Great Afternoon of Crochet

I had a fun afternoon/evening out at the official opening of Purl City Yarns. It was great to sit and chatter knitting and crochet with lots of crafty folk. Some that I had met before and others that I met for the first time. When these photos were taken it was late afternoon and so the crowds hadn't arrived by then. Charlotte's Father and Mother came and as the Mayor of Stockton resplendent in his mayoral chains he cut the ribbon that officially opened the shop and the gallery upstairs. There was a film show later in the evening but as it was upstairs in the gallery and it was heaving with people I elected not to slowly ascend the staircase and hold everyone up. Apparently it will be shown again so perhaps I can view it on a less crowded day.

I had a good chat to Sean and a couple of students from the MMU who are studying design and using crochet and machine knitting. Chatting to them and seeing some photos of Sean's work made me think once again about getting my bigger knitting machine cleaned up and working properly again. I have all the gadgets and gizmos for it and it would solve the problem of my slow knitting. Well it will once I remember how everything works. It has been many years since I used it properly. Crochet will always be my first love though.

As you can see from the photos there is plenty of stock to chose from and Charlie is adding more every day. I had a good browse and decided on some King Cole Cotton and a few patterns which I will show you tomorrow. A lot of the people who came bought something so I hope that they will make plenty return visits as it is good to have a quality wool shop in Manchester. I can't wear wool as you know but there are so many people in Manchester who appreciate the chance to view the top end wools in real life. I have ordered many things from the Internet as my shopping ability is somewhat limited at the moment and it is always a surprise when the things arrive as they are never quite the colour that I thought I was ordering. Purl City Yarns has the King Cole Riot in stock so when I need more stocks I know where I can see the colours properly.

For those of you unable to visit the shop I have been told that the website for mail. order will be up and running very soon - possibly next week. I have also put the blog link through my blog title so that you can keep up to date should you wish to do so.

At the moment I am crocheting a hush hush project so I can't update you on my work at the moment. All will be revealed at a later date. I still have the two sleeves to crochet on my jacket but that has taken a back seat once again as I push on with my secret project. I have just been asked by my London Niece to knit a cardigan for her friend. I did promise this friend that I would knit her one a while ago when we were chatting at my niece's wedding but she has had a baby in between and has only just got around to deciding on what she wants. My niece is going to get the wool for me and send it to my address. My niece is away in Spain at a family wedding at the moment but will be back next week.

I will have to be starting my Christmas presents soon as some of them will be knitted and my knitting is far slower than my crochet.

My knee has felt like it has been run over by a bus since the physio. I am back to day one pain wise. I know that it is going to hurt but what is alarming me more is that since my scar healed my knee is starting to swell back up again making the knee bends even more difficult to do. I just feel that if I could get this swelling down then the knee exercises would be a doddle and I would be walking again. I haven't felt much like blogging over the last couple of days. When I hit a down day I try not to inflict myself on other people. My blog would have just been one long moaning woe is me rant and not very interesting.

I have bought another subscription in for the Interweave Crochet magazine and I am hoping that they don't keep up the trend of adding knitting to their magazine. I debated whether to renew but as I find it so hard to find copies to buy in the newsagents I decided to take a chance on the new editions improving.

Dillon The Herbivore

Dillon is growing up but not much taller. He was supposed to be a half Akita but he has a large head and such short little legs we are not sure what he is. He is very mischievous and a real handful. We just hope that we can find him a home where he can get lots of attention which he craves. He has such a cute face that I am sure one of my son's friends will fall for him soon. Lots of people have shown interest in him but they either have another dog or a cat and we think he would be better being the only animal for a while. He is like Tigger. He bounces everywhere and thinks everyone wants to play with him. His nickname is now Herbivore since he ate the plant that my son bought me for Mother's Day.

Yesterday I was so tired that I spent most of it dozing off in the chair. Today I seem to have recovered and have managed to finish off the neckline of the striped sweater. I just have to knit some sleeves now. I hope that I have enough cotton left to make the sleeves longer as I am not one for wearing short sleeves as shown on the pattern. I definitely have enough green and white but the mink colour is the one that I am worried about. I am going to start one sleeve and just hope for the best. Even long sleeves will be quite short as it is a dropped shoulder line and I don't have very long arms. I am longing to start some crochet but I am trying to make myself finish this knitting before I do,

I have put some more photos from the Vintage Baby book on the blog today. I will let you make your own mind up whether you like any of them. I doubt that I will be using this book much. I like the crochet book that I bought at the same time and will take some photos of the projects in that for another day.

I have seen on Ravelry that the new Interweave crochet is out in the US. There are a couple of jackets in it by Doris Chan in this issue. My copy won't arrive for another couple of weeks which is probably just as well as I have other things to finish before I get carried away with any new patterns.

I hope that I manage to stay awake this evening to get some more knitting done but as I am still not sleeping through the night I get very tired around 9pm and doze on and off until bedtime.

New mags and hooks

I got my delivery of 2 Interweave magazines from Get Knitted today. As usual there are only a couple of designs per book that I will use but it's still nice to have them anyway. Doris Chan has her usual contributions but they are rather lacy as seen in the black ZZ topper. I can picture getting hooked up on every door knob if I wore that in the house. I like her Sugarplum bolero but without the furry fluffy edging for me. I like the little edge to edge cardigan but without it's bed jacket ribbon and the spiders web cardigan is a possible. I like the scarf and could possibly like the Diamond Sage wrap if it wasn't in such an insipid colour. I would omit the beaded edging as I am not really a beady kind of person.

I also ordered 3 Clover soft touch hooks with the wider handles. I hope that I can use these and that they are not destined to be given away like the Brittany Birch with their overly long annoying knobbly ended hooks and the snaggy bamboo ones I have bought in the past.

Ambermoggie loves the purple granny square shawl that I sent to her (see her blog). It's funny but as soon as I made the shawl I said this is more Amber than me. When she admired it on my blog I knew where it was destined to be re-homed to but it has taken me until now to send it. I love to crochet as you have probably guessed by now but once things are finished they are not always "me" so I have decided that in future they will get passed on to other homes if I have this feeling about them. No sense in putting them in the cupboard for them never to see the light of day.

My niece came to do my hair roots on Thursday and cut a few inches off the bottom of my hair. It feels really strange to have hair only to my shoulders now. It needed doing though as the hospital had swabbed my hair with some wet cloths soaked in some unknown cleaning substance in post op when I was so sick and my hair resembled Worzel Gummage, with his straw hair, from then on. No amount of deep conditioning helped so it was time to bite the bullet and chop it off. I can still just about tie it back and it will soon grow again.

I went to Julie's (next door)party last night. It was a jolly affair but got a little tearful when Julie thanked us all for coming and said it might be her last birthday and so this was her pre 40th in case she doesn't make her milestone next year. We had a bit of a laugh as someone had bought her a water feature for the garden and she put a couple of the blue toilet tank freshener things in it and it started foaming all over the garden and everyone was throwing foam at each other. I had to stick to Coca Cola because of the pain killers but I don't need alcohol to have a good time.

Chatting to the neighbours it appears that I missed a streaker in the Clough. If I had Buster back I would have seen him as it was my normal afternoon walk time. Apparently he stood naked apart from a pair of boots in front of Christine and started waggling is man parts about. I miss all the fun. I am sure I would have laughed out loud. He did get reported to the police - who caught him - as there were children in the Clough at the time and it's not a nice thought that they could have seen him. Or worse if he was some kind of a pervert. Amusing to adults but potentially dangerous for children.

I have started the sleeve edging for Rah Boom De Ay just to see what it looks like finished. I am still undecided as to whether my finished sweater will have a frilly edging or turn into a more boring version. Anything that adds inches to my hips or draws attention to their girth is a bit of a no no for me. If you look closely you can see a small photo on the pattern of the finished sweater.