I just can't seem to catch a break this year - I take a week's holiday (with 4 clear days when I could be machine knitting) and my beloved works from home most of that week (so about 1 hour of machine knitting gets done - his office is my knitting room). I plan ahead and make the lovely gloves below, a competition entry for "Environment" for Long Buckby - I figured out how to hand-manipulate the leaf pattern, though I've seen variations of it on lace punchcards too. Because the second half of the pattern creates a "spine" it involves moving stitches in a certain order, which takes a few passes on a machine but is fast to do by hand.
Lace "leaf" gloves. Sorry for the poor picture, this red doesn't photograph well!
The chart
The week before the competition, I finally get to fly out to my head office in the Netherlands (first time since 2019) for a day's training and... some selfish git brings their nasty cough on board on the return flight. No thought of catching it in their arm, hand, or maybe, you know, wearing a frigging mask? It's a 45 minute flight, you don't even get a hot drink because we're not in the air long enough. But it's long enough to have given me a very nasty head cold - I had a sore throat the day after the flight but thought I'd escaped because everyone's got their heating on at the moment. Not a bit of it - by Sunday afternoon it was a full on nasal catastrophe, and the thought of leaving the house to share the germs with the ladies of the Long Buckby machine knitting club just didn't appeal (and yes, that was my last "holiday" of 2024, ugh). I'm finally on the mend today and honestly can't be bothered to go through the hoo-hah of cancelling holiday to commute it to sick as I'm running out of days to take this year. Seriously people, did you learn nothing in 2020, or do you just not give a damn about others?
On that note I popped to Sainsburys today to pick up a few items and get petrol, and got a very odd look from an older lady on my way out of the store because I was wearing a mask. It's not COVID, I tested - I had that ealier this year, and if it's 'flu it wasn't the one I got vaccinated for - usually I get 'flu as an awful ugh feeling with no respiratory symptoms. Maybe I just looked ill, who knows?
On a more positive note, before all of this kicked off, we took a Dutch friend on a whistle-stop tour of Birmingham, Coventry and Rugby. This bull is now installed at New Street station (the shopping centre is Grand Central but I'm pretty sure the train station name hasn't changed despite seeing information to the contrary online). It was part of the commonwealth games - it moves its head and eyelids. Originally I think it breathed smoke too. I've just been reading the comments under that video, wow! Lots of folks reading devil worship into what happens to be a symbol from Birmingham's flag!
The New Street bull, no longer flammable
Current mood: 
lethargic
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