Yesterday there was a showing.

Traditionally, the opening number is “Meet the gang, coz the boys are here…” the “It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum” theme tune. This has its origins in the days of “maternity leave” when I was entertaining the little ‘uns by myself…

Of course, we all want to have a go. Here The Wizard is magicking a little duck into being…

It was around this time that Lily asserted that she is the funniest person in our family, with Uncle Pete coming a close second. It seems he cracks Lily up.

And, as usual, the final number brought the house down.

At which point, the garden became really appealing.

I didn’t manage that, however I *did* manage…

:: sorted out apps on my iPhone & reinstalled pocket god (it has a new island & a gorilla. We’re all very excited) but lost my shopping list so far.
:: settled musical differences for L,J&J’s band to continue musical harmony
:: lunch (including home grown lettuce & peas) without a supermarket trip being required
:: Ginger Jam with a hint of rhubarb

:: cranberry & white chocolate cookies (the actual recipe was used…)

:: 2 loads of washing

:: a trip to the theatre

:: ironing
:: a chat with Jean next door (Joel scaled the wall again)
:: watched Ep3/3 of “Sherlock”. It was quite good. Had I known Rupert Graves was in it, I’d have made the effort sooner.

:: and first thing this morning, got the cat to hairball on the tiled floor rather than the carpet so it would be easier to wipe it up

Alice, Sylvia and Alan (the action man, not a transvestite Sindy) had been in storage for some considerable length of time, although apparently not as long as my school friends thought they should have been, as I remember being ribbed for still playing with them when at high school. Playing with them by then consisted chiefly of making clothes for them, but still. Ribbing and ridicule were mine, albeit briefly. I never admitted to *that* twice – what kind of masochist do you take me for?

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, the three of them emerged blinking into the spotlight again. I thought Joel might be keen on the action man, with his army gear & scuba kit. Apparently not, as he isn’t a super hero. He was labelled “rubbish” and left for girls to play with.

I should rewind here slightly. Alan was originally acquired in order to be a boyfriend for the (at the time) 3 Sindy dolls in the house. Quite frankly, given the choice between 1. a muscle man with swivelling hawk-eye vision who spent his days basically being James Bond and 2. someone who clearly drives a volvo, probably towing a caravan, and wears “slacks” before his 50s, there was no competition. He had a good life. He had several manly outfits – a sheepskin bomber jacket, a hand-crafted sleeveless fisherman’s vest (it was a made-up pattern. I wasn’t up to setting in sleeves at that scale), a demin shirt. And he had A LOT of sex. A lot. I refer you to the previous reference to James Bond.

So, when he was brought out of retirement and callously rejected by Joel, I felt slight disappointment but didn’t want to forcibly enforce stereotypes – he was handed to Lily. Who promptly suggested he could be a boyfriend for Alice & Sylvia. Which was quite spooky.

However, before he got to get back in the saddle (so to speak), it being bath night, Lily wanted to try out the scuba gear. And, disastrously, this happened.

It was really very upsetting.

Sticking a small piece of plastic on a similarly small piece of plastic inside Alan’s head is not something I think we can achieve, and I just know he wouldn’t be happy with no head movement. Our Alan is no Christopher Reeve, he’s man of action whom invalidity would just frustrate.

So Alice and Sylvia, rejected as well now on account of their missing hands and toes (they had a hard life, sue me), are destined to become the Hinge & Bracket of the storage cupboard. Until Lily or Joel have children who want to take them swimming…

Alan has been quietly disposed of. RIP.

This view was just round the corner and some trees from our pitch. There’s a fabulous sweep of the Conwy river just off to the right – properly lovely scenery. Joel & Lily can be seen here with their new friend, who for 2 days we thought was called Noah, but then we found out was called something completely different… which is a shame, because for once Lily actually remembered his name from the get-go!

We arrived on Friday and left on Sunday – Saturday’s short trip took us to Conwy for a stroll around the walls and a visit to The Nice Butcher’s Shop.

Finishing up with an ice cream on the quay. While we were chomping, someone pointed out that there was a monk with a bird coming our way. It turned out he had a friend, who also had a bird. They are from a birds of prey company who have them potter about town talking to the tourists. You don’t see that every day! (click through to flickr to see the picture a bit bigger – you might actually see the birds then!!)

It was all going so well.

I was following the pattern (although I like to treat food recipes as optional, I usually find that patterns make the results of knitting a lot more useable). I was churning out predictable, functional, working so far, sweater.

I took it to my “new” knitting group at my LYS knit-wise. Explaining the unconventional structure of the garment (knit across rather than up or down, and grafted at the center back (it’s an American pattern)) led Myra, proprietor of said LYS, to say “I’d be finding a way to avoid all that grafting. Why don’t you knit on round?”

This struck me as a very good idea.

So I did.

I made especially good progress during the few days I spent with Lorna, a long-time buddy, recently brought back into the knitting fold, at her mother’s house. We spent our mornings doing some light sight-seeing and old-haunt-revisiting, and our afternoons…. well…

I got past the second armhole… and started the frogging* on the Second Front.

See here, how knitting the cabling from the other end doesn’t alter how it looks enough to justify abandoning The Plan and knitting it as per the instructions.

Good progress was made. Properly good progress. During knitting the second front, I realised that I hadn’t really thought that hard about how much yarn was required, and was rapidly approaching a point where clearly there wasn’t enough yarn to have the full length sleeves that this jacket requires. I contacted Big Sis, who has, by now, duly acquired 3 more balls in the same colour and happily the same Dye lot. I haven’t yet dared to calculate if 3 extra will be enough, although I’m sure Myra & her calculator will disillusion me in no time (she was the one who confirmed that I was under yardage by Quite A Lot at a subsequent knitting group session).

I was quietly knitting away one evening, celebrating how very close to finishing I was (literally NO ROWS away from the end of the frogging) when it dawned on me that there seemed to be quite a few stitches at the top of the frogging when compared to the other side.

A horrible cold feeling ran up the back of my neck.

Back in the mists of what happenned several weeks ago, I had a hazy memory of the bottom pattern repeat not being absolutely flush with the bottom of the fabric, but… (and this is where things slowed down a lot) …3 stitches up from the bottom.

It dawned on me that there was no way to fix this without redoing it. Without, on this picture, wripping out from the lower knitting needle in the picture below, back to the higher needle, which is roughly positioned where the cabling starts.

It’s fair to say, I swore a lot. I tweeted the word “cock” several times, many of them in capitals. When I had got through that phase to the nearly crying phase, I went to bed. I avoided actual crying.

The following day I took the needle out, and saw what thing of beauty it will be once it’s knitted properly (*sigh*).

Then I undid the knitting it had taken me nearly 2 weeks to do, and started again. I also took a picture of the 63 rows worth of checking off patterns I had done, to remind myself what a bonehead I was.

I *had* been quite clever, and decided instead of re-writing the chart of the rows & pattern increments, I would just work from the bottom up of the chart instead of top down. In theory this worked. In practice, I just needed to remember to start the pattern IN THE RIGHT PLACE!!

Progress is again going well. I’m about half way through the frogging. Again.

* frogging, it turns out, is the term for the braiding & buttons on the front of military-style jackets that this cardigan is supposed to resemble. HOW IRONIC, then, that so much of the other kind of frogging should come into play here (oh, er spoiler alert, if you’re reading this before finishing the blog post. There’s frogging).

Rescuing beans…

and after…

And this is the same area I showed you a week or so ago, before…

and after…

I know it’s not perfect, and there are a lot fo weeds there still, but the big ones and the carpet effect have at least gone… plus the ones that mum identified as probably deadly nightshade – not a good idea to have something which has poisonous berries growing in a vegatable plot the kids generally graze on.

And yes, we can expect to see this repeated later in the month when I yet again remember I have a vegetable patch that needs weeding!

…becomes less scary when you see this:

And no, I’m not the kind of neurotic who makes their child wear personal safety equipment in a playground: I actually tried several times to get him to take it off. He had worn it to ride his bike to the playground (which I do insist on) and didn’t want to take it off.

I guess it was either keeping his head warm, or it just made him feel safer.

Here the on-screen talent is waiting for her crew to be ready.

And as she waits, her able assistant can be seen demonstrating the equipment ready to roll.

I didn’t catch a still of the actual event, although Steve has vowed to put it on YouTube. However, after the fountain, we of course had to check how the ingredients were affected.

And, frankly, waste not, want not…

It tasted slightly minty, but otherwise still pretty cola-like.

p.s. I’m loving my hipstamatic app, but it *does* take a while to take photos so you can move on to the next one…

…but really this one has more of a story behind it. I just can’t let it lie.

I would love to pretend that we went for a back-to-nature stroll in the woods to spend some quality family time together, but here’s the background to this photo.

Where are the woods? They are the carefully preserved oasis of green in the car park around The Trafford Centre. We took a stroll through the nature reserve… up to the point where there were big wire fences and there was some “tree management” going on, on the other side. We’d just been shopping for a family member’s present (fruitless, I might add, but is now resolved), tried to persuade Joel to see Toy Story 3 (he thinks it will be too scary because of the version he’s seen in Joel-Land (inside his head)), watched the “ARM WARS” international arm wrestling competition going on in the food hall (there was a crazy Finn who appeared to scare his opponents into submission by ROARing in their faces (quite hard to not be in someone’s face when you’re arm wrestling them – especially when “IT’S A STRAP!!!”)), had lunch and quick play in the play centre (a less natural environment woul dbe hard to find), and were heading home having managed to not acquire More Stuff (not because Lily hadn’t tried, I should add).

But, it was a brief, green pause and A Bit Of A Find in one of the busiest places we could have been. As a waiter once said, it gave us some quiet moments of contemplation.

There is still discernable lettuce action and the rocket to the left is looking quite bushy. The courgettes haven’t been coddled or nurtured at all – they have often been seen gasping for water of an evening as this bed is quite dry, but they are growing some zucchini nonetheless. I intended to get out there and blitz it this weekend, but ran out of time. Maybe during the week…

She spent the night in her bandage & dressings, and although her vision was “still very fuzzy” in the morning, she said she would try without, in the hopes that she didn’t go blind in that eye after all.

DEEP SIGH, and note to self to do better.

By way of compensation the other day, I unleashed a brew that’s been brewing for an undetermined length of time, and consequently elicits Eric Morcambe-esque “NYAH!”s when sipped.

I give you, damson gin part 1, 2009-2010.

I’ve had a small amount. That’s all you can have in an evening without losing brain cells, I think.

The recipe? Courtesy Jean next door: rough-as-f**k gin (here I’ve used Tesco’s Value – any cheapo stuff will do), sugar & damsons. Stick it in a jar, shake it up periodically, when you can’t see any more sugar leave it on the shelf for 3 weeks to 5 years(!) then strain it through muslin (it seems good to me that I’m using the kids’ old urp cloths to strain strong alcohol. Sort of poetic). Try not to drink it all in one sitting. Hide it when relatives come round. This is NOT schnaps, even though it shares texture, taste & colour with some brands.  This is far more potent and precious. YOUR time has gone into it.

I think Jean has a more scientific method, i.e. measures ingredients and time on the shelf, and probably washes the muslin between batches (JOKE!!) – her brew is generally FAR superior, which is why I give her so many of our damsons each year.

If you need me, I’ll be under the kitchen table…

Big sis sent me some genuine Australian WOOL (not just yarn, actual WOOL) and it turns out there’s enough of it to knit one of the two patterns I was drooling over, Timpani from the latest Twist Collective. In theory, anyway. I may get to the sleeves and find out that they need to be 3/4 length, but I will worry about that when it happens…

So far this pattern has lived up to expectations – it’s not hard to knit, is quite compelling, but is challenging enough that I’ve had to read ahead and write out a check-off sheet for the various pattern rows. The WOOL is nice & soft, and WOOLly enoughthat I’m reminded I have to remember not to just bung this in the washing machine when it’s finished and I’ve worn it long enough to get ketchup on it…

The exciting structure is working for me, too. You cast on at the front edge, then knit round to the middle back from both sides and then graft the two sides together. I’ve just started the armhole shaping on the left side, and am about to embark on some short row shaping. It’s all good.

In other news, I’ve “signed up” in a not-actually-signing-anything-way for the knitting group at my LYS. so that’s 1.5 evenings a week I’m out, in theory, in term time. I may attend each group about once a term… let’s see!

Birthday project the second is still at the LYS. Watch this space…

I tweeted this yesterday, so it won’t be news to everyone. I think, after several months of waiting for spring to come to the Bonsai tree, that we can declare it dead.

Mum (& Dad, but principally Mum) got it for my birthday 2 years ago. I suspect the harsh winter of seeing it off, through no fault of my own.

So Mum gets to be right. I think it died about a month before she did.

I’ve just been reminded, by this tweet: @AmandaSoule Ezra just asked me to knit him a sweater vest….with sleeves. Hmnnn.
of a similar conversation I had with Lily.

Recently I asked Lily if she would like me to knit her a cardigan. She said “yes”, and then added a few qualities it should have:

• butterflies
• be mainly pink
• kittens
• possibly puppies
• fairies
• princesses
• and, if I really must, a rainbow

I should have been firmer on the hat issue. I can’t help but feel it’s coming back to haunt me…

Undeniably it is hard to come out, especially to one’s parents. However, it should be equally hard to dishonestly acquire £40K.

That’s not really why I’m writing. The parting shot of the discussion, in which a young man said he had decided to tell his parents immediately before going away to university, got me very wound up.

Ever since I was at school and several of my friends (ones for whom I had big romantic hopes, it might be added) came out – one of whom disappeared and then sent me a poignant “goodbye & thanks for all the fish” note, which REALLY pissed me off (does he know me *at all*??!?) – I’ve been passionate in my defence of equal rights for homosexuals. I nearly resigned a pretty good job when I found out that the company I worked for was withdrawing benefit rights for same sex couples (they were an american company: this was quite a significant change in benefits for the US colleagues it affected) except I resigned for other reasons before I could check my facts. Discrimination on these grounds generally gets me so cross & wound up I start hyperventilating. I’m working on that, because it makes me less useful in such arguments, but for some reason this issue speaks to me in a big fat loud voice.

The final comment on this morning’s radio discussion (which, generally, was pretty well handled – I was just thinking that what it missed was a swivel-eyed loon declaring that the gays were all disgusting and Queen Victoria had the right idea when she routinely hung them all at dawn when the final comment was made) was a young man who said that he thought he probably would tell his parents that he was gay, but would do so immediately before he went away to University.

As a parent for whom my children coming out would be no problem, I would find such a choice of timing extremely hurtful. My babies going away to university will be a difficult time – it’s hard enough when they go to nursery for the morning. To have this emotional time compounded by what my child clearly considers a bombshell would not be good. I would be denied the chance to show them that I accept them for who they are, that I’m OK with this, and that I just want them to be safe & happy. Plus, especially if it’s the last one to leave, I’ll be reassessing my role in the family, purpose in life, etc and to be told that I don’t know the child I’ve just spent the last 18 years rearing would be pretty unhelpful.

Having said that, if this happens, then I will have failed, because my children clearly don’t know me, and I don’t know them. I don’t routinely tell them at ages 4 & 6 that it’s OK to be gay, but at an age where they can understand what it means, I will be. If only to promote their tolerance of people they may know who are gay.

If I were a parent who wasn’t basically OK with the gayness, but who was willing to alter my mindset to accommodate my gay child, the bombshell on leaving would again be pretty selfish. It’s not being thrust in my face if they’re away at university, but at the same time, getting used to the idea will be so much harder. There’s an argument that says that this isn’t the child’s problem, but frankly it should be.

The only scenario in which the bombshell on leaving represents helpful timing is when the parental reaction is “You’re dead to me now”. In which case, well done – you judged that one right. I hope you’ve made accommodation plans for the holidays.

It just seemed like a wholly selfish decision, with no regard for his parents, made all kinds of assumptions about how they would react and was basically content with leaving them out to dry emotionally while he went off and built his new life.

I really hope that by the time Lily or Joel are old enough to know whether they are gay that our society is one more step towards tolerance which means that they are confident they can build a happy life for themselves, whatever their sexuality. I hope that they know they can tell me anything – I might be surprised, I might (if it’s stealing £40K rather than coming out) be cross, I might be worried about the repercussions for a whole raft of reasons.  And that whatever they tell me, I will still love them, and where they need it, will give them my help & support.

Treasury ministers bending the rules on parliamentary expenses to help them keep personal secrets I’ll deal with another day. Maybe.

One of them bit back.

Regular readers (ha!) will recall one of these projects is a lilac laceweight scarf.  A few nights ago I had “a session” and completed 4 rows in 2 hours. Or that’s what it seemed like, anyway. This time, during the first row I knitted while on the train (while travelling backwards in a seat with no socket, having requested facing direction of travel with a socket)(my lesson is, only specify the thing you REALLY want (ie direction of travel) and then they can’t fulfil one of the random other things you ask for (window seat) and say “job done”) I realised that a few rows earlier I had gone awry.

This is laceweight. It’s like knitting with hatpins using sewing thread, only fluffier. Wripping back rows at this stage (and then trying to pick up the stitches) is the fast road to insanity. Doing it on an intercity train (did I mention I was travelling backwards? I don’t think I mentioned travelling backwards makes me feel ill) while travelling backwards is the equivalent of a travellator on said road.

I’m not sure that the path I chose to take was any better.

The pattern goes K7, K2tog, YO, K1, YO, SSK, K7, K2tog, etc with shaping variations at the middle & ends which makes each row feel exponentially longer than the previous one. On one of these repeats I’d somehow got my YO mixed up with a K2tog or something, and frankly it was a mess.

You can see in the pic above, the pattern makes for a line of lacy holes. My mistake had caused the line to not be straight any more.

Can I just add here, there would be at-the-time pictures, but on account of the no socket thing, I didn’t have any power in my phone or PC, which I’d allowed to run down on account of the having a socket on the train, only I didn’t, so they were both basically dead at this point. So no scene-of-the-accident pictures, I’m afraid.

Once blocked, this minor error would have become bleedin’ obvious. This will be a gift. Bleedin’ obvious mistakes are not an option.

Wripping back 5 rows was also not an option – since each row takes roughly a year both out of my life and possibly also off the end of it – so instead I took a bold & brave decision. To take 16(ish) stitches back 5 rows, and re-do them.

I isolated that bit of the row on the ends of the needles, from halfway through the K7 on one side, to half way through the K7 on the other side. Then bobbed them off the needles (if you use words like “bobbed” and “popped” it makes it sound much less scary and reckless than “ripped back”. I guess that’s why “tink” is so popular. Sounds quicker, too.) and undid the rows back to before the mistake, then picked up the stitches again. Checking I was starting with the right number of stitches and the right loops, I then knitted back & forth. I had to do the first 3 rows twice, which was a bit disheartening, but in the end I managed to get back to the row I was officially on with the right number of stitches on each side, and an apparently correct, if slightly loopy, section of corrected knitting.

See how the row of holes up the middle is now apparently straight? They weren’t before, trust me. I managed to do one more row before arriving at Euston, which means that this adventure in honing my knitting skills (for I choose to see it as such) took nearly 45 minutes. The knitting looks loopy where the ends of the corrected bit is: this will come out with blocking, of this I am confident. Ish.

An aside: It takes 2 hours from Wigan to Euston on this crazy no-stopping-after-Warrington train – I spent the first hour reading. Then felt sick. I hate to go on about the travelling backwards thing, but they do this to me pretty much every time and it’s quite annoying. Maybe I should just book earlier. So I began knitting, did 15 minutes on my other knitting then remembered that I can talk while doing the other knitting, whereas with this knitting I have to count to 7 repeatedly every other row, in spite of being able to “read” my knitting, so was basically doing the wrong knitting given that I was going to spend the weekend with friends, who will almost certainly want to talk to me. I know, how inconsiderate!

I felt that this incident needed some commemorating, so have highlighted the row on my stitch-counter notes.

You’ll see that I’ve done seven rows since the mistake-correction row. I did six of these on the train between Waterloo & Hounslow, which officially takes about half an hour. Apparently it travels through a time warp.

In other news, one of the books we have from the library at the moment is Dan And Diesel, a book about a boy whose guide dog is stolen but manages to escape & find his way home (because he’s a clever guide dog). I was trying to explain the concept of guide dogs to Lily after we’d read the story, but was struggling. You’d think that with an illustrative children’s story book to hand it would be easy. Apparently not.

I was very excited, then, to meet a lovely guide dog and his owner at Wigan station at the start of my journey.

His name is Spencer, and according to the badge on his harness, he’s a Rotarian.

So, I’m left with a big pile of rhubarb.

I only have one jar of R&Ginger jam left, and I’ve started that one. The last time I had toast with R&G jam on it, Steve tasted some and immediately made his own so it seems like we need a bit more.

Here (again) is my fool-proof recipe:

Chop up some rhubarb into a large pan. Weigh it.

Add some sugar. I think I went for about 20% sugar to 80% rhubarb. I’m not sure.

Pay no heed to the large number of plastic beakers your daughter and her friend are taking outside: they are taking them outside: mess is more easily cleared up outside.

Chop the really old ginger your Dad gave you before he went away into iddy-biddy pieces using the yellow knife that always makes you feel more cheerful – and not just because it’s a sunny yellow, because it’s really nice & new & SHARP!

Put the ginger in the pan with the rhubarb & the sugar.

Boil it up for ages. Stir occasionally. Remember to put saucer in fridge for testing set-ness of jam. Forget to take a picture of boiled-up jam for The Blog.

Under no circumstances open the bathroom door to see what daghter and friend are making in there. The floor is tiled. Mess is harder to clean up in the bathroom than in the garden, but it’s still not actually hard.

Heat up the jars. Pour the mixture into the jars. Take arty photos of the jars.

…having forgotten to move undelivered pile of election leaflets from the background.

Look at the large amount of rhubarb you still have left. Remember that you were thinking you might try the muffin recipe again, only this time trying to make it tasty.

Cook-a-thon Part II: Rhubarb & Custard Muffins.

This sounds great, but even I am aware that actual custard in muffins is unlikely to a) work on any level, or b) be tasty.

So I’m going to *call* them rhubarb and custard, but they’re actually going to be rhubarb & vanilla.

The basic recipe is for date & apple muffins, from “The Fat Free Cookbook”. I’d get up and look at who wrote it, give ISBN and an amazon link*, but I wouldn’t honestly recommend it. The only recipe I’ve followed with any success is the fruit cake, and that mainly benefits from my generosity when it comes to alcohol in cooking (ask my family about brandy sauce at Christmas. They get drunk just thinking about it). Honestly, every time I’ve done this recipe and used the proper ingredients, the outcome hasn’t been tasty. And I’m not even counting the time I forgot to put sugar in, leading me to write SUGAR in big, big letters next to where it says “oh and by the way, if you like, add the sugar at this point”.

*OK, I got up to take the picture of the page, so I thought I might as well follow through…

Be aware as daughter whizzes through kitchen en route to getting perfume to make the mixture smell nice. Restrict them to 2 sprays of the cheaper stuff.

So, use your favourite muffin recipe. Add loads of vanilla essence (by “loads” I mean about 2-3 teaspoons, not the whole bottle. That would make for pricey muffins). Don’t forget to add the sugar. Also add some yellow food colouring.

Unfortunately, this helped to reveal what had been going on in the bathroom. Lily & J were looking for new ingredients for their experiment. They thought food colouring was an excellent plan.

Mix the mixture together only until it’s mixed. Don’t over-mix it. Put it in muffin cases.

Put the muffins in the oven. A be-wellied Joel has now joined the fun in the bathroom. Moments later, he emerges with a (lidless) cup of yellow liquid and asks for 2 bits of kitchen towel.

It might be time to put a stop to the experimentation in the bathroom. Our downstairs bathroom is a style symphony in pink porcelain/enamel and I’m not keen to be googling “how to get food colouring off enamel”. Much crying from Joel when his cup of food colouring is confiscated.

However, ta-daa! Muffins:

They’re very tasty, too. There were none left by Friday.

We watched the experiment show afterwards. It involved many leaves and much mixing, but sadly not much smoke or exploding.

Main headline: councillorSteve is back. He was elected today in the second place in our local ward of Scott in West Lancashire. Well done, Babe.

Next: I managed to pull a decent number of votes in my role as paper candidate. Not really sure how that happened, and congratulations to Val Hopley for holding the seat. If I’m selected there again, I may even campaign a bit more…

The relative success on my part is almost certainly down to sterling work carried out through the MP’s office and the national party. Well done, folks.

In other news, it’s harder to climb a tree carrying a flag and wearing wellies than it is wearing normal shoes or no shoes…

And riding a bike is still the best thing you can do, even when you’re waiting for your friend to come out to play…

She’s mainly waiting to deliver a letter – a painstakingly crafted reply to the one she received last night. The P.S. said “your a great friend” which is always nice to hear…

The dwarf beans were starting to look a bit leggy, and the courgettes were starting to gaze balefully out of the window, so it’s high time they got a bit of fresh air. Possibly. Unless we get more frost.

I cleared a big area of the “old” veggie patch a month or so ago (possibly longer, I can’t remember) so on that part there were only very small weeds. So, in summary, here’s what I ploughed through today…

• Weeded and dug over the area under the pea frame, planted peas & added sticks for them to grow up.
• De-strawberried the strip along the end of the pea frame (they’ve gone properly rampant – we could re-create sleeping beauty’s castle purely by putting it in the middle of the “new” veggie patch), dug it over again, then planted dwarf beans, added cloche and cunning cat-prevention barriers at each end.
• Planted the 5 broad bean plants at the other end of the pea frame in dug-over ground and put up trellis to protect them a bit.
• Lily pulled out the remaining parsnips & scraped the mud off. I dug over that strip (alongside the pea frame) and we’ve now planted carrots there. I need to dig out or buy some fleece for when they start to poke their noses up.
• In the other bed I’ve thinned out the rhubarb a bit and weeded around it.
• I’ve weeded round the blueberry bushes, which need frames/nets around them.
• I hoed over the pre-cleared area and here I’ve put the 3 courgette plants and 2 rows of lettuce/rocket. One of the courgette plants is under a bell cloche because it was trampled no less than 3 times by 2 different people. This may give it a chance to recover, who knows.
• I cleared the rest of the veggie patch between the pre-cleared area and almost where the strawberries are and here have planted broccoli, radish & beetroot.
• Plus liberal sprinklings of slug pellets around the tasty-looking plants.
• I would have planted parsley, but the packet says to soak the seeds overnight before planting them. So that’s what I’m doing.

There’s possibly space for more, but we’ll see how these do before getting carried away. I plan to re-pot some of the strawberry runners I dug out, the surviving tomato seedlings are to be transplanted and I want to buy some more. Any tomatoes that make it to maturity I’ll pot up and keep on the patio.

And the one things that is doing really well all by itself is the rhubarb. Tomorrow, unless I get sidetracked, I plan to indulge in making some rhubarb & ginger jam.

So that the plants get the right idea, I’ve asked Lily & Joel to call me Percy Thrower in their presence.

This, of course, means that my mind is whirring with the many projects that I could start.

I have the yarn to make this (poplar & elms) in baby pink, but it means buying the pattern. I am looking at a stack of knitting pattern books from where I sit, and this isn’t even all of the books I have.

p.s. the knitting ones are the ones that haven’t been put away properly. And I’ve also realised that the one on top is also a knitting book.

In my new intention to dress smarter, and also my habit of going for stuff that’s slightly costumey or historic-looking, this timpani jacket is calling to me in a very loud and insistent voice. I will definitely be making this at some point, because frankly it’s too “me” to resist, and so far all the other examples in Ravelry also look good on normal-looking people (as opposed to stick people who appear to spend many hours doing their hair to take photos of their knitting projects and possibly also hire a studio). This is a good shape & length for me and, helpfully, they’ve made it in one of my favourite colours. It isn’t really going to be needed as a wardrobe staple until the weather gets consistently cooler, say September, so in some ways there’s no huge rush. Also, it’s knit sideways on and we all know how I love to go with the structurally unusual (I give you skew and elektra). The two impediments and the reason why this isn’t on my needles yet? I’d have to buy the pattern and the yarn. Not buying patterns we’ve covered above, reasons for not buying yarn – I have a big stash of my own, and have just inherited some as well, which added about 1/3 by volume to my un-knitted yarn collection.

And then there are the twisted woolly toppers which are calling to me en masse (although not very loudly since the weather is getting warmer, admittedly).

Also, there are these shoes which seem ideal, but I want to chat to the nice man in the Timpson’s in Ormskirk to come up with a good sole solution. I have dark pink hemp which will be ideal. All I would need then is a beach holiday to go with it, rather than the planned week’s trekking around fields in Glastonbury.

So, in spite these many & varied potential projects calling to me from various parts of the house, I am instead devoting some effort to growing THE PROJECTS THAT WILL NOT GROW.

Exhibit A.

This project started conceptually over a year ago when I planned to make a shawl for my sister-in-law’s birthday. I decided after Christmas to make a shawl for a birthday at the end of May. I had made one shawl before this, and it had taken me around 5 months (although I’ve just had to adjust the dates in Ravelry because according to that, I finished it in -7 months… that must have been before the time machine broke) so it seemed at the very least do-able. I threw in an extra challenge of designing a Mackintosh-motif shawl (couldn’t find any on Ravelry, or The Internet, you see…) although I’ve never designed any knitwear before or (see above) knitted more than one shawl.

After a short while struggling with trying to come up with a decent Mackintosh rose motif (bizarrely, it’s harder than it looks) I gave up and decided to just do a nice shawl. So I picked this one, Icarus from Interweave Knits.

It started well, but I didn’t take into account the very long dull rows which get longer each time you do one, up to over 300 stitches per row before you get to a new & different bit of pattern. I’m currently 3/5 of the way through the body of this shawl, and it has had loooong periods of hibernation. I’ve picked it up and done some this week, and it turns out I can do 4 rows in an evening. So this is more of a marathon than a sprint, it turns out.

Exhibit B.

The braided bodice wench blouse. We’re back to the unusual & historical, and this has the added jeopardy that it’s in chenille, so tinking is really not an enticing option. Even trying to make a single stitch bigger is quite traumatic so if I get some ways through a piece of this project and realise it’s irreperably wrong (which, mercifully hasn’t happened yet I don’t think) I may just throw it away and start again, especially as I have plenty of spare yarn. When I first started it I had to wrip back several times and that was more than enough for one project, frankly.

I’m fired up now by the fact that I’ve been asked if the picture I took of the front-so-far could be used on the ravelry page for this pattern. Which means that my (albeit adapted) finished object might become the definitive example of this piece on Ravelry. And I’ll have to apologise to Teva Durham for butchering her pattern…

I’ve actually made significant progress on this this week. On Thursday I took Dad to a hospital appointment and brought my knitting along to do while I waited for him. This is part of our re-arranged relationship since Mum passed away, as Mum would usually have done this. When Dad was called through, I assumed he was being called through for his treatment, so stayed in the waiting room. I got out my knitting and started listening to the educational & uplifting podcasts I had on my phone.

Having previously ploughed through the majority of the sleeve I was knitting, I was pleasantly surprised to find quite early on that I could embark on the sleeve shaping. So I did, and hurrah I finished that sleeve. Starting the second sleeve, I began the long haul of the rib. When I got to the point of nearly running out of yarn, and was listening to the second not-quite-so-educational podcast I checked the time again, and saw that 3 hours had passed. This seemed odd for a procedure that was allegedly going to take 10-15 minutes. (OK, I’d been checking the time intermittently in the meantime, but 3 hours and no yarn left seemed like a good check-out-what’s-happening point)

I went to the front desk to ask what was happening. Had there been an Incident, was my Dad OK, etc? It turns out, he had been taken through to prepare for his procedure which meant getting into a hospital gown (presumably to reduce the risk he would get fed up and just walk out) and waiting in a bedroom until it was his turn to take to the table. Turns out that while I’d been knitting in the waiting bunker, he’d been watching the snooker in his bedroom *sigh*.

So I went to find nurses, who told us he had at least an hour to wait, then would have to stop in for 3/4 hour afterwards to make sure he was OK before heading home again.

It seems that knowing you’ll be in until about 6.30 when you’ve been told to get there for 1pm isn ‘t useful information. Clearly, these people don’t have childcare to arrange. Don’t get me wrong #welovethenhs but sometimes I think the lovely nurses who do a fabulous job could show some awareness that the people they come into contact with don’t know the routine, how surgery schedules work, and what they’re thinking in their heads.

Next time, I am going to be the pushy daughter who asks all the questions and who they wish would just go away and next time can he please call a cab?

Anyway, the upshot of all this is, I’m on the last sleeve of the braided bodice wench blouse. The end is in sight.

And finally, while taking the above progress photos, I noticed that these flowers have sprung up in one of my pots. Here it looks like they are clover flowers, but those are just leaves from the clover that is trying to take over the pot – it’s actually an alpine. Which, given this pot is freuqntly water logged, is doing remarkably well!

Here Joel is explaining to Daddy (who’s off camera, having not long got up. I thought, for the general ambience of The Blog, it was best to leave it that way. He wasn’t looking his best…) what we’re doing. I think at this point, egg was being beaten.

On making the decision what flavour to make them, we decided on half chocolate, and half lemon. Which would have worked out fine, had Joel not mistakenly added cocoa to the mixture that already had lemon in. So we ended up with slightly lemony, and slightly lemony chocolate.

Having baked those, I was on a bit of a roll, and decided to make muffins. I didn’t take any photos of this process, but I had additional helpers in the form of Lily and Jasmin & Aidan from next door. The mixture was well stirred. Unfortunately the egg made it into the mixture via the table-top HOWEVER I have to hold my hands up and confess that it was in no way Aidan’s fault (he who was patiently waiting to beat the egg) and totally mine. I tried cracking the egg on the edge of the table instead of the flimsy plastic bowl, and somewhat overdid it. Still, the table was fairly clean, and the germs it did pick up are all well cooked by now. Unfortunately, because I haven’t learnt the lesson from previous muffin-making episodes, I went with an uber-healthy recipe involving wholemeal flour and walnuts, which means that the muffins themselves, frankly, taste like shit. Dates or apples would have been a good plan, not so much the dried fruit. The really disappointing thing is that I reached past a half-eaten apple several times in the process and didn’t think to carve it up & lob it in in spite of the recipe calling for an eating apple.

Anyway, the cupcakes are a big success. They were cooked and cooled, and again we had all hands on deck to apply Joel’s choice of icing colours.

In the background here you can see everyone participating in the very important stage called Licking The Bowl.

And so, in the manner of a Proper Blogger, here is the finished product:

The tomatoes have gone all pear-shaped. Thinning them out is no longer an issue. This makes me really really very sad. Mainly because Joel eats tomatoes like there’s no tomorrow.

In other, more uplifting news, we now have at least 5 live chilli plants:

And the observant among you will have spotted that I mixed up my courgettes and my broad beans. I’m actually quite pleased about this because 3 courgette plants is probably enough and 3 broad bean plants isn’t enough – 5 is probably *just about* enough…

We may just scrape in with a “you tried hard” sticker, it seems…

There are no new seeds in the ground, although I fully expect potatoes to appear at some point. In the pots shown above there are (L to R) broad beans (4/6 currently sprouting), courgettes (at least one more has sprouted here since then – we’re currently showing 5/6) and chilli. It’s fair to say the chilli have been disappointing so far – 3 weeks and no sign of life whatsoever.

And L to R here we have courgettes (again), yellow & red tomatoes (see below) and dwarf french beans, again with a disappointing success rate of 4/12, but they were left-over seeds from last year.

My happy plan of only planting *enough* seeds seems to have backfired a little: last year I didn’t have enough garden for all the tomatoes and courgettes I had for planting out, and frankly keeping up with the courgettes/marrows proved to be a struggle. I had a marrow the size of Steve’s arm on the side for several months before I even needed to use it, let alone wanted to use all of it.

The tomatoes have gone well so far, and need some thinning out, pother wise I’ll be planting in the front garden again:

These pots were moved to the slightly less sunny kitchen window at the weekend, where they appear to be thriving. So much so, that this has happened:

Life in the chilli pots. Here’s hoping it’s not a weed…

Well, today I bit the bullet. I’ve twice sorted them into colour groups so in practice, sorting some out for the wall was reasonably quick & easy.

I’m please with how it’s turned out. Originally I was thinking 2 columns of each colour stripe, but I think one gives enough of a spread without being overwhelming. It’s actually about the size I thought it would be, and fits nicely in the space in front of the desk I’m planning to be the focus of my “craft zone”.

And, gratifyingly, when Steve saw it, he said “ooh, that’s pretty!” without any prompting whatsoever…

This week I finished A Major Project – Duchess by purl alpaca designs. I started this project at a workshop Debbie and I booked as a “treat” weekend. I’d been feeling stressed and overworked, and wanted a real break and travelling across the country to knit and feed apples to alpaca seemed ideal. It didn’t go that smoothly as the car broke 2 miles before I got there. It was one among a series of disasters. The car broke in a properly broken bits flying out of the engine kinda way, such that it is still in a garage in Wigan, front bumper off, waiting for either a new engine or an engine rebuild. Steve, when told this project was finished said. “Is it nice? It should be. It’s cost us One Car.”

So – to the project. Purl alpaca run/ran workshops at the farm that houses their alpaca whereby you spend the day chatting, knitting, choose a project to start, discuss and work out any modifications with Kari-Helene, their inhouse designer, and then Tracy takes you out to meet the yarn growers. The food is fabulous, the company (on our workshop, at least) was fab, and it was an excellent day. It almost made up for having to be relayed back to Wigan by the (lovely) AA.

Overnight Debbie and I spent a lovely evening together, working on our projects and taking the piss out of The X Factor. Here she is pointing her pointy knitting stick at the telly. Forgive me, I can’t remember why, although Debbie may.

The project has grown intermittently over the past few months. The yarn is actually really nice to knit with – it definitely has a character of its own. It drapes nicely, yet is springy. When I sent the first work in progress pics to Steve that first evening (below), he said it looked like a string vest. I can see why he said that, but in person the yarn is a lot less stringy and a lot more springy. (did you see that I slipped in here that this is day 1 progress? I know I spent a lot of the day knitting, but progress was so good that Debbie threatened to steal it while I was asleep…)

It has a lovely slight halo of fuzz around it, which gives it a much softer feel than “string”. It’s also surprisingly warm. When I tried on the finished item the other day, I felt the slight chill when I took it off, and I’d only had it on for 5 minutes or so. I was pleasantly surprised.

Having made them slightly bigger with the longer-back modifications we’d worked out I wasn’t looking forward to ploughing through the big-flap fronts. It seems they were well in progress when the snow hit, and I went all Yarnharlot and decided to take advantage of the bright snow light and take pictures of all my works in progress out in the garden.

Since then, thanks to Miriam Tegels’ speed knitting techniques, I’ve skipped through the rest of it, doing the sleeves last, and after a brief breather, sewn the bits together to come up with the finished object.

One other minor modification made was down to the grafting/kitchener workshop I went to in September. The pattern says to cast off the two halves of the collar and sew them together. Instead, I left the stitches live and grafted them together following woollywormhead’s instructions. It’s not invisible, but I’m hoping it’s at least less lumpy than a sewn seam would be.

It’s finished, it’s lovely.

And I heard purl alpaca were running their last workshop for the foreseeable this weekend, because the alpaca have had to move and they don’t have a suitable new venue yet.

The back has worked out quite well, too – I like the extra cables on the back as is brings it in a bit more and somehow seems a bit more flattering. In writing up the modifications I realised that I’d actually done 2 extra twists on the big cables, which makes quite a difference. Looking back at the original, it looks a bit trivial & frilly to me.

I wasn’t able to go to the farewell workshop, but have sent pictures. And one of my Ravelry pictures has been chosen to be featured on the actual design page. Fame, at last!

p.s. I just need to lightly steam it now…

Except this year, the height of the tree is reminding me I didn’t prune it at the right time which means again that many damsons will be Out Of Reach.

This year’s special feature – a vapour trail-free sky because of the big invisible cloud of volcanic dust over the country. All jets grounded for at least 2 days so far…

I casually mentioned this on Tuesday, on the way home, in a speculative sometime-this-summer kind of way. Introducing the idea, so to speak. Lily, fairly predictably, expressed many & varied concerns. What if she were to fall over? What if her bike were to crush her in a freak riding accident? What if she were to hit a tree, the tree fall over, and break the house? What if she were to ride into oncoming traffic? I suggested that maybe starting out to learn in the back garden would at least eliminate the danger of oncoming traffic, and reduce the risk of serious injury. We left it there.

The following day on the way home, Lily raised the subject again, and asked if today was the day? To be honest, I had envisioned a weekend, but given the good weather this week, I said we could probably do it that evening. She went through the risks again, and when she asked “what happens if I fall off and cut my knee?” and I replied “well, in that case you’d probably bleed to death” she seemed to decide that she was happy with the level of risk the project presented.

I went with a very hands-off approach of basically setting her off and seeing what happened. What happened was she got the hang of it really quickly (with much glossing over of slightly scraped knees & legs which got in the way of pedals, etc. – I felt sympathy but also feared if we stopped to nurse each wound we’d never achieve anything. I adopted a strategy of “ooh yes, that looks bad – why don’t we sort it out later?” which against expectation appeared to work). By the time Daddy came home, she managed (for the first time) to go around the oak & apple trees on the far side of the lawn and back again without falling over when slowing down to turn the corner. At this point, the main problem was setting off by herself – she really hadn’t got it, so I had to set her off with a shove each time.

This evening (Friday) she was keen to ride more bike (actually, she was keen at breakfast but given that we’ve eliminated the TV before school because of the ructions it causes, getting into playing-in-the-garden seems even more mentalist) so I set her going, and gave her a quick lesson in “starting yourself off”. We raised the seat a little, and off she went.

Proper actual bike riding.

Two things here.

1. She’s wearing one of Grandad Tom’s t-shirts because her dress got wet at Nana & Grandad’s and she was so keen to ride her bike she didn’t want to get changed.

2. This bike was a present from my Mum & Dad. My Mum isn’t going to get to see this. That makes me quite sad. However, I know that she would be proud of Our Lil getting on & doing it.

Another part of this, is… my parents have always told of how when I was learning to ride a 2-wheeler, I kept falling off & getting back on whereas AntiKaggs stopped to nurse each bump along the way. Left to herself, Lily would have been properly in the latter camp, and to be honest I’m amazed the “let’s sort it out later” strategy worked. She has taken to this like a fish to water with hardly any complaining (during the process, at least…). The cynical, self-deprecating part of me says that (as with the toilet training which for Lily took less than a week) we’ve left it so late that it’s about blimmin’ time which is why she’s picked it up so quickly, but another part of me just wants to give her full credit.

I’m concerned that she’s generally a worrier and her inner (and also on this occasion, her outer) voices shout “I can’t do it”. It turns out, with much positivity, encouragement and shouting “You can do it!” we can overcome this, and show her just what she can do.

And when we’re not in the back garden, there will be a cycling helmet involved.

P.S. I’ve suggested the same move to Joel. He’s not ready. Shame.

It’s a quite big tent. Technically speaking a 6-berth, but the main thing we like about it (apart from the more room) is the fact that there’s room inside for the table and you can stand up in it. So if it rains, we don’t get sore necks any more…

Here’s Joel demonstrating the spacious living area:

See how, with a massive tent to play in, he still squeezes himself into a wheelie suitcase!

And here’s Lily demonstrating the spacious sleeping area:

In this photo you can see what I’m anticipating will be my favourite feature: pockets to put stuff in:

All in all, a big success so far!

We put it up the week before Easter and left it up for a couple of days so that the children could play in it over the holidays. Of course, they didn’t because as forecast (oh how I wish we’d checked!) it promptly rained really hard all week. It finally came down today (pretty easily, thank goodness) and I’m sure the grass won’t take too long to recover…

It took us a while to get to fitting it, because shortly after that was the point where mum died. That’s not to say that ordinarily it would have been done next day: we have another gifted carpet which has sat in the back room for at least 2 years. We’re not reet snappy about these things, usually.

So it was quite an achievement, the point where we were standing in joel’s room with carpet stretchers, no furniture and Dad due any minute to help us lay the new carpet.

Steve looks round, pensively, and says (bear in mind this is a Sunday, and we’re self employed) “this room could really do with decorating before we lay new carpet, couldn’t it?”

See, now. Several times we’ve been on the brink of doing something, or thinking about it, and one of us will say – we *could* do that, but first we should do this – i.e. create all kinds of dependencies, the upshot of which is we often don’t do it at all. In some ways, it’s to Steve’s credit that he only floated the decorating idea once the room was empty of furniture. Any earlier and we might have put the project off until it was even slightly convenient, and thus not done it.

The upshot is, after a bit of face-pulling and non-saying of negative things on my part, Dad arrived, and was promptly sent home again for wallpaper steamer and scrapers.

Those familiar with our house, and our decorating history will almost certainly now be reading from between their fingers, or from behind the sofa. Our house was built in or before the 1880s. There are very few right angles or straight lines, all the floors creak, and walls are not flat. In the 1970s or thereabouts one of the house’s owners decided that an effective way to deal with the uneven walls was stippled artex. About a week after we moved in, having found stippled artex in many-many rooms we hadn’t previously been aware were stippled, I was sat in bed and realised that even here, not only were the walls artexed, they were artexed on top of wallpaper.

Joel’s room is one such room. We set to with the steamer, which rubberised the artex, meaning it could be peeled off like a face mask, and then going over it again to remove the lining paper. Half way along one wall, we discover that the paper underneath runs out. Steve takes a trip out to get artex-removal goo. Dad, who has been side-stepped to the job of boxing in the water pipes in the corner, has well scarpered by now, BTW. In the meantime, I strip (oo-er Mrs) wallpaper, and sand & undercoat the woodwork.

Steve’s intention was to do the gloss of an evening during the week, and make progress that way. The fates conspired to make this one of the busiest weeks ever, and Steve didn’t make it home before 9pm ALL WEEK. So my week was 2 children sharing a room, not settling, trying to get them to settle single handedly… and failing.

The following weekend was goo application & removal, and carpet removal. And painting the ceiling.

The following week was also busy. It’s fair to say that, given the week before, I had no expectation of any decorating occurring weekday evenings. I wasn’t prepared to do it, being properly knackered, so didn’t expect Steve to be able to do any either. Joel asked “Why do I have to sleep in Lily’s room for ever?”

So: to easter weekend. Steve glossed while I acquired wallpaper and took L&J to see “How To Train Your Dragon”. Wallpaper was applied in pretty-fast time, and painted. New light fittings and curtain rail put back up and hey presto, the young man can finally move back in.

Now we have had to promise to tart Lily’s room up somewhat, although she’s temporarily mollified by moving the furniture round, and frankly the rest of the house is looking a bit shabby…

We’ve noted that this is the second room that Joel has had a hand in choosing the colour. Both rooms are yellow. We may ask his opinion in future, but we may also ignore it…

Footnote: I’ve had to remove the Ben10 blanket from his chair, bnecause her’s worried that it will turn into an alien in the night. I forget how young he is, sometimes, it seems…

Intrigued as to what exciting initiatives the council was launching to encourage folk to flock to the leisure centres in the borough, I clicked on the link. Which takes you to a list of the sports centres in the borough, and some high level detail about the facilities available.

As someone who uses the swimming pool in Ormskirk reasonably frequently (we plan to go tomorrow, heaven help me) and has heard dark tales about the state of the facilities in Skelmersdale since Serco took over running them (charging spectators, effectively squeezing out the groups who use them, many other tales of woe), I have to say it will take more than a suggestion that I’ve eaten too much chocolate to entice me through their doors.

When we lived in UpHolland and our closest pool was Nye Bevan in the centre of Skelmersdale, I went swimming there quite a lot when the children were babies. I’ve had a reasonably privileged and sheltered upbringing, but honestly, the changing rooms at Nye Bevan were one of the grimmest places I’ve had occasion to be. If they haven’t been refurbished or rebuilt in the 5 years since I darkened their doors, it’s nothing short of criminal.

One of the Labour Party’s pledges for the forthcoming borough elections is that we would introduce the free swimming scheme which the central labour government has proposed and which the current Tory administration has rejected. To be honest, to get me back into the changing rooms at Nye Bevan, it would *have* to be free.

I don’t have experience of the other leisure facilities because as the parent of young children, running machines aren’t a great idea – you don’t get to work up anything like a rhythm before someone’s asking for something or if they can join in. Park Pool used to have a childcare facility but it closed recently due to lack of it’s being used. I never saw it advertised, never saw happy colourful signs pointing prospective clients in their direction: if you rely on word of mouth to sell your services, they ain’t gonna sell, missy.

It’s fair to say that if Labour had been in control when Serco entered the public-private “partnership” they currently operate under, either a) there would have been no partnership, or b) there would have been controls and incentives to ensure that the less well off in the borough could afford to use the facilities, and that those facilities were maintained to an acceptable standard at the expense of the people who get to bank the cash each day. Yet another instance where the Tories have let down the good people of West Lancashire.

So, when I see a tweet from my tory-administered borough council, exhorting me to visit my local leisure facilities, my immediate reaction is “Tell me why I should want to?”

p.s. a nod in the direction of the lovely council officer who probably posted this tweet – good thinking batman, here’s hoping the council pull its finger out and give you better services to tweet about!

I was drawn to these socks because of the unusual structure. I seem to go for unusual structure over pretty patterns so far in socks (with the exception of Pomatomas – and I gave them away) mainly because they seem like the kind of thing I’m more likely to wear. And, as I think I’ve mentioned, I liked the idea of a pattern which claims to have an “origami moment”.

This is the first time I’ve knitted full size toe-up socks (I did mini ones at Yarnissima’s workshop at iKnit in September) and honestly – I really properly need to pay more attention during the toe section. I had to wrip back several rows several times. The actual reason each time is lost to history, but it’s clear I wasn’t properly paying attention. I nearly had a wripping back drama on the second sock as well, as I mis-remembered where I’d got to and it was only the fact that I’d marked the pattern that saved me un-necessary grief…

At the point of the origami moment, I had to dig out middle of ball because didn’t read ahead before knitting & see that one needed a length for kitchenering the origami moment (you’d think with a self-professed difficult pattern I’d read ahead. apparently not). Luckily I was able to do so without great difficulty, but for a moment there I thought I was going to have to find a way of not making an uncomfortable lump in my heel area.

The second sock went well, it was started quickly, without the traditional 3-month “oh do I *have* to knit another one” hiatus, and other than thinking I’d have to wrip out, not paying proper attention while knitting at disneyland paris, and on the gusset decreases having decreased one more stitch than was necessary a row too early, it was all smooth sailing.

When it came to the cast off I had a challenge. I didn’t want it to be too tight as am aware of that as a risk, so went for Jeny’s surprisingly stretchy bind off (instructions on Knitty). It’s accurately named – indeed, when not stretched around my leg, it looks a bit frilly. In light of the frilliness, and a concern that lack of elasticity might mean Nora Batty effect, I tried a normal, but loose bind off for the other sock & while not so tight I can’t get the sock on, it has no elasticity and is a bit touch & go getting it over my ankle. It looks OK off the leg, though (stretchy on the left, normal on the right):

So given that it’s important for a sock to be comfortable & look good on your foot, not in your drawers, I have re-attached thread & done the  stretchy bind-off on the second sock. I’ve since found out about the Russian Bind off which is apparently very good. I may have to knit more socks just to check that this is true…

They fit nice and they’re dead warm. Which is what I was after, after all!

skew socks, from Knitty in King Cole Zig Zag from Knit Wise, Ormskirk

* just realised that confusion may reign re. ravelympics & the 17 days mention, especially among the political appointees who are made to monitor this blog. The Ravelympics are held in time with the actual olympics, and the basic idea is to knit something that it’s a challenge for you to complete in the time between the olympic flame being lit and the end of the games. I chose these socks, but failed to get appropriate yarn in time for the start, and then everything happened with Mum. So I started on 24th February, and finished on 4th April. 39 days. Over twice the alloted time, but nonetheless a personal best.

This is a plea to please grow up, and move on.

Also, Nestle are still pushing powdered milk in 3rd world countries in communities without a clean water supply, and are now also hacking down the natural habitat of Orang-Utans (and which Terry Pratchett fans aren’t appalled at the thought?) to get the oil they use to make Kit-Kats. It’s really not getting any better.

The colours of the dragons were astounding, the technical standard fabulous as usual – generally a top film I’d recommend, although sensitive pre-schoolers might need to sit on your knee from about half way through.

I found, however, that I was distracted by Astrid’s jumper (without the metal shoulder pads, mind!) – it looked really cool – as in “that’s a jumper I’d like to own” – and spent a lot of the time when she was on screen trying to work out how on would make such a jumper…

As though it were some kind of omen, following a link from woollywormhead’s blog, I stumbled across this: bingeknitter’s violet & green shawl

This led me to look for yarn in a suitable colourway: blue moon do a colourway that seems pretty suitable… but given that it’s mostly sock yarn, I might continue the search elsewhere as well…

The other hang-over from the movie is that we got a free sticker book with Joel’s snack-pack. Lily, who had very sensibly gone for just-popcorn, didn’t get a sticker book. This has been quite traumatic, although after initially not being keen to share, Joel has conceded that Lily can do the pages which have spellings on them.

I just looked back into my archives (oo-er, Mrs) and realised that I don’t think I mentioned anything about last year’s  debacle here. Thinking I was being a good parent, I got an Easter Hat Kit from tesco – I think it was about a tenner – and assembled it for him, mainly because he refused to help. There was important playing & watching the telly to be done and frankly I didn’t have the time or energy to insist.

So, a hat was made and presented to him. “I’m not wearing that hat,” says Joel, “It’s for babies.” He didn’t like it.

Instead, he decided that he would wear the hat he had made at Munchkins earlier in the week. I can’t track down any photos of it on Flickr, which seems like a travesty, but here’s a recent photo of it being modelled by Benjamina…I took the shop-bought one in in case any children were sans-bonnet, and he seemed happy with that scenario.

He should have been, because at the end of the day, it turned out he had won the competition, the prize for which was a large Easter Egg. Steve speculated that the staff probably go more for the hats which look like the child has had a significant hand in preparing.

So – to this year.

I’m pressed for time at the moment, I think we’re all aware of that. We’re in the process of remodelling Joel’s bedroom (more later) and so have wallpaper samples available. I took the one that looks a bit like trees (I personally really like that one, and would like to use it at some point, but it’s not right for Joel’s room), chopped it in half and gave half each to J&L. I got out paints, glue and crafty bits & pieces, called them through, and basically said “go”.

Here is what they came up with:

NB. Joel’s is shown upside down here. Other than the feathers, I don’t think it really makes a big difference.

As an aside, there’s something I became aware of while the kids were doing this. As a parent who crafts myself there are two things I’ve had to let go of. The first is the amount of painting over the edge of the paper that occurs, and the resultant mess that comes from unconstrained pre-school crafting. It’s not clear from the photo, but Joel covered his hands up to the elbows in mud-coloured paint and then set off to walk round the house. Strategies have to be developed – one of which is to have Joel on the side of the table nearest the sink. The second is that, as a stash-hoarder, I have a voice in the back of my head at times like these which says a variety of things “they’re using stuff! they’re wasting it! look – a sequin has dropped on the floor! that’s not a pattern!” and so on. I have learnt to ignore this voice. And to separate my actual proper stash from the kid’s crafting bits & pieces. Both in real life, and in my head.

The other thing some of you may be asking, is why leave them to it? Why not sit down and craft with them? Rest assured that I do sit down and do stuff with them a lot of the time. On this occasion, however, I wanted to see what they would come up with. And I was cooking their dinner at the same time (did I mention that time management is an issue at the moment?). Other than the voice in my head trying to tell me unhelpful stuff (see above) I don’t want to be an undue influence. A couple of weeks ago we sat down and had a drawing “competition” – the theme was “volcanoes”. We all sat down & started drawing – 3 lovely drawings were in progress. Lily looked at mine, and was clearly impressed, because she immediately cast her picture aside (which was shaping up nicely, by the way) and did one which was the closest copy of mine that she could manage. While flattered, I felt a bit sad that she didn’t trust her own creativity, and I’m not sure where we go from there apart from giving her the freedom to draw without my influence some of the time. I’d add illustrations, but I can’t find them just at the moment…

Anyway – I digress. The hat was left to dry overnight, a hat band fitted at breakfast, and he wore it to go to nursery the next day. It was much admired on arrival and, sure enough, he had at the end of the day, a Flake Easter Egg to bring home. We celebrated by wearing the hat to “Old MacDonalds”

PS. Jan, the head-teacher, made a comment in the morning about how as a governor I had inside knowledge that home-made hats are more likely to win than shop-made ones. I’ve written this as an overly elaborate way of demonstrating that this is not the case. To be honest I’d kind-of forgotten that there was a prize to be won, otherwise my fiercely competitive nature would have kicked in & I would have probably ruined it for everyone. Truth is, Joel cares about what he wears each day, and after last year I knew he’d be a lot happier wearing something he’d mostly made himself. But, all the same – YA BOO SUCKERS – 2 YEARS RUNNING – OWZAT!!!

The first half ended with an arrangement of “The Circle of Life” from The Lion King. It was billed as a ’slightly unusual’ arrangement & I found myself disappointed with it at first – partly because, although the music was great, they didn’t have the solo voice cry which features at the start of the film, which I felt sure could have been done with one of the instruments there. However, the piece built, including some chanting from the musicians who dealt seamlessly with what could well have been considered a voyage out of their comfort zone, and by the end I felt myself being swept up into an overwhelming crescendo.

The pieces played covered a wide range of films over several decades, not too much John Williams, and a surprise inclusion of “Lara’s Theme” for the benefit of a departing band member – a change that was warmly received by the audience, many of whom were, one suspects, in their prime when the film was released. The two soloists were excellent, one of whom played her own arrangement of “Somewhere over the rainbow”, the other the classic “Orange Juice” concerto (again, as featured in Brassed Off).

On the whole, the concert made me nostalgic for the time when I played myself, and laboured under the tyranny of Mr Bridle’s baton at KEHS. My Dad, who played in the National Youth Brass Band in his time, said that he felt the standard of musicianship over the years has been raised a lot, and he doubts wherher the band of his time would have coped with some of the pieces we heard.

The band’s encore was “Death or Glory”, a classic band pioece which features in the opening sequence of Brassed Off, a film which did a lot for the band movement in the ’90s, and for Grimethorpe in particular.

The play is set in Beverley’s living room, while the eponymous party takes place next door. Its intention is to criticize/highlight the futility of social snobbery in the 1970s, and it’s fair to say that the evening the characters undergo is not a pleasant one. The bizarre ending left me wondering if the final curtain was truly such until the cast took their bows.

Staging was excellent, the crew really captured the essence of a 1970s living room, and there were none of the swaying flats that one often associates with amateur performances. The women truly brought their characters to life, whereas the men fulfilled their roles with aplomb. Given the script, where they are called on to be tremendously awkward and pompous by turn, essentially portrayed as the weaker sex, it was hard to tell whether awkward silences were part of the script or a weak point in the performance. The costumes were bang on (Beverley, in particular, had a truly astounding cleavage), and the comic timing excellent.

It’s also a sign of the times that when “Beverley” lit up on stage for the first time, I thought “can she *do* that?” and spent the rest of the evening wondering if I would smell like I’d been to the pub 10 years ago when I got home…

I thought this had been lost. It hasn’t. Hurrah!
That’s it for today!

Day 1

• Not having to come home again pretty much straight away
• train ride from CDG to Marne La Vallee takes 8 minutes
• lunch at Annette’s diner. Joel falls asleep
• first afternoon in the park.
  
• going on buzz lightyear shoot-up ride. In spite of having his eyes closed throughout due to fear (there was a very scary alien toy) Joel scores at least twice as much as anyone else. And vows never to go on it again
• going on thunder mountain ride. Joel only just tall enough. Joel catatonic throughout. Mummy scared witless he was going to be tossed out of car. Joel vows never to go on that ride again, either
• dinner at highly-recommended steak house. Joel falls asleep
• the presents promised before leaving last time are bought: Angel from Lilo & Stitch and a classic Mickey
• everyone goes to bed. Mummy gets to knit a little bit of skew sock 2
• an hour later, Joel throws up in bed, on the top bunk. Mickey gets caught in the crossfire

Day 2

• mummy gets to go back to bed after breakfast. Daddy takes L&J to the park
• first go on the Peter Pan ride – Joel’s favourite. The best bit is going over the rainbow, apparently
• L&J meet Mickey & Minnie. Lily is unconvinced
  
• Daddy takes Lily on the Finding Nemo/East Australian Current Turtle ride. Both are glad to still be alive. Lily is cured of her love of roller coasters
• we go on “it’s a small world” for the first time
  
• we go on “it’s a small world” again
• Lily gets to drive (sort-of)
  
• we see the parade. Joel scared by “baddies” float which stops by us for roughly 5 years
• dinner at mickey’s cafe
  
• mummy scores free garlic bread & beer by being nice to the waiter in French. And by not remembering until 3/4 way through her garlic bread that it was supposed to have cheese on it
• Joel falls asleep
  
• mummy leaves scarf in restaurant

Day 3

• today, Daddy gets to go back to bed and mummy takes J&L into the park
• Due to crowd pressure, we locate & enjoy the Pocahontas Play Village
• This is the bizarre scrum that occurred when a chipmunk visited
  
  From the way one chap dashed across the playground, we thought someone had been hurt
• our hotel. We were in “Sitting Bull” on the left
  
• we attempt an afternoon nap, to avoid Joel falling asleep at dinner time. Joel having none of it
• chamber maids try to clean room while we’re in it. When told we don’t want it cleaning there’s much confusion because they still have to come in to tell reception using our room phone that we don’t want to be disturbed. Crazy system. I’m still quite cross, it seems. Really properly wished I knew the French for “please just go away”
• dinner at all-u-can-eat buffet at the hotel. Food not great. Joel spills drink. Daddy gets pretty fed up

Day 4

• again with the really busy. Announcements over tannoy telling punters not to run
• we watch playhouse disney, the stitch show & animagique, because they fit a lot of people in
  
• dinner at the Rainforest Cafe (Lily’s request). Joel scared by intermittent pretend thunder storms
• hometime!
• departure lounge at CDG has no toilets after security. Joel wees in bottle twice and has to change trousers twice
• Joel bangs head on chairs in departure lounge, and falls asleep for the rest of the journey
• Joel wets mummy’s pants while being carried off the aeroplane
• home just before midnight

We parked at the southern end of the village, next to the school which has exciting looking play equipment which has a BIG SIGN on it saying that it is only for children at the school, and there is another playground in the village for other children to use. We thought “grumpy buggers” but respected the sign. Turns out the playground is at the other end of the village, at a point past where we were able to get to before it was time to head back to meet the other half of our party.

We consulted a map, and walked along the river to the playground. Lily baa-ed at some sheep, who all looked round. That hardly ever works, so we were quite pleased.

We found the playground. We didn’t stop there long enough. The small hill/large lump of rock near the playground was also exciting.

click to embiggen for full unhappy-face effect

We went on to the Daffodil walk by the church, to check out the location & find Uncle Pete & Aunty Davina’s plaque. We found it, and Daddy trampled some daffodil shoots.

We’re pretty sure they’ll bounce back…

So, we had lunch, then headed over for a walk by the lake. Within 50 yards of the car park, Joel did a proper face-plant where he pretty much head butted the path, quite hard. He had to go on Daddy’s shoulders for a little bit then.

The light was fantastic. Even with the good camera, I don’t think I do it justice.

Joel cheered up a bit. Who doesn’t enjoy a good footbridge, after all?!

The children found a chunk of ice crystals the size of a decent cow pat which was fascinating. So much so, we nearly had to curtail the walk. We persevered, though, and finally turned back when Joel indicated he’d had enough by pretending to fall asleep against a path-side tree.

Joel was pretty keen to keep his trousers clean, though. See him here, making sure his trousers are unscathed by the deep mud…

Moments after this, we achieved another headlong fall-over when a tree root leapt up off the floor into Joel’s path.

And, as if further proof were needed that I am turning into my mother – this just seems heavenly to me right now.

We had a lovely walk in the woods, along the river which runs between Grasmere the lake & Windermere.

It was a wonderfully sunny spring day, in a place where Mum loved to be.

It still feels very much like there is someone missing from these photos, other than the person behind the camera.

It’s fair to say that plenty of tears were shed.

Get me, I’m a wildlife photographer.

Note to Deb. This one was *a lot* harder to write than the one with all the cards. Just sayin’.

Also, I may add a lighter couple of notes in a future post, because we actually had quite a nice day out with some funny moments, but just now I’m too tired & have to pack for hols to expand on that. And there’s enough for another blog post, so why waste it on the one

I’ve fancied knitting this ever since I pulled it out of the magazine & threw the rest of it away. 50-odd page magazine, and I choose the 2-line set of instructions. To be fair, they did also do a sideways version where you cast on eleventy bajillion stitches (Hi, @mulene!) and work 14 rows, which I’m sure I’ll try some day. Or not.

In other (and I promise, relevant) news, my LYS, Knit Wise (you too can be a facebook fan) has moved about 20 yards up the road to a larger store which has an upstairs room for workshops and for rude punters to allow their children to disappear up to without batting an eyelid (it seems) (mine didn’t even go near the stairs, and they didn’t touch any yarn either – see – they’re TRAINED). I popped in to visit Myra in her new premises, and it seemed rude to leave empty handed (even though, I might point out, I was carrying 2 scooters, and about a gazillion library books by then), so I got some lovely variegated yarn to make a belt with. I also popped into the haberdashery store in Church Walks to get a ridiculously large pearl button to act as a feature & form some kind of closing.

I didn’t get any of the belt buckles they had there, because they all looked like they belonged on old lady’s handbags, and that isn’t the look I was going for.

I chose the colours with my bezzy in mind, but when I spied the huge red button, my sister called to me from the far side of the world, so this project is destined to be for antikaggs.

So, I cast on and it turns out, linen stitch is HUGELY addictive. I made a bit of a mess by knitting the first row, and not launching straight into the pattern stitch, but if you don’t look right at it, you hardly notice it.

I didn’t think it would grow quickly or be fast to knit, because the actions are not dissimilar to 1×1 rib, which is possibly my least favourite thing to knit.

However, after only a couple of evenings, one of which was spent in front of the longest film in the history of the world, The Deer Hunter, it was getting quite long.

I like the way that although the colour changes are reasonably sudden (who knew yarn could shock) and gives fairly solid stripes under normal knitting circumstances, the linen stitch makes it grade over a couple of rows. I also like that fact that while the front is flat, the back is super-nobbly, and also looks pretty foxy. If it wasn’t for the fact that the HUGE button kinda dictates how it’s worn, you could wear this belt the wrong way round and it would still be pretty damn stylish.

At this point, it occurred to me that to accommodate the button I’d bought I was going to have to make button holes which were wider than the belt, or somehow work out how to make them lengthwise while keeping the colour stripes consistent.

So I dug out a smaller button, with the intention of sewing the button on the back and only having to make smaller button holes. This appears to have worked, although having measured what size holes were needed, I’ve had to go up a button size, because it wasn’t going to be staying done up.

So now it’s complete, and all I have to do is pack it up and send it.

Preferably before posting this, given that antikaggs is an avid reader of this ‘ere blog.

An aside: I’ve been saving this post up, and in the meantime, circumstances have brought antikaggs round the world for a visit. So that’s saved on the postage, anyway…

Joel (4): uh – everybody! Granny has died!
Alex (8): Whose Granny?
Joel: My Granny.
Nathan (4): What happened?
Joel: (struggling slightly) well… her heart broke… and then… it stopped.
Ben (6): That’s called a heart attack!
Lily (6): Yes, and she’s in Heaven now with Aunty Mabe.
Rachel (10 weeks): *nods sympathetically*

Christine & Jude (the adults in the room) look at each other 8-|

Curtain.

Hence the brief period over the past couple of weeks where I haven’t blogged much.

It’s fair to say…

…that as a family…

…we’ve been quite buoyed up…

…by the many cards & messages…

…that have been sent…

Sometimes from folk who we’re struggling to identify!

Although, the get well cards from the incident the week before were a bit pitiful.

I procrastinated by first insisting that she accompany me down the garden to watch me dig up the parsnip crop that’s been languishing under the ground since last summer. I’ve picked a few over the months, and have occasionally been beaten by larger specimens who weren’t coming out quite as easily as I thought. I picked one (before the snows came, I think) or tried to, and it gave up only its leaves. Thinking in my head that I was not to be foxed so easily by a root vegetable, I began digging with my hands. It was only when elbow deep in mud tugging on a stubbornly not-shifting root vegetable that echoes of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox came to mind, and I thought that possibly my competitive nature was getting the better of me. I did get that one out in the end – it was satisfyingly big – but I like to think that it shows personal growth that the next time that happened, I thought “buggrit, I’ll get a fork out & dig it up later”.

So, this Saturday it was Fork Time.

We dug up so many, Lily couldn’t manage to hold the container. We may be eating parsnips for some time…

So, having washed them off and packed some away (someone tell me the best way to keep them – if it’s not-quite-dried-off and in a cardboard box between layers of newspaper next to the recycling box, I’m on to a winner)  I proceeded to make parsnip & mustard soup.

This particular batch could do with more cream. It’s a bit thick, but tasty even if I say so myself…

So, after lunch we assembled the ingredients for peppermint daisies. All ingredients present & correct (although only just enough icing sugar – woops). Turns out, the smallest flower shaped cookie-cutter we have is 2 inches across. We *do*, however, have a suitably small heart-shaped cookie-cutter at about 1″ across. So we made hearts, which as everyone knows have to be pink.

We then had to decorate them with blood-red food-dye paint, because that’s just what you have to do.

worth noting: this is one of my fave pics of Lily ever. Not sure why, it just ’speaks to me’. Will stop now, honestly…

As with most of the stuff we bake, they were pretty popular.

So, being on a roll, I made bread, which appeared to work OK.

And then the next day, having plenty of eggs in the fridge, and Daddy still in bed with a cold, we made chocolate octopuses (see page 2)…

The observant among you will see that they have between 3 & 5 legs. The ones with 5 legs are octopuses, and the other ones are squid. They should have had smarties for eyes, only the bag of smarties I put in the trolley while out shopping in the morning with Joel mysteriously disappeared. And yes, they *genuinely* disappeared. I have a clear recollection of choosing them, lobbing them into the trolley over Joel’s shoulder (yes, he’s nearly too big to be sitting in the trolley, while I can get away with it I will), but then no sight nor record of them exists. They didn’t come back to the house, they don’t feature on our receipt. They may still be in the trolley. In which case they will be very cold.

So the eyes are made of raisins (Lily’s back-up plan) and don’t stay on because we just bodged them on and didn’t stick them on with anything. Because we didn’t have any icing sugar left.

The octopuses are featuring in this week’s lunchboxes. I asked Lily if she wanted an octopus in her lunch, to which she said yes. At the end of the day I was reprimanded for putting a squid in her lunchbox “by accident”. Do you ever get the feeling you can’t win?

An aside: I’ve just realised I’ve got my timing arse about face. We had a fry-up for lunch on Saturday, because I spotted a sign at the farm over the road which said they had black pudding, and the car turned in there all by itself. I used the last of the eggs for the fry-up. After lunch I realised that egg whites were required for the peppermint whatevers, so had to go back over the the farm (the farmer thought this was very funny. He needs to watch it – thin ice exists here quite a lot) to get some eggs. (note for beth at fakeplasticfish – I took my own bags both times, and took an egg carton from our making-stuff stash to refill with eggs, which the farmer did without blenching or calling me odd or anything)

So I got eggs and we made peppermint thingoes and I made the bread. On Sunday I dug up parsnips, we had soup for lunch & ate the homemade bread which always slices better on day 2, Joel & I went to the supermarket and when the sun was nearly over the yard-arm, we made chocolate octopuses.

This is how there are enough left to start putting them in lunchboxes.

As my Dad once said – never spoil a good story with the facts.

And, by some bizarre twist of magic finger-ness I have the current high score on facebook bejewelled blitz of 300K-something. Until Tuesday. On fire, I tell thee.

So, I knitted Lily a hat, and she doesn’t like it. So I’m knitting another one. After a tortuous school-morning 10-minutes claw-back-from-the-brink-of-meltdown discussion about what she was expecting in a hat, we have settled on:

1. Like Joel’s, with pictures on.
2. No skulls, instead butterflies and flowers.
3. The background should be green like the grass and blue like the sky. Like in Australia, where Fraser & Gemma live.
4. Daddy helpfully suggested the sky could include birds and the sun.
5. Daddy not really helping here.
6. Lily said I could include a rainbow in the sky if I liked.

So, apparently it’s that simple.

So, I got green and sky-blue yarn. Although the skies in Oz are often navy-ish in the mid-day heat, I can’t be bothered arguing the toss.

As I started knitting one evening, having done the 24 lining rows, it dawned on me that this yarn seemed thinner, more delicate, softer if you will, then the navy I knitted Joel’s hat with. I consulted the helpfully different-coloured ball-band and realised with a rising sense of dread that this yarn is indeed 4 ply, not DK.

As I tweeted, Oh Cock.

Helpfully, Lily got up a few moments later, so I checked the size of what I’d knitted so far on her head and it could be squeezed over her ears. So we plough on, regardless.

By this point I don’t think I’d charted the flowers & butterflies, so I did that. It didn’t take long, although it’s surprisingly hard to get just the right feel for one’s butterfly, with ethereal wings, etc, in one colour & reasonably low resolution.

I was determined to wedge some of the original hat in there, so used the spot-dyed yarn I had used for Marina. The solid fluffy nature of this yarn helpfully accentuates the 4-ply-ness of the main colour. There’s also a tie-in to Joel’s hat where you’ll see I’ve used the yellow for the flowers. I contemplated alternating colours of butterfly, but the thought of passing yarn over that distance made me feel light-headed. I also contemplated *not* passing yarn across the back, and putting together little balls of yarn, one for each butterfly. But there are 7 pattern repeats round the hat. I was already on my second hat. I was not prepared to do what amounts to a full re-design (other than the tricky structural stuff, clearly) just to have alternating butterflies.

The hat was making good progress when I took it with me on another relaxing weekend to the work farm.

This happened.

So this happened (more knitting in a recovery vehicle).

Fortunately, there was some time available once we’d finally made it to the cottage, and this was able to happen.

As you can see, it’s a bit big for Steve, but just the right size for Lily. It was met with a gasp and a grab, and has been worn more than I would have expected it to.

So, finally, success!

PS. we gave Marina to Antonia, who apparently likes it a lot…

Shortly thereafter (I didn’t ignore said light, by the way – the action I took had no effect) the engine in Steve’s car ate itself, and remains in the garage to this day, fate as yet undetermined.

For this series of events, I am in no way blaming the knitting project I acquired that weekend.

I have yet to rack my brains “properly” but I’m pretty sure it hasn’t left the house since then. We’ve not been away for the weekend, and I don’t yet have yarnharlot’s courage for taking knitting to generic social events.

This last weekend, we went away to our fave away-weekend, the work farm (which normal people call “Little Edstone Farmhouse“)(they’re lovely: tell Peter I sent you) and I took Duchess with me.

I am in no way blaming the presence of this knitting project on what happened next.

My car broke down. It made very similar noises (although, to be fair, significantly fewer of them) to those made by the Audi, very briefly, and then the engine stopped.

Lily’s main concern, once we were at the top of the embankment, was that this pretty much ruled out the plan she had to go swimming on arrival at the work farm…

It’s fair to say, that the knitting project has now been in a series of other vehicles over the course of the weekend, none of which have yet broken down (that we know of) and some good progress has been made.

Given its history, though, I may still get it exorcised before going out to anything in a car while wearing it.

Including the exorcism.

This time, my car broke.

Steve’s is still in the garage, fate undecided. Hopefully the problem with my car is nowhere near as serious, and will be faster and more cheaply back on the road. Needless to say, having had a Friday night like we had, I was focussing this weekend on enjoying myself and sitting around going “oh, crap, not again”.

Keep your fingers crossed for us! Normal service will resume presently (I have hat pictures…)

I have some yarn which I bought from ebay from China. There’s pretty much enough to make a sweater for Lily, but I thought I’d spoil a good plan and make a hat with it.

Eschewing the nonsense of doing a tension square, I dove right in and wouldn’t you know it, it’s really engaging to knit. I “picked” this one as it’s garter stitch – so no tricky purling involved – and the yarn-overs are all dropped, so although I *did* wrap them the right way round, it didn’t really matter.

Day 1 went pretty quickly…

And by Day 3 it was finished. I did an extra pattern repeat than was called for in the small size as *when I tried it round Lily’s head* (remember this later) it seemed like it was going to be a bit snug. Finished, grafted, only a slight clue as to where the grafting is in the guise of an uneven end at the rim (what can I say – I’m not Woolly Wormhead!!), otherwise I’m pretty pleased with it.

So, I photograph it…

…and leave it on the kitchen table to present to Lily in the morning.

Morning comes, and Lily finds the hat, and tries it on. She doesn’t like it for 3 reasons:

1. It’s too scratchy. Wool content & not being washed yet means it’s a bit coarse. Maybe in future I need to wash woollens at least once before presenting them to the kids, or just use pure acrylic on their stuff.

2. Her head doesn’t go to the end of it. It’s a slouchy beannie rather than rasta-style, but you’d still need to be a bit alien-head to fill it out. Being a simple girl of simple tastes, Lily does not approve of this style.

3. She thought her hat would have pictures on it, like Joel’s does. The impatient part of me asks at which point when I was trying a pictureless hat round her head did she think the pictures were going to magically appear? The more patient & understanding of children’s minds part of me, in the guise of Steve (aka Daddy) pointed out that Lily doesn’t know how hats & knitting works. How is she supposed to know that the pictures *don’t* magically appear at the end?

We determined in 10 valuable school-day breakfast minutes that she would like a hat like Joel’s but green & blue like grass & sky with butterflies & flowers on. Is that all?

And why Mariiiinaaa? Because my boyfriend(’s mum) from age 17 to 22(ish) had a cleaner called Marina whose name he always sang. It was a Thunderbirds reference, or something. And yes, you’re right, I didn’t grow up in the ghetto. In the 4 or so years I went out with him I met her only once, but I’ve never been able to say “Marina” straight since then.

So now I have green & blue yarn & have cast on another skull hat, only this time I have to chart butterflies & flowers before I can do the colourwork.

At least she didn’t ask for bunnies as well.