getting cable

not the TV version - this:

Real, proper knitting wot grown ups do.  I can't even begin to describe my joy at getting this far.  I have unravelled this piece six times already. 

Problem being, I cannot fix a mistake, being slightly unskilled in the knitting department, so any slip-up is an error of catastrophic proportions.  I have referred to that Bible of modern times - YouTube - but in learning to fix a dropped purl/garter stitch means you must be able to recognise them in the first place.  Which I cannot.  Ergo no fixy. 

So I plough onwards, slowly, laboriously and with sore fingers from a bad grip (my next learning curve on the YT express train of knowledge on all things) hoping that my next stitch will not be my last. 

In other news - wait! 

There is no other news.  My life has been totally dominated by knitting cable and everything else apart from the absolute necessary, such as being a Mumsy, Wifey (sort of) and going to the toilet has slipped into superfluous obscurity. 

Tune in again soon for more gripping yarns.

K1, P1

On my Hobbycraft jaunt last week, I picked up a ball of Crofter Fairisle yarn - just because - and because I thought it would make a nice winter scarf for Oliver.

It would have made a better one if I hadn't been such a tightwad and picked up two balls, because I have run out halfway through what I would call a decent length.  My nearest stockist of this £3.79 ball of yarn is 30 miles away and postage to get it to me is coming in at around the £3 mark.  Estimated petrol cost to get to the Hobbycraft is £3.69.  Rock.  Hard Place.  Me.  Bloody hell.

I have finally succumbed to knitting.  Only tentatively, mind.  My knitting resume consists wholly of 25 years of badly done and unfinished scarves.  I get very bored with rows and rows of bog standard starter garter stitch, and if I drop one, or make extra (don't ask) then I am unable to rescue the situation.  My Nan was an avid knitter, and my Mum is a capable one (or though inexplicably cannot sew all the bits together at the end and has to take it to my Auntie Anita to do).  So, needles to the wheel, I used my beloved YouTube, and last night produced my first rows of purl.  Or proper knitting, as I excitedly babbled to Mark, who couldn't have been less interested. 

Cable next - it looks even more proper. 

getting on with

'stuff' lately - cooking up this...

...and that.  If Granola counts as 'cooking'.  The cake is parsnip and sultana spice cake, baked on the back of the frenzy of health and activity that always accompanies the arrival of the first veg box.  It's quite nice - good with a cup of tea, as my SiL always tells me my cakes are.  Oliver said it sucked all the moisture out of his mouth, so - same view different windows eh?

I have bravely branched out in the crochet department and taken a departure from my normal blanket making to create this little fella:

I left him on the kitchen table for Oliver when I went to work with a blue ribbon and a lable round his neck calling him Pascal, which I thought very natty indeed.  He is a French poodle you know, but by the time I came home the blue ribbon was discarded on the floor, Pascal had been renamed 'Stitches' and absorbed into the toy mountain which lives in Oliver's bed.

Emboldened by this foray into toymaking, I recently purchased this:

and hope to produce a whole heap of cuddliesomeness.

And a Navajo Ripple update:

The white is working.  Phew.

Just after Christmas the three of us took our Christmas double chins out for an airing.

The three of us NOT being Mark, the squirrel and I, obvs.  And Oliver doesn't have a Christmas double chin weighing him down either.  Obvs.

The local squirrels were very tame, and very overweight, the fat little blighters.  Too many peanuts bought by cooing tourists, no doubt.  We tried to tempt them with cherry tomatoes, which is the only food I had with me, but they obviously hadn't started their New Year diets yet, as they were very sniffy about them.

Hmmm, what else.  Looking forward home-ed wise I have decided to focus on reading, writing and spelling for a few months.  This is a weak area for Oliver, and I suddenly woke up the other morning in a cold sweat panicking about how the hell he would ever sit an exam in anything given his current loathing of the written word.  Shoulder to the wheel and all that.  Poor Oliver, getting his education solely on the back of his mother's twighlight epiphanys seems a little ad hoc, even by my standards.

Anyhoo, his spelling and writing is improving, albeit slowly, so a focus on it for a while won't hurt.

Tootle pip.

New Years Realisations

No resolutions for me this year. 

Although Oliver has requested that I stop swearing in the car when out driving.  I'll give that one a good go for him. 

Today feels like the first day of the year to me, Mark has gone back to work and so have I.  The close family times are over for another year.  Yes, yes, I know we can 'be together' anytime throughout the year, but there is something very special and unique about that week or so at Christmas when you are drawn together by the celebratory feel of the season and family films, games and lovely meals eaten at the festive table with crackers.  I feel more of a unit then than any other time. 

And whilst mentioning crackers may I just say how disappointed I am by the growing trend for 'luxury' crackers.  I don't want a silver plated yo-yo or nail clippers in my cracker.  I don't want a sheet of highbrow jokey facts or charades nor a pleated hat made from high quality cartridge paper.  Crackers should be the crackers of my childhood - cheap and completely crap.  They should contain a hat made from flimsy tissue paper so that extreme care must be taken when putting it on.  Jokes should be groan-tastic and the gifts should be a clip-on moustache or a fortune-telling fish. 

Having said that I have found the odd tape measure and mini screwdriver set to be quite helpful in the kitchen drawer.  If I can ever find them in amongst the clip-on moustaches and fortune-telling fish, that is.

We are going to eat better this year.  I have spent some time scaring myself silly reading up about conditions you can develop by years of poor eating and have decided to overhaul the family diet (and budget) at the same time.  Mark is ok with that, Oliver less so.  Not sure Mark will be so happy when I dish up a kohlrabi and cauliflower sandwich next week ha ha. 

I have ordered a fortnightly veg box from a local organic farm, as I caught a TV article last night saying that spinach grown in the soil in 1914 contained so much more iron than its counterpart today that you would need to eat around 30 times more.  Shit a brick.  The same sort of figures were true for cabbage and calcium.  I think.  I was crocheting and skim-listening so I can't be too sure of exact figures, but it has jolted me enough to decide to not buy supermarket veg for a while anyway.

And fibre.  I am going to start cooking more oaty things.  Like cookies etc as the fibre we eat is not brilliant.  And I know cookies may not be 'the' way to go, but hey - gotta be better than no oats surely. 

And I will return to exercise as I gave myself December off (thank you me), and I can feel a layer of blubber settling in and no doubt making itself at home around my internal organs and choking me from the inside out. 

Out damn blubber.