See you on the dark side of the moon...

My Interweave finally arrived so I have been perusing it – and finding that I’d like to knit – well – almost everything (as usual!). My package from Ecoyarns arrived (noticed that Ms 2Paws has also ordered some A-maizing – it really does feel gorgeous and will drape just beautifully, I think. And it’s on sale! What more could you want!

The fabulous Luna eclipse last night brought out my inner wolf – a blood-red moon has a rather chilling effect – you just KNOW that the walls between realities have become very thin indeed. I, of course, was at a P and F school fete meeting – so I interrupted it regularly to check eclipse progress (and stand outside with a glass of wine – our meetings are very civilised). You know that you don’t actually have a life, when your big excitement is slipping the leash and attending a P and F meeting! If you’d like to check out photos of the eclipse, check Kate’s blog.

Whilst browsing idly through the latest Interweave I discovered an ad for an Australian company which appears to have no Australian retail outlets – but heaps in the USA – check out Wagtail Yarns from Childers Queensland – what exceptionally lovely looking yarns (yes, yes and tops for spinners),

Juno’s back still not finished (see above), but very close. I’m hoping that with the drudgery of the ribbed back out of the way, the ribbed sleeves and ribbed fronts, and ribbed bands will just FLY past! Until I get to the excitement of the collar!

Whilst at last night’s meeting, I said hello to Gracie, the guinea pig. Which reminded me of yet another one of my weird animals. Yes, settle down children, sit quietly and let Auntie Tinkingbell tell you a story.

At the end of grade 3, my parents bought me a guinea pig. Originally, it was meant to be a Christmas present, but they were hiding it in my step-grandfather’s garage. My step Grandad was extremely deaf, refused to wear a hearing aid and revved his cars until he could hear them. This was very hard on clutches and cars, and Mum decided that if the guinea pig didn’t end up deaf, it was likely to die of Carbon Monoxide poisoning. So they gave it to me early. Henry was duly christened Henry Tremblenose the First (last and only), certified male and carried off to join the menagerie.

Henry was a nice guinea pig. He talked, was a great judge of character (tended to wee or poo on people he didn’t like), had a lovely hutch outside, from which he occasionally escaped, to be returned slightly soggy by the Labrador Retriever. He came inside at night and slept in a box lined with ripped up newspaper next to Dad’s homebrew barrel. He had bread and milk and night and guinea piggy stuff during the day. He made valiant efforts to eat down the lawn for us.

Then poor little Henry started to lose his hair. He also started to suddenly fall over, shriek and be unable to get up. This baldness and paralysis were deeply worrying. He used to recover, but the shrieks tended to shred everyone’s nerves. We initially put it down to proximity to the homebrew, but he didn’t improve when we moved him elsewhere.

We took him to the vet (the same vet we owned half a white pig with). Poor Henry turned out to be Henrietta. Henrietta was also apparently losing her hair from sexual deprivation. And the paralysis was psychosomatic (the guinea pig version of hysterical blindness).

Henry started to have hormone drops in her nightly bread and milk. Her hair grew back. We acquired a friend for her in the shape of a rabbit (no, not another guinea pig – one was enough – we didn’t want to be knee deep in the dratted things). Henry eventually died at the extremely advanced age of seven.

The moral of the story is…….. well, I think it’s that sexual deprivation causes hair loss. It may also be that it’s not the alcohol causing your paralysis at all (a comforting thought). Maybe it’s just that we all need friends. And bread and milk. And alcohol is not as bad for you as you thought.

Turtle Walks and Heavy Horses

Just as I feared! You’ve all been off doing exciting stuff – and I haven’t been there to see it all – just a day and a half I’m off the airwaves, and there you all are – knitting, cooking, playing with animals, sheep planning mass breakouts! What am I going to do with you?

So, since I’ve been absent I’ve:

1. Finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Liked it (of course) but thought it could benefit from stronger editing.

SPOILER ALERT

Also, can someone please tell me a) how did the sword get back to the hat? And b) How did Draco end up as the wand’s master when Snape killed Dumbledore?

2. I cast on Polyglot socks and discovered after knitting the first full repeat that there was a mistake in the pattern and I ended up doubling the number of stitches in 10 rows!!! Frogged it (2 nights work, not including the 2 nights spent untangling the skein to ball it, making a complete dog’s breakfast of my new ball winder, untangling it all again, taking the mess off the ball winder, rewinding and re-balling it by hand and putting it in a ziplock, as I would have done originally had I not had the new ball winder – decided to watch the instructional video on YouTube) and emailed the designer in a panic, only to discover there WAS a problem with the pattern but I wasn’t sent the corrected chart – she was very quick to get it to me though.

3. the feather and fan scarf at playgroup yesterday

4. Cast on a plain pair of socks in Patonyle faux fairisle for travelling and meetings

5. Cast on and did 2 pattern repeats of Happy Spider’s Turtle Walk socks in JoJoland Melody (I would have searched out some of Spidey’s own gorgeous wool, but I was so upset about the Polyglot socks I grabbed some reasonable wool from the downstairs stash)


6. Felted and semi dried the Squatty sidekick. Tips: Increases and decreases in the side stitches I think for the next couple. Slightly longer strap and less bound off stitches between the flap edges and straps. Waiting for it to dry.

It’s been wild weather here and there’s been little prospect of playing outside from about lunchtime yesterday. I’ve decided I feel a bit naked without a big knitting project, so I’m going to try the ball winder again with the Rowan for Juno.

This will bring me up to 3 WIPs – which is my limit. On the other hand. Maybe I should just finish the Turtle Walk socks and then do Juno. Decisions, Decisions.

I notice that some of you are enjoying the animal yarns (he, he). As we lived on a farm, we always had lots of animals drifting in and out of our orbit. Even the mice which lived in our house (no, not pets – the sort that come out at night and poo in the cupboards!) had names – my mother actually used to put food out for them. One (particularly fat and buck toothed) was called Mousey Tung. The extremely fat and slow moving one was called Enormouse. How they managed to stick around in a house full of cats (we always had at least 3) is beyond me!

Mostly, the sheep weren’t distinguished enough, with strong enough personalities to get their own names. Bottle fed lambs circulated through the house, drank formula out of Seppelt’s Solero sherry bottles with teats on (much to the disgust of our Brethren neighbours who were convinced we were enticing them into a life of alcohol and vice), grew strong and were either matched with a ewe who had lost lambs or were weaned and went back to the flock.

The real stars of the farm were the collection of horses. My mother was a bit scared of horses (this is a women whose hobby, prior to moving to Australia from Wales and settling down with Dad, was mountain climbing. She also went around Europe on the back of a BSA motorbike with a former boyfriend). But she was a softie (our farming practices were the source of enormous amounts of laughter from the REAL farmers around us). So she bought an elderly Clydsesdale mare, Jewel, to save her from the knackers. This cost her 45 dollars (or 2 weeks housekeeping). For 2 weeks we ate lots of porridge and potatoes. Jewel was in her early twenties (we think), was calm and placid, and suffered from chronic greasy heel, which required baths in copper sulphate and bran poultices. She generally got the sack containing the poultice off her leg and ate it (the poultice, not the sack). A bran poultice has the same ingredients as bran mash.

She hated the copper sulphate wash, so generally, someone had to distract her with food at the front end, while someone else crept around the back end with a bucket of the wash and got as close as possible before hurling the contents at her heels. She generally trotted off, but became extremely wary of buckets. If there was food in a bucket, we had to put it down and back away, allowing her to investigate its contents!

Jewel eventually died of extreme old age, having had a loving and lengthy retirement. We used to sit on her very broad back and play cards, while she ambled along eating grass (pulling herself along by her teeth). She never minded. The only time I ever saw her moving quickly was when she saw a bucket!

This is all your fault

Right, you lot!

Immediately stop being so interesting! Stop having funny things to say and making wonderful knitted things and living interesting lives – stop it immediately!

Stop knitting in public and making beautiful, enviable garments and shawls and socks and scarves and other bits and pieces! Stop it this minute!

You’re making your blogs all so interesting that I have to stop by to check on you every day – and I’m only 2 weeks into this month’s broadband allocation and I’ve already used 75% and it’s all YOUR FAULT!

If you lot weren’t such wonderful, interesting and fun people, I wouldn’t be in this situation – again!

I think I need a new plan – at least as far as the broadband goes, anyway.

So, I’m not going to check on any of you till Friday – OK, maybe Thursday. I’ll have to store it all up. I’ll expect knitterly progress reports on shawl and socks and scarves and lace and jumpers and other stuff to be on your blogs then. And then I’ll ooh and ahh and tell you how clever you are and wish I had unlimited (but very fast) broadband like they do in cities.

I also promise to tell you more about the animals who have shared my house – not all of them came to bad ends – many just died of old age after doing extremely weird and bizarre things throughout their lives with us – like the orphaned calf, Claude Hopper (go on – say it aloud – he always trod on our feet in his eagerness to get at the bottle), who my father wasn’t ever allowed to sell, and died of old age, a fat and sooky steer. He was always so tame that even when he grew up and went back into the cattle herd, he’d let me ride him.

Or Ajax, the Hereford bull who loved nothing better than people feeding him apples and curling his fringe. He once treed my grandmother (the Welsh one, Nain) up an apple tree for 3 hours as he circled around underneath while she was picking apples. She was scared of him, and started throwing apples to make him go away. Unfortunately it had the opposite effect – he thought she was feeding him – eventually we heard her plaintive cries and rescued her by luring Ajax away – with an apple!

He was much more interesting than his successors, Bearable, Capable, Disreputable, Effable and Gullible. Go on – say them aloud too. The liking for puns is an appalling family trait.

So, I’m not going to tell you about any of these. You’ll just have to wait.

I’m not even going to tell you about my lovely parcel that arrived yesterday – 6 skeins of Noro Blossom and 500gr of Silk Road in a really dark green (another swing jumper?).
You’ll just have to wait. So there. Now go back to doing interesting stuff. I’ll pop in and see what you’re doing later in the week.