It seems that I've been knitting more than ever over the last few weeks, but nothing has been leaving my needles. It's like the black hole stage of knitting, where you measure something, and it's 7 inches long. Then you knit for what feels like eleventy billion lines, and you still have 7 inches. Or 7.25, to be really annoying.
I seem to have defeated that today. 
I haz warm toez nao ^-^
In which my cat looks more whacked-out on catnip than usual (even for a Saturday night)
and my tiny wickle bwain goes pop, and decides that handknitted socks are all that lies between me and hypothermia this winter
Universal toe-up sock in Cherry Tree Hill "greens and blues" supersock. Yes, I have teeny feet
Seriously though, it's pretty cold. Not cold enough for snow, but the wind is coming down from the Arctic every damn day, which makes your outsides want to become your insides for warmth.
This was not made easier by the arrival of an email from a certain long-coveted sock club in my mail box this morning. I now have to decide, by tomorrow, if I'm going to go ahead and sign up, even though it's damn expensive, or hang on to my few pounds for loading up on goodies in New York.
There's also the Knitting and Stitching show this weekend. There's no way I'm coming out of there empty handed either.
Hrm....a conundrum.
Last night was Halloween, or Samhain, or "another hallmark sponsored evening", depending on your outlook on things. I had a lovely, quiet halloween. I went to SnB, cooked proper dinner, drank wine and watched Monster House to the glowing light of a carved pumpkin. We got a few trick or treaters, but I think those started to tail off as soon as we were found out to be a sweets house, and not a pocket change house.
Naturally, I forgot to charge my camera batteries, so have no pictures of the lovely pumpkin. It shall be lit again tonight though, so I'll grab one then.
Dead batteries are also the reason why I have no other photos of my weekend, despite having gone to a convention. Gaelcon rolled around again, and was much fun. I missed it last year, as my back decided that standing, sitting or breathing was not allowed. This is also the first year that I've been to it and not been on either committee or staff. Very strange feeling of "shouldn't I be doing something" occured on more than one occasion.
I was also invited to a bra party in Dublin on Saturday evening, which I'm going to try to get to. It's impossible to get good bras in larger sizes that don't a) look like they were made for nuns b) cost an arm and a leg and c) require a team of dressers to secure them on the wearer.
Hehehe....I'm going to have a yarn bra weekend....
Yes, it seems that I am easily amused.
Bleurgh.
The cold I have been fighting off for the last two weeks may have been the flu. It also may have finally beaten my poor immune system in 2 out of 3 games of rock, paper, white blood cell.
Todays post is gonna be short, as I have an appointment with my sofa and a potato that is currently getting a suntan in the oven.
The sponsors of todays post are
I have a conference call with Amsterdam in just over an hour. Once this is done, I shall be retiring to the sofa for the day. I already have my little nest laid out.
The bag on the left with the fuzzy duck-egg blue wonderfulness is Sublime Kid mohair, which I won on Ewe Wish. I'm finally going to cast on Branching out. Go me. Some of the left over yarn will be used with my lurvely Knitpicks Ambrosia to make me some Mrs Beetons.
The bag of minstrels sadly only contains about 5 chocolates, left over from last weeks trip to the cinema. Next bag across contains sock yarn leftovers. (Yes, I bag pretty much everything.)I have most of a ball of Knitpicks Essentials left over from the making of my Volcano socks, which are in the foreground. Haven't sewn in the ends yet, because I can't find my needle case and am not arsed looking in my current condition. My 2.25mm addi's rarely leave the sofa when they're not being used, as my little project basket is at the other side of the armrest.
The blue square is my contribution to the UK Stitch N Bitch blanket that's being put together, and is in my own handpainted.
Exciting day I have lined up, eh?
I'm still going to hit yoga tonight though, as I'll miss it next week anyways.
Right, need to go get a topup for the 'leccy, so that I still have power and therefore, lights. Should possibly brush hair. And get out of pajamas.
...or I could give the little old lady in the shop a reason to use her panic button...
As I went rummaging for my camera, I remembered that I didn't update after stitch and bitch last week. We had our most members evah!, which rocked, and I was also on the belini-wagon
The dark green tweedy yarn in the background is Kilcarra donegal tweed, and is being knitted into a cobblestone by Nikki
On the way out the door that night, we were all in a bit of a giggly mood, and the sight of this van outside reduced several of us to hysterics, and required cameras to be whipped out.
Sure, it's childish and all that, but it's still funny on soooo many levels!
Yoga happened on Monday (just to get back to this week) and I woke up the yesterday and rejoiced that I had the foresight to have taken a soak in the bath after class. My hip extensors were not happy.
Class was great though. Nice and slow for a first night, but that didn't mean "not strenuous" by any stretch of the imagination. I'm liking it a lot though. Hazel is quiet and unassuming and can bend herself like a pretzel while the rest of us are working on not falling over in basic standing poses.
Current knitting is sock. Volcano sock.
MY volcano sock. For MY tootsies
I've not been knitting much at all in the last week or so, but I'm hoping to be on to sock two by the weekend.
Which is when we should next have post. I hate when Royal mail goes on strike. It always seems to be perfectly timed with my expecting something knitting-related in the post.
I'm hoping that my kilcarra shade card will have arrived at my parents place by the time I get there on Friday, as I'm eager to order yarn and get Pooks cobblestone started. He's basically getting that, a DS and a couple of books for Christmas. I will not be finishing the damn thing on the train 2 days before Christmas though. Nope.
....I'll be trying to get the ribbing done on a sock so that I can wrap it before the train stops...
...or another year older and deeper in yarn. Probably more accurate.
The Supah Mario socks are fully finished, and modelled while hanging upside down off the sofa. They're just that damn exciting, it seems!
Universal toe-up socks in Opal Hundertwassers
I'm quite chuffed with them. Also with the fact that I made fraternal twins, and am not itching to frog them because the stripes don't line up. The very enthusiastic receiver loves them that he has pledged to wear them as house socks so that he doesn't wear them out. Aww bless.
Considering that mens socks take for-bloody-ever to knit, this may not be a bad plan, at least til I can get around to making him a second pair. I only realised yesterday just how slow they were, when I cast on a sock for myself, and turned the heel while watching BSG last night. 
More universal toe-ups, in Knitpicks Essential Volcano Twist
If I keep going at this rate, I might have a pair done in a week! Pretty good, seeing as I've had to sacrifice my daytime knitting to end of month reports and cold fingers.
Today, I'm not feeling any bit more mature. My hair looks like the proverbial haystack, I'm drinking tea from a Nightmare Before Christmas mug, and trying to skive off work. It's just not right for someones birthday to also be the day for submitting end of month reports. Bah and humbug!
Things aren't all bad though.
My mam and dad sent me a card, and I got the new Jamie Oliver cookbook, and some sterling to buy myself a winter coat with. Huzzah! My dad actually managed to hold a pen long enough to make a vaguely "Dad" shaped squiggle on my card...I nearly started crying.
My godmother (I mistyped that as "gothmother" the first time, for some bizarre reason) and my mams best friend gave me some euros, which will be spent on my other obsession, shoes.
This morning was utterly squee-worthy:
I've had the wonderous Nintendo DS for a month, as he couldn't go without giving it to me. I currently have FF3 in it. I shall now be brain trained as well. A birthday isn't a birthday without books and chocolate, which are well represented, and the dvd's of wonderfulness are My Neighbour Totoro (I am obsessed with Studio Ghibli) and the Hammer box set!!! 21 movies in a box!!!!!
I shall now be endlessly entertained on my travels every weekends.
Sensibly, he didn't get me anything yarny. The Knitting and Stitching Show is coming up, after all!
Right, need to go shower and tame the mane, so that I can drip dry before heading to down.
Shoppingshoppingshoppingshopping!!!
Today there are no photographs, no tales of being sucked into the LYS while browsing through the merchandise at the greengrocers.
Today, I am a prisoner in my own home.
I jest not. I am locked in, with no way of getting out.
This is in a very, very large part due to a certain someone not paying attention to where he put his house keys after he locked the front door last night, and having to take mine this morning in order to go to work.
This will also be my excuse for there not being anything interesting for dinner.
The sock is doing rather well though. (His name is Wario, it seems)So is my left index finger, now that the nerves in one spot are completely dead. Handy, that.
I've had a few questions, so I'll answer those in an attempt to look popular!
The shawl. Yes, it's really that bad. Yes, I also admit that I may be forever biased towards this yarn. This is not a warning that everyone should unload any of it that they have in their stashes, but a gentle reminder that it may not be the funnest thing to knit ever.
The shawl was blocked using a couple of types of pin.
The first was a tub of rust free, glass headed pins. They were purchased in the "yarn" shop in town, Simpsons, for the outrageous price of £2.90. Outrageous, indeed, especially as I really could have done with a second tub to properly block.
As it happened, I had my fabulous Clover knitting marking pins to hand, and they saved the day.
The pirate washcloth: I'll post a "how to" soon. As soon as I can make out the scrawled handwriting of my pattern, that is. I use the word pattern in the loosest possible sense here.
It's still cold and ick outside. My Jack Skellington mug is almost permanently full of tea and held between my far-too-cold fingers. Tea is my friend. Warms you up on the inside and the outside.
My current brew is Celestial Seasonings red vanilla, with honey. It's the only one of their teas that I've tried, and I do like it. Is anyone else a fan? Other recommended flavours?
Right, this chocolate ricecake ain't gonna eat itself...
Well.....it has been a while, hasn't it?
To be honest, I didn't realise quite how long. Bad blogger. No cookie.
Work night out passed off well, and much food and booze was had by all.
Here we are!
One of the steaks was the stuff of legend
Knife included for a little perspective. This wasn't even the largest one on the menu. Cos, ya know, we could all do with having a pound of steak for dinner bleurgh
The evening went really well though. It was nice to have an actual night out. There haven't been many of those at all this year.
Supah Mario sock one was completed last week
Don't be fooled by the cast off edge into thinking that this sock is finished though. Oh no. It seems that even though I translated Pook's request for "one inch longer" into "3 inches longer please", the not-finished sock here is still about an inch too short. Easily fixed though. Easily fixed, on Monday, that is.
I applied, and had approved, my holidays for the end of the year this week. I'll be finishing for Christmas on Friday the 22nd December, and won't be back at work til January 9th. Rockin! The best bit is that I also booked our flights.
Myself and Pook shall be invading NYC on December 28th, doing some sight seeing, shopping, hitting a show, yarn crawling, and eating far too much food before departing again on January 6th. Wahoo!!!! doesn't even come close to covering it. It will be Pooks first trip outside of Europe as well (awwww!) and he's incredibly excited about going. That, and freaking out about the flight, thanks to those incompetant people at KLM giving him a flight to remember. In a bad way.
So, filled with online-shoppers buzz, we hit the town yesterday after work. I even wore my favourite socks
I do love long striped socks.
We managed to pick up some feather pillows at last. I really don't like microfibre pillows, and they're impossible to avoid these days. Now we have lovely squishy ones. We had some Starbucks (mmmmcinnamon) and pondered whether a shop with a sign outside it like this:
could be considered guilty of false advertising (or at the very least, misleading hapless knitters) when not only does it not sell spinning wheels, it isn't even a yarn shop! Nope, this place with the promising name sells curtains, pillows, duvets and craptacular bed linen at knockdown prices.
Craptacular. I do like that word.
Poor Pav finally lost his battle with cancer yesterday as well. He's the first opera singer I ever really liked, and he was just amazing. Won't be replaced any time soon, that's for sure.
Must go and get some actual work done now. Yes, I too would like to claim that sitting in front of my laptop surfing through Ravelry counts as work, but my inbox states otherwise.
Back down home this evening. At least I have my so called scarf to keep me busy. That, and my birthday prezzie from Pook, which I got early. That shall be blogged after the weekend. If I can pull myself away from it, that is.
Have a great weekend everyone.
Supah Mario sock is coming along well.
It's very odd to be using 2.5mm needles again, after the 8mm pointy sticks stipulated by my last object. (The mohair shawl. Nope, still not blocked.) I am at a fork in the road though. Do I keep knitting, and get to the heel turning today, or do I cast on something else that I can bring to the cinema tonight? MmmmmMattDamon....nope, no chance of heel turning while watching that.
My so-called scarf is ready to be started, but I don't want to bring 35mm straights with me again, having poked myself in the arm so often last time.
Wow...the deep thoughts that fill my day....
At some point in the past, I may have mentioned the Great Destashing. One of my mothers friends knitted for all her grandkids, and as they grew up, she gave up knitting. Or, at least, knitting teeny little cardigans that she would never get to wear herself. The majority was acrylic yarn that came in either baby colours or school-jumper colours, as demonstrated below.
This morning, I had my eureka moment.
In my estimation, I have just over 3kg (or nearly 7lbs) of acrylic that I'm never, ever going to use. As of this morning, I have an empty cardboard box in our spare room/home office, and over the next few months I'm going to fill it with booties, hats and other items to be sent to various charity groups catering for babies/preemies. Just about all of these ask specifically for acrylic and acrylic blends, as they're totally machine washable and dryable.
Considering how fast little things knit up, I have little to no chance of getting bored of a pattern. I get my instant gratification projects, a warm fuzzy feeling inside, and a little head gets something cute to put on it.
Does anyone else do charity knitting? I know things like Afghans for Afghans and the Duulan project were huge in the States, but I wasn't keen on the vast amounts of airmiles that anything I would send would clock up. Anyone have any stories they'd like to tell?
Well I brought my camera this week, but I also brought the dead batteries instead of, you know, the ones I put on to charge especially.
I am teh blonde.
Last night I started turning the heel on my second teal sock. I realised after about 10 rows that I'd had a brainstorm and ignored the "and turn" part of w&t. Frogging and swearing ensued. Lots of swearing. Picking up 2mm stitches in dark yarn is not my idea of a fun Monday night.
On the plus side, cos there has to be one, I managed to get the ripped section reknitted on the bus journey this morning, instead of dozing off and jumping to attention as I almost miss my stop.
The plan now is to knit like a woman possessed, and get sock 2 done on Thursday, so that I can cast on sock one of pair 2 on Thursday evening at Knit Night.
Anyone think that I'll actually manage it without pulling out my hair or trying to strangle myself with my addis?
So no piccies again today.
Oops.
I've spent a chunk of today at work (sssh!) updating my Ravelry page. It is a wonderously fabulous site, with a wonderously fabulous queue for membership. So totally worth the wait though. I have friends on it now as well, so I don't feel so lonely.
Conclusion: if you're not already on the list, sign up. Go on, clicky linky. There's no time like the present.
I've signed up for a bloglines account recently as well. I read rather a huge amount of blogs on a regular basis. Blogging is considered a valid use of the net connection here for some bizarre reason that I won't question. Anyway, bloglines is wonderful for dealing with those times when you realise that you have eleventybillion blogs bookmarked, and that you're signing up with all the blog sites in an attempt to keep up with them. Instead of that, sign up for bloglines. It takes five minutes, and you're left with a page that shows you all recent entries for your chosen reading material. Faaaaaabulous.
My username on both Ravelry and Bloglines is, surprise surprise, GaietyGirl.
Feel free to friend me :)
The house is very quiet today. It's a bank holiday in Ireland, but not the U.K. so I have the day off while the boys have to work. Sucks to be them, I guess. Except that I'm having a can't keep still day.
The plan was to catch up on some of the massive amounts of sleep that I've been missing...I lasted til 9am before I got up out of boredom. I proceeded to clean most of the house, put on multiple loads of laundry and do some shopping.
I resisted the lure of Jeans, though it called to me. Multiple times, as I kept forgetting things and had to walk past it about 5 times.
So aside from checking out the shops, and pottering about, I've been doing some knitting. What a shocker!
The cardigan is being slightly ignored today. I've only got one front piece and sleeves to do, so I reckon I deserve a slight distraction, especially as Fathers Day is looming.
So over the weekend, I started on this
My first sock :)
Actually, first sock mark 2. I had progressed to this point already and had to frog back to the start. Why? Because knitting when sleepy is stupid, and stitches always run in huge and messy ways when I don't have a crochet hook, needle, toothpick or hair pin that I can rescue the situation with. Still, now that I've got the knack of magic loop knitting, there will be socks for everyone for birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas..you name it! This also ties in nicely with the justification of yarn purchases if it's for making gifts. Wonderful!
The shawl has been left in Dublin, because I'm a genius....
I did manage to snap a picture though, so I don't feel quite so bad. Hey, blogging the wrap is the same as knitting it, right?
