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.

Photominimalism

I’m excited – but I should have been excited a week ago! I have been reading lots of blogs – and thoroughly enjoying vicariously meeting lots of new people – and popping comments on their wonderful blogs, but it wasn’t till yesterday that I realised how honoured I’d been!

Put this down to being a blog novice. I was tagged as a Rockin’ Girl Blogger by Catherine. In fact, despite my newness, she had named my blog as one of her top five international rocking blogs – now, I apologise for not mentioning this before, but I really had not realised how wonderful it was – so thank you very much, Catherine.

She’s going through a tough time right now, so I’m thinking of her and her family.

On a different note, I have finished the back of the Black Dog Swing Jumper – the knitting gods must have something extra specially bad planned for me, because I finished the back the night I thought I was going to and (as far as I can tell) have not yet made major errors requiring frogging – for which I will also no doubt get struck down.

I have started on the front, and love the way it looks. The Silk Road drapes gorgeously and I love the tweedy flecked look. I’m knitting on bamboo needles to, which are becoming nicer the more I use them. I admit to not having used my Knit Picks Options much – the few times I have used them I loved them, but I keep going back to my old faves out of habit.

I’m also still searching for the perfect pattern for Daughter’s jacket/cardi with the ladybird buttons. Rose Red is right. I needs to be lovely and simple to allow the buttons to be the key feature – may have found something – the simplest of jackets, which I can play with to make perfect – watch this space.

I had a wonderful score at the local op shop on Thursday. -3 balls of Aarlan Aarwetta (sock yarn) – 2 in lilac, 1 in pink – all full skeins yum yum – 1.50 each. Someone locally uses lots of Aarlan, because I have scored a couple of balls of a gorgeous silk wool mix in the past. Wonder who it is?

I often wonder who the people are who have used the things I buy in op shops. They must have taste similar to mine – Aarlan’s great, I love the totes I have scored over the last few months for knitting bags, the dress I scored a few weeks ago – so why haven’t I met them? It’s only a small town after all.

Taph was talking about the history of objects on her blog recently. I love imagining their history. I adore the things I own which used to belong to my grandparents or great-grandparents. My family are hoarders and passers along – things that belonged to my great grandparents have their genesis in the 1850s and 1860s – my paternal grandmother was born in 1896 and died in 1973. These objects feel like a tangible link to my family and their history.

Mind you, this makes it very hard to de-clutter!

You may have noticed that I’m very light on for photos over the last few days. The Accountant has discovered how much over my broadband allocation for this month I am, and has threatened to disconnect me, This means I am limiting myself in how many blogs I look at and in commenting over the next few days (till I get my new allocation!)