Update-o-rama

Wednesday already. How did that happen?

Autumn has officially arrived in these parts, and quite a bit early.



So utterly crap was our summer that the swallows are preparing to hit Africa a fortnight early, and the trees started turning at the end of August. Mother Nature is clearly ready for some serious duvet time.

As is my routine now, I spent the weekend travelling to and from home, and being in a hospital. It's a bit surreal being home.
The daily routine hasn't changed that much from what it was in Cork, but now I get to wake up to the mewing of my cat outside my window at 5am.



He is a cutie though. Rather huge too, being part maine coon and all. He was yet another rescue cat, except we knew from day one that we were keeping him. Or that he was keeping us.

One of the best bits of my weekend?
Opening my bedroom curtains in the morning, and seeing this

Slip slidin' away

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.

Beginning at home

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?

It's oh so quiet...shhhh...shhh

It appears that some readers think I've been far too quiet of late, and I guess they're right. Then again, when my life closely resembles that of my hamster, I bore me at the best of times, never mind anyone else.

I feel that people would rather a few days of quiet, rather than being bored to death.
Personally, I like reading about the normal, everyday things that other people get up to in other countries, so perhaps I'm not entirely yawn-worthy all the time. Paranoia gets the better of me at times.



SnB was on Wednesday. We had a new venue, which worked fine, even if it was the smallest turnout ever. Durn college expecting people to get their theses (thesuses sounds more fun in my head lol) done by deadline and such. Still, we soldiered on bravely.



I felt a little underachieving, having failed to complete a scarf and another throw square like a certain someone. Ahem.

Still, it was a great laugh. The sock was named Supah Mario Sock, due to the resemblance of the sock striping to the colours of the infamous platform game.

The sock enjoyed a mojito. Well, it was payday...






The sock enjoyed the view from the hospital window...

...then deemed the lack of air conditioning intolerable and demanded to be taken outside.



As soon as the sun came out, of course.


I have a feeling that this sock is going to be rather demanding.

The doctor that my father is under at the moment is a highly intelligent moron. Degrees coming out the wazoo, and yet is more willing to say "we don't know how brain damaged he'll be" instead of admitting "I don't know what's going on, as I don't have any frame of reference".
My dad is not brain damaged in the slightest. He had a drug reaction last week, that made him think that our cat was sitting on the end of his bed, but that's about it. (As things to hallucinate about go, I'll admit that was both cute and rather funny!)

Then again, maybe he is. Personally, I don't know of any brain damaged person that can have a discussion on car manufacturing, and follow it up with explaining to me about the sillica content of sand used in glassmaking. Yeah, he's a vegetable alright....

He has, poor dear, picked up the nastiest chest infection in world history in this place. They, naturally, are going with the cover-your-ass method, and insist that he came from Cork with it. Do chest infections really take 3 weeks to manifest symptoms? Do you not think the slight lack of basic hygiene shown by some of your staffers might possibly have something to do with it?

Argh.

.......enough rantage.
I just find things massively frustrating at times.

So what do I do?


I knit.

Hey there, Mister Postman

A two-post day! w00t!

Rainy day scarf is done and dusted, and photographed on bush 1 of 2 in the "garden".


That's not the really exciting thing though. The really exciting thing is this



my box of goodies from Mindy!
In the piccie you can see 2 skeins of Knitpicks blanks, ready for the dyepot.
The red yarn is knitpicks essentials, and the fab blues are knitpicks memories. The little skeins of green are called Ambrosia, and what an apt title. I would fill the bath with this and do nekkid things if I could. It's 80% baby alpaca, 20% cashmere. Need I say more?
All of this wonderfulness was topped off with a copy of Stephanie PearlMcPhee Casts Off, which has been on my amazon wishlist for ages.

Thanks again Mindy. :)

A bad day, better

My lovely other half rang me on Friday morning while I was in work, to let me know that he'd taken delivery of a package from the States. He assured me that he had given it a good shake to see if there were any edibles that called for immediate "checking". Thankfully I was spared coming home to see him in a post-twinkie haze, dressed in a bedsheet and some yarn.

A huuuuuge thank you to my spoiler, Mindy. You rock my socks.

I'll post some photos tomorrow, as my camera batteries picked the perfect time to need recharging.

In the meantime, I'll try to get some work done that doesn't involve me fondling my new shinies.

Knitting on trains is great. 3 hours of virtually uninterrupted working on a project, all at one time.



Rainy day scarf is done, or will be once I weave in the ends.

Cinema tomorrow.
Any Belfast peeps interested in the Bourne Ultimatum?
MmmmmmMatt Damon....

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.