knit groups – Enchilada Sunrise

Digital Housekeeping

I’ve been doing housekeeping tasks on the computer all day¹, and I still haven’t even scratched the surface. Or that’s how it feels – I’ve backed a load of ebooks and photos up onto DVD, and cleared up my podcasts folder… and I still have far too much to do. I need to grab one of those programs that sorts out all the broken stuff in the registry, etc. Although I don’t know if I have room to install one. Oh noes, it’s all so difficult! Heh. Shall I just do a reformat and reinstall? It’s about time I did anyway. My poor computer can’t cope with much as it is – it’s getting a bit elderly, relatively speaking. If only I could (no offence, ‘puter) replace it. Not all of it, since some parts are just fine. But the most important components could do with replacing or boosting, no getting around it. Time to start saving up!

¹ OK, that’s a slight exaggeration, since I have been out to KnitJam this evening as well, and done a bit of spinning (while waiting for DVDs to burn, but never mind).

Fun things (Part 1?)

Alright, so I said I’d make sure I was doing at least one necessary thing and one thing for fun every day… how’ve I been doing so far?

Monday: Cleaned the bathroom and kitchen thoroughly; knitted and listened to podcasts.

Tuesday: Did my library volunteering (this doesn’t really count as a chore, but it’s a commitment, so I’ll count it!); went out to lunch and then round the Old Town with my Mum and visiting aunt and uncle.

Wednesday: Made a whole slew of necessary phone calls; went out for the day to Rye with Mum, aunt and uncle, and later to KnitJam.

Thursday: Waited in for a parcel and did housework; went to knit & natter at C House, took it easy in front of the telly (and caught up on Holby).

Friday: Did housework, sorted some paperwork; watched TV and knitted.

Saturday: Went to the vet, the chemist, the cash machine, the local shop and the post office (whew!); went geocaching along the seafront and found six caches, watched SCD then had a massively early night!

Sunday (today): Filled out a health cost help form (must remember to book my eye-test when/if that comes back), cleaned the kitchen; done a bit of knitting and listening to podcasts, and might pop out to do a geocache in a mo.

U is for Uninventive

Which is how I’m feeling today. I think it’s the heat – lovely as it is, I’m starting to get lethargic. I could just go for a nice snooze right about now! And I’m only just back from Knit & Natter at Carisbrooke House. I think I’ll go and find something relatively mindless to do that involves me moving around. Housework should do the trick! Not exciting, but necessary.

O is for Oh Dear

Ugh, I’ve lost almost all of today – I made the mistake of vegging out on my bed this afternoon to read… and apparently fell asleep at some time not long after lunch. Actually, that was probably why. Shouldn’t have laid down on a full stomach. Anyway, I’ve only just woken up. Or rather, I’ve just been woken up by a rather annoyed, and very persistent, cat. He wanted his supper. Actually, he probably wanted to go out as well, but he’s not getting that because it’s almost midnight and I’m going to go right back to bed and hopefully sleep a bit more. Will I manage to sleep til morning? Probably not, but I don’t want to stay up all night now because that will put me upside-down again. I’m already annoyed because I’ve missed going out to knitting tonight; I don’t want to miss anything else by being asleep during the day again if I can avoid it. I can’t remember right now if there’s anything else I’m supposed to be doing this week, but getting into bad sleeping habits is never a good idea. So, quick sandwich, then bed. Goodnight!

K is for Knitting in Public

So, today was World Wide Knit in Public Day (or at least, the start of WWKIP week) for 2010. We had a little meet up and knit in Princes Park in Eastbourne to mark the event – there were just four of us there in the end, but we had a good time. Or I did, anyway. I hope everyone else did!

We were there from 11am to 3pm, and as well as getting on with knitting and crochet of our own, the heel section of BigSock was cast on! A mere 500 stitches at its narrowest point, should be a doddle. Hah!

Of course, I didn’t get any of my jumper done… and what I did get knitted of my clapotis is probably going to have to be ripped back because I seem to have gained (or lost) a stitch somewhere! I’m out one, anyway. Oh well.

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!

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!

Od habbing uh coab

I was trying not to talk about it any more in the hope that it’d just go away… but it hasn’t. It’s no good. I have officially Got A Cold, which I’m really hoping isn’t going to be pig flu or whatever. I did feel particularly awful today, but having slept for most of the day (hence the late post) I’m feeling a bit brighter. So with a bit of luck I’ll be better still tomorrow and so on. I have things I need to do, and I’m already annoyed that I had to miss choir on Monday and KnitJam tonight. Bah!

Back to bed with me, then, and I will be better tomorrow, I will I will!

Is Oratoria the plural of Oratorio?

Actually, I’m fairly sure it’s just “Oratorios”. Which is what I’ve mostly been singing lately, now that I’m a member of Battle Choral Society. For any non-local people: no, we don’t wear chain mail, we don’t carry weaponry other than the heavy music, and we don’t make war on other local choral societies (although wouldn’t that be kind of fun? *g*). Just like Battle Wool Shop doesn’t sell combative yarn and needles (although, again…) and Battle Golf Club doesn’t practice an outdoor form of battle chess (I bet there is a Battle Chess Club, though, which may play normal or battle chess), it’s just that it’s based in the small town (large village?) of Battle. Which is so named because it’s where the Battle of Hastings took place, with the abbey being built and then the town growing around that in the last thousand years or so.

Anyway, history lesson over. I’ve been really enjoying being part of the choir, and would have been at rehearsals tonight if not for going down with this stupid cold – I’ve just got to the sneezy part, so I can’t very well go along and germify everyone else. Bah. At the moment we’re rehearsing for Haydn’s “The Creation” – concert at the end of the month! And just a couple of weeks ago was the first concert I’ve done with the choir: Handel’s “Messiah”, which is one of my all time favourites, and luckily something I’ve sung many many times, since much of the practice for it was done before I joined!

Right, if I want to be well enough for KnitJam on Wednesday, not to mention choir next week, I’d better take myself back to bed. I’m tempted to take my knitting with me, but I might be better off just trying to get some sleep. Early night vs knitting? Hmm, we’ll see.

Knit Jamming at Aardvark

Got back from Knit Jam a short while ago. Hi Jo! Hi Lesley! Hi Leila! Hi everyone else! And there are lots and lots of everyone elses now that we’re meeting at Aardvark. I suspect the scrummy cake has something to do with it! I really hope it carries on with this many people in the new year :-)

Anywho, I got a good chunk of knitting done, but there’s still more to go, so I’m off to slave over some pointy needles for a little while more before I go to bed. Not for long though: I’m tiiiired!

Carnival time!

It’s carnival week again, and I’m excited. Whee! I know it’s daft, but it does make me feel like I’m little again and it’s the summer holidays. *g* Not only that, but the Olympics starts technically-today (I’m going to bed any minute, really), which for me mainly means the Ravelympics. Which is like its own Olympic Games, only for knitting! No, really. I’m going to be having lots of fun with it anyway, and it might make me actually sit and watch some of the actual Games on telly if I have something to occupy myself with knitting-wise at the same time.

Since multiple affiliations are allowed, I’ve signed up to be in Team TARDIS (duh), Team Dog, Chicken and Aardvark (AKA the Brighton & Hove (and surrounding E Sx) Safari Knitters), and Team Posh Knitters. The ‘Events’ I’m doing are WIP Wrestling (because my WIPs need wrestling into submission very very badly!) plus the Handspun Heptathlon for Team DCA (yes, I’ve started spindle spinning, but no, I don’t have to do seven sub-events, it’s just a catchy title) and the Amigurumi-n-Toys Toss for Team TARDIS during which I’m going to actually try to crochet an Adipose. Well, it’s sposed to be a bit of a challenge, you see, so I thought trying two small projects in crafts that I’m a novice at would give me that and also give me a break from wrestling the WIPs so that doesn’t get to feel like a chore. There’s method in my madness! This time ;-)

Getting back to the carnival, there’s been various events going on all week and I’ve been down to a couple. I got well and truly drenched last Sunday, going down to the gig in the Old Town – elen_ancalima was visiting, so I was showing her the typical British summer seaside weekend ;-) Which of course includes sudden torrential rain! Anyway, I’m hoping to go down to a knitting exhibition thingy tomorrow afternoon, and of course to the main Carnival parade itself on Saturday.

Anyway, I think I’ll wrap this up now and get to bed. Zzzz. With a bit of luck, it should crosspost to LJ. However, I have now decided to change how this site works, so alterations to the look (as well as ‘my end’ of things) will be coming…. er…. some time this year? I have planning to do first! Night all.

Project 365 #7, Days 45-51: 23rd – 29th Feb

Still catching up! Here’s the rest of February: days 45 to 51 of my Project 365 photos. If you want to see all the photos so far, click on the Project 365 category link, or check out the Project 365 folder in the photo album.
On to the pics (click them for the full sized versions):

Continue reading “Project 365 #7, Days 45-51: 23rd – 29th Feb”

Project 365 #4, Days 17-24: 26th Jan – 2nd Feb

I’m still catching up, so I’ve put a few more days in at once this time. So here are days 17 to 24 of my Project 365 photos. If you want to see all the photos so far, click on the Project 365 category link, or check out the Project 365 folder in the photo album.

On to the pics (click them for the full sized versions):

Continue reading “Project 365 #4, Days 17-24: 26th Jan – 2nd Feb”

Where was I?

Both figuratively / mentally and literally…. um…. yes. My train of everything is well and truly lost! Let’s try and get back on track, shall we? This is probably going to be a massively long post, I warn you now! There’s also going to be a fair bit about mental health stuff, so feel free to skim :-)

So, starting from when I vanished back in December… well, for the three weeks leading up to Christmas I was pretty much knitting constantly. So much so that I cramped up my shoulder and ended up with an ouch-y left index finger joint! But eek, I had to get the Christmas knitting done!!! Well, as I already mentioned, I didn’t quite succeed, but I did get Mum’s Fetchings done, and I had a scarf finished that I gave her as well. Also within that time, I went to visit C for the weekend, and having been manic not too long beforehand, I think I ‘overworked’ myself, because once I got home again, I when I wasn’t knitting, I was sleeping. Zzzz!

Then, this site was down from 17th – 26th-ish December because of a server crash. It took the hosting company a while to be able to recreate the accounts and then restore the files. The flat files were about 6 weeks old but the databases were all up to date, so I’ve been able to easily restore the things that were still missing (photos, mainly). So that’s all good. Of course, during that time I had a million posts I wanted to make, and now I don’t remember what they were about ;-)

After Christmas, I crashed like a …. crashed out thing for a good ten days. Everyone tends to, I think, but annoyingly I can’t do anything by halves, so I hit a depressive slump with it: didn’t get up or eat or anything really. I slept, or I read – I got through about 15 books, actually. But mostly I slept. Luckily, I’d arranged with Clara, Ally & co. for them to come over for New Year’s. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have done anything for that… and if I’d been up to phoning them to cancel, I probably would have. But as it happened, Clara rang me and just asked me what time they should turn up. I don’t think she knew I was down, but that really is the best way to deal with me when I’m like that. Don’t leave me room to get out of things! So I pulled myself together, tidied up, and sorted out some nibbles and the like. We had a good time – just a chilled out evening, chatting and playing with little M. :-) After that, I was still down for a few more days, but I started to pull up again at the weekend after C helped me with a plan to get me firing on all cylinders again. Hooray!

Since then, I’ve posted my resolutions, which I’m doing OK with in general, and I’ve started Project 365. Mentally, I’ve cycled into a more manic phase, but overall I’ve been mostly within ‘normal’ parameters. I’ve also done something that I’d been sort of putting off for some time – I’ve gone and registered with the drop-in centre down the road. I think I was resisting it because part of me felt that only people with a “real disability” needed to go to somewhere like that. Or perhaps with a more severe disability than I like to perceive myself having, I don’t know. Ah, denial! I thought I was over you, but no! Anyway, it’s a really nice place, and I can go there as often as I want or need, to use whatever facilities I want to. Mainly, I think it’ll be useful for me to have somewhere to pop in when I know that I’m starting to slide one way or another and need to just be around other people to ground myself, and also it’s good to know that the support and advice services are there if I need them. And I have to admit that it’s a huge plus that it’s literally a minute’s walk (or less) from my front door. They do food too, very reasonably, so if I can’t cook, I can eat there. And I got to chat with three other people with bipolar while I was there, and it’s just kind of nice to have that face to face contact with others in the same boat. So yes. I’m going to keep that up.

Hmm, I think that kind of covers it. I’ve been working away on my WIPs, but I’ll talk more about that in a different post (with progress pics, whee). Oh, and I seem to have my sleeping pattern back to normal, so it’s back to the gym and everything this week as well. I missed Knit & Natter the Saturday before last, but my friend M is coming over tomorrow, and I’m planning to go this coming weekend. Now all I have to do is stick to the plan, but also not overdo it!

Falling off the yarn wagon

Ummmm….. it was my birthday and I’ll buy yarn if I want to?

So, I know I said I wasn’t going to buy any more yarn, and lord knows, I don’t exactly need any. Seriously, I’m all yarned out. You know that – you’ve seen my stash. I have lots. But those sock yarns are just so scrummy, and apparently don’t count towards your stash anyway. Of course they still dent your bank balance a bit, but whoops, too late now! But it was my birthday last month, so I treated myself to some yarn that I had been stalking for a while. And then I decided that that’ll be it until… well, until I’ve knitted a lot of it up!

That wasn’t me falling off the yarn wagon, though – at that point, I wasn’t even on it despite my oh so good intentions. I was the person half-heartedly jogging along behind the wagon, occasionally making a vague jump up but not quite getting on board. But last month when I began clearing out my stash, I made my yarn diet ‘resolution’. I was then really good and resisted all yarn except for the YY glove kit that I already mentioned… which I justified because [a] it’s for something I need (gloves) [b] it counts as my sock yarn allowance, and [c] the money for it came from the yarn I’d sold on eBay.

Howwwwwever, I tripped and bought yarn and stuff after Knit & Natter last Saturday. The fatal flaw with K&N is that I’d have to leave early to catch my bus back home… and I don’t want to do that. So that leaves me with almost an hour to kill when it finishes. Of course I’m going to go to the yarn shop (the group meets in the pub opposite). Actually I still haven’t broken my yarn diet rules¹, but I feel kind of bad nevertheless. I got some Debbie Bliss Rialto DK, which is for a Christmas gift and was a planned purchase, and some sock yarn – Regia’s Kaffe Fassett Design Line in Mirage Fire, which I think is new. I refrained from buying more than one lot of sock yarn, though, so at least that’s something! *g* I did succumb to the lure of a couple of Addi Turbo bamboo circular needles, though. I’m using one pair already, and they are lovely and smooth with a non-tangley cord and all. But the join between the bamboo and the bit that connects it to the cord isn’t smooth. There’s a definite jump that the stitches catch on all the time. :-/ Still, maybe I can do something about it. I really hope so, because they’re lovely in every other respect, and I don’t want to spoil the very nice yarn that’s being knit on them. Anyone have any advice about that?

So yeah, I haven’t technically fallen off the wagon, but I felt the need to confess my purchases anyway. That’s probably the best way of keeping on top of what I do buy within my allowance and making sure I don’t slip. Keep it all public so I’ll be too embarrassed to fail! Think it’ll work?

¹ To re-cap:

No more yarn for larger projects until I’ve used the yarn I already have in my stash which is mentally assigned to things in my queue.
Budget the amount of sock yarn / single skeins that I can buy: this will be sock club yarn plus an allowance of £15 a month max. This should probably also cover needles and notions as well, come to think of it. And books.
Yarn for gifts and commissions doesn’t count, but I am going to try to knit from my stash for those as well where possible.