help meeeeeee!

[poll id=”3″]

You know what’s really annoying, though? This is the fourth time I’ve run out of yarn on a project recently. I must be doing something wrong.