Purple monsters and fingers

June 24th, 2009

Rowan all seasons cotton is very nice. Very nice indeed. Knitting it in the round on 3.5mm needles is distinctly not advised though.

I’m taking a break from knitting my purple monster (and from the resulting hand cramp. There are a hella lot of ssks and k2togs in that pattern!) to do a quick update. Again, photoless due to  my camera battery being dead, and my photoshop trial being over *sob*

A quick jaunt down to Waterford took place at the weekend, where I got to catch up with some people that I haven’t seen since the wedding. Shameful, I know. Large amounts of yummy food was consumed, along with multiple mojitos. The weather even obliged and allowed for my first al fresco meal of the year.

Shockingly I didn’t get near the new yarn shop in the city centre, due entirely to the aforementioned mojitos and company. I’ll be back down there in a few weeks though, so will give a full report then. The things I do for my readers!

Last night, myself and HusBeast headed into Dublin and went to a Bill Bailey gig. I got the tickets back in October - I’d failed to get them every other time he was touring here for the last five years  - and they were an anniversary prezzie for himself. I won’t post spoilers for those of you who are still to see the show, but suffice to say that it was fantastic. I had serious issues with not being able to breathe because I was laughing so much. Clever funny as well. Not just an assortment of “tit and bum” jokes, which is all too prevailant in stand up these days. Just to sound like an old fart.

This morning I was rudely awakened by the postman. At 7.15am. Has to be some kind of record for earliest delivery by the Irish postal service. I had been hoping that it was a package from the States for me, but alas, it was for The Lodger. It seems that the best way to get me out of bed and down stairs in 15 seconds or fewer is the promise of peanut butter M’n'Ms.

The finishing touches on my BSJ were completed at SnB this morning, which left me feeling rather chuffed. It’s a very cute looking thing, and finished just in the nick of time. Pity the intended recipient will have grown out of it in about ten minutes, but he is a baby and that is their way. You turn your back for just a moment, and poof!, they’ve grown another inch. I’ll console myself knowing that Becky will like it, and will possibly be able to reuse it at some stage in the future as it’s in a nice gender neutral colour.

Wow, I used the term “gender neutral”. I may have earned a gold star from the PC police, horror of horrors.

Apart from suffering from hand cramp (mind out of the gutters, thanking you!) there’s not much going on chez moi. I’m trying to get the stuffed purple monster body done this evening before bed, so am ensconced on one end of the sofa with some tea and Tom Waits on the stereo while HusBeast and The Lodger are currently saving the universe from alien invaders on the other end. For my part, I’m being encouraging by making comments loaded with double entendre and singing the Faceplant song every time one of them gets splatted. It’s a pretty regular thing, but they’re getting better.

Many things are getting better.

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Goodnight, sweetheart

June 16th, 2009

The last week has flown by in a flurry of knitting, frogging, re-knitting and refrogging, learning to count to 14 successfully, not setting fire to a chart (due entirely to my own inability to read it as opposed to some inate flaw in the chart itself) worrying about cashflow, trying to declutter, and catching up with friends who came over on Friday night because we can’t afford to go out (in honesty, they’ve been coming over every Friday for months, but they bring chocolate and whiskey and sympathetic hugs now too).

I went for a costume fitting, which was fun and productive, and holds promise of some days of work over the next few weeks. My final Wollmeise sock club package arrived, which was a truly joyous moment.

WWKIP day passed me by once more, as did SnB, as the moths started to fly from the wallet. This is vaguely better now, as my social welfare paperwork finally got stamped and authorised and all that jazz this week. (See you on Wednesday girlies!!)

Insomnia seems to be this weeks’ special though.

As much as I intended to have a regular sleeping pattern when I got the boot, it has been slipping gradually over the last couple of weeks. What’s one more pattern repeat or one more episode of Buffy when you don’t have to face rush hour traffic in the morning, eh? Quite a lot as it turned out.

HusBeast was the first to give up on the idea of sleep last night, and got cosy with the XBox at about 2am. I decided to continue tossing and turning and having those amazingly vivid dreams that you have when you’re not quite asleep, yet not quite awake (the kind that has seen me almost launch out of seats on planes on more than one occasion. Thank heavens for seatbelts, I say!). By the time 4am rolled around, it was clear that I was fighting a losing battle. I lay there for another half hour, listening to the dawn chorus and veering wildly between “perky and awake” and “so tired I could cry” before heading downstairs.

The adventures really started mid-morning. My trip to the wonderful land under the sofa resulted in my finding the remote control which went for a holiday there on Thursday. Having gotten lots of headway made on my cardigan, I realised that my feet were not filled with pins and needles from sitting on them, because they were that damn cold. Being the vaguely sensible girl that I am, I headed upstairs to break out the handknitted socks. I managed to keep my balance while hopping about and struggling with a sock. Score one for me. Not in a million years did I think that, as I tried not to fall over a runaway ball of sock yarn, that the simple act of HusBeast sitting on the bed would result in my having to stay up til midnight.

I realise that one of the perils of living in rented accomodation is that the furniture is mostly held together with the power of the Force or something. The flip side of that, to me at least, is that…well…being blunt, a double bed that is intended for two people to sleep (etc, etc, etc) in should really be robust enough to sleep in. Sitting on the corner of it should not be cause for concern.

It’s partly our own laziness (and lack of a toolbox), I guess. We bought a new bed ages ago, and have not put it together. We put the new, fab, orth mattress on the crappy frame that someone had gerryrigged together using a 4×4 and a tube of No More Nails. Still, it held up fine. We’ve been sleeping in it for months with no problem. It seems, however, that sitting on the damn thing was just asking for trouble, as the loud cracking noise attested to.

We mostly laughed it off, as the frame has been defying all laws of gravity and physics since we moved in. Tonight when I got into bed and noises came from the wood that you’d normally hear in some form of documentary on demolitions, I realised that it was just plain wrecked. I busied myself with emptying the dishwasher and making tea and trying to convince myself that my ass isn’t really that big while HusBeast and The Lodger got down to rearranging our room. This evening, we’ll be sleeping on our very expensive mattress on the floor. The frame is being coaxed into standing up against the wall in the downstairs hall as I type.

Tomorrow, there shall be photos to document this marvel of the modern age. There will be large amounts of swearing and blinding as we try to put the new bed frame together, and frustration as I realise that I couldn’t lift that mattress with an IronMan suit. I also get to call the landlord and get him to send someone to pick up the firewood old bed. I’m a little apprehensive about that, to be honest. The memories of Sparky the WonderOven are still a little raw. Almost getting electrocuted will do that to a girl.

Now, however, it’s time for sleep. Here’s hoping that the morning will bring productivity, good vibes, and a day of less than 22 hours.

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Sunshine and lollipops

June 2nd, 2009

I managed to miss Woolapolooza entirely this weekend. There was a rather hasty exit beaten to Tipperary on Saturday morning, and we didn’t get home ’til Sunday evening. Nothing big and bad, just family stuff that couldn’t be dealt with over the phone.

It was a fantastic weekend, weather-wise. My cat didn’t appreciate it though. Perhaps it’s something to do with all that fur he has.

kitty

He found shelter in some of the many, many plants and bushes in my parent’s garden.

The butterflies, on the other hand, were loving the sun. I’ve been noticing a distinct lack of butterflies in recent years, but they’re all over the place at the moment.

butterfly

Yesterday was a bank holiday here, and to be honest, I didn’t get up to much. Made the apparently obligatory visit to a garden centre, where I ate ice cream and bought some organic herbs and compost to repot at home. I hate buying little packets of over-refrigerated herbs in supermarkets when they’re so easy to grow. Even though we’ve a big back garden, it’s basically a wilderness, so the herbs are in a plantpot garden. They seem to be settling in well.

lemon-thyme

Lemon thyme

and tarragon

tarragon

You may think that I’m being a little over the top in calling our garden a wilderness. I assure you, I am not. The grass is more than waist high, as are the dock leaves and buttercups.

buttercups

There’s a whole ecosystem going on in there. So much so that I’m feeling pangs of guilt at even contemplating phoning the landlord to have him come along with his lawnmower. …or tractor, at this stage.

Today has been most productive, due in no small part to the still-sunny weather. It’s a complete shocker to have a long weekend in Ireland where it’s not raining like monsoon season. Having good weather for it, and good weather with no end in sight, is a revelation!

drying-off

Yarn was dyed…

bread

…bread was baked.

Not much of that bread left, mind. My first attempt at proper yeast bread. Very nice it is too, especially with some real butter and honey drizzled on top.

Speaking of which…..

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Water of life

May 26th, 2009

We woke up on Sunday morning to sun and glorious blue skies. After some quick consulting with the all-knowing Google, we decided to take a road trip.

The weather was perfect for driving, and as we were heading to the midlands and not the beach, most of the traffic was going in the other direction. We were even in such a good mood that when the googlemap directions turned out to have been written by blind monkeys and were abandoned in favour of my internal satnav, we were still smiling.

It was a day on which there were many reasons to smile.

The first day this year that the birkies have been worn outside without risk of frostbite, for one!

sandals

Wow…I need a pedicure.

The drive (eventually) brought us to what is traditionally known as “culchieland” by those in Dublin….and by a lot of people outside it as well. County Offaly has been the butt end of jokes for countless years. Most involve sheep or having an extra finger/toe.      Our current Taoiseach (Prime minister) is known as BIFFO (Big Ignorant F***er From Offaly).  It’s quite a gorgeous place though, for all the slagging off we give it. 40 shades of green doesn’t even come close. It’s also home to one of the last remaining distilleries in Ireland.

Yes, dear readers, I drove all the way to see whiskey on my sunny Sunday.

more-posing

Not that there were many objections from HusBeast, who even deigned to pose for a photo.

The Tullamore Dew distillery was in the building behind him for most of it’s life, but was recently moved out in favour of this “modernisation” malarkey. The building has been turned into a heritage centre, and while it’s very much geared up for TransAtlantic tourists, it was an interesting way to spend an hour or so. There are displays about the history of the town, whiskey making, and some nice bits of old kit

bottlefiller

like this bottlefiller, which was manned by an amazingly creepy looking waxwork of a bottlefiller operator.

At the end of our wander around, we headed downstairs to the bar that’s not really a bar. It used to be a working bar at some stage in the past, and now sits empty and forlorn looking in between busloads of tourists. We had a sample of Tullamore Dew, which is not my favourite whiskey by a long shot, I must admit. It’s good in cocktails and fab in Irish coffees, but I prefer my whiskey without an umbrella in it. Irish mist has been associated with big hair and shoulderpads and other pinnacles of 80’s fashion in my head since childhood, and it turns out that it’s actually a nice drink too.

Naturally, we had to take home a souvenier. Ahem.

whiskeypost

It’s a bottle of Heritage, which is their special distillation. When it’s gone, it’s gone  - that kind of deeley. No idea what it tastes like, as the nearest pub didn’t actually have any Tullamore Dew at all. Not the smartest marketing strategy, I feel.

Since then, I’ve mostly been knitting. The Tangled Yoke is flying along.

tangled-yoke-part-one

Flying for me, at least. The body section is done, sleeve one is done, and sleeve two is coming along nicely. Once that’s finished, it’s on to the slightly complicated part. This is actually the first Interweave Knits pattern that I’ve knitted (as opposed to queuing and never getting around to knitting) and I’m getting into the swing of their pattern-writing style nicely.

If that wasn’t enough, I’ve also had the dyepot going. I’ve posted off a custom order today, and I’ve been working on something new to boot. Here’s a sneek preview

new-kits

More to come soon!

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Lions and tigers and bears…oh my!

May 23rd, 2009

Well, something like that anyway.

The lions were off being lions and were distinctly not cooperating for the camera. Bloody celebrities.

The bears were cute as all hell and I’d like to take one home.

redpanda

Yes, technically the is a bear. A red panda bear!

The tigers, much like the lions, were off sleeping and being far less pose-y than is necessary for blogginess. Durn cats.

The day at the zoo was fab. It’s so much removed from the last trip I made there when I was 12 - it was really like a different place. Huge open areas for animals, and plenty of places for them to hide from the bad weather when it arrives. Or cameras, in our case. We had a picnic lunch with a rather fabulous guest

pretties

…and naturally had to stop off at the city farm, where the pigs were sleepy

piggies

but the sheep were more than helpful.

sheeps

Yes, I realise that this makes me a massive knitting nerd, because I went to the zoo and saw sheep. Personally I found it more than a little disturbing that a “city farm” has become part of the zoo because some people have never seen a sheep up close. Or a cow. Or a pig.

I am a firm believer in knowing where your food comes from, especially if that food has a face. I die a little inside when stories about kids thinking that hamburgers come from McDonalds or Tesco and are shocked when it has to be explained to them that actually, it’s a bit of a cow (though given the meat content of a lot of sausages and burgers, not that much. Urgh.)

But I digress.

My “welcome to the umemployed club” paperwork arrived this week, which was strange. Even though I knew it was coming, it made things all the more real. This reality was added to in bright technicolour when I spent most of Thursday in the social welfare office, sitting around and waiting to be seen by someone who would tell me that I didn’t need to fill out an AB form, but an aB form and could I go back to the end of the queue. After three hours of sitting around feeling like I was in the waiting room from BeetleJuice, I was starting to despair in humanity and the Irish Government. Surely if these offices are that understaffed in every major town in the country, they could, oh, I don’t know……hire some of the huuuuuuge numbers of people who are standing around twiddling their thumbs to do some of the work?

The upcoming elections here are going to be epic. Absolutely epic.

Other things I’ve been doing over the last week or two (other than blogging…..no biscuit): cleaning. Lots of cleaning. Huge amounts of decluttering. Quite a bit of knitting.

shrug-folded

It’s another One Skein Wonder, in my own organic merino. ‘Cos I may as well get some squishy for myself!

I’ve also taken up the Tangled Yoke again, and it’s going fabulously well. I didn’t manage to get the photo off the camera before the battery died though, so that will have to wait til my next post.

I’ve been doing some dyeing as well, both custom orders and some new skeins for the store, which will be going up this evening. Here’s a sneeky preview

cathbad-2

A strange, up-and-down sort of fortnight, overall. I’m not sure if things like “getting all (yes, all!) of the neverending laundry finished” and “going dust bunny hunting under the bed” count as being blogworthy though. While I’m feeling rather accomplished about tackling these tasks that I’ve been putting off for an embarassingly long amount of time, they hardly rank as exciting.

Well, maybe just a little…

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A little more tortoise, a little less hare

May 11th, 2009

The trip to Tipp at the weekend was grand. Nothing terribly eventful, but such is the way of things. I also got diddly squat knitting done again. I’m a little annoyed with my lack of progress over the last few days, but I’ll have a bit more time this week.

The pain in the arse bit is that having managed to buy a bag of polyfill for the stuffed monster (and a huuuge bag at that) the needle that I need to finish the thing is - you guessed it! - tied up with the BSJ. I refuse to buy a second set of addi’s in the same size. After all I am trying to cut down on the “stuff” that I have, not add even more to the pileup.

Some destashy bits will, if all goes to plan, make their way up on to the etsy store this week. A few knitting books and some skeins of really nice yarn that I will just never, ever get around to knitting. I have multiple, multiple jumpers worth of yarn, and SABLE was well and truly hit some time ago. Unless I win the lotto and can just knit for a living. Even then, I may be pushing it.

Today was back to my new usual routine. Cleaning up, doing laundry, going for a walk in the glorious sunshine during which I managed to miss a call from a recruitment agency. D’oh. On the plus side, it means that at least I’m not unemployable. The downside is that I’m most employable doing the kind of stuff that I’m good at, but don’t actually want to be doing for a living. Them’s the breaks during a recession, I guess.

Tomorrow, in a surprising (even to me) break from the norm, myself and HusBeast are taking advantage of the good weather and the fact that schools aren’t done for the summer yet, and are heading to Dublin Zoo.

Normally, you couldn’t pay me to go to a zoo. The last one I was in was a wildlife park when I was twelve, and that didn’t even count as a zoo. It took 3 hours to drive around the route, and primates did rub poo into the windscreen. Last time I was at a circus of the animal-ly variety, I must have been about seven. I am aware that zoos fulfil an important role (in keeping certain species from becoming extinct, for example), but I’ve heard so many horror stories that I just stopped going. I have been assured that Dublin Zoo is not like this in the slightest, so I’m prepared to test the theory.

We’re going to relive our childhoods slightly by bringing a picnic - sandwiches, a big glass bottle of orange, and homemade cake with jam. The camera will be going with us, as will the suncream. Would it be overly optimistic of me to bring my sock-in-progress?

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*hic*

May 9th, 2009

I had planned on posting some shiny new piccies today, but we managed to leave the camera on in the bag last night and completely drain the battery. The first “d’oh” in a series, no doubt.

BSJ continues apace. I’m now at the bit where I need to start working on bits in the middle, rather than entire lines. I think I’ll just be bringing a sock to Tipperary tomorrow.

Or later today, as it is at this stage. We had friends over this evening for gaming (I ran old skool AD&D) and dinner and I’ve consumed most of a bottle of epic-ly good red at this stage. I’m wrecked tired ( and just a little smashed, if I’m honest), but much fun was had by all. The thought of having to get up in just over five hours and drive a hundred miles is not making me a happy camper, but I’ll deal with that in five hours, I guess.

I’ve had a few really encouraging emails and even a few custom orders, so between that and coding the website I should have a busy week ahead.

I’m also loving Apple so hard right now. I’ve been having problems with my shuffle for a few weeks, and having exhausted all my options I rang their tech support line yesterday. They said they’d send me a new shuffle, free of charge, and all I have to do is send my defective one back. I was expecting it to arrive early next week and was completely shocked when it arrived by UPS before lunch today. Best customer service ever. I’ve also gained a gig in the process, as my defective shuffle is only one gig, and the replacement is a 2gb. Awe-fracking-some.

Time for some sleep now methinks. Hope you all have a great weekend!

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Squeee!

May 7th, 2009

I’ve spent a large part of today playing with yarn, but not actually knitting. As a result, most of the photos on my etsy shop have been updated - something that’s really overdue and will hopefully show of the yumminess of my yarns in a fitting manner. As I’m a sharing sort of person, here’s a hint of what has been going on chez moi of late

yum

More goodies to follow!

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This is the life

May 6th, 2009

Seeing as I’m now a lady of leisure, I made my way in to town this morning and having cleared out my desk (into a rather huge holdall) I headed along to the city centre SnB. Awesomely good scones, and much gossipping, and yarn babies. Or yarn baby, at least

yarnbaby

One of the largest balls of yarn evah. There wasn’t even a cardboardy  centre like on a cone!

The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of camera buying and Wolverine watching, and amazing-that-we-didn’t-get-rained-on-ing. Most productive, overall. The camera is fricking awesome. AWE. SOME. I’ll add some better details as soon as I’ve read the manual. It’s the first time I’ve had to read the manual for any bit of tech I’ve bought, which is a strange and slightly unsettling experience. For now I’ll just say that it’s a Canon Eos, and that if anything ever happens to it I may have to sell a kidney to replace it. I’m also thinking seriously of getting one of those bungee-type cords that parents get to attach from their wrists to that of their over-energetic toddlers in order to ensure that no light fingers get near it.

I started my second NDS sock this morning, but was so busy eating pain au chocolat and giggling like a woman posessed that I got about 5 rounds done before giving up. The BSJ is moving along at a steady pace.

bsj-cont

It might not look like much progress, but I assure you that it is, especially considering how utterly perplexing a “plain English” pattern can be at first. I am being a very good knitter and trusting the pattern, though I almost bowed to the little voice in my head last night which screamed at me to download a chart or some form of spreadsheet with row-by-row instructions. I resisted, and I’m now rather chuffed at this minor miracle of knitting. Considering that I may possibly at some time in the not to distant past have promised HusBeast that I’d knit him an adult tomten, I’m doubly chuffed at having “cracked” the EZ code.

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Another one bites the dust

May 4th, 2009

In WIP terms, at least.

image013

Boo yah!!!

The footies are finished. I’ve a little yarn left over, but didn’t want to run the risk of turning these into ankle socks. I hate ankle socks bigtime. Too many memories of horribly uncomfortable feet in childhood summers caused by the things.

My current WIP pile was then brought to two - my NDS socks and my Tangled Yoke.

So naturally, I cast on another project. More on that later…

Back at the start of the year I may possibly have made some statement about a particular monthly goal and entrelac in the same sentence. I’ve been feeling guilty about my lack of progress on that, but during the week I had a startling revelation about the whole thing.

I really don’t care about entrelac.

Sure, I could learn it for the sake of learning it, but having weighed up the pros and cons of the situation, I’ve put it firmly back on the..er..back burner. Sure, I like the effect of it, but I really can’t see myself ever wearing something made out of entrelac. It’s not really my style. It looks awesome on some people, but I fear that my “personal style” can be described as eclectic on the best of days, so adding multicoloured knitted squares to the mix might be the final straw and have the men in white coats come for me.

Since deciding not to bother with the whole entrelac thing, my queue seems so much less intimidating as I don’t have an entrelac tutorial screaming at me from the bowels of the knitting basket.

I’ve also managed, somehow, in the last few weeks to hit a kind of a balance between my book-eating and my knitting. I’m still flying through books but now the knitting basket is no longer where good projects go to die. I’ve been slowly but steadily making a dent in my rather sizeable stash, and have been using up pretties that I didn’t have the heart to knit before (because then I wouldn’t get to knit them in the future, of course. It makes sense to me, at least.)

It’s an overcast day outside, as is traditional on bank holiday weekends.  I’m ensconsed on the sofa with my new project, wishing that I didn’t have to leave the house in a couple of hours to drive to Dublin (Sunday public transport timetables are in effect today and are, quite frankly, poo.) with the purpose of running a game for a bunch of people who are quite likely not to turn up as they’ll be firmly ensconsed on their own sofas for the weekend.

The whole “I don’t have to go to work tomorrow” thought has flashed in my mind a couple of times and is rather odd. More time for knitting and blogging, I guess. Oh, and that dyeing that I thought I’d get to do today, but haven’t had a chance to.

Anyone else get up to anything interesting this weekend?

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