Selenay's Ramblings

This is the cardigan that I made my sister for Christmas. I was really proud of it and she apparently wore it every day until about a week ago when someone stole it out of her bicycle basket while she was riding along. Tragedy! So I'll be making her a replacement to cheer her up.

I'm posting a bunch of photos and this is the first lot: my socks! I made these in November and I adore them. I've worn them at least once a week since I finished them and there is barely any sign of wear apart from a tiny bit of fuzzing on the sole.

You can see the rest with my other knitting projects here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/archerygirl/tags/knitting2009/

Yesterday I went up to London to meet up with my sister for sushi and yarn shopping. As we weren't due to meet up until 6pm and I didn't fancy trawling through trains during the rush hour, I decided to go up a couple of hours early.

Hmm. What on Earth could I do with myself?

And then I remembered that going to the British Library was on my "do to before leaving England" list and voila, my afternoon was sorted. I spent a very pleasant couple of hours wandering the exhibition galleries, looking at the Ramayana display and standing in the presence of Magna Carta. Is it sad that I can identify King John's Great Seal from ten paces?

Then I popped up to Oxford Street for a pre-emptive wander through the John Lewis yarn department and had to remind myself that the Rowan magazines weight far too much to take on the plane with me and I can buy them in Tangled Skeins (my new local yarn store) whenever I want after the move. I did leave with a pin cushion - to stop me using the arm of my chair as a pin cushion - and some self-striping sock yarn. historyterry - what size are your feet?

Then it was off to Itsu on Regent Street for sushi with my sister, which was absolutely fabulous and she introduced me to these tiny pots of incredibly intense chocolate mousse that I fell in love with. Must visit Itsu every time I return to England for visits.

After supper, we were back in JL making tough decisions about yarn for her the cardigan that I'll be making for her Christmas present. We finally settled on a teal colour to go with the cashew (it's stripy!) and cream borders. Sis nearly succumbed to the lure of a Rowan accessories book but the patterns are all fairly complicated (a lot of Fair Isle) and she doesn't yet know how to knit. I'm planning to teach her to knit and get her started on a simple scarf when she visits at Christmas. Once you're confident in knit and purl, everything else flows much more easily and a scarf is great for that kind of education. JL is evil because they knit up some of the patterns and display them so that you can marvel at how nice the garments are and how gorgeous the yarn feels. I resisted the lure, though, although I'm not sure how easy that will be once I'm not having to be concious of weight restrictions!

Today has been lots of rather mundane moving stuff. I transported a ton of magazines up to the dump (still got a few more to package and take, but I ran out of plastic bags) and put together a pile of stuff for shredding. The shredding pile isn't as big as I'd hoped :-( Still, there is the drawer under my bed to excavate so I'm sure that it will be getting added to. I'm predicting another dump trip next week to get rid of everything else that needs chucking.

I'm a terrible hoarder, but moving overseas is actually making me ruthless about chucking and shredding stuff. After all, when every extra kilo has to be paid for it gets hard to justify keeping crap "Just in case" when you know that there is only a 99.9999999% chance you'll ever need something again.

I thought that it was finally time to upload the photos of what I’ve been working on. I finished this in March but here are the photos of the baby cardigan.

The rest can be found at Baby Cardigan.

Last night I ploughed on with the new mittens through Holby City (now a BAFTA award winning continuing drama, dontcha know - sounds much more dignified than "cracktastic soap") and I got the cuff done and part way up the hand. I added an extra repeat of the cable pattern because I know that my hands are very long and so far it looks beautiful.

I'm knitting in the round on double pointed needles for the first time and I seem to be doing it OK because there is no sign of a seam between needles. Yay me! It's very exciting and there is actually a good chance that I'll have one mitten done by the end of the weekend. So they're quick as well as beautiful. Yay!

Then it's back to my sister's blanket for a few weeks. So far, we have 14 out of the 63 patches done and the first row has been crocheted together. Getting that first bit put together always makes a project feel like it's going somewhere.

In other things, I had a thought earlier this evening about characterisation in Girl's Own fiction. I'm currently reading Upper Fourth at Malory Towers (Enid Blyton) and I'm noticing the characters are a bit less rounded than the Chalet School characters. I know that many GO books don't have the deepest, most well-rounded characters. But it strikes me that some are much better in this department than others. Perhaps this is why I love Chalet School so much? Although EDB does things that modern writers would never get away with, she does give her characters more personality and layers than many of her contemporaries and her characters are allowed to grow with time. So far, in the fourth MT book, there isn't actually very much character progression for some of the characters and all of them are still rather 2D sketches.

A thought to ponder.

Yesterday I had to work and it was nasty. Today, thankfully, I have another day off. I am supposed to be going to the hospital this afternoon and I am currently looking out of the window and really wishing that I could just stay home. Blergh.

However, I have to go out because I need wrapping paper! I want gender-neutral new baby paper because the baby has yet to be birthed, but there probably won't be such a thing so I'll be settling for some reasonably neutral unpatterned coloured paper. Hmph.

The cardigan that I have been knitting for my hairdresser's baby is almost done. I've just got to sew up the side scenes and add some buttons. This project has taught me that I hate making buttonholes only marginally more than I hate using circular needles, although most of the project has been fun. My sewing skills are rather...er...non-existent, so I'm being very careful and sewing very slowly. Seems to be looking OK so far. I will attempt to post pictures tomorrow.

And now I should eat something before I traipse up to the hospital. The good news is that it's at least six weeks before I have to go back after this appointment!

Today I have watched a very embarrassing rugby game (why am I still an England fan?), done a bit of pottering around in some shops and knitted an entire sleeve for the baby cardigan.

The best bit about today is that my neck is feeling better. It's still twinging uncomfortably at the end of my range of movement, but at least I can move my head reasonably well without pain. This also meant that I got some sleep last night, thank god.

My sister is a lovely person and brought home the most indulgent, calorific, chocolately insane gateau I've ever seen from Patisserie Valerie for my Mum's birthday. It's gorgeous. Possibly one slice equals the recommended caloric intake for a week, but it's soooo good. She even brought vegan chocolate cake for my father. I was too crippled by neck pain to do anything useful in that area this year :-( Woe. And next year I won't be here to do anything. Woe again.

Still, lovely cake :-)

My hands are now stiffening up from excessive knitting, but do I care? Of course not! We're going out for Thai food for Mum's birthday and then coming home to watch movies and eat more evil cake. I may switch to crocheting the edge of my blanket while I watch, due to the excessive knitting issue. Or I may just spend the evening lying in a Thai-food-and-chocolate-cake included coma *bfg*