Habit – llamo (pronounced yam-oh)
It seems that the way to get Lily to practise is to be playing yourself and allow yourself to be kicked off.
Plus, hands up who thinks she looks freakishly like steve here.
Habit – air guitar
Air guitar/mike is nearly always better with badminton bat accessory. This is what the theme to “Magi-Nation” looks like…
Habit – sprouts
A sprout is not just for Christmas. At least, not in this house.
my mummy’s an alien!
This is what Joel says when he shows people my new gloves. I’ve had the pattern for these in my favourites for a while, but haven’t been moved to make them before now. I adapted the size to my short/wide hands, as when i cast on they seemed a little narrow.
Having finished them, making them a little wider, they are now (of course) too wide and stand off my hands mostly. Well, at least the cuffs fit…
The intention with the fingers is to give additional dexterity without having to take your gloves off. However, it turns out that most of the things I want to do, I need to take my gloves off altogether anyway. It was a nice thought, anyway.
And so, I give you Tridactyl Gloves, made with some malabrigo that my bezzie gave me…
Habit – the sink
It’s really rare that all of the washing up is on *that* side of the sink…
New comfy fit well heritage sox
Following a brief but enthusiastic campaign, Steve’ substandard Christmas present socks have now been replaced with some Much Better socks.
Knitted from a yarn I fell in love with, Heritage DK, in the colour I love, I attempted a reverse version of the fit well socks the Christmas ones were made with. But with DK yarn instead of sock yarn. I need to work out a way of knitting toe-up which allows decreases each row for the first few rows (I’ve been doing left/right-leaning increases which don’t lend themselves to being worked every row elegantly), because the only criticism (I KNOW – knit a chap a pair of socks and does he stop carping – no he doesn’t) of these when they were tried on was that they are “a bit pointy”. And to be fair, I can see where he’s coming from. They are. A bit pointy.
But other than that, they are fab. They hug the foot. They are long enough. They have an element (55%) of actual sheep to them, so will be warm and springy and not too crunchy.
And, I believe, they are currently enjoying an Alarm Event at The Gathering at Pontins Prestatyn.
(this is Steve attempting to make sock modelling interesting. Here, I gather, he was going for “coy”.)
In other news we had 2 school friends over to play this avo. The boys were the most effort, mainly because Joel wanted to watch TV and his friend isn’t as big a fan of “nearly naked animals” as Joel is. Plus, Joel’s friend fell in a puddle up to his knees. AFTER I’d said he didn’t need to wear his Wellies. Although, to be fair, given the size of the puddle and the total trip it caused, I don’t think Wellies would have made much difference…
Rats!
The other day, while working from home, I thought it would be a nice opportunity to give Lily’s pet rats a bit of a run around. I feel bad that they really only get one half-hour of relative freedom each week, which is when we clean their cage out.
So, I settled down with my laptop – turns out the wireless signal is perfectly fine in Lily’s room – sat down, closed the door of the room, and opened the door of the cage.
There are two doors on Snowy & Ellie’s cage – one on the side which opens to form a ramp, and the top of the cage which opens like a lid.
I opened the one that is easy for them to use, thinking I was doing a good thing. They didn’t come out. I don’t think Ellie even noticed. Snowy stuck her head out a couple of times, kind-of in a “ooh, someone’s left the door open” way, but didn’t properly venture out. Only when I opened the lid, which is how we usually say hello to them, did they mount an escape bid.
From that point on there was scampering and exploring. Snowy kept mainly to herself, either behind the drawers or under the bookshelf. At one point there was a major scrap under the bookshelf, which must have been tricky – even considering relative sizes, there isn’t much room under there.
Ellie was a bit more sociable and kept coming to explore what I was up to. I discovered that rats paws are even less helpful than cats paws on a laptop keyboard – their paws are small enough to press individual keys, which means that typos can suddenly appear in your code and she somehow managed to switch windows at one point. I focused on saving frequently and keeping her away from the “return” key…
These two pics show her trying to nibble the end of Lily’s magic stick (picked up near Aylesbury at new year), but being thwarted by my notepad sliding out from under her.
Sadly, Snowy disgraced herself. I heard a slight knocking sound coming from behind the drawers, and on investigating, discovered that she had decided to “trim” one of Lily’s toys. I told her she wasn’t helping her own PR given that she was already not-favourite because of the history of biteyness.
Turns out it was worse than we thought, the little bird belongs to Polly Pocket and is one of Lily’s favourites. And now it’s ruined.
Rocky would never have done that.
Romani ite domum (or schola)
A couple of weeks ago, Lily’s school year had “meet a Roman soldier day. For this they were encouraged to dress up as a Roman. Not surprisingly, this ties in with the current learning theme of “Romans”. Putting aside the additional £2.50 we had to cough up to have the Roman soldier there for them to meet – silly me, I thought I paid for their education THROUGH MY TAXES – it seems like it was a top day.
We prepared the outfit somewhat ahead of time.
Nanna supplied a table cloth which would double up as a toga, plus quite a few bangles and the necklace we eventually used in Lily’s hair. I remembered (I think) from my own studies that Roman brides wear flame-coloured cloth, and it so happened that we have a suitable sarong in the dressing up box…
I’m not normally a big fan of the high, tight pony tail – too much Lorraine Chase in my youth – but on this occasion, I felt it was appropriate.
With suitably strung silver necklace, I give you… Lilliana Gracia Romana
Thiese were taken about a week in advance of the day itself, when we were working out what to do. On the intervening Saturday, Lily spent the day as a Roman. Unfortunately during that time, a bit of chocolate biscuit got dropped down in between the toga an under-t-shirt, which meant we had to find an alternative t-shirt and be *very* careful about how we folded the tablecloth.
Because Romans don’t have princesses, she is the Emperor’s daughter. She was pleased with this until she got to school, and discovered that one of her classmates was a Goddess.
Sometimes, you just can’t win.
*sigh*
and finally, the post header is a quote from one of my favourite films The Life of Brian. as someone who has had to struggle with Latin grammar, while being fully fired up about actual Romans, that scene definitely struck a chord…
paddington stares from the cat
Just a quickie, to test something.
I was working from home today, and the cat quite typically decided she wanted to check out the view from the window next to my desk. Having pottered across the keyboard, she needed stuff moving to be able to get onto the side, then the window sill. I got my phone out to take a classic “cat at the window” pic, at which point she decided it was time to leave.
Except, she felt the direct path down from the side wasn’t clear enough.
I like to think that here, she is saying “will you just stop taking pictures, and get me down. Now.”
Pink hats
This is Christmas hats, part deux, really.
So, the other two new nieces who needed hats were Lucy (6) and Sophie (0) (or kinda, nearly 1/4). Their mum seems like the kind of mum who would be up for matching outfits, so I decided to go with similar hats.
Time being of the essence, I chose to use the Big Softie yarn I acquired from a university colleague, who in turn got it in a sale. My intention in getting it from Charlie was to make felted slippers for Our Lily – given that there were 7 balls in the parcel, that’s still an option. Anyway, as the name implies, it’s a big yarn, so I got out my big needles & swatched.
For Lucy I assumed a 20″ head or so (having measured Joel’s head) and cast on accordingly in 2×2 rib. My plan was to knit an oblong, then fold it in half, but I didn’t want it to be too dull, so I made a cable develop out of the rib. This knit up really quickly, as you’d imagine, and it was done within the evening.
It fitted on my head, at least.
I made a smaller version for Sophie, sewed them together, and just for extra pizazz, added a row of fringe across the top.
They were well received by Mummy, although from the girls’ reactions, they may be a little on the snug side. Plus, Sophie was ready for a sleep/dinner/new nappy or had just woken up, so a new hat was always going to be a low priority…
twitter updates (real-time jude):
RT @TwistedSifter: Occupy Potholes! RT @Paul_Steele 20 Miniature Pothole Gardens http://t.co/qDyVOniV via @tashacourtney #
- RT @TwistedSifter: Occupy Potholes! RT @Paul_Steele 20 Miniature Pothole Gardens http://t.co/qDyVOniV via @tashacourtney
- really cool > RT @TwistedSifter RT @cindyvriend Anatomical Cross-Sections Made w Quilled Paper http://t.co/wjufolPC via @psyop @AshrafGhori
- RT @DeathStarPR: Two wrongs don’t make a right, but a series of wrongs make you Emperor of a galaxy who can shoot lightning from his hands.
Categories
- *sigh*
- 3.15
- aga-tastic
- Crafty So & So's
- eco-jude
- felicity kendall eat your heart out
- habit (franklin)
- Holiday Pics
- I'm not pleased about
- I'm pleased about…
- jude the obscure
- Kids Stuff
- plastic-free
- poke the croc
- politics
- that's entertainment!
- train hats project
- Uncategorized
- Work-related Stuff