This just about sums me up

What kind of yarn are you?

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You are Dishcloth Cotton.You are a very hard worker, most at home when you're at home. You are thrifty and seemingly born to clean. You are considered to be a Plain Jane, but you are too practical to notice.
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Duck billed sockypuss

I managed to finish one sock. Well I think it's a sock. I can't try it on as it's the right foot and I have a strange toe on my right foot. To me it looks like half a twisted sock with a bunch of fat small bananas hanging off the end! I do hope that it fits my niece and that I have the willpower to make the second sock. If these had been for me (never in a million years!) I would have rippppped ages ago but a promise is a promise and so I will persevere. I think it's important to keep a promise, I hate it when people break them to me. If I don't keep a promise it's usually because I have forgotten that I have made it (sign of old age) and not because I have ducked out of it. If I get reminded of said promise then I carry it out as soon as I get reminded.

The stye on my eye is much better, hardly swollen at all but these last 2 days I have got hay fever and now both eyes and my nose are streaming. Not a pretty sight. I only suffer from hay fever for short periods usually at the start of Summer so let's hope that this is a sign that the Summer is here at last. My poor son has horrendous hay fever and suffers the whole Summer, He disappears behind sunglasses and has a hankie permanently attached to his hand. He used to drive for a living and this made it hard as a lot of medication cannot be taken by a driver. He has changed jobs so hopefully this year he can use stronger medication.

I started to crochet a small jacket for Charlie. I found a pattern with a relief treble stitch jacket style with a collar so hopefully it will look suitably boyish. I made myself put it down as I was getting far too happy crocheting last night when I knew I had a sock to finish. I will sock knit for a while tonight with the dangling carrot of treating myself to a bit of Charlie crocheting later.

The house is in need of a good tidy but the sun is shining so I think it's time to say blow the house I am off to my lounger in the garden for an hour or so. The dog is already out there sunbathing on the grass. He is a sun worshipper like most animals and always finds the sunniest spot to recline in. My late cat was the same wherever the sun streamed in you would find Ollie stretched out no matter how bizarre the place.

I have fallen out with my sock

I have fallen out with knitting the lacy socks. I have been beset with problems. The pattern has driven me nuts and stye on my eye hasn't helped my patience. Last night I managed to drop a stitch and on a ladder lace pattern that isn't a good thing. It laddered down about 10 rows before I could catch it so there was a lot of &*$" going on in my house. I have managed to latch it up but it's less than perfect. The one saving grace is that it is under the foot otherwise I would have had to unrip it stitch by stitch and row by row. There is going to be an awful lot of cosmetic darning done on this sock before it reaches my niece. I have got the second sock syndrome and I haven't even finished the first!

The photos today are of my charity shop stash that I bought the other day. I have 600 grams in each of the lilac/purple shades although the lilac has quite a few half balls in the bag. Where are the other halves? I wonder what projects were started and then discarded before it reached Cancer Research? The white fleck wool was another mystery. There appeared to be 5 x 100 gram balls but on closer inspection one of the balls changed colour a quarter way through the ball. I rewound it to check and now have about 80 grams of wool flecked with orange, green and blue and 420 grams with just green and blue. Strange. There was no knot to designate where the colours changed from one colour to another. Weird happenings in the balling dept? Perhaps the lady throwing the orange bits in had gone on a tea break?

The wool appears to be either acrylic or acrylic mix but I got 1,700 grams for £10 so I am well pleased. I don't know what I will turn it into as yet but the fleck will come in handy for making something for baby Charlie. I have found 500 grams of 4ply pale blue in my stash and was searching through my vast collection of patterns but there were hardly any 4ply ones and the ones that were 4ply were either crocheted or for girls. I can see a bit of Internet searching going on today although most of the patterns are US and they tend to use thicker wool for their babies. I like to see a brand new baby in finer things. If anyone has any links to any nice boy's fine garments especially a beanie please let me know.

I have a Debbie Bliss book but when I came to look closely most of the patterns are in Aran thickness. For a new baby hat? Erika Knight has one 4ply cardigan in her book but it is plain but then the book is called Simple Knits. I looked in the Itty Bitty Hat book and the smallest hat in there is too large and in worsted (double knit). I suppose I could pop it on smaller needles and use 4ply and see what happens.

I am trying not to put these socks down as they will get pushed to the back of the drawer if I do. The lure of Charlie knitting is beckoning as that would be far more exciting. I have found a crochet pattern that could be boyish ( well for a very young baby) so I will start on that. You can't keep me away from my crochet for long or I get fidgety!

To wrap or not to wrap

I am a fairly novice sock knitter. A relative newcomer to the delights of knitting on 5 needles. So far I have been coping quite well and since the advent of my Knit Picks needles fairly jogging along. Until ....... My niece gave me a Simply Knitting book Issue 21 and asked me to knit some Fancy Feet toe socks. Hey easy peasy I thought. I have made 4 knitted pairs and can tackle anything.

What do they say about pride coming before a fall? These socks have driven me nuts. I have managed to work out the constantly changing first stitch of the spiral lace ( The pattern says repeat 4 rows but when I did that the lace pattern went out of line all the time) and all was well until I got to the heel. It is a short row heel which I have not come across before and it was not very well explained. I went on the net to try to understand what a wrap was and their instructions made more sense. (I thought a wrap was a fast food delicacy from Mc D)

I have managed it but am not happy with it. One side is passable but the other side looks very amateurish. I found the whole process awkward to do. I am sure that I have used a similar type of shaping to this before but it didn't involve any wrapping. I think I will give these wrap kind of heels a miss once this pair is finished. The heel doesn't look very nice and it's not reinforced like the flap heels are. To add insult to injury the instep stitches left un knitted kept slipping off the needles (one drawback of the Knit Picks) which in a ladder spiral lace pattern is a bit *&%$. I am now on the foot bit and it is lace all around - even under the foot! I don't think I will ever knit these socks again.

The last photo is of my new designer sunglasses (well Florence and Fred from Tesco are designers aren't they?) I splashed out a fiver as I was fed up of the sympathetic glances I was getting for my eye. I am sure people thought I was a battered wife and had been punched in the eye. I am now being very Hollywood and wearing sunglasses in the rain! The eye is not quite as swollen today so I think the eye drops and antibiotics are working slowly.

I suppose I had better shake a leg and take this dog for a walk (paddle) in the rain. It's a stay in and knit kind of day today. Dull, rainy and depressing.

Edit - Just got a text that my niece Vicky's ex housemate had a baby boy by C section at 9.30am this morning. Charlie (named after her late father) weighed in at 7lbs 11ozs and Louise and Charlie are doing well. Not sure if dad Keiran made it into theatre with Louise or whether it was Vicky (her birthing partner)

Eye, eye you should see the other guy!

Not sure if this is a style as the swelling has gone underneath the eye this morning although there is a definite peak in the corner of my eye. I shall keep taking the antibiotics and the eye drops and wait and see.
Not much knitting done last night for obvious reasons. I forced my eye open for this photo. It's more comfortable to close it. I think I will take up Zuleika's suggestion of a brightly coloured crochet eye patch when I go up to Tesco to put my Lottery on as I don't want to scare the natives!
I will try it out on the dog walkers first.
Eye Eye (Aye Aye) for now.

Eye has a stye and I want to cry

I woke up this morning with a very sore eye. To be honest it has been a bit sore for a couple of days but I kept rinsing it in Optrex and hoping for the best. I rarely wear make up these days and I had put some on Monday as I was going to the Biobank. I woke up Tuesday morning like Alice Cooper on a rainy day. I had completely forgotten about the eye make up and had gone to bed without removing it. Big faux pas. I presume this eye is a consequence of this. My GP says I am probably run down and it's a stye.

I used to get styes (or poukes as my mother used to call them) regularly when I was a youngster and they didn't come from eye make up so maybe the whole make up thing is just a co-incidence. I am talking about the late 40's and 50's and young girls were not so precocious in those days.

I waited about 45 mins in the pharmacy and when the pharmacist came out she ran through the instructions for my ear drops. Ear drops? Hang on it's my eye! She disappeared again and re-appeared some time later with eye drops. Apparently it is all this progress and computerisation. The doctor types in the brand name and it brings up the drops which are the same name but different strengths for eyes and ears. It's a very easy mistake so I am told. I will forgive him as he did see me at very short notice and it is a bank holiday weekend as well. Luckily I have a very diligent pharmacist who insists on telling me exactly what to do with any new drugs and so the mistake was rectified immediately.

The doctor said he couldn't understand why I had not heard about my op since I have already had my pre op testing done but when I mentioned the CPAP machine and my need for high dependency or intensive care he said - Ah that's why. They will be trying to co-ordinate the two together and that is almost impossible to do as no-one can predict a space on those wards. Doesn't sound very reassuring does it?

I had started my niece Vicky's socks but as the pattern is a travelling spiral lace lattice I doubt if much will get done over the weekend with my dodgy eye. I am struggling with the pattern somewhat anyway. I don't know why but I have a moveable 1st stitch start. The pattern only has 4 rows but when I come to restart the first row again the beginning of my row as per 1st stitches on the needle is wrong for the pattern and yet I ended up right at the end of the 4th pattern row. I have unpicked it several times, counted stitches on every row until I am dizzy and cannot find out why I keep going wrong. I am now just going with the flow, keeping the lace pattern correct and moving my stitch marker back and forth to compensate for the wrong starts to the rows. I hope it all works out well when I get to the foot part and I have to keep a panel of lace at the foot front and stocking stitch under the foot! Argh. It could all go horribly wrong.

The photos are of the sock wool that Vicky brought for me on Sunday. She is the lady who finds me all the bargains. If anyone wants any specific details about any of them Vicky is the woman to tell you. I have the memory of a goldfish as you have probably guessed by now so would be of no use to you.

The first photo is of skeins from the Natural Dye Studio. Top one is Alpaca/silk mix. Middle is Nino Merino and the bottom is Mirage Marino/Tencel. The middle photo is Fyberspates 75% Marino/nylon and the last photo is Opal Neon on the left and Schoeller Fortissima Colori on the right. As you can imagine all of these added to my stash will mean that I have enough wool for lots of socks when I am recuperating.

My niece's best friend is supposed to be induced today so I am waiting to see if she gets a boy or a girl. She will text me when the baby is born. I think it is so lovely that they didn't want to know the sex of the baby before birth. It makes it far more exciting for all of us who are waiting to hear.

My diet went out of the window today as I had waited so long in the pharmacy that it was 6.30pm and I was really hungry and I had to pass the chip shop on my way home. The smell was wafting out onto the pavement saying come in you know that you don't want to stand with your painful back and cook when you get home. I gave in to temptation and the dog and I shared a lovely hot freshly cooked fish with a few chips. Bang goes the diet for another day!

I am off to put my drops in my eyes and take my antibiotics. Hopefully the eye will be less sore and more open tomorrow and I will stop winking at everyone . Maybe I should crochet a fetching eye patch? I could use the crochet hook with the light in the end that Zuleika kindly sent down from Scotland for me.

Short n Sweet shrug once again

This is my latest version of the Short n Sweet Shrug by Angela 'La Vonne' Best in the Stitch n Bitch book The Happy Hooker. It is beautifully modelled by Perran, Vicky's daughter, and was made in honour of her 7th birthday. I had taken some photos of the shrug but decided to wait for the better photos taken by Vicky before posting on my blog. It is made in a double knit cotton that I bought from Lidl. Although it was economically priced I have found that my garments have washed well and will certainly buy it again if Lidl ever has it on offer again. I had to adapt the pattern slightly to scale it to Perran's size as the pattern starts at size 27" but then the next size is 36".

I started my niece Vicky's sock last night and after 8 rows I fell asleep so my Knit Picks were not smokin last night! It must have been the excitement of my last trip to Tesco in my car. I decided to take it for a final spin before I SORN it today. I guess the excitement was too much for me as I fell asleep shortly after I returned home.

Today I went to water aerobics there was a very strange smell in there (no it wasn't us honestly) and it caught at the back of my throat. A lot of the ladies were coughing and a couple had to leave before the end of the lesson. My throat feels a little scratchy now. They must have been using something chemical somewhere in the centre and the smell was drifting around.

I snagged another bargain in the charity shop on the way home (photos later) I found a bag of Purple wool and one of Lilac so I was over the moon. It has no labels but I presume it is double knit acrylic, I also got a bag of white flecked baby yarn. More details later when I count up and weigh my stash. I found it very hard walking to the tram for aerobics today as my back has still not recovered from Monday. I have written an e mail to the hospital saying that I have gone worse and can they tell me when my op date is.

I need to walk the dog but first it's coffee time and feet up with my sock knitting for an hour whilst I watch 60 min makeover and see what the team are doing to someone's house today. I will try to finish off Perran's shawl tonight. I have the edging still to do. I might wait for Vicky's superior photos to post on the blog once it is finished.