Old year's night

well what a year 2008 has been:

knitting- I've made my first adult garments, I've knitted 3 pairs of socks, I've tried bamboo, soya and cotton. I've made Christmas deccies which have been sent around the world (and received some gorgeous ones back) and washcloths for the kitchen (which are fantastic, really, no really). I've practised intarsia and my first "lace" patterned piece some socks for J2.

I've joined Ravelry, which is just brilliant, I'm in a Doctor Who swap and a Pratchgan-along. I've taken up crochet too.
I've been to a knitting show in Glasgow and saw the awesome knitted gingerbread house and have committed to make pieces for the next project, a fundraiser for the RNLI.

It's not all positive though: my yarn substitute for the advent tree was not a success (and is destined to become another scarf for J2) and my drop spindle languishes in the cupboard, untried and untested.

I've listened to some fabulous podcasts while I've knitted: Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase, Cast-On, Craftlit, Escapepod, Faery-knitting, Podcastle, Starship sofa, Sticks and String to name but a few. My mp3 player is a year old and is well used!

Football- we survived the PL last season, started this season well, lost our manager and are still surviving. I sometimes think that football is too stressful a sport and I should watch something less emotionally exhausting, like carpet bowls or shove ha'penny . D and J1 are going through the same with their team, so little consolation there.

Sport -I was entranced by the Olympics and by the tennis this year (cricket and rugby have not been so good) and am looking forward to 2012.

Learning -I have kept up with Spanish, learning 2 new tenses this year,but still struggle to remember my vocab.
I tried to learn some Arabic, but found it very hard. I was drained of energy after the summer.
I tried to learn some html programming, but was totally confused. Oh well.

.....and most importantly I have kept a blog since Feb. This is so enjoyable: I like reading other people's blogs from around the world, I love seeing other's amazing knitting projects, I've even won some posh yarn! I've found that it's helped shape my thinking processes, and given me back a bit of structure.
My concentration is so bad sometimes with ME that its hard to get into a good routine to improve my health, but in an odd way blogging is helping. I don't want to write about the condition as such as I find that very boring, but blogging about other stuff (politics, books, films, sports, travel etc) can be energising.

Well, it's been interesting, some new stuff, some good stuff, some old stuff & some cool stuff ........
so, here's to the Old Year, fare thee well, 2008 my friend, and 2009 beckons.....( To be fair it's already started in New Zealand and Australia!)

Young guns

I was so engrossed listening to Arsenal's young guns wallop Sheffield Utd 6-0 last night that I didn't notice my soya yarn get in a tangle in the yarn (un)tidy. Jack Wilshere is 16 and was the youngest in a a team with an average age of 18 1/2 . They played wonderful flowing football and were keen to play and hungry for the ball.

Sunderland weren't so fabulous, scraping past Northampton on penalties after drawing 2-2. Northampton are struggling in League 1 and have only one win this season but they nearly got their second last night. Roy Keane blasted the Black Cats saying they were "a shambles" and that it was one of the worst night of his footballing career.

Well, my yarn was a shambles too after getting so engrossed in the fluid play of the Wenger Boys. Definitely " Boom Boom Boom Boom" ( and two more Booms). At least I don't have to face Roy Keane today, I might prefer to be in Ibiza!

I'm not sure if I want to listen to Toon vs Spurs tonight. It might be too depressing. I think I'll just tackle the soya mess.

OOPS!!

in my excitement at starting a new project for myself I forgot my own body shape.
This top ( Passionflower) is meant to be a snug fitting piece and of course I measured my bust line to know which size to knit, but I sort of forgot that throughout the last 35 years ( excluding pregnancies!!) my top half has been a bigger size than my bottom half. I was happily knitting away last night when I thought "hmmm, this seems very wide", but I didn't have time to do anything about it.
After a strenuous shopping trip with J2 today (Edinburgh was frenziedly busy and the festival isn't in full swing yet!), I sat down and slid the stitches off the needle (with spare yarn through them of course, in case it was OK after all) and measured the width.

I couldn't believe my eyes. I measured again.

Still disbelieving I put the knitting on the dinner table, whisked a tee shirt from the laundry basket and compared the two.

The knitting is at least 3 inches wider than the tee shirt!!

Instead of being close fitting it would look like a sack on me, albeit in a beautiful colour and feeling very very soft ( soya is gorgeous!). However, I do not want a sack , not even a soft one in this lovely shade of pomegranate. so I think a frogging session is in order, and a sensible half hour taking proper measurements.

My only consolation is that I realised before I had sewn it up!!

Rippit! Rippit!

false start

I bought some Rowan cotton glace to make this top (originally done in Sublime soya) and I'm not happy with the swatch, it feels a bit crispy to me. Maybe its supposed to, I don't know, so I've put that to one side and ordered some Sublime soya.

Not sure what to do with the cotton glace though. I've seen all sorts of uses on Ravelry and maybe it washes softer, but I'm not convinced as yet. I might take it to Woolybacks to see if I can blend it with another cotton and knit double strand to make a jacket.

I think I got carried away with my own enthusiasm in Jenners and assumed that one type of cotton was much like another, but this is not the case. Damn!