Wednesday, 4 February 2009

January, what January?

Blog wise I seem to have skipped January completely. If only you could do that in real life. However this does mean there is a lot to put in a post today so I'll try to be as concise as possible.
I have decided to frog the shawl as I am not feeling the love for it at all. I just keep finding excuses to not pick it up. I think the problem is that it doesn't flow as you are knitting it and if I am not enjoying whilst the rows are small I'm going to hate it when the rows are longer. I still want to make a shawl with the blue cecilia and the silver beads and just have to work out which shawl I can add beads to. I have narrowed it down to three options, Matilda, Adamas and Go fly a kite. All have a regular pattern that will allow for the placing of a bead. But which to do? I know, I should swatch, but since when did I do the sensible thing.
The skittle vomit socks have also been frogged and reborn in a different pattern and I have nearly finished the first one. In amongst all this frogging I have actually finished two items, a pair of fingerless mitts for Chris at work and an Odessa hat for me. This one has been worn and I don't feel too silly in it.












































I have been looking at second hand spinning wheels on ebay and ravelry but am not really sure what to go for, there are so many different types and I had never even tried a wheel. So I joined the local spinning guild and got loads of good advice from a very friendly group of people. Even better they have a guild wheel that is available to borrow, so it is now sitting in my front room. I picked it up Sunday morning and then spent most of Sunday afternoon swearing at it. Its certainly not as easy as it looks. I did manage to produce some yarn, its very uneven but its yarn nonetheless. Since then things have improved and I am getting a lot better and swearing less. The only problem now is that I have run out of fibre! I am waiting for some to be delivered from an ebay seller and I do have a couple of braids of beautiful fibre from Limegreenjelly but I want to save them until I can do them justice.





















I have joined Twitter, I even managed to add it to the side bar of the blog. I'm not sure how much I'll use it, but its great for following people like Eddie Izzard and Stephen Fry who do use it. I'm not really sure that I can think of that many interesting updates about me but I'll try and add things that aren't too tedious or silly.
The only other thing to add before I go are a couple of obligatory snow photos, this was proper snow, the kind that shuts down the schools and gives the kids a day off to indulge in some real fun. My two made the most of it and produced a much better snowman than the December one. D and E had a mega snowball fight in the garden and R disappeared over to the park with her friends for the whole day, coming back soaking wet and extremely cold.