photos – Enchilada Sunrise

An Actual Knitting Post

No, really!

I haven’t done a lot of knitting (or spinning, and certainly not crochet) lately. And by lately, I mean… the last 18 months. Or thereabouts. But in the last week or two I’ve picked up a couple of projects that’ve been languishing and started work on them again.

First of all there’s a hat for Miss RA. Whether or not she’ll wear it is another matter. She doesn’t seem too keen on keeping hats on! Anyway, this is it so far:

And the other thing I’ve picked up again are the mittens for Mum’s shoebox project. I didn’t finish them for last year’s box, so I figure if I do them now then I can be ahead of the curve for this autumn.

I’ve been thinking I should also get at least one of the jumpers that are laying around in bits finally sewn up. Yeahhh. I’ll get right on that.

Welcome to the jungle family!

So, what with not having posted properly for ages again, I haven’t mentioned that there are two new additions to the family! One actual brand new person, and one fuzzy feline dictator.

First of all (not chronologically, but never mind that), my Favourite Niece, who is also my first and only niece or nephew, arrived in the big wide world last summer. Here she is aged 2 months:

photo of Ms RA and her Daddy — Favourite Niece aka Ms RA, with her Daddy

It's srs bznz, this growing up thing — It’s srs bznz, this growing up thing

And this is a more recent photo, aged nearly 6 months:

photo of Ms RA wth Mummy — Ms RA invites you to try some of her parsnips

Isn’t she adorable? *proud auntie face*

And secondly we have Mr Merlin McPurrlin, my new feline overlord. He is about 2 years old, loves his play tunnel and yellow-mouse, prefers to drink from the bath tap… and yeah, has me very well trained! He came to live with me back in the late spring, after having been left in a box outside the vet’s because he’d been spraying in his previous owner’s home. The vet gave him the snip, and surprise – no more spraying since then. He’s a lovely boy, and I’m very glad that I happened to pop into the vet at just the right time!

photo of Mr Merlin McPurrlin — Merlin McPurrlin, Lord of ~~The Remote Control~~ All The Things

Marking a century

My granddad would’ve been 100 years old today. Happy Birthday Poppa!

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.

Dagenham firemen - Poppa on the far right

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!

Busy busy busy

I’ve been running around doing all-sorts this week. I’ve been at C House a few times, at the library (hi Henry!), at the gym (!!!), to KnitJam, and I’ve had a visitor this weekend – my friend Charlotte. Whew! And now I’m starting all over again.

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 :-)

A decade of blogging

I very nearly forgot altogether, but yesterday was my “blogoversary”. The tenth anniversary of starting this blog, in fact.

It doesn’t feel like ten years, but then there have been some years where I’ve barely blogged at all, or at least times when I’ve been mostly using Livejournal or similar platforms instead. As I think I’ve said in previous anniversary posts, this blog has gone through a few changes in terms of its back-end platform – Blogger, Movable Type, and now WordPress – over the last decade. I feel pretty settled now, though. And at least I’m managing to post more, if not regularly.

Perhaps with this new blogging year, I should make that a mini-resolution: to pick a day and blog regularly once a week. After all, if I can blog every day for a month, I can do once a week at the least. In fact, since it’s Friday today, why not have Friday as my must-post day. If I can’t think of anything else to say, at least I could do a weekly round up. Preferably it’ll kick start me (again) into posting more frequently than that. Right then, I’m going to go off and stop talking about posting, and actually make a start on posting something with Real Content. Good night.

… and a Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone. I’m having a quiet but good one – I was going to be visiting Mum, but she’s feeling under the weather so I’ve stayed at home instead. So I thought I’d just jot a quick post down to wish everyone a fabulous 2011.

See you next year ;-)

Christmas prep

I’m in the middle of getting everything ready for Christmas. Actually, I feel that I’m doing quite well. I’ve done all my shopping except for a couple of small things (and I know what those are and where I’ll get them). Now I’m just waiting on a couple of deliveries, and of course finishing the things that I’m making myself. I think I’m doing alright on those too, luckily, so there shouldn’t be any last minute panics. Hooray!

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!

Oh baby, it’s cold outside!

I took a day off of blogging yesterday, but I’m going to see if I can now do the rest of December as well. If not, no big worry. I actually ventured out yesterday, and I’m glad I did, even though the pavements down the hill were icy:

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!

No(t much) Snow

We’ve had a little bit of snow today, but it hasn’t really settled. Which is good, because it meant that the rails and roads were OK for getting back from the Skunk Anansie gig at Brixton Academy last night. That was fantastic, by the way, and if I can find the words I’ll try to write up some kind of review.

Today, I’ve finally been working on the photo album for this site again. So, as an experiment, let’s try displaying a gallery from it on this post…

Continue reading “No(t much) Snow”

Travelling Woman shawl

Finally, belatedly, here are the pictures and info for my “Gap Year Travels” Travelling Woman shawl.

Pattern: Traveling Woman by Liz Abinante [Ravlink]
Yarn: The Yarn Yard Bonny in Byron Bay & Art Deco solid, and Wendy Sunbeam St. Ives 4ply Sock Wool in Dark Grey.
Needles: 4mm metal circulars.

Typing + tiredness = not working

Since I’m extremely tired today (I have new medication which is making me drowsy, hopefully just for the adjustment period, and every time I sit down somewhere relaxing I drop off!), I’m not going to say much again. I haven’t managed to finish the shawl yet, but just have the cast off edge to go. I’ve been setting the twist of some of my handspun:

(excuse the rubbish photo), and also marvelling over how the Xandermog can go from FULL ON PESTER mode to fast asleep, you-can’t-wake-me in under five minutes flat. Still when the result is this little face:

how can you complain?

Nearly done!

Just two rows to go on the Gap Year Travels shawl now:

Gap Year Travels / Travelling Woman shawl in progress — Travelling Woman "Gap Year Travels" shawl in progress

I’m planning to finish it and leave it blocking before I go to bed. Yay!

Late night blogging

Whoops… I’m really tired today, and I nearly forgot to post. Wouldn’t that have been a good start to NaBloPoMo. As it is I have no time to think up anything clever or interesting (as if there’s ever anything along those lines here!), so instead I shall post a photo of one of my recently completed knitting projects:

A pair of “handsocks”, aka fingerless mitts, for Mum. Her hands don’t get as painful if she keeps them warm, so these are really useful for that. They’ve completely stashbusted some of my left over sock yarn, so that’s good too.

Clap!

As I mentioned the other day, I’ve finished my Clapotis [Ravlink] at long long last – it’s only taken me nearly three years! Although to be fair, for most of that it was languishing in a bag with only the first section knitted.

So here are some photos of the finished object, anyway. I haven’t blocked it, as I like how it’s turned out as it is. It’s too warm to wear it at the moment, but as soon as the weather cools down, it’ll be in active service! Should make a change from wearing purple.

And talking of purple(-ish), I’ve been spinning away for the Tour de Fleece. More pictures from that tomorrow, I expect.

And they’re off!

So, I’ve started my spinning for the Tour de Fleece. As I said yesterday, I’m starting with two complementary braids from Limegreenjelly that I’m going to ply together. I’d actually spun up half of one of them already, so I have about 50g of that one left to do, then the whole of the second.

This is how much I already had spun:

and this is the remaining fibre, before I started spinning today:

Onwards!