Insert random pun here

The weekend really flew, didn't it?
Husband's (it's still weird to say that) birthday was on Friday, and on Saturday we headed to Bangor, which may be one of the prettiest and nicest villages I've ever been in. There's a huge marina, all very carefully managed, some gorgeous buildings, a village centre that has more than a post office, a petrol pump and a pub, and best of all was that the sun came out!

There really is something to be said for sitting on the prom, eating icecream, on a sunny afternoon.

I should probably come clean now, to save future slip ups as well. Bangor has a yarn shop. If you get the train there, you literally can't miss it, as it's on the left of the station door as you exit, and it's helpfully called The Wool Shop.

I may have squee'd once or twice. I may have chatted away with the lovely owner. I may have come out with a bag containing eco-wool, baby cashmerino, angora and a skein of extra fine merino in the most fantabulous shade of purple ever.

I'll ignore for a moment the fact that I managed to twist the arm of a SnB'er who mentioned that she's destashing, so today I also take posession of some Twilleys Freedom wool......and there's that pesky sock yarn in the post.

Yeah, I'm knitting down my stash....it just keeps growing back!

Old father time

It's himselfs birthday today. Now he's as old as I am!

I do feel a bit crap though. Most of his birthday present was due to arrive in the post today, and it didn't. Fingers crossed it will arrive tomorrow, or I'll win worst wife of the year. Actually, that's a lie. Assasins Creed arrived safe and sound, and he's now firmly entrenched on the sofa with that.

Guess that's what I get for marrying a geek. You should have seen him when we picked up our PS3 from the shop. I thought he was going to make amorous advances towards it on the bus home!

In other news, there's a birthday cake in the oven, a fire ready to be lit in the fireplace, and a second sock (huzzah!) on the needles on the bit of the sofa that he hasn't sprawled over. I'm going to get the whole roast dinner going as soon as the cake is done, and then my work is done. Well, apart from the washing up. He gets out of it tonight. Bleurgh.

Tomorrow we're heading to Bangor. Amazingly smaller than its namesake in Maine, but it has a gaming store and a LYS, and that's the important part. I really shouldn't buy any more yarn after my recent oopsie on the Collinette website.

....maybe one skein....

I have the funk and it's bad.

I'm in a strange funk lately.
I've enough yarn to keep me going for many, many months. I have a folder of patterns printed out, and a stack of knitting books and magazines. Gods know I could do with finishing the blue cardigan of doom. Or, y'know, the other Kaffe Fassett sock for the misters birthday present (which is tomorrow. He's getting one sock.).

The funk, however, means that I'm not really getting anything done. After a flurry of clearing up and organising stash last week (I even assigned yarn to actual projects!) I find myself feeling listless, choosing to make washcloths out of cheap cotton yarn, instead of diving face first into the Lion and Lamb that arrived for my reward-to-myself clapotis.

It's even gotten to the stage where the one thing I'm itching to make (since, ooh, yesterday) is the Swallowtail shawl, which I can't start, because the yarn that I have which would suit it is in my parents house.

No, I'm not quite mean enough to phone my mother and ask her to a)locate said yarn in correct shade and b) express post it to me so that I can start before the urge to knit it turns into another "meh".

Has it something to do with the changing of the season? Well, possibly, but that would imply that I actually get some daylight hours outside, instead of staring through the window at it all.

Ok, perhaps all of this is just me trying to get away from one simple fact. I don't have the funk. I have SSS.

There's a skein of Collinette Jitterbug on my desk, and every now and again I catch myself fondling it when I get buried in email. I would cast it on in a heartbeat, except I can't possibly do it when himself is sitting downstairs, patiently waiting for his second sock to materialise. (I even caught him fondling sock one while he was reading a book on the sofa last night. He claimed he was checking it for cooties.)

Ah love, ain't it grand?

Well, hello stranger!

The stranger, in this case, being yours truly.

I am now an old married woman. There's a bit of paper that says so, and I have a ring on my left hand that wasn't there before. I also had a great holiday to Paris, during which my digital camera got nicked.

Yup. My precious cybershot got lifted in the Louvre foodcourt. We reckon that someone spotted us using it, then followed and waited til a milisecond when we were too busy with trays/getting a seat/peeing and yoinked it. So no photos, I'm afraid.

This brought me on to another train of thought, and one which is related to my blogging absense.

Are people really interested in photo-less blogs?

Sure, there are a lot of them out there, and I wouldn't even think about the lack of photos on my LJ, but here it seems different. I think knitters and crafty people are more tactile or visual than most (or at lease aren't shy about letting it be known!) and a crafty blog with no pictures seems......

.....well, I won't go so far as to say pointless, but lets say that knitters like their shiny.

I'm not even talking about posting tomes of photo diaries or anything, just the usual couple of pics a post that most bloggers seem to do. It helps make a connection more easily between the reader and writer. You may tell us that your latest WIP looks like your new puppy just tossed his cute little cookies all over it, but unless we see, we still doubt that it could ever be quite that awful. Bonus points if you post a pic of the puppy looking cute and adorable too.

Now there are always exceptions to every rule. The fantabulous Yarn Harlot could write a completely photoless post about the kind of glue used on the back of postage stamps, for example. She has a way with words that I think fewer and fewer people have, and this is even more apparent with new blogs and social networking sites popping up every other minute. I am convinced, in my especially soapboxy moments, that if the world ever descends into the type of all out chaos and war that the Terminator warned us about, TXT SPK will be one of the causes.

There is an ongoing debate in the UK, for example, about test scores. The results that students have been getting in state exams have been getting worse for a long time. Instead of re-examining the school system, encouraging teacher training, paying for school facilities and proper school dinners, what is being debated as a serious "fix"?

Make the exams easier.

I kid you not.

Apparently the problem is not overcrowding in classes, frazzled teachers spending all their time dealing with wrangling little brats, or the curriculum. Nope. The problem is there be too many of them big wordz in the tests.

What will happen next? Will the collected Jane Austen be released in a special edition that goes something LK DIS?