Friday, July 02, 2010

Not much knitting...

...but there IS some crochet going on at the moment. I've been trying to figure out how to decrease in a shell pattern (Cameo). I had a break-through late last night, after trying it on a test swatch, although I might also switch to a smaller hook size too.

Despite my best intentions, life keeps throwing me curveballs. I spent most of last Saturday either in waiting rooms or shopping. Went for an eyetest as the cataract in my left eye has become quite noticeable when I'm driving in full sunlight. Noticeable to me, that is - my eyes look fine to the casual observer. The optician's opinion is that, yes, I'm still legal to drive, but he'll refer me to a consultant if I think I need the op. At this point, the risk to my eyesight if there are complications, outweighs the problem, so I'm not sure I could convince a surgeon if I can't convince myself. Got another appointment in a year, and ordered some proper reactive Polaroid driving sunglasses, which were rather expensive.

Then I popped over to Autoglass to get my car checked out. I discovered last week that the rear window had become unstuck on one side. It was threatening to be a £114, not-covered-by-insurance reseal job. Luckily for me they'd had a no-show, so they started it there and then (whilst I popped around the corner in search of anything I could reasonably call lunch - ended up with chappatis, crisps, pop and some Indian sweets). When I got back, the chap in charge said the glass had fallen out completely as they'd taken the boot apart, and that it was now a full replacement which was covered on the insurance. So only £75 excess - even though I was now getting a new piece of glass as well as a new seal! It was only the radiator bracket that was holding the glass in place.

It's made quite a difference to the car, I can tell you. I can't, alas, prove how long the glass was unstuck, but I suspect I may have bought it like that. So it made a lot of noise over a pothole - and I reasoned that it was normal for my car, it is 7 years old after all. I'm quite lucky the glass survived a year as it is. The car is so much quieter now!

When I finally made it home around 3pm, we had to pop out and get the food shop (was kind of hoping the Cog'd take a hint and go without me, but no!). So Saturday was pretty much a bust, although we did at least get a few rounds in the real ale pub in town after dinner. Banana beer! Yum! It's just a pity we have to catch the last bus (6.30pm), which usually means I'll be pretty merry by 9pm and ready for bed. Hey, Belgian beer is stronger, ok? Came home and slept through the Dr Who finale, I really must watch it again.

Sunday we had a guest coming for a barbeque - ok, so it was only the Cog's brother, but I still ran around like a headless chicken, tidying the place up a bit. We had a laminate floor put in on Friday in the hallway, so there were leftover bits of wood and carpet everywhere too. The Cog managed to pull a muscle sweeping/scrubbing the patio. I kid you not. Managed to draw up and knit the peg bag - thank goodness for keeping a database of old swatch measurements - before the England/Germany game came on, so I was sewing up whilst the two blokes were ranting at the screen.

So - that was my weekend. I reckon I must have blinked, and missed it. I'm debating whether I should reorganize my stash a la Yarn Harlot, and place yarn in bags with the pattern it was bought for, so that I can "shop" and not have to spend an hour searching for the pattern. Hmm. Mind you, if I haven't time to knit, I haven't got time to reorganize, either. I've still got two tops to make, the yarns and patterns purchased at Nottingham in April. Luckily they are still in the shopping bag they were purchased in, so at least they're all together.

Picked up six massive sacks of coned yarn last night from a lady who lives near where I work, so spent about 90 minutes last night inventorying and photographing the lot. I've posted it up on Ravelry if you are in need of any coned yarn, haha! I'm only asking for postage. Made the inventory into a spreadsheet and stuck it on Google.

I'm going to be in the Lives and Times/Greenspace tent all day on Saturday, at the Coventry Godiva festival, so pop by and say hi if you're in the area. I'll be the one sweating over a knitting machine of some sort, no doubt.

I'm also teaching machine knitting to a lovely lady who is literally about 10 minutes drive from me, on Tuesday nights. So, personal knitting time is pretty scarce chez moi at the moment. Let's not even mention getting to grips with the weaving loom, the CSM or the sewing machine. Hmm.

I need some sort of time machine, to double the length of time in the evenings and halve it during the working weekday. Ha!

Last night I made a start on a Nina Miklin design, it's in a smoky grey alpaca. I had intended to finally finish the Cog's jumper, and discovered I don't know what I've done with it - I can only find the front. Oops! Well, that's one way of dealing with a UFO - lose most of it! :o)

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