Holidays, Spending sprees and Swaps (and an FO or two!)

The week away was definitely needed...I hadn't realised how wound up I was and it took a couple of days to even feel like I was on holiday! Still, the weather was on the whole good (only an afternoon of drizzle throughout); we thoroughly did the local attractions....

...Whitby Abbey....

....Scarborough (that was the drizzly day)....

...We stayed close to home a lot of the time...well, when this is the view from the window of your flat....

...And you get to see steam trains passing at (relatively) recent intervals....

....And even the dusk holds reflections and a myriad of colour. Being by the river, we could watch as the tide changed, the water level ebbed and flowed and we walked and walked (and ate and ate!) and generally had a fantastic time.

Of course, I had a whole heap of photos and maybe I'll share a few more choice selections in future blogs plus a few tales when I have more time.

In knitting news, I've a couple of FO's to show you...

In typical Blogger fashion, the second one's first and one of them's the wrong way around, go figure! Anyway, this shawl has been given a new home with Mel, it's a version of the Forest Canopy shawl knitted in Noro Kureyon on 6.5mm needles and I'm happy with the result (just don't look too hard for mistakes!). It knitted up quickly over a matter of days and with the colour changes it kept my interest so it was fun to knit.

This was the first Forest Canopy Shawl I knitted and this time I was using Colinette Cadenza.

I ended up doing extra repeats to the original pattern, ending up with around 350 sts on the needles rather than the original 190 odd, making it into a more typical sized shawl rather than a shawlette. With more stitches, it was a bit more laboured to finish and it was rather depressing to wash it and find reasonable dye loss with every bowlful. After the tenth, I decided that what remained was unlikely to rub off on anything and besides, shawls only get washed once in a blue moon so it was spun and blocked and here it is in all it's glory!

I went to the Cheshire guild again on Saturday...it was a textile talk and braiding workshop but a group of us sat at the back of the hall and spun instead. It was great fun!

This is most of the roving that spinningsue sent me as part of my swap parcel, a unique colourway from Lime Green Jelly fibres. After some dithering, I decided not to navajo ply it as usual, I'm going to buy some black fibre and ply it with that so I get maximum yardage and colour length too...fingers crossed!


I did take some yarn away in case I got much time to knit (not really!).

The left-hand ball is the dye-job I just couldn't part with. Much prettier in the skein, you'll see it better when it eventually knits up..just don't hold your breath!

I had planned to knit some exquisite long socks for mum to go with her bolero cardigan (which is now all sewn up) but having some major tension issues, switched to these instead...

Plain, serviceable long socks that'll keep the worst of the winter at bay...and a darned sight quicker to knit as well!

I did say they were in a whacky order! I cast on these on holiday, black again and struggled through the lacy pattern in not wonderful light only to find the cuff was a whole 2" wider than it should have been! In hindsight, these socks (Millicent by Cookie a) were so tailored to your leg size, I'd have kind of given the game away if I'd asked for all her measurements! As the width is closer to my own size and I'm reluctant to rip 100+ stitch rows, I may make them for myself one day instead.

I came home from guild to find an international parcel waiting for me....

One of my parcels in the Chocolate and Yarn swap, yummy soft Knitpicks sock yarn and a bar of Cadbury's Caramello, I guess the U.S version of our Caramel. Unfortunately, the chocolate's been somewhere hot on it's journey so arrived somewhat squished and the chocolate's gone all funny. I don't seem to have much luck with international chocolate! There wasn't a card with the packet and unfortunately, although the name and address is on the front it's not easy to match up with the swap-bot participants for me to rate so I'll have to put a message up there and see if someone replies!

My two swap parcels are ready to be made up (hopefully this evening) and go out with luck tomorrow. To be honest, my timetable's kind of gone out the window since my return due to a number of reasons but chiefly due to another infestation of mice.

So far so good, we captured a third this morning using the usual sticky traps and some chocolate orange fudge brought back from holiday that they obviously took a liking to when it first appeared on the level. We managed to get to B+Q this afternoon and bought 4 more sonic deterrents so I can guarantee the upstairs is mouse-free and the lounge (hopefully) also. If they can be restricted to the kitchen to be trapped and further infestations prevented (I finally silliconed up their prime entry point), I'm hopeful we can finally draw a line under the whole affair. I'd like to also glue a mesh to each of the airbricks as a belt-and braces approach though they've never appeared from there but primary concern will be to phone the water board as it's getting incredibly tedious washing my hair and body in stone cold water as the pressure is so low, it won't trigger the water heater. Fingers crossed it won't involve another huge bill!

EDIT: AAARGH! Lord knows how blogger lost the text on half the pictures, I've been so rushed I never even noticed....

Still, at least one person twigged it was my holiday spoils! A few balls of a new 50% wool, 50% Acrylic yarn to have a play with plus some fantastic coloured sock yarn aaand....

Oodles of noro sock yarn, a couple of balls for projects unknown (but probably socks!)...

And 4 balls in the same shade to maybe one day knit this (or something like)...

I do love the Noro colour changes even though the sock yarn does feel pretty rough. I believe it softens considerably after washing though, I'll have to try knitting it for myself before I make any judgements.

Roll on next post....