Stash Enhancement, wool stats for June and project progress.

 Yes I thought I'd lump all these in together this month as none would really make a worthwhile post on its own. 

Stats first; in 620, out 155, net increase for the month therefore 465g. This reduces the net decrease for the year to 5832.

I'm not going to moan. I knew when I went to the Lay Family yarn thing that I was bound to buy some in addition to the yarn we got as a result of our dyeing endeavours. I have plans for everything I bought so it's not as though I bought blind. 

here's the bundle! 

at the back is the skein I dyed together with the bunch of 16 minis, one from each attendee. In the middle from l to r; Christmas sock set, self striping sock set no 1, skein of sock yarn in the colour toffee apple, bundle of autumnal minis to use with toffee apple skein, self striping sock set no 2. In the front a skein of coral coloured sock yarn that I couldn't resist, the colour is just so beautiful.  

Finished projects, or actually that should be finished project singular, a pair of socks for the OH. This is the Yarn Unique  Starry Night colourway, the March instalment of her Art Gallery club. 

They're very nice, but it's a puny total! I did have shingles and I did go away and I was still unpacking and I did work on other things, but even so. A shockingly non-productive month. 

here's the Japanese scarf as at the end of June.

I am 28 rows away from the half way point. and looking at it there I'm thinking it had better block well length wise as well as width wise or it will be a kerchief. It is lovely though, 

I didn't take  a progress photo of the lavender cross stitch this time as I don't think I actually did any work on it in June, but I did take one of the Earthdancer and she's come on a treat since the end of May. 

There's no denying that cross stitch is slow and even when I've finished the figure I have a forest to put in (I exaggerate slightly), but there are trees to come and a moon. That assumes that I ever finish her hair; she has more of it than is at all reasonable. 

I am full of good resolutions about being more productive in July; the unpacking is almost done - we are at the 'get out the pictures and put them on the wall' stage and I finished sorting the books earlier this week. Also we are not going away for a week. So there's that! Who thinks I can do four pairs of socks in a month? 

Playing in the Dye Pots

So we're not long back from a lovely week in Shropshire. The reason for going was a dyeing workshop/craft retreat at Lay Family Yarn who are based in Ironbridge. I've though about going on one of these several times, last year I decided to go but wasn't quick enough to book, so this year I was sitting poised over a hot screen ready to stab at it the moment the retreats appeared on the website. 

I'm not sure really why I was so keen. I'm generally not good in large groups of people, particularly when I don;t know any of them, I have had a bad experience with a previous knitting retreat ( I cane home early!) and generally I've tried out knitting groups both in person and on-line and then given up. Whatever the reason I did want to go to this and so I booked it. At the time we didn't know whether we would be travelling from Orkney or the Central Belt but either way it was a long way to go for a weekend and so that was why we booked a self catering place nearby for a week. 

Despite being a bit stressed by the prospect I have to say that I had a lovely time ( apart form missing the first morning because I was ill). Here's a photo of some of the participants

Everybody gets to dye some yarn in the colours they want and at the end you take  away 100g of your 'own' yarn and a 10g mini of each of them. There were 16 people there on this occasion so that's 260 g of yarn, plus of course there is plenty of time to browse the Lay Family Yarn Shop. And yes, the wool stats for this month are going to be a bit of a sorry tale, but that's for another day! 

Meanwhile here's  my yarn in the dye pan

and here's the finished skein together with the inspiration picture ( Waterhouse's Destiny )

It cam out paler than I would have liked ideally, but I still loved it. There's not much of the blue on show but that's mainly to do with how it was skeined. 

Anyway I must have really enjoyed it because I have booked to go again next year! 

Opera x 2

 Yes we have already been to the opera twice since we moved, which is pretty good going I think. 

First up was a matinee of the Merry Widow at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh. It's not our favourite venue because the stage is a bit weird, not very deep but very wide, so sometimes productions look a bit odd when accommodating to it, but as far as that goes the Merry Widow fitted quite well. 

I liked the sets and costumes, and the music is lovely in an 'I'm almost a musical rather than an operetta' kind of a way. Further than that I won't go. The director had updated the action to 1950s New York ad set it amongst a collection of gangster families; Mafia, Eastern European, something else which escapes me. Leaving aside the horrific cacophony of, not always successful, accents this led to, I don't find the mafia a fit subject for mirth and hilarity.  Setting an act in a Sicilian lemon grove with every farcical trope you can think of just annoyed me when compared with the brutal killing of Michael Corleone's young wife in The Godfather. Lots of people loved it, but I'm sorry, I just don't find the mafia funny. Basically because they.re not. 

Obviously you can't take pictures during the performance but here's a photo of the curtain call

The other 'opera experience' was a pop up at the Falkirk Wheel last Sunday. They were doing two performances; a family show with a story about the Scottish canals and the boats that used to use them and a cut down version of The Pirates of Penzance. We're not huge G and S fans but we thought the other one might be fun and the Falkirk wheel isn't far and the weather was nice so we went. 

here's the wheel; for those who don't know, it's actually a boat lift to take boats from one section of  the canal to the other; the height differential is huge at this point. 

A little representation by the Visitor Centre of life on the canals once upon a time.

And the three singers and two instrumentalists who performed Puffy McPuffer and the Crabbit Canals. The children in the audience loved it, joining in with the singing and generally leaping and squirming about with great joy and it was huge fun for the adults as well. The performers were all fantastic. 

We have done lots of other things as well since moving in despite the shingles and the ongoing BT saga and I will get caught up eventually, although we are actually going away for a just over a week tomorrow so when I get back there will be even more to catch up with. I think that's a good thing though. 

The Move - A Retrospective

 Well, it was bloomin' hard work, I can tell you that. 

Moving out day was awful; not because I was sentimental about leaving though. The removal people weren't very good; they were young lads who had no respect for other people's property, I had to keep away from them a lot of the time because I winced every time they tried to get  a piece of furniture  out of a door. I don't know how long they had been with the firm but I hope not long, because otherwise they were obviously unable to learn from experience. It took ages for them to get everything out and then we had to clean. After about two hours of the cleaning I had gone from 'gosh I'm breathing heavily, I know I'm unfit but really this is ridiculous' to ' this is much harder than I expected and I feel a bit sick and light headed' to ' I can't breathe properly and that's quite frightening'. I'd been spending a lot of time on my hands and knees washing skirting boards, and whether it was dust, or carpet mites or cleaning fluid, I was definitely not in a good place. So then I had to sit by an open window and take deep breaths and after about half an hour I felt better. 

Then we locked up and took ourselves off to the ferry as we were doing a bed and breakfast on it and I took a last photo of the house. 

And when we got to the boat I took a last picture of Stromness too, because I knew I wasn't going to be up and about when we set sail the next morning to take it them. 

The following week is  a bit of a blur as we officially spent it in Glasgow but there were so many mornings when we had to be at the new house at the crack of dawn that twice we stayed in a Premier Inn near Stirling just so we didn't have to get up really early and drive from Glasgow to Alloa for 8 o' clock. We did, while in Glasgow, go to M and S and get the OH several new pairs of trousers, since the ones he had had all suffered from ingrained coal dust from the solid fuel stove and now, thanks to the marvel that is central heating, that will no longer be the case. We had various travails with BT, which have already been briefly alluded to and I have no intention of re-visiting that particular annoyance, but we've spent far too much time explaining and re-explaining various tings to BT in an effort to stop them trying to hit us for a cancellation charge we don't owe them. Sky were great though; the woman turned up on time, discussed whereto put the dish, installed it and buried all the cables neatly, and all in the blink of an eye. Well -ish. 

The worst bit was fielding a phone call from the manager of the Orkney branch of the removal firm who was ringing with the news that my beautiful ceramic figure, despite dire warnings from us about how fragile she was, and instructions from him to his workforce to triple blanket wrap her and take extra care, was in fact now in several pieces. He did says his wife was 'quite crafty and had offered to have a go at mending it if I would like'. I would not like. 

Photo of said ceramic for those who might not have ben around when I bought it 

I know not everyone thinks she's beautiful, but I loved her and she meant a lot to me in several different ways and I just cried. I'm still crying inside about it because she was part of a limited edition and there is no way I can replace her, a fact which the insurance company for the removal men seemed quite unwilling or unable to take on board. I am going to be recompensed but there was a bit of an elongated exchange of e-mails. We were also claiming for some damaged bookcases because when the van was unloaded at this end they discovered that something in the the stuff at the front of the van, which belonged to someone else they were delivering to later that day had leaked a thin odourless but very black liquid which was now covering the bottom few inches of some of our bookcases. I was not amused. (possibly printer ink. we still don't know).

I think that's all the worst of it,. I don't regret the move, but I wish the logistics had been calmer and more smooth and that we hadn't  got exhausted from the early starts and the 3/4 days when we seemed to do nothing but unpack boxes and I definitely wish I hadn't developed shingles. I did at one point think that if I had to do ti again I would sell everything at the leaving end and start anew at the destination, but I'm not intending to move again in the foreseeable future. 

Upcoming over the next few days; some of the exciting things we've been doing since we got here - because yes,  we did get past spending all day every day unpacking eventually, although this doesn't mean that we don't still have a few boxes waiting to be dealt with. 

In Which I am Poorly Sick

 I have been poorly sick for a while now; and what I have mainly been poorly sick with is Stress.

This is annoying because, although moving was stressful, that is now behind us and  I feel I should be 'over' it. Sadly, the signs are that I am not. 

I am prone to stress and it has various ways of manifesting itself, but generally it chooses one way and does that to the nth degree, then gets bored and moves out for a while. Obviously the whole moving thing threw it into a whirl of confusion and it decided just to go for gold and hit me with everything. 

So I have very  red itchy palms just now. This is a genetic thing that my mother  and at least one female cousin of mine suffered from ; the cousin concerned is a doctor and she did tell me the medical name for red itchy palms. I can't remember what it is, but I do know it's a pain. 

I have a patch of something nasty and itchy  on the sole of my right foot. I'm not aware that this is genetic, but it is stress triggered and I need to start treating it with a steroid cream soon or it will just spread.

My restless leg syndrome is very present just now, especially at night, and to add to the joy of nations it has been joined by restless hand syndrome. The latter tends to kick in at about 8.00 in the evening and settles down at about 11.00, when the legs take over. I literally cannot describe the feeling of either of these things, except to say that it's basically an irresistible urge to move the leg or hand affected, which sounds like nothing but is in fact extremely unpleasant. Especially since moving the affected part does not in fact take away the sensation of needing to move it. 

All of these I have had off and on for years ( although never more than one at a time until now ) but 10 days ago they were joined by shingles. This is a first for me and I sincerely hope it is also a last because it is not fun. A very  sore and itchy rash, which occasionally prickles,  accompanied by pain in places the rash doesn't reach. It was diagnosed in time for me to be given antivirals - 10 pills a day for 7 days, which was horrible in itself as I hate the physical process of taking tablets - but I still felt rubbish. The best thing to do apparently is to rest and relax until it's all over, but no-one tells you how you rest and relax when you've just moved house and are surrounded by a multitude of unpacked boxes. Nice trick if you can work it. 

So that sort of explains why there hasn't been a blog post for a while, because I really haven't had the energy, but possibly I am really on the mend now because here I am typing away. 

I don't suppose anyone wants to see a picture of the truly horrible shingles rash that I had on my back, because why would they, so instead here is a photo of one of the recently purchased  lavenders at the front door. Because lavender is supposed to have soothing properties, yes?  

May - Wool Stats and Project Progress

Yes, I know, I hear you. I've got lots to say about the move and here I am faffing about with project updates. But I just thought I would get this one out of the way, and do move and recent activity stuff over the next few days.

I am delighted to say that the BT Engineer did turn up this morning as arranged. He then had rather more trouble than anticipated getting our internet to work, as apparently there was a broken cable and this necessitated him summoning a colleague, lifting up a man hole cover and standing in a hole for some length of time. The good news is that we now have stable (so far) working internet. I'm told on the ground floor this is via Ethernet and that upstairs uses wi-fi.  I have no idea what this means, but as long as I can get back on my laptop in a meaningful way, it's all fine by me.

Anyway, to the craft update. Wool in was 200g, wool out was 3164g. V-e-r-y pleasing. The large out figure was for a couple of main reasons. One was that I finished a huge project (see below) and the other was that I finally looked out my very oldest wool, most of it inherited from  my mother and squatting under the guest room bed almost since we moved to Orkney. Most of that went to a charity shop, some of it was thrown away. I also sent quite a lot of my own leftovers to someone I know who makes things on a very old knitting machine in a museum; the things she makes are then sold to raise funds for the museum upkeep. 

So net decrease for this month was 2964g and the running decrease for the year is 6297g. This is all excellent, but on the other hand I still seem to have an awful lot of wool. 

Finished projects. First up a pair of socks 

These are from the Skein and the Stitch weekly advent from last Christmas which means I've done three weeks out of the four. Not entirely sure where the wool from week 4 is just now ..... It will turn up. 

The big project was this

a huge blanket. This was part done and I picked it up at the beginning of April, realising that it would be easier to pack as a single blanket than 5 sets of squares/mini skeins in 5 separate project bags. I hadn't actually done all of the squares at that stage, I think I had about 24 to do, and then they almost all needed edging, before being put together and then bordered. It was a Big Ask, but I managedto get it all done before we moved, bar some of the weaving in of the ends, but I finished that after we got here. I call it my Inkling Blanket, because the squares are made from an Advent themed on The Lion and the Witch and The Wardrobe, and a mini-skein club based on the Lord of the Rings. The square edging was done in a colourway called the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and all the wool came from Giddy Yarns. Sorry the colour is a bit washed out in some parts of the photograph but it was a bright day when I took it. 

That's it for finished things, but not bad considering I moved house in May and my crafting time was severely limited. 

Progress reports on other things. At the end of May the Japanese scarf looked like this

so it had grown quite well, considering I don;t like to do too much in a day otherwise I start to make mistakes. 

The earth dancer cross stitch looked like this at the end of the month

which is very little different to how she looked at the end of April which was disappointing. The only real change was that there was more done of her medicine bag. However there will be lots of progress visible by the end of June. 

And the lavender sampler also didn't grow by much but there's lots more tree and a bit more lavender field, compared to the previous month

So there you go. That was May, as far as crafting went. 

Well, we're in.

Apologies for the lack of a picture but I'm too tired to source one. 

I'm pleased to say that we are in the new house and so far we are loving it, even though there are a few things that need/(ed) sorting very quickly.

However we are plagued with minor frustrations of the sort which I suppose attend every house move, but knowing that doesn't make them any easier to cope with when they are happening. 

Today has been the first day I've had access to my laptop because BT/Openreach are useless and although they promised that an engineer would come last Friday to set up our internet he didn't appear, and the next available slot is not until 8th June. They sent us a temporary battery powered hub to tide us over but the battery doesn't hold a  lot of charge and we won't leave it charging overnight so it has to start almost from scratch every morning. 

More details to come over the coming days; and I'll try to balance the annoyances out with some of the good stuff.