Four Ducks on Their Way to London

Poppa Duck, Momma Duck and two baby duck hats are finished and by the time that you read this they will probably winging their way to London but not under their own steam. They will be going courtesy of Royal Mail. I think that they look more like chickens but the pattern does state that they are ducks.

Tonight I will get back to my niece's aran jacket. I still have two sleeves and the collar to knit before Christmas. Plus I have the scarf to finish before I start anything else. I left these two projects to make the hats as they don't have to be posted.I also have a few more ideas in the pipeline that I would like to make but that will be if and when I get the time. As it will involve another journey up to Bury to get more supplies then it will probably be next week. I am not a lover of going up to the market on a Saturday as the trams and the market get too crowded especially for me and my shopping trolley.

I was almost Mummy or perhaps foster Mummy to a puppy last night. He needed an emergency re-homing as the person who had him has mental problems and wasn't feeding him properly or toilet training him. He turned out to be rather a larger puppy than described so he is at my son's at the moment as my son said he is too boisterous for me to cope with. He is of mixed breed but has huge paws so the potential to grow into a large dog. They are used to training dogs in the social graces so he is better off with them at the moment. We are not sure where he will finish up but we didn't want him to have to go into an already overcrowded dogs home situation as we know that he won't get re-homed from there until after Christmas. He is driving my son's other two dogs mad but that is to be expected until he settles in. My son and his wife have an extensive circle of friends so hopefully Dillon (as he has been renamed) will find a happy permanent home soon. If he had been a tiny puppy turning into a tiny dog I might have been tempted to keep him but I had to give Buster back to my son as I couldn't walk him properly. I miss him like mad but I had to do what was best for the dog. Larger dogs need more exercise than I am capable of at the moment.

Two Little Ducks

No I am not playing Bingo in fact apart from playing an odd game in the Working Man's club in the interval when I was young I have never played the game.I am referring to the fact that duck motif hat number two is finished, I have made the two adult ones first. I am trying to get the children's hats finished soon so that they can get posted down to London. One of the little girls who is having one of these hats spent the day at London Zoo last week and refused point blank to move away from the duck enclosure. She could not be tempted by any of the other animals.

My arm isn't too sore today after my flu jabs yesterday but my ex husband said his arm hurt more a couple of days afterwards so I am knitting like mad in case the hurting kicks in tomorrow.I am feeling very tired though as I had one of my wakeful nights with my painful knee and I finished up watching TV at 6am this morning.

Not much else to report really except I now need the help of the teenager from next door not only to reach my Christmas decorations out of the loft but also to re-programme my Freeview box which seems to have gone off all it's channels. I am looking forward to the day when we can go back to just pressing a button and getting the channels on the TV once again instead of all this fiddling about with top boxes or Sky boxes. The world is going mad. I don't think that I am missing much not having viewed things in high definition. I have only just progresses from black and white TV. Videos and DVD's have me shaking my head in wonder. I am just technologically inept. I wish I had been born years ago when none of this stuff existed and I could just sit there with my knitting and crochet without being made to feel in adequate.

Hat With Duck Motif

I am having a break from the aran knitting. I have finished off the back and two fronts now.The last front too k me longer than I had anticipated due to the fact that I forgot to place a buttonhole and had got up to the armhole shaping before I realised it. Grr I just love unpicking - especially aran.

My niece in London asked me to knit 4 hats with a duck motif on for her to give to duck mad friends and baby girls. I suddenly realised that I need to get these hats down to her before Christmas so decided to leave the aran and push on with the hats.A friend of my niece is going down to London before Christmas so with a bit of luck they will be finished for her to take with her to save on the postage. My niece and her husband work full time so they miss the postman and have to travel miles to the sorting office (they don't have a car) to pick up any parcels that they have missed. I made the gents hat first to see how large the motif turned out so that I can make adjustments for the babies hats. I got the motif from a children's cardigan pattern by Cascade yarns. It is a cute pattern and if you click on my blog title you can see it.

I am going for both my flu jabs this afternoon so I am hoping that i don't get a sore arm as a lot of my friends did when they had their swine flu jab. That will really put my hat knitting back a bit and drive me mad. I can't just sit and do nothing so I will have to devise a way to either knit or crochet if this happens.

At least it is not raining today. My knee doesn't like the cold and the wet.I am looking forward to the day when I will have a full nights sleep as I haven't slept all through the night for over 5 yrs now. First it was back pain waking me up and when I got that sorted then the knee pain jabs me awake. I just know that when I visit the specialist in January he will say it's my weight causing this. They will not listen when I say it's the pain that has caused all this weight gain and not the other way around.

Time for a coffee and to sort out my shopping list as I might as well do some whilst I am out and about. I have to pass some shops on my way to the doctors so why waste a walk?