Back Again

On the left above my DH June 1952 to August 2009. Sorely missed, there is a hole in my heart that will never heal. The suddenness of his death was such a huge shock to all, we are still trying to make some sense of it.

I tried moving this photo but blogger is not cooperating today so I'll let it stay where it is.

I've been gone a long time, I just haven't been able to write anything without getting emotional. However I decided it was time to get back in the saddle as they say. I have been getting on with my life and I have good days and bad days. I have been sorting and clearing, bags of stuff to charity and boxes of books to charity book shops too. Most of the stuff so far has been my own, I haven't as yet boxed up DH's clothes, in some ways it is comforting to still have them around.

I now have a brand new car, picked it up from the dealers last Friday, and both of the other cars are now gone. It was a difficult process, letting his car go, like finally saying he was gone.

I'm looking at houses and have seen one that I am tempted to put an offer on, but it feels like a very big step.

Knitting has been continuing all the time and I will have a lot to update you all about on that front in the not too distant future but for now I have no photos to share. I have finished 2 sweaters recently - well all but the sewing up. Have finished a pair of socks, unfortunately I am going to have to frog the first of them totally as it is a disaster. I also have a single sock done using one of the zuberballs (probably spelt that all wrong). Have also started another sweater that has been on my project list - this one is in Noro Silk Garden. No photos of any of these so I will try to take a day, probably after Christmas, and do a lot of snapping then try to feed them in here over a period of time.

I have been teaching my cleaner to knit socks and she loves it. Taken to it like the proverbial duck to water. She is now accumulating her own stash of sock yarn, she is addicted. We try to share a bit of knitting and a coffee at the end of her work. I'm also teaching her lots of other techniques, she has no one else to teach her, so last week I taught her how to cable and yesterday she used my swift and ball winder to wind 3 skeins I gave her for a shawl.

My entries here will probably be intermittent yet for a while as I am busy trying to get things sorted still. SIL and her husband are coming over for 5 days from 28th so I am trying really hard to achieve a number of things before they arrive. Of course the days being so short seems to make the amount of work achieved each day very little.

Signing off for now. Keep safe, take joy in your loved ones, never forget how fragile life can be.

Nothing Can Express

My sense of loss...............

On 20th August my life changed forever. My Dear Husband of 30 years suffered a massive and totally unexpected heart attack and was just gone. I've been keeping going, getting through things, and there are are lot of things to get through... settling all the finances and then will come sorting the house.

I may not be blogging for a while but I am following all of you out there, reading your blogs and keeping up to date. I'm still knitting as I need that to keep me going. I have good friends and family 'keeping an eye' on me as it were but nothing can replace the constant companionship and love we had. I will always miss him.

Malabrigo - soft, softer, softest

I love Malabrigo yarn. It must be one of the softest yarns I have ever snuggled up to. I have this sweater in my basket of 'resting' WIPs, it's been resting for about 2 years and I had an urge to go back to it as a rest from the shawl. The back was finished and the front was well underway. So I've been working on it again this past week or so and have finished the front. It is of course in Malabrigo, colour Loro Barenquero. You can see the change in the colour striation when the back narrows in at the armholes.



The front has a large central cable, not too easy to see due to the colour. The cable then splits up the neck edges. So where the central cable was 16 stitches, each of the neckline cables is 8 stitches.


The finished neckline is actually a wrapover which is knit as a separate rectangle and then sewn in. It is a Lana Grossa pattern which I have had to size up, their patterns are typically only sized for anorexic runway models.

I own a bought sweater with this same neckline, which I love, so when I came across this pattern I had to knit it for myself. Of course it hadto be done in something so cozy and soft, what better than Malabrigo.

Now for a quick update on other things. First my car passed it's MOT, clear for another year. Just over a week ago we had a thunderstorm in the area and we had a lightening strike which blew out our phone master socket and all the equipment connected into it, which included 2 brand new DECT phones and the modem in our SKY+ box. (Actually it affected more than us and the engineers have been out replacing lines which were melted) We're still watching TV OK but without the modem the box can't dial back so they won't see the box plugged in. Eventually we will get a letter from sky complaining that our 2 boxes are not connected to the same phone line (we have sky multi-room with a really old box in our family room). Maybe it is time to go to SKY HD, probably cheaper to buy a new HD box than cough up for an engineer to fix the existing box. More expense, new phones and new Sky box.

SIL and her husband are visiting for 10 days. Luckily they are staying with MIL as DH has come down with something, came home on Friday evening feeling unwell and has been running a temp all weekend. So no outings with the visitors until he gets better.

So to finish on a brighter note here is a flash of some stash acquired last month.

This is Posh Yarn Diana 2ply (lace) in colour Grotto, it is part of a shawl kit. I also got another skein of Diana in a different colour but I'll save that for another day.

Considering all the expenditure recently, with more to come I'm going to have to go on a strict yarn diet for the foreseeable future. Just lucky I have a large yarn stash to shop from then isn't it.

Bits and Pieces

As usual there is knitting progress here but a lot slower than it has been for a while. I fairly zipped through the last couple of big projects (even though the sewing up isn't done yet) and now Lepidoptera is only going at snails pace.

Here's the latest progress shot.


I took this just before I started to introduce the 3rd colour and have now completed the 12 row transition into that 3rd colour. There is now a gentle hint of lilac starting to appear in the orange, but I haven't taken a photo of that yet. The rows are getting longer and longer so it takes longer and longer to work each of the rows. I find I can't do much at a time as my hands are tiring and cramping a bit working with fine circulars. I will have to rest them to get the kinks out. Perhaps I'll resurrect a WIP on straights to see if the needle change will help.

I met up with Gilraen last week and we had a long lunch talking about knitting, books, films,... She suggested I might like to go along to one of the weekend SNB meetings with her, so I might just do that. While I was having lunch with gilraen my car was in for a service and MOT check, turns out it needed a good bit of work. It is now 8 years old and it is not unexpected that things are wearing out and needing replaced. It doesn't half cost money though AND my big freezer decided to bite the dust at the same time and we had to get a new freezer PDQ. That was a very costly few days.

DH and I went to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince on Saturday night, I enjoyed it very much. SIL and her DH will be visiting MIL from 7th to 17th August so we will have to plan a few excursions while they are here. The Tall Ships will be in Belfast from 13th to 16th so we are going to organise one outing to inculde that.

To conclude here is some stash enhancement from June. Some Posh Yarn, 3 skeins of Martha (80% merino 10% cashmere 10% nylon) 4 ply (fingering) in colour Wheat.

Unfinished Symphony

Photos, I have 'em. I waited until the CLP is mostly pulled together....i.e it is off the needles but not sewn up yet. I'm just one of theose people who doesn't get to the sewing up without a lot of pressure. So the number of WIPs which are at the waiting stage is growing. There will have to be a reckoning one of these days and I will tackle my basket of mostly finished projects (MFPs) and then they will grow into fully fledged Finished Objects. Not yet however. In the meantime here is the penultimate photo of the CLP, the next time you see her she will be all sewn up.....


Just don't hold your breath waiting for the next one. OK so the photo is up to my usual crappy standard, the weather has been so wet and dark and the light so poor it doesn't help my appalling lack of skill. I've changed the neckline, as you may or may not be able to tell from the photo. I decided that as it is going to be a warm sweater I'd make the neck a bit more snuggly. So I did some decreasing and finished out the neck in SS. Then I cast off using 4.5mm needles to enable a nice rollover.

On to the next subject. I wound a couple of skeins of the Sashimi last night and made a start on the Lepidoptera shawl. It doesn't look like much at the moment but it will grow.


This is the first time I've done a triangular shawl but it's only a matter of shape. The knitting is all the same no matter the shape. I'm looking forward to seeing how the gradience dyed yarn makes the shawl change as the colours start to bloom. I need to work 8" of colour 1 before starting to blend on colour 2, and it is a blending process as you have to merge the 2 colours over 8 rows.

I'll give you a peek of one of the 3 little parcels I got last month.


This is my parcel from the Unique Sheep for the Rubber Ducky Club, June shipment. I haven't chosen a pattern for it yet. I think DH will like this as he is a "blue" person so I'll have to pick a pattern he'll like. Shouldn't be too difficult, nothing frilly.

I succumbed to one of the Tilda shawl kits from Posh Yarn a few weeks ago, I'll have to take a photo of that for another post some time.

I'm going to meet up with Gilrean next week, we have not met before but discovered we live relatively close. She goes to some of the knitting get togethers around the country but I have never attended any of these. It will be nice to meet up with someone from the knitting community, I'm usually to be found knitting on my own.

Enough for now, I'll keep you updated on Lepidoptera as she grows. For now I'll have to get back to some decluttering as SIL and her husband are visiting for 10 days next month. I'm going to have to dig the dining room out for underneath a clutter of computer bits, saucepans and yarn...... Here is where it would be nice to be able to conjure up "storage space". Think there's any chance I could wiggle my nose and it would happen? Oh well wishful thinking.

And then there was the White Rabbit.....

Not literally, it just seems like I have followed the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole.

Time has been marching on apace, at such a pace that I coudn't even catch it if I was the world record holder for the 100m sprint.

I have knitting to report but no photos - yet. I'm going to make time over the weekend and get some photos taken to update my projects. My CLP now consists of a finished body and 2 finished sleeves all strung together on the circular needles ready to join for the neck. I need to sew in the sleeves first, but it is nearing completion, photos soon.

I shall be winding my skeins of sashimi in preparation for the lepidoptera shawl. I'm looking forward to seeing how the gradience dyed yarn knits up. As it is triangular I'm expecting to see huge progress to begin with and then it'll get slower and slower as it grows. I'd love to be starting my Sunday cardigan too but I do need a rest from knitting garments, so I think some smaller things for a while. My hands need a rest, they are cramping a bit so I think I'd better have a break before I do damage.

This weekend is a big holiday weekend in Northern Ireland, referred to locally as "The 12th". The 12th July is given over to marches with bands and gatherings of the Loyal Orange Order who celebrate the victory of King William of Orange over King James II at the River Boyne. DH gets 2 days off work so we have a long weekend. The weather forecast is not very promising for the next few days however. As the 12th is a Sunday this year the parades will be taking place on Monday, there will be no marches on Sunday. Whichever day we will be staying at home, enjoying the peace and quiet of the country, well away from the parades.

I was reminded last week about some skirts I'd promised to look out for my BF, so I got them out..... Then I fought my way into a wardrobe that has been blocked in for a while and could not believe what was in it. Well half the contents have now been divided out between a couple of friends, who got a couple of things out of the clear out, and the rest has gone to charity shops. The other half will be tackled at some future stage and I'm sure most if it will end up in charirty shops too, perhaps I'll find room for all the overspill in my bedroom after all.

The two birthday outings last weekend were a great success but it took me days to get over the indigestion and I felt totally exhausted for several days. I feel like I'm getting my energy back so I'll have to turn my attention to some more sorting out again.

We took MIL for a Tepanyaki lunch and she thoroughly enjoyed it, so much so that she spent the afternoon writing a letter to her daughter giving her a full account of the whole thing. We all enjoyed it, perhaps we'll do it again when SIL and husband are over for a visit next month.

Our Saturday evening surprise birthday party went very well. Shirley was totally surprised at the gathering who were waiting for her at the restaraunt. She thought her husband was taking her out for a quiet meal. There was 10 of us and a good evening was had by all. The food was superb and the staff were very good. Her husband had got a cake made with a photo of Shirley as a little girl on it. I think she will be making him pay for that.

I have some photos of the birthdays and of some new parcels I got, of course they are still in the camera. I'll get them all downloaded soon, I have to send Shirley some from her birthday.

Time to go now and catch the last episode of "Torchwood: Children of Earth". I'm looking forward to a new series starting on FX next week ------"TrueBlood", based on the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlene Harris, I've read them all so far.

Nothing to see here

No, nothing at all. Move along now, move right along. That is still no photos. That doesn't mean no progress.

The first sleeve is almost finished, just some final raglan decreases then it goes on the holders along with the front and back stitches. The sleeve looks remarkably like the front and back, just narrower anyway, so just look at the other photos and use your imagination.

I thought I'd get in a quick post though as I will be extremely busy over the next few days and I didn't want any of you out there to think I'd fallen off the planet (haha). I will hopefully get some knitting in but I don't see any photos happening. I'm out tomorrow then I need to spend most of Thursday get me sorted for Birthday Friday and Saturday(now that is a big job). Come Sunday I'll be glad to rest up and very probably not eat.

So nothing more here until next week. I promise I will have some photos then.