Rain, rain, go away

So the rain has started again. I should know to expect it at this stage, it being Ireland and all, but no, the weather here is still more-or-less a constant surprise.

After the weekend of sorting stuff out, I am PC-less.
My room feels a lot more like a room and less like a storage locker, now that the PC, tv and hamster now live in Belfast. The PS2, assorted games and dvd's, and my box of breakables have gone as well. It's a good start, but I'm in limbo land at the moment, which is making me fidgety.

The cardigan is still progressing, slowly but surely.
I need to order myself a pair of those nice needles in 5.5mm so that I can cast on my mohair sweater. Though really, I should do the shawls for the girls first. I don't think they'd be as enthusiastic as me about a finished sweater, no matter how cool, if I had to do an all-nighter before the wedding to get their stuff finished.

I may have a problem

Ahhh eBay.

I have a love/hate relationship with it. I hate it because aside from melting my credit card, there's a huge amount of, well, shite on there.
Does anyone really need 15 balls of eye-searing pink polyester eyelash with glittery flecks in it?

....apparently, I do.

Ok, while I've yet to fork out my hard earned cash on 15 balls of eyelash, I have a weakness for those wonderful hanks of really, really nice yarn that pop up on a far too regular basis. Like the Lornas Laces stuff from yesterday.
Or the purple laceweight that I'm currently watching, but have restrained myself from bidding on as of yet.


It's a confusing situation. In real life, I'm all about supporting local, independant businesses, and steering clear of big box stores and those supermarket chains where you can get approved for a mortgage and pay your car loan while buying, I don't know, avocadoes. However, in real life (in Ireland at least) I'm not likely to pick up some amazing hand spun and hand painted yarn anywhere, never mind for the price of a paperback. (Yarn and books..I need some cheaper hobbies)

Mostly I try to balance. This will be easier when I move house, as there's a fab yarn store about 2 minutes walk from my new house *squeee*

So how does everyone else buy? Online? Online from places that have bricks-and-mortar shops as well? Only from yarn shops? Do you count down the days til there's a crafty fair on and load up then?

It's not like my stash isn't big enough already. That's a whole other blog post though!

Celebrations..sort of.

So, I handed over the scarf to the birthday girl, and there were grins all around. It's taller than her, but who am I to argue with the taste of a 17 year old. I'm obviously not "cool" anymore.

To celebrate, I bought some yarn.
It wasn't intentional, but I logged into ebay for a quick look, and 15 minutes later I was the proud owner of some fab Lornas Laces.



Isn't it pretty? It's in their River colourway, and I can't wait to get my hands on it. I may have to temporarily hide it in my drawer at work. My darling other half doesn't quite know how big my stash has gotten of late, and I'd rather not have 2 large boxes filled entirely with yarn when we move at the end of the month. Maybe I should get one of those storage baggies that you hook up to the hoover and it squishes duvets down to the size of a stamp. I could use the "see? it's mostly just air" line then.

Think it would work?

I'm gonna wash that scarf right out of my hair...

Well I managed to get the scarf of doom finished last night. Ends all woven in, blocked, the lot. I even succeeded in wrapping it in pink paper and attaching a card.
Go me.
This evening I'll get a few pics of the birthday girl striking a pose with said scarf, and then I can finally wash my hands of it. Of course, now that I'm about to hand it over, today is going to be the warmest day so far this year...19 degrees (or 66 for those who prefer farenheit).

Cardigan progress...well I've finished one of the front sections, I've rounded the corner, done some casting off and shaped the armhole. Next step is some mid-line casting on, and I'm back into straight lines for 120-or-thereabouts lines.
Number of lines done on cardigan last night: 0.

I suck.

Well, to be more truthful, I got a little distracted. In my hunt for yarn needles I'd tipped my basket contents on to the floor and found the balls of yarn for the big bad WIP. I took this as a sign and got started on yet another of the squares. Oh, and I also decided what to knit with that delicious Jaeger mohair that I snagged off ebay. Not entirely unproductive, then!

We hateses the blue fluffy, yes we does

Wow...it has been a hideous amount of time since my last post. Lots of things have happened, and, unfortunately, more bad than good.
Still, now is not the time to dwell on such things.

I finished the scarf for Michelle's birthday, which is good. Now if I could only bother sewing in the ends this evening, I can give it to her tomorrow. This would be a wonderful thing (tm) as it would mean that I can finally leave the horribleness of knitting it behind. She wanted a scarf, in a girly colour. She now has a powder blue, 6 foot long skinny scarf, and I have nightmares about ever again having to make something in that 100% polyester eyelash yarn.

This does remind me that I need to charge my camera batteries this evening, so that I can take a picture of her modelling the blue monstrosity. Then, when I'm about to eat my needles in frustration at a project, I can just look at that picture and say "at least I'm not knitting that again!"!

On the plus side, I'm now back on schedule (and it's too warm for scarves by miles now) and have made a good dent in my wraparound moss stitch cardigan. For meee!