Magazines are my lifeline

In completely un-yarny news, my cousin David is now a proud papa for the first time.


Abigail Jane (or Abby, for short) was born in the wee hours this morning, and looks like a wrinkly old lady! Mama and baby are both doing well, and she's de-pruning by the hour. Abby, that is.

I may have mentioned that I'm on a yarn diet. I may also have mentioned my slight slippage to allow for purchase of enough laceweight to make the fricking wedding shawls.

Guess what arrived this morning?



Only 3 balls in the picture, but 4 were purchased. Sure, the postage was nearly the same price as the yarn, but still! It's 50% baby alpaca, 50% merino, and so wonderfully squidgy. I'm looking forward to casting on now. It's a bargain for that fact alone!

Back on the horse again now.

I'm also on a book diet. We have a lot of books. A whole lot.
Most of these are in storage, though, due to the large amounts of moving about that has been done over the last year and a bit. Since moving to Belfast, we've been buying books again. There are 3 shelves in the living room, that once housed crappy folding wine racks. These are full of books, 2 deep, and in places, 2 high as well. I have a stack of books in my "to be read" pile that's coming up to my waist. Hence, no buying books for a while.

So........magazines aren't books, right?

I've signed up for Rowan International.
I'm hoping that after a few issues, I won't have a large chunk of stash that I have no plan for. (Yes, I justify stash if I can break it into project-specific piles).

If anyone else is interested in signing up, let me know, 'cos if you get referred by a member, there are some extra freebies involved :)

I need to go untangle some sock yarn that's lying all over the stairs now. It got tangled around me as I ran down the stairs, and thankfully I noticed before falling in an embarassing manner.

Embarassing, because even if I had wound up in a puddle at the end of the stairs, I'd still have crawled to the door to get my yarn.

Faraway hills

Ok, I've been quieter than usual over the last week or so, but there has been a lot going on.

The Saturday before last, my uncle lost his battle with cancer. He was diagnosed at the same time as my Dad, in April, and fought it right til the end. He could be the worlds biggest pain in the butt at times, but he sure will be missed.

On the Friday of that same weekend, one of my friends from home passed away. He was due to have surgery on the Wednesday, having been admitted to the same ward as my dad (coincidence much?!) the weekend before. Unfortunately, by the time Wednesday rolled around he was on life support in intensive care, and there was nothing that could be done. His wife is a widow at 26, and not only is she 6 months pregnant, but she has 3 more little ones at home all under the age of 4. Life truly sucks sometimes.

My usual weekend trip to Cork was slightly different this time around. I headed down on Thursday, helped my mother with the packing and cleaning, and on Friday we followed the ambulance back home. Dad's now in the hospital in my hometown, having lots of physio to get him back on his feet. It's pretty much a pit stop til we can get a space at the national rehab hospital, but it's still a step.

I managed to photo another section of my stash for Ravelry this weekend, as well as take a few other pics, and then being teh blonde, left my camera back home. This will be a photo-free week, as a result.

The lovely Trish, AKA Belle7171 finally got my "bad day swap" package. It went down well, which I'm rather chuffed about. I can't wait for my one to arrive. It shall not be kept, until a suitable moment of Zen though. Nope, it shall be ripped open on the spot. I may even manage to close the door on the postman and get past the hall to do so.

Rainy day scarf is going well. Except for the bit I repeated too often last night while watching season one of Rome, and have to frog. Ah well.
Maybe when I get finished with the Rainy day scarf, the rainy days will cease, and we can have some summer, instead of the 6-month-long spring we're currently going through. Even the trees are confused. Many of them have changed colour and started dropping leaves already!

Going to the moooooovies tonight. Ice cream cookies rock.

The hills are alive with the sound of....sirens

It's a fabulously gorgeous day outside. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and fire engine sirens are wailing in the distance.
Nothing too serious, I hope.

The major downside with a day like today is being stuck indoors. It's the kind of day that makes me wish I were doing some sort of outside job, or had a garden to potter in. I guess I'll have to settle for hanging wet washing out on the clothesline.

Last week, I knitted up a baby hat for OH's niece, and here it is


Looking all squishy and cute in its dual role as head warmer and bannister decoration. My box of bits is in Dublin though, so I've not been able to stitch it up yet.

When I received my package of even more cashmerino and addi's on Friday, I squeed. Squeed a bit more, then inhaled suddenly, as I realised that the shade of green in my package was not just beautiful, but an entirely different shade of green to the hat. Bummer. On the plus side, I'd ordered a ball too much, so running up another one is not a big deal. (As a side note, I also found out on Friday that one of my friends is finally pregnant, so my apple green bannister decoration will be going to her as a belated meme craft present!)

Equipped with my bag o' yarn, needles and a 3 hour stint on a train, I cast on the Baby Shrug from Debbie Bliss Simply Baby. Lovely pattern, and quite easy, even though it's all knit in one piece. Granted, I haven't gotten to the "pick up on million stitches" part, but I'm quietly confident.

So here's what 6 hours of train knitting will get you.

Train knitting is a funny thing. The Dublin-Cork train is the most fancy and fabulous in Europe, apparently. They're new and shiny, and meet all the carbon emission standards for 2012 already. They do, however, sway a bit more than the old diesel warhorses, which makes knitting impossible at times. They also vary between artic cool and sahara hot at other times, resulting in my fingers being too cold to knit, or my dozing off, needles in hand.

That said, I knit pretty much every time I'm on public transport, even if it's just a few lines here and there. Every journey I knit on (save local busses) someone has struck up a conversation about how they/their mother/their aunt used to knit all the time. I've even had a 7 year old boy demand that his granny break out some needles and yarn when they got home to teach him.

Are knitters more approachable than other people? Or just seen as being? Is it that a WIP is an instant icebreaker, and people are insanely curious beings?
In my mind, there seems to be something a bit magical about it that draws people in.

Anyone else had some interesting WIP experiences?