East Neuk Knits

So, the East Neuk is a coastal district in Fife and East Neuk Knits is a new yarn show which is taking place this weekend at the Bowhouse in St Monan's. It has a connection with the Channel 4 show The Game of Wool in that Di Gilpin is common to both. If anyone was wondering, yes, I have been watching The Game of Wool and yes I will be ranting about it in due course. But I thought I'd wait until it was over and I had an oversight of the whole thing. Incidentally the website for ENK said filming and photography for Series 2 of the Game of Wool would be taking place over the weekend which is  I suppose good or bad news, depending on what you think of the show. It seemed to me that if they were filming Series 2 already this meant that they wouldn't have had time to reflect on the reactions of knitters to Series 1 and make any tweaks they thought might be necessary in the light of that, but then I'm not a TV producer, so what do I know? ( More than the producers of the show apparently know about knitting, that's for sure ). 

I did of course buy stuff, because what is the point of driving for 90 minutes, parking in a muddy field, freezing yourself between the car and the venue, waiting an unconscionable time for the delivery of lunch ( which in any case wasn't the desired scone as they had 'run out' of scones by 12.30)  if you don't then justify the trip by making purchases. 

Here's what I got

The project bag I had decided to buy before we went, having seen them on the website and deciding I'd like something a bit more structured than my usual floppy drawstring ones. This was from Wild Wood Stitches and you can find their website  here, definitely worth a browse. I was so excited about buying it that, to my shame I totally confused Loch Ness where they are based, with Loch Lomond where they are definitely NOT based. I do know the difference but I was just a bit carried away. It wasn't cheap but it has leather handles, the bottom is Harris tweed and it is beautifully made so it was good value for money. And I love it,  which is really the only justification for buying anything - although it was quite difficult to decide which one to have.

The single skein was a pick by the OH and is for me to turn into socks for him in due course. I knew that if he was let loose in a wool show he would pick some wool for socks so that wasn't really an impulse purchase either. The other two things, the pattern and the miniball fade from Wee County Yarns ( Website  here ) weren't planned purchases although I have looked at that pattern multiple times on their website. I'm only planning to make the mitts. 

I also picked up a card from a vendor who does sport weight yarn with a high natural fibre content because that's what some of the patterns in Kalevala II call for and I want to knit a couple of those this coming year. And I had a nice chat with the lovely Clare from Cookston Crafts ( again website here ) where I didn't buy anything but made plans to buy some of her yarn in the new year to make a sweater that she has a sample of. After seeing the sample previously  I've thought about getting the pattern before,  and I've decided that now, or at least 2026, is the year to give it a go. More about knitting plans later I expect, but possibly not until after Christmas because  tomorrow is the 1st December and the blog will be full of advent opening for the next 24 days! 

Cinderella

 It was lovely. We both really really enjoyed it. No pics sadly because I forgot my phone although you're probably only supposed to take pictures of the curtain calls, and that's a shame because the sets and costumes were magical and you'll just have to take my word for it. Unless you've seen it yourself of course. 

We hadn't been past the reception desk at the McRobert Centre before and the cinema wasn't easy to find. Possibly because all the spaces are designated by the use of the word 'house' on the end; playhouse, woodhouse, filmhouse and various others. Once you know then filmhouse makes sense as a cinema as playhouse makes sense for a theatre but it's not really obvious. However once we found it it was warm ( thank goodness, it was bloomin' bitter out up here on Tuesday evening) and comfortable, and the sightlines are great.

We had braced ourselves for the continuity person and annoying featurettes that the ROH will insist on inflicting on audiences during the intervals of their filmcasts, but we even enjoyed those this time. I wonder if the ballet ones are generally more acceptable than the opera ones? The man introducing it all was a former dancer himself and was quietly knowledgeable and informative and the three little features were all interesting. The least interesting one was Darcey Bussell talking to the two principal dancers but it was OK. The second one was a conversation between the two men who danced the stepsisters and the third one was the set and costume designers talking about their inspiration. So no rants from  me on that  topic this time. We thought about going again for The Nutcracker but it's in December, naturally enough and December is looking quite busty so we probably won't. 

A Word About Advents

 Yes, it is that time of year again - almost advent season, so I thought I'd run through this years.

The Bonne Maman jam one I've already posted a picture of , I did that when it arrived at what seemed like an alarmingly early date. 

We are not having a Yankee Candle advent this year. This is mainly because earlier in the year I bought a wax melt burner and I have bought some Christmassy scented wax melts to go in it. Incidentally I love my burner and have it 'on' every evening just now. 

The OH has an advent calendar all to himself this year which I bought for him on a recent visit to the supermarket (I know, could I be any more generous!!) But he was pleased. 

for a man who doesn't like honey ( or bee spit as he calls it!) he is inordinately fond of Toblerone. 

I don't know whether I ever mentioned here the fact that a while back I had a sticker subscription, which is just what it sounds like, you pay a company money every month and every month they send you a packet of stickers. After a couple of years I cancelled the subscription because I had what felt like all the stickers I would ever need for  a lifetime and beyond but this year I have treated myself to their advent calendar. It comes in a specially designed  folder - 

here's the front cover

and here's the back

and inside are 24 envelopes, each equally lovely, with a sheet of stickers inside. 

But Anne, I hear you say, are there no yarn advents this year? Oh, come on! Would it be advent without a yarn advent? Would it be Christmas without the OH buying me a yarn advent as my main present? No it would not, so naturally there are yarn advents. 

I chose to gift myself a weekly advent from Beth at Beehive Yarns. The theme is La Vie en Rose and here it is. Beth is wonderful at presentation, her colour choices really resonate with me and her yarn is lovely so I'm looking forward to unwrapping this. 

And from the OH I am getting a Nutcracker themed daily advent from Caroline at Yarn Unique (she of the artist's monthly club that I have had some of this year). I've had other bits and pieces from her over the years and she has never disappointed, not to mention that I am, as previously noted here, a sucker for the Nutcracker so I am really looking forward to this one. It arrived in rather splendid packaging only available to early bird orderers, and I didn't manage a photo before the OH squirrelled it away but there will be one on 1st December. Which is closer than almost everyone thinks. 

Talking of The Nutcracker we are going out this evening to watch a filmcast of the Royal Ballet's Cinderella; the very ballet we tried to see in Kirkwall last Christmas but which was cancelled due to unexplained  'technical issues' . The venue here is the MacRobert Arts Center at Stirling University where we haven't been before so I expect I'll be reporting on that in the near future. Life has been quiet of late, which has done me good, but things are picking up pace towards Christmas and I feel I'm now ready to embrace that and be busy again. 

Some Local Wildlife

Courtesy partly of the oak tree that sits just beyond our front fence, plus the recent installation of a bird feeder in our front garden, we get quite a variety of bird life here. 

Crows,

Lots and lots of woodpigeons

Jays! (Not blue jays as per the OH's baseball team, but even so.)They're very pretty and we get a pair visiting every morning

There's a robin as well which we haven't managed to photograph yet, and some other, so far unidentified, small birds that are visiting the feeder. 

As is the squirrel!

Many thanks to the OH for a fabulous photo. Again we have  a pair, but rarely see the second one. This one though is often around, especially during the mornings when he scampers about at great speed, stopping every now and then to retrieve and nibble at a nut. Great fun to watch. 

And occasionally we are visited by some local roe deer. I've yet to manage a good picture of these; the first time they came by  the time we had seen them and I'd found my phone all I got a picture of was their fleeing rear ends! The second time I did rather better, although the pictures are far from perfect. Still they're lovely to see, and not exactly what you expect on a suburban estate, even on the fringes.

Oh Look! I never finished Florence

 I suppose there's a metaphysical sense in which you never finish Florence but on a more prosaic note there was one last day there that I haven't written up yet. 

This was another serendipitous thing. It was our last day, it was a bit damp and we thought we would wander down to the heart of the old city and just see where our footsteps took us. Given that the weather turned from drizzle to drench about the time we made it the Uffizi portico, where our footsteps took us was into the Palazzo Vecchio. It hadn't been on our list but it was the nearest place that simultaneously promised interest and refuge from the rain, so in we went. 

I'm so glad we did. It's amazing. 

Like everywhere else it - 

was stuffed with tourists

housed some amazing art, both pictures ....

...and friezes

boasted amazing views over the city towards the hills

and unlike some other places which were so overwhelmed by tourists that there was no historical atmosphere left, this one struck a chill. This is the Court of the Five Hundred, the centre of Medici power in the city.  The picture was taken from a gallery looking down into it and nothing can prepare you for the scale of this room. Too easy to imagine how a malefactor, or even someone who had just been overheard disagreeing with a Medici, would feel being escorted into this room to face 'justice'. 

And that's it for the adventures in Florence, but there's a postscript. We have booked another Italian holiday for next spring. It's a short organised tour which  will take us to Arezzo, Assisi, Siena Florence and Rome. Obviously very short visits to each one I'd rather have gone to Pisa or Lucca than Florence again, just because it would be somewhere different and nothing says we can;t go to either of those places under our own steam at a later date. 

I'm not sure even I believed it ....

 ...when I said No More Cats after we lost Markko earlier this year. 

Anyway, meet Cosimo (and yes, it does appear we're working our way through the Medici family for our cat names)

There are very many pros to not having a cat, but it turns out that even altogether they don't outweigh the huge con that is missing having a cat about the place. 

It was with some trepidation that we took ourselves to the local cat shelter on Sunday to view their available cats. They had put up a post on their Facebook page earlier this week saying they had lots of cats in all of a sudden and if you were thinking of getting one maybe come along to one of their weekend rehoming shifts. 

We were worried mainly about the burden of choice but in the event we needn't have worried. We were asked what we were looking for and we said we weren't fussy really because all our previous cats had just turned up on the doorstep and then moved in, and when we said that the lady we were talking to said well let me show you Harley. Harley had been living as a stray for a while and hadn't liked it one little bit, and the fact that he had to fight lots of other stray cats to get himself anything to eat has apparently left him hating Every Other Cat in the Wurld. We are suckers for this kind of sob story so it was as well that we loved Harley as soon as we met him. We agreed to take him, subject to the necessary checks. We visited him at the Shelter on Monday and Tuesday and on Wednesday (yesterday), rather sooner than anticipated,  we were given the all clear to bring him home. So we did. And renamed him, obvs. 

He's very affectionate, a little bit vocal now he's home and the first long haired cat we have ever had. Luckily he loves to be brushed. He also appears to approve of having a large house to wander around with lots and lots of places to curl up unseen: we left him in the living room last night with a light, food etc and discovered him this morning under the spare room bed. Oh well, who doesn't love a game of cat Hide and Seek first thing? 

We knew they were coming so we baked a cake ....

 In fact we made several cakes in preparation for visits from our son and my sister. 

It was the son's birthday and he had requested that the OH do him a Viking Ship. The OH had made  this on a couple of occasions in Orkney but it was a long time ago. However since it was a special request he had a go and here it is

In previous incarnations it used the sail and shields from a Playmobile Viking ship but if we still have that somewhere we don't know quite where, so it was all done out of choux pastry and creme pat. It was delicious and the boy took the four little extra choux puffs home in a box! 

My own contributions were much more mundane, being a lemon drizzle 

and a carrot cake

I don't know if they ran away with the Playmobile Viking ship, not to mention my kitchen apron, but my 1lb loaf tins were nowhere to be seen and haven't been since we moved so I had to put the lemon drizzle mixture in a 2 lb tin. While this isn't the end of the world, it wasn't 100% successful, as it mucked up the cooking time and that was already problematic since the ovens here don't have a great deal of calibration temperature wise. There's a 150 and a 200 and anything in between is guess work. I hope that eventually we'll replace them because I do miss the lovely baking oven I had in Orkney.

That said it was fine and the carrot cake was yummy. Also, while out with my sister at a local garden center we found  some 1 lb loaf tins and I treated myself to a couple. So the next lot should be better. I need to reorganise the baking cupboards as, despite our best intentions when we moved, some kitchen stuff was placed where 'it would do for now', and although it may have 'done for then' I'm getting a bit stressed with having baking utensils and ingredients in about 4 different places. Sounds like a job for that empty time between Christmas and New Year. 

Projects and Wool Stats for October.

 Oh this is ugly! Not as ugly as it might have been but not good. 

No finished projects! 

Wool in 700g, wool out 198g, net increase for the month 502g, and net decrease for the year reduced to 5338g. 

Most of the Wool In was the Little Grey Cells club; there was the usual 150g for the three months plus I had ordered 200g of undyed to go with it.  The colours of the club are lovely but they are very bright and so the blanket I am using them for needed something to calm it down. All the wool out was work I did on that.

Of the rest I had the Debbie Abrahams Bunting Kit and I am well through that. Then I bought 200g of baby 'wool' to make a baby blanket for the daughter of a friend who is expecting her first baby in the spring, and I've just broken into the second ball of four. And none of the wool was an impulse buy, it all had  a purpose, which is a good thing. 

That said today has thrown up a multitude of problems and there's a lot of lovely pre-Christmas indie dyer stuff out there, so I'm hoping I can keep away from the Buy buttons. There will be advents arriving shortly and I'm off to a Knitting Show at the end of the month so hopefully the thought of  both of those things will keep me strong for now. 

And November should see some finished things; more time inside, some planned socks and the other two in progress projects inching towards completion. 

Pootling about

It's autumn and we've slowed down a bit. That said Son No 2 is coming over for the weekend as it's his birthday, and hot on his heels will be my sister visiting for  a few days. And there are a couple of other things on the calendar for November too. But it's not action packed like the summer was. 

Her's a bit of a catch up on some gentle days since we got back from Glasgow. 

We went for another walk in our local woodland, choosing a different path and coming across part of the Devon river which was much fuller and free flowing than we have seen it previously.

We went up to the independent book shop in Dollar one afternoon. We didn't buy any books but treated ourselves to coffee and cake.

mines the plain lemon drizzle at the front. Just so you know.

I did a jigsaw puzzle 

which, along with two others and a few bits and pieces we took to the charity shop for the local cat shelter. We also visited the cat shelter, donated some money and some food, and said we were pleased to help but not in the market for a cat. I think possibly we are in the market for a cat to be honest but possibly not until after Christmas. And it will need to be The Right Cat.

And I had some Happy Mail

I got 20% off because they are preparing to publish Knitted Kalevala III in the not too distant future. I already have Volume I but I think overall this one is better i.e. there are  more patterns in there that I wold like to knit.

I baked a cake. This was good of me as I do not like the ovens in our new kitchen and only the reflection that if I don't bake I will never get used to them gets me anywhere near my baking tins these days. 

So there you go. Quietly domestic days.