Happy Mail and Wool Stats for March

 So the happy mail came yesterday and here it is

In a way I wish it hadn't arrived until today because then I wouldn't have bought any wool in March which would have looked good. But equally I was very pleased to get it. 

A while back I decided that I would like to make a sweater with my 2025 weekly yarn advent from Beehive Yarns. I chose the pattern I wanted to make but  because I have - ahem! curves - up top ,and also because I wanted to make it full length rather than cropped I needed 5 skeins of yarn and the advent naturally had only 4. 

I approached Beth at Beehive to see if she had anything that would work with the advent colours that I could buy and she had a think and then got back to me and said she had a colour in mind but she would need to dye it especially to match the base my advent yarns were on which she was happy to do if I  was prepared to wait a little while. Well obviously I was prepared to wait because as we all now I have plenty of projects and wool on hand  to keep me busy so I waited and now this beautiful skein has arrived. Once we are back from our upcoming holiday I must make a start on the jumper. I'm a bit nervous as I will have to adapt the pattern to fit and also I've never done a fade garment before, but if I don;t try I'll never know if I can do it. Plus I have several jumpers waiting to be finished, or started and I need to buckle down and get then all done. Especially as I have in mind to do a  root and branch clear out of my wardrobe before too long. 

Anyway, despite the arrival of this new skein  the March stats look good. Wool in 100g, wool out 602 g, net decrease for the year to date is 2915. Which makes me a fairly happy bunny. 

Two Busy Days

 

If I said that was an elderflower presse (which it is) then several readers might well say 'oh you've been to that antiques place again', and if they said that they would be right. I went to see a podiatrist last week and her clinic is in Doune. I daresay there are more local ones but I had seen this one advertise itself on Facebook and there were good reviews so I decided to go there. The appointment was at 11.30 which meant it finished in nice time for us to go and have lunch at the restaurant attached to the Antiques Centre in Doune and after lunch we had a pootle about in the centre  as well. We didn't buy anything although I picked up contact details for someone who I hope will upcycle a bookcase for me. There were some very nice things in there, also some of the other kind, but nothing that leaped off the shelves shouting 'Buy Me, Buy Me' so we didn't get anything. I did look in the modern bit of the shop for wax melts but they didn't even have any of those. So a nice day ( I even enjoyed having my feet looked at and pampered a bit)  without spending a fortune. 

On Friday we went to the SEC in Glasgow for Model Railway Scotland. I felt that we might well spend a fortune here but in the event the OH was very restrained and contented himself with buying some bits of bendable track to add to his 00-9 layout. That's  going to have to come off the coffee table in the living room shortly but we're not quite ready for that step yet. 

I have to say we were both overwhelmed by the show. It was huge, it was full of people, it was very noisy and there were a lot of model railway layouts which, to the untutored eye, like mine, all looked the same. Here's my big takeaway from this; at the end of the day model train layouts are basically model trains going round and round in a circle. Or an oval, at a push.  You can put in backgrounds, of distilleries, or paper mills, or small gauge railways in the Yorkshire Dales or the Welsh Valleys but at the end of the day it's a train on a track and most of them have scenery that's basically hills with grass and sheep. 

Some of them stood out a bit from the rest; this was my favourite 

although why the neighbourhood giants are cultivating equally giant primulas I don't know. I was of course well outnumbered on the gender front;

there were a few women there but they were mainly staffing the stalls. 

I did however make one amazing, and delicious, discovery 

And I say it's delicious even though I'm not the world's greatest fan of marshmallow. There were lots of other flavours too, we got some raspberry and some orange ones too. 

Three posts in one day! But I wanted to get caught up because life is picking up pace and we're off on holiday in less than a week, after which there will be lots to blog about,  without needing to catch up on the knitting, the jigsaws and What We Did Before We Went Away as well! Or at least I hope so. 

Stashdown - The Jigsaw Edition

I have lots of lots of different things; books, CDs, DVDs, wool and jigsaw puzzles. The books, cds and dvds all got thinned out before we moved, which is not to say they couldn't do with a bit more thinning out but you know ... I also donated lots of jigsaw puzzles to the library in Orkney but I still brought 65 puzzles to Alloa with me. 

My goal is to reduce this to 50 by the end of the year. I was told, when taking a couple to the charity shop for the cat shelter we got Cosimo from, that they have someone who likes 500 piece puzzles so I did all my puzzles of  500 pieces and under over the winter, reprieved one  and took seven to the shop a couple of weeks ago. This should have  meant I was down to 58, but I bought one while I was in there which brought me back to 59. That's not a problem as I have now finished it  and will be taking it back to the shop shortly. 

Here it is

The World of Frankenstein. I have several of these 'World of  ' puzzles. Originally three were only a few but the range has expanded over the past few years. I'm not a completist so there are a lot I don't have simply because I'm not particularly interested in the subject matter and Frankenstein was one of those. I wouldn't ever have bought it  full price and I don;t see it as being something I'd want to do over and over. But it was only £2 in the charity shop and I enjoyed the challenge of doing it and now it can go back and they can sell it all over again. 

I did get a rather lovely late Christmas present of another jigsaw which I dd before the Frankenstein one but ti will be a long time before that one goes to the charity shop. 

So 58 down from 65 whic means another 8 to go before the end of the year. Can I do it? watch this space!

WiP progress and a finished project.

So I've dealt with two more things from the Wip list recently. 

One got frogged; it was a DK  cowl that I was never going to finish as I only had two colours for it and you really needed three, or even better, four. Obviously for some reason I didn't realise that before I cast on. I've been out this morning helping someone from knit group teach knitting at a local school, and we all took along some DK leftovers for the children to practice on/take home and the wool from the cowl went to that. So a project off the list and wool destashed - definitely a win. 

The finished project was a hat. I bought the kit for this at the Glasgow School of Yarn in 2024. I'm a huge fan of the skyline kits from Wee County Yarns, which is now very local to me! - I've done   their  Glasgow Skyline and the Firth of Forth Bridges ( I think I have recorded here recently the sad news that the bridges one is lost which is upsetting.) Anyway back in Nov 24 we knew we'd be looking to relocate to the Stirling area so it was a no brainer to buy the Stirling Skyline pattern and some wool to knit it in. Sadly between then and now my desire for a pink hat has definitely waned, and although the two colours I chose were a good contrast in the ball they could have been a better contrast in the knitting. Too late now. 

It's not my bets knitting ever and I'm not 100% happy with it, ( my knitting not the pattern!) but I am pleased enough to  wear it. And some time I must reknit the Forth Bridges one. 
 

Quick Dash South

 We zapped off to Newcastle at the weekend with son no 2. Down on Saturday, back Sunday. The occasion was my last remaining aunt's 90th birthday; something well worth celebrating. One of my cousins had done all the organising so all we had to do was turn up at the selected restaurant at the right time. It was an Italian and part of a chain; not the best Italian food I've ever had in my life, and the place was extremely noisy so conversation with the various relatives at the table was quite difficult. We still all managed to enjoy ourselves and catch up a bit on our news. My aunt was delighted to see everyone and one of my cousin's step-daughters had baked a birthday cake so we all sang Happy Birthday, not very tunefully and she blew out however many candles there were on the top. Not 90, I do know that! Looks like it might have been nine. 

The next day we popped in to see her at home, together with my sister, and had a cup of tea before we set off in opposite directions; sister going south and us back north. The house was like a florist's shop; obviously no-one knowing what to get a 90 year old  nearly everyone resorted to flowers and I'm only amazed she had sufficient vases for them all. 

She was reminiscing about the days when we were all small and how we are now 'all grown up'. I pointed out we were not so much all grown up as 'old' but was roundly told that I wasn't old at all, which was consoling. I don't feel it, but a chill falls over me when I look at the age creeping up on my next birthday. 

I did a little looking back myself. When I was young I had 9 aunts and 8 uncles and I'm now reduced to one of each, and my remaining uncle,  who was also there and is 92, was looking very frail. It's very sad to see what time can do to those you remember in their prime. I'm told there are consolations to growing old but looking around I do wonder ... what I would give sometimes to be 15 again and in the middle of a big family gathering with all those people I grew up with  still safely around me. 

 

Hair Again

 I feel I want to add 'and gone tomorrow' to that title but it would be wrong - although not rhythmically.

Anyway, it being spring I went to the  hairdressers a couple of days ago,  had what was left of the winter blue ( which had faded to a rather nice teal) taken out and replaced it with pink. 

It's quite bright and there's rather more of it than there was of the blue. I love it. 

I put up a photo on Facebook and the person who was less than complimentary about the blue confined themselves to a 'nice cut' comment this time around. I was pleased about that. Wonder how they will feel about what I have planned for October ....

And It's Done!

 

The cross stitch kit I bought at the Palestinian Embroidery Exhibition at the V and A in Dundee.

I'm thrilled with this for several reasons. 

1 I like the design

2 It was a quick and easy stitch

3 I didn't need to wear my head magnifier! 

and the third one is the most thrilling because I thought I was destined to wear that or just not cross stitch for ever. I have no idea why this was easy to do without a magnifier, it's not huge or anything. Possibly it's that the fabric is a block weave, or maybe it's the fact that it was in a hoop and the tension made the holes easier to see? Who knows? In any case I was sufficiently happy to order a new kit to start which is on similar fabric and I'll put it in a hoop, a thing I have previously avoided like the plague and see how I go. 

There were a couple of things I wasn't so happy about though. One was that I thought the hoop was both for working and hanging but closer inspection revealed that it wasn't, it's just a working one. Not a problem though as I will use it on my new kit, and get the trees framed. The other was  more problematic. The box says clearly that it contains 6 colours of embroidery thread, which it does. The design as printed on the box, and the chart inside it, contains seven colours. This meant  a bit of creative input on my part, as I tried to stretch six colours to cover the job of seven, but I'm happy with the  result. I could have bought some extra thread but I didn't know the make or the weight or even if it would be available locally, not to mention that I wouldn't have had any use for the large amount that would have bene left over. So six it was.