Queen Of Bloops

What is that saying - More haste less speed. I have spent an hour this morning trying to correct a blooper I made last night. I had finished the navy hat and I should have known better than to sew it up in the electric light. This morning I looked at at and the ribbing didn't match up so I extra carefully snipped open the seam. You know what is coming next - yes I did - I snipped into the ribbing! As the hat was knitted bottom up on two needles I had a choice of either unravelling the whole hat or trying to salvage it by cutting the rib off and picking up the stitches from the wrong way and then ribbing downwards on 5 needles. As you can see I have managed to get the stitches on the needles that but not without a lot of swearing under my breath. I now have to rib 4" just to get back to where I was last night. See what I mean about wasted time.

The piece of navy cable is the start of the Irish Hiking Scarf and whilst it seems to be a very popular pattern on Ravelry projects I am a bit undecided about it as it is very one sided which isn't a good look for a scarf. As it is for a nephew in law present I wanted something a little different to the usual ribbed scarf. The guy it is destined for isn't from a knitting family so perhaps he wont notice that it can only be worn one way. There might be a bit more unravelling if I decide to make it ribbed instead of cabled.

The jacket for my niece is making very slow progress as the cable pattern is charted and not only that one panel has 20 rows and the other has 6 rows so it's difficult to keep track or to write it out as the patterns are at different stages for most of the time. I am having to really concentrate on this one so I doubt that I will be zipping along.

The duck motif hats that I have to make are navy based so I will have dim eyesight by the time Christmas comes along.

It is bitterly cold today and my knees are feeling it. I have had to put my heating on for the day which is a thing that I try to avoid as I am afraid of the cost. Once the house has warmed up I will turn the thermostat down a few notches and hope that will be warm enough.

Time for a coffee, Loose women and a bit of hat ribbing before I go up to the shops for a few bits and pieces.

The Culprit

I went to knit club last night at the Kings Arms. A good time was had by all. I came back and found next door's cat Oscar lurking in the porch. I let him and gave him a drink and he scuttled off to sleep in his hidey hole somewhere in the house. I went to bed later and completely forgot that Oscar was in the house. I woke around 5am to the overwhelming stench of either cat spray or cat wee. If you have ever smelt an un-neutered tom cat then you will know what I mean.

I came downstairs and let him out but at that time of the morning I was still half asleep and I had a quick feel about but could not find any patches of wet. I went back to bed and when I got up this morning the stench was even worse. I have therefore spent all of today scrubbing and cleaning every place I can think of but I still haven't discovered that tell tale wet patch. My throat hurts and my cough is back courtesy of a cocktail of disinfectant and a full bottle of Fabreze. The sad part is that even after all my efforts I can still smell cat wee !!!

He may look like an angel but Oscar is not my favourite cat at the moment. I have had cats of my own who have had accidents but I have never smelt anything this bad and can't find it. I swear it is in every room. Either that or I am losing my sense of smell.

The good side of it was that when I was cleaning the spare bedroom I tidied up my stash of part balls of wool and sorted them into colours. My head is now buzzing with ideas for shawls in shaded purples and lilacs or shades of green. There is always granny square shawls to use up all of these oddments. I need another pair of hands for all the things that my head plans.

I started knitting some of my stash at the Knit Club last night but after using up 100 grams I realised that I will not have enough yarn to complete that pattern so I have unravelled it. That is the only trouble with keeping wool in stash. Invariably you have not bought quite enough for what you now want to make and the chances of getting anymore are very slim.

I am going to have a shower now and settle down with a different pattern for my knitting and hope that the smell will fade from wherever it is coming from soon and fade from my nostrils.

I commented on Jam & Jerusalem's blog that she was making me feel guilty with all of her spring cleaning. I am not feeling guilty now as I have cleaned every surface that I can. I hope when I get up tomorrow that the stench will have faded. I have had all the windows wide open all day to try to blow it away.

Midnight - One more night without sleeping

For those of you old enough to remember the late Frankie Vaughan you will understand today's title. It's from Green Door one of his biggest hits. I kept humming - Midnight one more night without sleeping. Watching until the morning came creeping. Green Door what's the secret you are keeping.

I was lying in bed last night sleep eluding me even though I am tired to the bone. I just could not find that magic formula that would tip me over the edge into sleep. I dozed for a few minutes at a time. Tried all the yoga tricks like focusing my mind on happy thoughts, holidays and waves gently lapping. I tried counting sheep and thinking of clouds. No success. I tried putting on headphones and having music gently playing. One minute I was freezing cold and the next raging hot and to make matters worse I developed a cough in the middle of the night. Probably through my constant trips in and out of the duvet!

My back pain has been good today I am just so tired.

I am still in the unravelling stage of my crochet. The Cinnabar that I had started for Vicky J would have fitted a size 0 when I reached the part where it joins together. Normally I crochet on the slack side and always automatically tighten my hook sizes to compensate but I must have crocheted to tension with the Colinette Lasso. I got up this morning from my restless night and pulled it all back again and restarted it. It is now looking the right size although I have had to add a couple of extra rows before I joined the jacket together for the body as I felt it was far too tight. It is now measuring 36" across the bust line so I hope that with the addition of the borders that it will fit. The next size on the pattern is 40" and I thought that would be too big. The pattern is very stretchy and could be blocked out if necessary to give a bit more ease. I have to do another couple of rows before I do the short rows to give the bust ease at the front. I don't want to make it too big as I think the style is more fitted than large and loose.

I will try to do a bit more on it tonight but I must admit that the tiredness is catching up with me big style and I find I am crocheted 3 rows and pulling one back as I have made a mistake on it.

Yesterday Charlie came for a visit and discussed whether I would be well enough to go to the Knit Out on Monday as the Manchester Evening News is coming to take photos of us and the knitted chandelier.

Caroline F came later to pick up her shrugs. I was giving her a bit of a crochet lesson. She mastered chain and double crochet and I got an e mail from her today to say she has progressed to trebles today. She is finding it difficult to find which hole to put her crochet hook in but it is more a question of tension as like most beginners she is gripping her crochet hook like grim death.

I do hope that I manage to get some sleep tonight. It is getting worse the longer this sleeplessness goes on and when I start thinking that I might stay awake then that doesn't help me to relax long enough to fall asleep! I lie awake worrying about why I can't sleep. Arghhh.

To frog or not to frog - that is the question

Frogging to me conjures up pictures of my youth when my friends and I would slop merrily along in our overly large (you'll grow into them) Compo style wellies armed with a fishing net and a jam jar into the fields to the local ponds. We would then proceed to deprive Momma Frog of her frog spawn and take them home and then on to school to watch the evolution of nature. We always kept our frog spawn in a fish tank on the window bottom at school and every day we had to search (and draw) for any changes in the tank, The poor little beggars used to be poked and prodded on a daily basis and always managed to make the final stage of turning into frogs over the weekend and so annoy the school caretaker and scare the cleaners half to death as there was always a few Houdini frogs that managed to escape the tank and make a bid for freedom.

Anyway I digress as per usual. I was searching through my stash and found a half made jacket in mohair that I had started many moons ago for a friend who after I had knitted the back and 2 fronts told me that she was allergic to mohair. She didn't know I had been making her a jacket as a surprise present so I just left it as it was. Too small for me to finish for myself I decided last night to re-use the wool. Thoughts came into my mind as to why the Americans and increasingly the Brits have started using the word frogging to describe the process. I looked in the dictionary and frog still has the same meaning as I remember it. An amphibian creature or an ornamental fastening. So why do we frog wool? I then looked up my word - unravelling and that meaning hadn't changed either. To undo or ravel knitted fabric separating tangled threads. Unravelling is a wonderful word it describes the action of parting the superglued together strands of mohair with loving care. I will leave frogging to Kermit and from now on I will unravel!

I started using the unravelled mohair for the crocheted bolero that I was toying with the idea of using the purple wool for. I thought a 6.50mm hook would be too large for double knit but on starting the pattern with the mohair I realise why they have used a large hook. The pattern stitch is really closely worked as it is mostly double crochet and half trebles. I worked about an inch or so of it last night whilst watching a programme about a couple who had 12 kids.Lovely kids but rather them than me. The father was a real hippy type when the going got tough he would take to the hills and play this wooden hurdy gurdy instrument and at one stage I thought his wife was going to chop it up! She kept saying how can he go off and make that awful noise when there are so many chores left undone. That's a man for you! I wasn't too keen on the bit where they emptied the septic tank. I was eating my supper at the time!

The hat is something I made up from left over wool from a couple of previous hats. Not enough of each colour to make a hat I decided to combine them to make a dog walking hat. The pattern is one of my own and it kind of twists when its on so the "cables" don't lie straight. I quite like the style though and may make it again one day in a nice yarn. I need to make it a bit shorter though as it falls over my eyes. All of my hats do that. I must be lacking in brains to fill up my head and make it the same size as everyone elses.