Au revoir

We are going away on a trip that reads like something from The Before (Covid) Times. In preparation for this I had my hair done this morning and I think I've persuaded myself that that will be the last time I have it coloured. Time perhaps to let it go grey with grace. 

Anyway we are spending tonight on the ferry so that we don't have to get up at stupid o'clock to get to the other side of Orkney to catch it before it sails at 7.00 in the morning (check in an hour before and a 40 minute drive, I'm sure you can do the sums.).  Then Glasgow,  Leeds , Glasgow again,  Chambery in the French Alps then back to Glasgow and then Orkney again. Ten quite hectic days, although I hope there will be some fun in there too. Fingers crossed there will be some bloggable stuff in all of that, but in any case no more blog posts until after we're back which, weather permitting, will be 24th of the month. 

Would you believe it - some good telly at last!

We're well into autumn so it's competition telly time, which is generally good news for me. 

There was a weird thing recently called Dressing the Nation which purported to be looking for a new designer to join the team at M & S. This has to be a gimmick as I'm sure M & S are regularly overwhelmed by applications from people with the appropriate qualifications and relevant experience wanting to join them but it made for an entertaining programs. The putative designers all had quite = er - expansive personalities and some of the ideas they come up with even wearable. Although some weren't. It passed the time agreeably, sort of filled the gap left by Sewing Bee and was a short series. My favourite moments each episode were when they let what they assured us were 'genuine M & S customers' in, to comment on the clothes and made the designers sit and watch what appeared to be a  real time live feed of the customer reaction. 

As far as current offerings go I do not go near Strictly, whose delights escape me, although  I realise it's very popular. I am watching Bake Off, but with only half an eye as I've got bored with it and I don't like Alison Hammond as a presenter, or all the stupid double-entendres, or the dressing up at the start.  It doesn't seem quite so focussed on decoration this time around, thank goodness, but there's till time for that to turn around. 

Also on a culinary theme we are of course watching Masterchef the Professionals and I am still of course bemoaning the spoiling presence of Greg Wallace. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I have no idea what this man is doing anywhere near this program, he brings nothing to the party that Marcus  Wareing and Monica Galletti do not bring themselves - and more expertly wrapped at that. However there is a lot of enjoyment to be had from watching people who are very good at their job to start with getting even better,  even if, when faced with some delicious looking main the general refrain in this house is 'but where's the potato?'

Over on Sky Arts I have been celebrating the return of Portrait Artist of the Year. I am currently obsessing over whether the male judge, Tai Shan Schierenburg ( spelling?) has had a hair transplant or just adopted a rather drastic new hairstyle. His hair currently looks like the fuzz that used to adorn the head of the Action Man Toy when they stopped just painting on his hair and replaced it with some sort of fabric-y stuff. There is a bijou problemette with PAotY here in that the OH has a distressing habit of walking through the living room when it's on and saying things like 'None of them know how to paint' or 'That look nothing like the subject'. The latter comment is actually sometimes true, never better exemplified by the winner's portrait the year the prize was to pain Lenny Henry. The resulting picture looked nothing like Lenny Henry, If you didn't see it, Google Images is your friend here.  I would have defied even his mother to have recognised him from it. But that's not a common thing and I like watching how the different artists work, seeing which medium they choose and how they approach the task of producing a portrait. 

Moving away form competition TV tonight sees the return of Wolf Hall, or more accurately the start of the The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantels sequel to Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies. I'm currently trying to work out some time to finish my rewatch of Wolf Hall (one episode to go) before the new series starts this evening. 

In late summer I did find a few drama series to watch, courtesy of Amazon Prime/You Tube. On Amazon there was a very entertaining legal drama called Newton's Law; much input from the people who brought you Miss Fisher 's Murder Mysteries so that was a good start. Sadly there was only one season of Newton's Law but it was a fun watch. Another Oz drama I enjoyed was Winter, one series, one made for TV film, both very good I thought, if a bit grim - especially the film. On You Tube I called up a thing called The Brief, an old ITV drama starring Alan Davies. I had totally forgotten that I had ever watched it, in fact I had forgotten it altogether, but I came across a reference to it in an old letter from a friend - can you tell I've been doing some clearing out of Very Old Stuff that should probably Never Have Been Kept? I was intrigued by her sentence 'I too am watching The Brief, mainly like you for EP, unfortunately I was away for the episode with DJ and CV'. I was totally bamboozled by these initials so went off to IMBD to discover they referred to Edward Petherbridge, Dominic Jephcott and Christopher Villiers , three actors both she and I admired at the time. And after that discovery I had to see if I could find the program and remind myself abut it and there it was on You Tube. Again not very many episodes and more serious in tone  than Newton's Law, but it was a bit of a trip down Memory Lane. 

And now for a couple of small household chores before I settle down to lunch and the downfall of Anne Boleyn and Co. 

 

Another Sad(dish) Farewell

I said goodbye this week to my Rivendell socks. You can read all about why and how I knitted them in this blog post  . And see a bit more of the finished article. Not my happiest ever knitting experience. 

They looked lovely when done and I enjoyed wearing them, which is why I was sad to say goodbye to them, but the soles had felted, the rest was pilling, the colour was leaching out of the yarn .... basically in an overcrowded sock drawer they could no longer justify taking up space. If the pattern had been better written I would have knitted a replacement pair, but it isn't, and there's just no reason to put myself through all that pain again! 

Following on from an earlier post I succumbed yesterday and bought the JL Advent Calendar. Despite my doubts, I like the Parisian street scene and although I wouldn't describe the 'apartment' (where the games and activities are) as cosy - and to be fair the JL people themselves call it 'chic' - the colours are much more to my taste than last year's Edwardian Country House ones. So an improvement on that  already! 

Wool stats and projects for October

 This isn't pretty!

My quarterly clubs arrived and I went to the Glasgow Yarn festival and then there was the Australia themed sock yarn ... so the grand total in was 1250g. It was another unproductive month knitting wise as I only managed to finish three things. So wool out was only 243 g which means a net increase for October of 1007, and the reduction for the year is down to 6769. 

The projects I managed were 

the last of the baby cardigans from who knows when - still awaiting transport to the charity shop. 

Poppy's new blanket with the leftovers.

and this is a project for a Christmas swap. Since it was largely lace it gave me a lot of trouble but I managed in the end. It's a Victorian style muff and obviously I wouldn't knit one of those for just any random person but my swap partner is a regular attendee at Victorian/steam punk events so this seemed perfect. The yarn came from the cardigan kit that I disassembled, it was perfect, being the right weight for the pattern and also the right colours for my partner who loves autumnal shades. 

Not entirely sure why productivity was so low this month although going away didn't help, and I did a non knitting thing that took ages and isn't quite finished and there was something else that I had a lot of trouble with which I mostly knitted in October but doesn't count because I didn't finish it until yesterday. 

Numbers for November are looking a bit better so far, and I hope I might get more knitting done than I've managed recently. Certainly hope so! 

Advents

I know, we haven't got Bonfire Night over yet, how dare I mention something associated with Christmas? There again I had an e-mail from Jacquie Lawson last week saying their Advent Calendar is now on sale  so I'm assuming we can talk about them, even  if it is just November. 

I daresay I will get  the JL one although I had a few issues with it last year. At least this year they claim they have some new music, which is a great relief because they have been using the same few carols over and over for years now, and some of them I am very sick of. The calendars are fun and I do look forward to seeing what each day brings, but  occasionally I think I have  just got  a bit too used to them and no longer have quite the same joy in them that I did when the first few came out. The wonder is gone. And that is not the fault of the team at JL, it's a fault in me, because I've got  blase. That said the colour palette last year was horrible and I'm not particularly taken with the this years setting - 'a chic apartment in Paris'. 

We do already have four advent things in the house. One is the yarn advent that the OH traditionally buys for me for Christmas; this year it's from a dyer called The Yarn Artist themed on the paintings of Van Gogh and that's still in the box the postie brought it in. I'm not sure whether to open that day by day in December or leave it all until Christmas Day. The jury is out on that one.

Also yarn related is the weekly advent from Lay Family Yarn which I treated myself to. 

Four parcels, on the theme of Winter at the Christmas Market,  one for each week of December, and each one containing the yarn and pattern to make a project small enough (in theory) to be finished in a week. All I'm saying to that is -  It's December and Christmas is coming, who on earth is going to have the time to knit a project a week?? But I'll give it a go. 

Next up is this one 

the Bonne Maman Jam advent. Some may remember I got this one last year as a one off and I wasn't going to repeat it, mainly because it had 5 or 6 days when instead of a small jar of jam you got a little chintz bag filled with dust which was supposed to be tea. As far as tea goes, if it doesn't look and taste like a relative of Yorkshire Tea then I'm not inclined to call it tea at all, and I'm certainly  not venturing to pour boiling water on a set of crushed-almost-to-extinction leaves which aren't even admitting to what they are, and then drinking the stuff.  It seems I wasn't alone in my low opinion of the tea option, as this year we are promised 24 small jars of jam. Plus, by buying direct from the company,  we got a large jar of their chocolate spread  which we are already using. The OH seemed a little it unsure about this, it not being December and all, but as I pointed out there are 24 small jars behind 24 numbered cardboard doors for December. The big jar is therefore non month specific. 

And finally is one that has become a bit of a fixture recently and that's the Yankee Candle Advent Calendar. The one we have this year looks like this. 

There was much bigger one that was twice as expensive which I assume contains votives rather than tea lights. Anyway the past two years the TC advents have had 18 tea lights, which I have always thought was odd, and they just sat in the box waiting for you to choose which colour for today and with a generic list of five scents on the bottom the box with no indication of which colour which scent related to. This year they have upped their game. There are 24 tea lights and they are each concealed behind their own little cardboard door and there's a little infographic on the bottom of the box telling you the scent for each of the eight colours. I feel that personally  I could live without a Christmas Cookie scented candle but it is an American company and Americans do strange things where cookies are concerned; scent their candles, put the raw dough in ice cream etc etc And anyway, who knows? they might smell all spicy and lovely. 

So that's our advents for this year. Last year we were away for the first week of December for our Stockholm Christmas Markets trip and although that was lovely and I wouldn't have missed it, it meant playing catch up with a lot of the advent stuff whihc spoiled the fun a bit. This year we are planning to be at home for all of December so I should be able  to get into a routine of opening /marvelling/ eating/ lighting and knitting as each day begins. 

But before that, two birthdays, Bonfire Night, a trip to Leeds and the Alps, presents to buy and the cards to get written. After that though, it will all be relax relax relax. (Yeah, probably not that last bit!)

Happy Mail

 

I sometimes think I have not so much fallen off the No Yarn Purchases wagon, as hurled myself off it at high speed and with great enthusiasm. Witness the above.

What can I tell you? It's a special edition sock wool called The Colours of Australia. This means two things. It won't be around for ever ( because special edition) and I have to buy it ( because Australia ).

Fall about laughing if you will, but those three balls honestly represent some restraint (!), as the collection comprises six colourways and as you will see I have (so far) purchased only three; left to right, Daintree Forest, Kalgoorlie Gold Fields and Sacred Earth. The plan is to make myself a pair of socks from each ball and then pair the leftovers with some West Yorkshire Spinners leftovers in a  toning or contrasting  colour to make another pair for the OH. So good value moneywise, if a rather large commitment in time. I did also think I might try doing at least one pair toe up, a technique I have yet to master, but that might be a step too far with everything else that is going on just now. We'll see. 

Two Days Out

 

So although the trip south recently was basically so I could go to the Glasgow School of Yarn yarn festival we took the opportunity to drive over to Dundee to see the Kimono Exhibition at the V & A Dundee Museum as well. 

I didn't take any photos at either of these events, and the OH just took the one at Kimono, which is above. 

The exhibition itself was amazing. A lot of care had gone into selecting the images, both the large background ones and the smaller ones on the walls which illustrated the story of the development of the kimono over the years. Plus the garments themselves were spectacular. It's amazing that one garment should stay as a staple for so many hundreds of years, with nothing much changing bar the nature, method and placement of the decoration. It was a bit sad to see how the workmanship and detailed nature of the decoration decreased once Japan was opened to the west and alkaline dyes were imported from Europe. But it was interesting, as was the way the basic shape was plundered by designers in Europe too. I was still suffering a bit from Exhibition Knee but I made it round with just the one break - and there were plenty of chairs and benches for people to sit on and contemplate the beauty around them if you needed them.

After we had looked at all the kimonos we repaired to the cafe where we didn't stay, since it was overpriced and pretentious. We had a look in the shop which has to be the dullest museum shop I've ever seen, which is ridiculous when you think its supposed to be a museum of art and design. To be honest I'm not sure how well the whole plan was thought through. There was a lot of hype over the exterior design when it was first built, as it's in the shape of a ship, as a nod to Dundee's maritime heritage,  but inside there's not a lot of space and a lot of it is wasted. There were lots of rooms for the Kimono Exhibition and presumably that's where they always put the temporary exhibitions, but they didn't seem to have much of a permanent collection on show. It opened in 2015 and I can't  shake off an eerie feeling that it was designed in Westminster to be built as some sort of pre-referendum bribe-cum-sop. It's supposed to be 'Scotland's Design Museum' but I saw precious little design or indeed anything very Scottish except for some Dundee cakes and tea towels in the shop. Which was about as overpriced as the cafe. We won't be rushing back! 

The GSoY was also a bit of a disappointment actually. Several of the vendors I've come to rely on seeing there weren't vending there this year. Whether they decided not to bother, or whether they weren't selected to make room for new ones I don't know but I certainly missed them. Some of the people I go to see had very small or badly placed stalls and certainly Wee County Yarns were suffering from being stuck in  a very dark corner,. They had had to being in extra lights themselves on the Sunday after putting up with it on Saturday. Some of the people who were supposed to be vending weren't there, and it wasn't just the weather that had kept them away because they had been announced as vending but they didn't appear on the floor plan which must have been printed a while in advance. Several of the volunteers had no idea of the answers to the questions we had either. Also I do wish they would extend their refreshment 'offering' from just drinks and cakes to something a bit more substantial. If I'm there over lunchtime I don't just want cake. I mean, obviously I DO want cake, but not just cake.

That said, the friend I went with and I had a very nice late lunch in a small cafe not far away, that we just stumbled over,  and where the staff were fabulous and  there was plenty of choice food wise. And we did then wander off to John Lewis where my friend made a couple of purchases and we rounded off our day with coffee and blackcurrant and marscapone  cake in the cafe. And it was delicious! 

I think I'll be giving GSoY a miss next year though. 

Shopping hauls - General and Specialised

So we've been away to somewhere where there are 'proper' shops, which naturally means I've done some shopping. Fist up, the general stuff.

Two new pairs of pyjamas for me, a ball of wool, two books, two bottles of shower gel and a Yankee Candle Advent Calendar. 

The wool is the West Yorkshire Spinners Christmas colourway for 2024. Normally I buy two balls and make a pair of socks for each of us and Son No 2, but this year there's too much going on and I can't be bothered. However the OH would be disappointed if he didn't get a pair, so I bought one ball in John Lewis and I'll fit those in sometime before December 25th I hope. The books are part of the Christmas present for one of the grandsons.  The shower gels are my two favourite scents from Arran Aromatics or, as they are now known, Arran Sense of Scotland, and the only reason they are in a gift box, since they are for me, is that the girl in the shop very kindly pointed out that it's cheaper to buy the two together  in a gift box than it is to buy them unboxed and separately. I decided this year to forgo the Aran advent calendar as it leaves me with stuff I don't use, like conditioner, and spend rather less on getting something that I really liked and would use. 

Then there's what I got at the Glasgow School of Yarn. 

I had a list and am happy to say I stuck to it. As hinted previously I bought the pattern and some wool to make the Stirling hat from Wee County Yarns, that's the pattern at the back, and the two skeins on the right are for making it. Pink is an unusual colour for me but it seems to appeal more the older I get! Beside that are two further skeins from Wee County Yarns which are for some mitts from the Lord of the Rings Knitting Book. At the back is a skein and a co-ordinating mini-skein form Helen at Giddy Knits, from her 2024 Roald Dahl Collection. She does a special collection for Roald Dahl Day every year and this year it was based on Fantastic Mr Fox. I am not a fan of Roald Dahl as a person or as a writer, so RD day generally tends to pass me by, but the colours are so beautiful and autumnal this year  I knew I wanted to make something with this as soon as I saw it on the website. And then there are two Doodledecks from the Pacific Yarn Co, stocked by Claire at Cookston Crafts. There are lots of topics covered but I chose Fantasy and Desert this time. I have the Arctic one already. 

There's a close up giving an idea of some of the motifs they each have. Claire was also the dyer asked to dye the mini-skein this year for the goody bags, which is what that small mini in the middle is, wrapped around a lovely Mackintosh themed tin, also form the goody bag, which contains rose gold coloured bulb markers. 

I'm giving myself a pat on the back for not succumbing to any of the other lovely things I saw, but really this is quite enough to be going on with. 

 

A Sad Farewell

 

Yes, my wedding dress has gone. After 40 odd years of lying in a box and being carried from move to move, when we cleared out the loft the other week I decided the time had come to let it go. To be honest this was more because the box had got damaged than anything else; I could just see it in another 20 years or so spoiled because the box had let in dust and dirt and possibly insect life. And I didn't want that to happen. 

I couldn't sell it or send it to a charity shop because on my wedding day someone put a stiletto heel through the train ( I'm sure it was accidental, but it was a pity none the less.) So it has gone off to Bonnie Babies to be cut up and made into beautiful little burial gowns and wraps for still born babies. It is doing more good like that than it would be lying in my loft for another few years, and I'm glad I knew I could do that with it. My veil has gone as well but I kept the head dress, and the comb that one of the bridesmaids wore in their hair, so I'm not totally without physical reminders of the day. 

That said I was a little bit sad, but then - why do we keep them? The suit the OH wore on the day has long since gone to the Great Wardrobe in the Sky and I don't remember him being loth to part with it.  We obviously imbue this particular outfit with some sort of special significance but I do wonder why. 

Changing the subject completely many thanks for the kind words from some readers on my Forth Bridges Hat, much appreciated. And given that it is the GSoY this coming weekend, keep your eyes peeled for a companion piece, coming to you in photographic kit form very shortly!  

September Wool Stats and Finished Projects

 I said to the OH the other day; it's not that I buy too much yarn, it's just that I don't knit quickly enough. I'm not sure he was convinced about that one. 

Anyway I was dreading totting up the stats for September because I did buy all that Aran wool plus  various other bits this month and that all came to a grand total of 1488g in. However it wasn't a total disaster as wool out came to 1342g, thanks mainly to a 'gifting opportunity' courtesy of my son. He worked for 6 months at a charity in Glasgow and still volunteers there two days a week, and it's just started running a year long fundraising campaign featuring knitting.  There are various ways to join in, one of which is donating wool. So a bag with 872 g will be on its way to Glasgow with us later in the week, and another 150g left the house as part of a swap. Total wool out was 1342g, which meant a net increase of 146g which was sad but not nearly as bad as it could have been. 

What with being away and then spending lots of time here clearing/cleaning the house I didn't have an awful lot of crafting time in September to be honest so I'm quite pleased, looking back, to see how much I did actually achieve. 

Starting with the non-knitting stuff, I made two cards 

they were brighter than that in real life and also not out of focus!

ThenI took a deep breath and crocheted the crib from my crochet nativity set

far from perfect but I'm happy with it. I don't claim to be a crocheter.

Then guess what? two pairs of socks. One for the OH

using some wool I bought in a destash on Ravelry. No, I don't know why I did it, except that it looked like this in the skein 

and I thought he would like the colours. Which, to be fair, he did. 

And a pair for me 

this wool was from ages ago. I'd started making a different pattern with it, but it was too complicated so it sat in time out for a while and when I could face ripping out what I had done I cast on these instead. It was unfortunate that I had forgotten that I had used this pattern once before and hated it. The finished object is fine, although not shown to its best advantage when not on a foot to be honest! but the pattern is very confusing to follow and I won't be using it again. 

I picked up the third of the four unfinished baby sweaters, the peach one, and completed it

and of course this meant that Poppy the Penguin got yet another blanket made from the left overs. 

She must be the warmest penguin in the world by now. 

And finally I picked out the kit for the Forth Bridges Hat, which I bought the last time I went to the Glasgow School of Yarn, and knitted it up. Like the Glasgow one from the same company, Wee County Yarns, this was a joy to knit . I have come to the conclusion that I must rather enjoy stranded colour work and I was very happy with the way this turned out. 

October is also shaping up to be a less than productive month, but maybe I'll be able to accelerate a bit once we're back from our next trip south.  

The Degas Exhibition

So while we were south for Bloody Scotland, and a bit of house related stuff, we also took in the big Degas Exhibition at the Burrell in Glasgow. It was actually an exhibition about Scottish Art Collectors  and their relationship to Degas' work, but Burrell was an early buyer so that fitted. 

I was a weeny bit disappointed to be honest. There was a lot of information about the men who bought Degas' pictures, and exhibits which detailed which ones they bought, for how much and sometimes how much they later sold them for. Interesting if you're digging through an archive and discovering it for yourself; not so much if you're presented with it  in a glass case. There weren't as many artworks by Degas as I expected and honestly the ones I saw in the Musee d'Orsay were much nicer. However there was a nice spread; some ballet dancers, some street women and laundresses, and some horses, so fairly representative. 

The two problems I had with it all were 1) it was spread over a large area and because my knee was still highly compromised at that point I had to keep finding somewhere to sit down. And that's personal to me and nothing to do with the exhibition. Secondly the lighting was at a stupidly low level. I read all the signs about fragility of the work and needing to protect it and that's fine, but I've never ever ever walked round an exhibition that was so dim. The lighting was so low that it meant many of the  colours in the paintings were completely wrongly perceived. And that problem was on them.

Finally, as always they never seem to have postcards of the paintings I like; the one above was the closest. I did like that picture which is rather more engaging in real life than in post card form but it wasn't my favourite. 

We're going south again shortly, mainly so that I can attend the Glasgow School of Yarn, but we're also planning a trip to the V & A in Dundee to see the Kimono exhibition there and I'm really looking forward to that. Hoping for some good postcards there! 

Just Popping In Briefly

 to say, like Granny Weatherwax, I ent dead. I am however dead tired and have not had access to my laptop for several days while my study was being decorated. We managed to put bits of it back together yesterday as the decorator finished in here on Friday. I even have a photo

It will not look this tidy/sparse ever again, The best bit about re-assembling it was having a heavy prune of the CDs as I put them back into the racks. We even have a little bit of space, in the unlikely event,  that we ever buy any more, to put them, and they are all so beautifully arranged that it should be easy to find any particular CD without problem. After the photos are done on Tuesday I am hoping to persuade the OH to put at least one of the bookcases back in here and hang a couple of pictures too. 

The decorator will be back tomorrow for a final lot of painting in the kitchen but there's not much needing to be done in there and the rest of the house is in various stages of readiness. It will all be fine by Tuesday. I should mention that the OH has worked very hard outside, clearing weeds from pavements and the patio and washing the windows,  generally a thankless task in Orkney because of the salt in the wind, but they do look fab. 

This afternoon, and my heart sinks slightly as I type the words, I shall be 'having a go' at my craft room. I am expecting it to take a while. 

Just a Quick Entry today

 

Yes, I made some cards yesterday which was mostly quite relaxing. I've been away from the computer for a few days because we are working hard getting the house ready for a) a decorator who is coming next week and is going to paint and paper my study and paint the kitchen and b) the agent and surveyor who are coming the following week to get the house on the market. So we're sort of doing three things at once; clearing the rooms for the decorator to do his stuff, starting to declutter other rooms ready for the photographs the agent will take, and staring a prune of 'stuff' that we won't be wanting to take with us when we move. 

Hard work, time consuming but as ever, all worth it in the end. We hope! 

'Bloody Scotland' (1)

 

So that's a not very good photograph of Richard Armitage, the actor turned thriller writer. This was the second session that Doreen and I went to; we were a very long way back hence the short comings of the picture. Well that and the lighting. I had been delighted to see that RA, an actor who I have long admired, was to be at the festival and even obtained a copy of his book Geneva to read (well, listen to) before the event. It's a multiple POV and he and the amazing Nicola Walker were the main narrators. I did not find it either thrilling or engaging and in fact gave up part way through, contenting myself with the final chapter and the epilogue just to confirm to myself that I was right about who was good, who was bad, and what the bad guys were trying to do. I was very pleased that the book had been an Audible freebie, as it meant that I hadn't had to waste any of my money on it. He has now written a second book, but I won't be bothering Audible for that. To be honest I think it's probably an OK book, I'm just not a fan of thrillers. We were very amused when it came to the questions because they were almost all from women who all said something along the lines of 'Good evening Richard, my name is xxx' which was funny because in the previous session no-one had felt it incumbent upon themselves to give their names when asking questions!!

The session before this was a two hander of Peter James, who writes the Roy Grace series of detective novels set in Brighton, and Elly Griffiths who recently brought her Ruth Galloway series to a close. I've heard Griffiths before and she's delightful, I hadn't heard Peter James but he was good value. He also told a couple of funny stories about Martin Amis, which almost reconciled me to the hours of my life I wasted reading Amis' book London Fields. Almost, but not quite. 

And then it was back to Doreen's for an overnight stay. 

 

Estate Agents, A New Coat and a Pipe Band

 

Well, what do you know? My photo program is allowing me to crop again. I probably shouldn't have mentioned it, just in case I jinxed it. 

So we drove down to Glasgow a week past  Thursday and on Friday we got up quite early and went over to Stirling. We visited two estate agents, both of whom we had been in contact with already, sampled an Italian cafe and bought the OH a new coat in the Mountain Warehouse sale. Him needing  a new waterproof thing hadn't really been on the agenda until we were ready to leave Orkney at which point we saw that the sleeve on his current one was ripped in several places. As it was waterproof there was no way I could just sew it up, and to be honest, he must have had it for years so, as my mother used to say, it didn't owe us anything.  I think the shop we bought it from in Kirkwall has had three changes of business since then! We decided to have a look in M and S when we got to Stirling, but then spotted Mountain Warehouse opposite and checked there instead. The coat is very nice and there was a lot of money off it so win, win. 

While we were in the cafe one of the agents we had been talking to sent us details of four houses on their books that she thought might suit. One we discounted immediately, and the other three we drove to and checked out the outsides, dismissing a further two, which left us with only one in the running so we arranged a viewing for that.

And that filled the day, by then it was time to go and meet my friend Doreen  for an early dinner. I had my first alcoholic drink for months, I think possibly the last one before that was a glass of wine in Finland last summer; we're not big drinkers. And after the meal I transferred an overnight bag from our car to Doreen's and the OH wended his way back to Glasgow. Doreen and I drove into Stirling, she dropped me by the Albert Halls while she parked the car and I joined what seemed like the longest queue I'd ever been in, to pick up a ticket. Just as well we had the pipe band to entertain us. I could have done without Mairi's Wedding, but there again, it wasn't Highland Cathedral. 

I had got to the Box Office but hadn't actually got my ticket when Doreen arrived from the back of the queue, which says something about the efficiency or otherwise of the box office staff. Actually it probably wasn't them. You know when you go to the bank and there are two people at the cashier's  desk and one of them is banking £742 in copper coins and the other one is demanding to know why the bank can't  send a tiny amount of money free of charge to a country which is so suspicious of foreign bank transactions that it demands a five page form filled in in triplicate, countersigned by the sendee, the cashier and two independent witnesses in good standing in the community? It was a bit like that. 

Anyway despite the huge numbers of people in the queue we all got in and we all got a seat and the entertainment began. Of which more another day. 

We're Back!

 

Gordon Bennet, every week another techy change that I can't get my head round. Suddenly the crop function on my photos program seems to have decided not to work anymore, despite telling me I am in focus and in crop tab. Not that it ever bothered to tell me those things before. I wish it didn't tell me them now, but just let me get on with cropping my pics....

Anyway that is why there is rather more white desk on the photo above than I would have liked; there should be more of The Bunny Isabel, and in particular more of her dress which I made ages ago but haven't previously shown because there are several others and some skirts as well, but they all need buttons. There was going to be a whole fashion parade but it seems seaming the back of small dresses and skirts and then attaching teeny tiny buttons isn't something that floats my boat every day. Or, judging by current experience, even once a month. 

We had a good time away, got back late last night just in time for the funeral of our friend-who-didn't- quite-make-90 which was today. Since we got back from that  we've been in prepare for the decorator mode and we've done quite well, hence taking five minutes to do my blog. I need to keep on top of it because we had a great time away, and there's lots to tell. Just not today. 

Two Books I Enjoyed - and One I Didn't.

Let's get the miss out of the way before we discuss the two hits shall we?. This was Dead Man's Grave by Neil Lancaster, and I got it on Audible, having seen that he was appearing at Bloody Scotland this weekend, and reading that he writes police procedurals set in the Highlands. I'm going to say right away that a good part of my non-enjoyment came from the narrator, who many Audible reviewers praised to the skies. I found him awful actually. I think I'd have enjoyed the book a lot more if I had read it on the page rather than listening to it. That's not the first time I've thought that. Don't get me wrong, I love Audible because I can iron, or do my knee exercises or knit or whatever and consume a good book at the same time, but  some books just work better off the page. Especially if the narrator doesn't do good voices. Which this one didn't. 

I mean, it's worth a try if you're looking for something new and set in Scotland. I can't fault the basic premise and the geography is spot on - apart from a character who appears to be doing the North Coast 500 anti-clockwise, and after all there's no reason why they shouldn't. I don't know what it is about men setting off down the police procedural road, but an awful lot of them have main police protagonists who are ex-Army. This naturally comes with rather more information about guns than I want, or the reader needs, to know. There's also quite a lot of 'gung-ho' talk; as in 'We're going to get the bastards who did this' or 'we know who he is and we're going to take him down'. Do policemen really talk like this - like real tough guys but tough guys on a moral crusade? Maybe they do.  It's also worth mentioning, with specific reference to this title, that I tend not to like books which deal with police corruption. Most writers turn to this in what seems to me to be desperation because a long way through a series they are running out of ideas, Mr Lancaster starts with it. I suspect it may carry on into following books. I'm not saying I wouldn't read another one of his - but I am saying I wouldn't listen to another one narrated by Angus King - or anything else read by Mr King either. 

The two I enjoyed were both from my recent library haul. Hope to Die by Cara Hunter was complex, twisty and well written; the final pages had me on the edge of my seat. In the past I have found her earlier books to have quite obviously upcoming twists and guessable endings, which slightly put me off, but I didn't see any of the ones in this book coming , and certainly not the final one - although it had actually been staring me in the face since the opening pages, had I but had the wit to see it. Not that I'm beating myself up, I defy almost anyone to see that one coming. This was Book 6, I may have to revisit 4 and catch 5 for the first time. 

Mari Hannah was, like Neil Lancaster, an author new to me, and also like Neil Lancaster appearing at Bloody Scotland, although I didn't know that until after I had checked out her book at the library. When I fond out I thought I wouldn't have minded going to her panel, but it clashes with one I have already booked for; another time perhaps. I really enjoyed The Insider, good plot, again with an adrenaline producing final few pages and the police characters were well done and credible. The two main detectives are both slightly overwrought; I thought Hannah didn't quite manage to make some of their emotional responses to crime scenes, other officers and one another quite ring true. A bit tell not show and not a 100% convincing tell, although I suspect a lot of that was down to dodgy editing. It's a minor quibble. And there was the added pleasure of having the book set in a place - the North East of England - with which I'm familiar. Again, I'll be looking for more. 

So despite my recent  moans it seems there are still good new authors to discover. Which is excellent news. 

You'll have gathered from the above that we're about to go away, for a few days. I will be attending several events at Bloody Scotland with a friend, the OH and I are doing some location scouting/house hunting, going to the big Degas exhibition at the Burrell Collection and catching up with our friend K, who has left her position as head of fundraising for Scottish Opera and gone to work at the University of Stirling instead. 

We will be back in just under a week at which point we will have to work very hard to get two rooms ready for the decorator to come and do his stuff the following week, and then we'll have to work equally hard around him and for a couple of days after he's gone to get the house ready for the agent to come and do measurements and photos ready to put the house on the market. Exciting but exhausting times. 

As usual I won't be blogging while I'm away, but hopefully lots to tell you when we get back, if I can drag my exhausted carcass to the laptop to write it all up. 

Here's the Happy Mail from Saturday

 

Note: the colours are actually deeper than this, it must have been a sunny day when I took the photo. 

There's a pattern I've been wanting to make for a while and it calls for 5 x 20g skeins 4 ply. When I first saw the pattern I had a good look at my mini-skein stash to see if I had anything that would work but I didn't, so I put the pattern on a mental backburner. 

A couple of months ago I saw these advertised  and knew they would be ideal. They were a special edition dyed up for a small yarn-and-other-things festival at Portsoy in Aberdeenshire by Clare at Cookston Crafts. I'd hoped to go this year, because it was sort of my last chance, given that Portsoy is a lot closer to Orkney than it is to the Central Belt, but the dates didn't work out. Which actually was a good thing because  - boring - knee ....

So I ordered them, partly as a consolation prize for not getting to Portsoy (and a lot cheaper than actually going would have been) and partly because they were just perfect for the pattern, so why not? 

Another tick in the box

 

So yesterday we had an excursion to North Ronaldsay which is the only sizeable and inhabited Orkney island that we hadn't ever visited. The other 'outstanding' one is Papa Westray but it's tiny and really difficult to get to so I'm not counting that. Who knows? If we ever come back here on holiday we may yet make it. Meanwhile North Ron was the big outstanding one. 

It wasn't exactly ideal timing with my bust knee but I booked it back in April - because otherwise we wouldn't have had a snowflakes chance of actually getting on the boat, as these excursions are only run by Orkney Ferries once a month for five months of the year, and it's the only way you can get there and back on the same day on the ferry. So, obviously,  popular.  Of course  back in April I had no idea that I would be limping rather than walking when the day came round.  At least I'd had the sense to book the car though - after the unfortunate events on Flotta last year when I suffered heatstroke and was really quite poorly - we had decided that we wouldn't go anywhere, however small, without it. Although heatstroke, given yesterday's weather, was unlikely to be a problem. 

So above see a general  view of the place from the ferry. Below is how they got the car off it

and it later went back on the same way. The oddest thing; not only were we  on the ferry with our current car, someone else was on it with our previous one! How small does that make the world? Although Orkney is quite  a small world in itself really. I have to say it was a bit worrying watching them swing the car around in a net, but there again, they do it week in  and week out so they know what they're doing. 

North Ronaldsay is famous for two things. The seaweed eating sheep who are kept penned on the beach by a stone  dyke that circles the island, and lighthouses. 

Here's a picture of the dyke; the dark line along the top 

and here are some of the sheep 

this is the old/first lighthouse

it's a bit far away; I did my best with the zoom function but I couldn't walk any closer to it sadly. I'd have liked to; it looks interesting.  Here's the second/new lighthouse built by Robert Louis Stevenson's grandfather. Built of brick rather than stone because the stone was too expensive to transport. 

It has 176 steps and you can pay to go up it; I told the OH he could go and I would wait at the bottom but he wasn't keen. I don't blame him, even without a bad knee I don't think I'd have wanted to do it. 

It was a very long day. We had to be up at 7.00 to get ready and then drive to catch the ferry, it was 3 hours on the ferry to get there, three and a half hours there, and then another three hours in the ferry to get back. Although we did get off the ferry just in time to listen to The Archers on the drive home. 

So was it worth it? For the sake of completeness, yes. It was a bit of an adventure. I'd have enjoyed it more if I'd been able to walk properly, and if the weather had been better, and if everything hadn't had a sort of tired, end of season feeling. A shame we couldn't have gone in May or June really. It was interesting, but there are nicer islands, imo, to visit  if you want to see more than just Mainland Orkney. 

Surely one of these will strike a chord

So I just did a very long and fairly amusing post about my visit to the library yesterday but sadly Blogger was playing silly beggars and not only would it not let me add any photos, it wouldn't do anything else either. No italics, no formatting, and in the end no publishing either and then it lost the draft. Cross?  Just a bit.

After a lot of faffing about the problem seems to be resolved, but as so often with these things I have no idea how it happened, so if the problem recurs I'll be no nearer knowing what to do to rectify it than I was this morning. And this was after, I should mention, Blogger absolutely refusing to let me write anything at all last night.

Anyway I went to the library yesterday (and the supermarket, without my stick for the first time since I came back from Finland) and it's as well a few books caught my eye because my knee is letting me know that it doesn't appreciate being overworked yesterday. Since tomorrow it's going to have to climb a steep set of stairs on a ferry, today it gets rested so it's a good thing I have a few books to read. 

Three of the books are crime fiction. Karin Slaughter I know and sometimes like, depending on how horrible the things being done to women are  in any given book. Cara Hunter I have read before but somehow she had dropped off my radar, so I am grateful for a reminder in the comments on a previous post. Mari Hannah is new to me but it looked promising and I chose to read it first, I'm about a third of the way through and enjoying it so far. The other one is the first in a fantasy trilogy, and yes, I checked and yes books 2 and 3 are written and yes the library has them both. No more unwitting GRRM type traps for me, thank you very much. Of course I may not enjoy it, in which case the fact that the author has bothered to finish her series will be irrelevant.  But it's important to know these things nowadays in case book 1 is a winner. I'll let you know how I get on. 

Postie just came, very early, something complicated to do with yesterdays fog and todays fog and planes, whatever - he brought some happy mail but that will be a post for another day. 

 

Unhappy Happy Mail

But first, here is the missing photograph from yesterday's post, the one of the yarn I bought to make the OH some socks. 

And this was today's parcel, a beautiful art deco themed tin from Betty's of Harrogate

containing this lovely cake

And that should of course have been very happy mail, except that I ordered it a couple of weeks ago for a good friend's 90th birthday which would have been  next week, but sadly she didn't quite make it. She died peacefully in her sleep about a week ago. She will be missed by many people here, not least of them me. Sith da h-anam 

Happy Mail - This Time It's Wool!

 And rather a lot of it. 

After months of using up yarn I had to hand I decided that I really wanted to do something new; new wool, new pattern, just for a change, and I decided to make something from the Lord of the Rings pattern book I bought in Stockholm back in March. So I ordered some wool to make two of the projects in there. 

There was this 

I know what you're thinking; that's a lot of yarn*. It is. But it's for a scarf and scarves take lots of yarn. Also it's really thick so it will knit up quickly. 

*Actually you might not be thinking that since you can't see on the label that those are 400g balls.  Believe me, they are big! 

Then at the other end of the spectrum there was this.  8 balls of Jamiesons Spindrift, but they're only 25g balls. 

I also bought some yarn in  a destash on ravelry. I haven't done this in I don't know how long and I wasn't planning to again, but I saw this and knew it would make a great pair of socks for the OH for his birthday or Christmas. It's originally from a dyer - Cosmic Fibres - unknown to me so it will be interesting to see how it knits up. 

There is also a small parcel in transit which I didn't expect to arrive until next month, but obviously it's coming this month instead and will further plunge the September stats 'into the red'. I need to get knitting! 

 

Wool Stats for August and Finished Projects

This was a good month for the stash reduction project. Wool in was NIL. Yes, no new wool came into the house at all in August. Which was great. Wool out was 925g; of that 200g was sold, 100g was gifted and the rest was all knitted up. So overall stash reduction for the year to date is 7922g, which is a huge win. 

Early warning, the figures for September may not look quite so bright .... meanwhile here are the photographs of the finished things. 

I made three pairs of socks in August, one pair was for a swap and it seems that I totally forgot to take  a photo before I sent them off. They were done in West Yorkshire Spinners in turquoise with a contrast heel and toe from their peacock colour - the other way round to the ones I did for the OH a couple of months back. 

The other two pairs were these

This pair was for the OH, made from a self striping golfball from Giddy Yarns. Helen has given up doing these, and they were always quite difficult to get hold of as they were so popular, so I was lucky to get this one a few years ago. I found it as I was going through a yarn box where it had no business being, and rather than put it in the box where it should be I decided just to cast it on. It came in the form of a 70g sock set and there were only inches of the self striping left at the end; it would have been less hard on my nerves had I done the cuffs in the contrast colour but I wasn't sure I had enough to do that.  For reference I would have! Not inclined to use a 70g set for him again, though it should be fine for me, because I have smaller feet. 

These were for me, the pattern is Paddington Station socks and the yarn is another old Giddy Yarns one called Strawberry and Vanilla. It was nesting with the self striping and again rather than move it I used it. ( By the way there is going to be a 'thing' going on with my socks over the next few months, I wonder if any readers will spot it.)

I completed another of the baby jumpers that had been languishing for so long, this time the blue one.

Also in the box I found a kit that I bought years and years ago; it was for a very colourful and textured  type jacket made mainly of Colinette yarns. I was persuaded to by it against my better judgement really and the fact that I never even cast it on says volumes. I split up the yarn and sold 2 skeins and gave away another two. Then I used two on this fringed scarf

I've never knitted a fringe before and it looked fun. I wasn't 100% happy with the pattern and felt the whole thing came out a little small but it was fine after an aggressive block. It should be useful as it will go with almost every coat and jacket that I own. There was a very small amount of yarn left over  which meant Poppy the Penguin got yet another blanket

That left three skeins from the kit and I have a project on my needles that will use up two more and I know what I'm planning to do with the final skein. Which is pleasing. 

I recently won a small competition in a group I'm in on Ravelry and my prize was a pattern from my list of favourites. The one the prizegiver chose was Copenhagen Building Blocks and I made two of the blocks this month. I'm using my Seashore Colours Mini Club yarns from Henny Penny Makes for these; I was pleased to find a project for them. Eventually they should make a stunning throw. 

And that was it apart from a few small items and I'll leave those because some of them aren't quite finished i.e. they need seaming and buttons putting on. Maybe at the end of September I'll manage a photo of those.