More quickies

I am barrelling along with my Central Park Hoody and managed to finish my first ball of wool on a trip to London a couple of weeks back, but then it occurred to me that Christmas was almost upon me and I should get on with some gift knitting.

So here it all is....

A cupcake for Pam at work for secret Santa...Pam is the staffroom mummy and always nagging us to bring in cakes for Friday breaktime, so I knitted her this. Well, I knitted her another one after this because I made several fairly serious mistakes with my first attempt (pictured) and I wasn't happy.

In the course of this, I discovered that the local Poundland stocks soft acrylic in DK and a wide range of colours, for only £1 per 100g. How exciting! This means I can buy some pale lemon balls to knit Mother Hand a sweater she wants and can't find to buy.

Then, I bought some suede lacing and made my friend Kath a whip...


...it's not quite finished because I needed cable ties and I only just got some. This was really fun to make and super easy; the 30m I bought made 2 with a bit leftover, although that doesn't really add up because the tails account for 12m and then there's a knitted bit, and with 7m left over....well, you don't have to be great at maths to work out that perhaps Jillybead sent me too much.



Finally, I knitted Ali a beaded cuff bracelet...

SO. Pretty. I love it! It was really fiddly to start with, and I couldn't do the tapered end I wanted to, but happily the project takes to shaping and wiring together at the end, so I was happy with it in the end.

I have now cast on for Mr Z's binary scarf: I was putting it off, since I've never done Fairisle and have no desire to. But I think it will be OK. I'd like to finish Binary and CPH over the Christmas break; you never know. I also need to find something for friend Jo, who I don't want to feel excluded when I dole out knitted gifts to Ali and Kath. I think I will make her some reusable facial pads and a little mesh bag to wash them in. Time is running out, though.

It's the last day of term for the kids today. We finish in about 1 hour and 19 minutes. Roughly. It can't come quick enough. Last night I took my tutor group out on a trip, where I was almost thwarted at every turn by incompetents at both Pizza Hut and Bowlplex (if only I could find the time/energy to write a letter of complaint), and spent much of my time trying to prevent the boys from feeding all their money into the fruit machines. Now they're back. I will come back and add to this later today, after I've consumed a bottle of chenin blanc in the bath.

Edit: I was in such a hurry I forgot to add the pictures, even!

When I got home, I had a 2 hour bath and a 3 hour nap, and I'm now coddled in a duvet watching Die Hard and thinking every day should be like this one. I have been feeling positively inhuman for the past couple of weeks; to quote Bilbo Baggins, "Like butter spread over too much bread." I couldn't catch up on everything by the end of term and this put me in an even worse mood. Plus, on Monday I had to drive down to Calshot for a one-hour course to refresh my knowledge of ski bindings. This utterly pointless waste of time involved a 4-hour round trip and when I arrived and the instructor said, "Wow! You've come along way - do you have to come all the way down here?" I had to restrain myself. I tell you, sometimes it feels like I've had more training in the name of this damn ski trip than I did to become a teacher. Hopefully it will all be worth it, and I won't end up having 2 weeks off with an ear infection afterwards, like last year. With 6 staff members to 32 kids we should have enough leeway for some evenings off.

Anyway. Tomorrow is TD day and I managed to avoid fire extinguisher training (the story goes, that the head didn't put anybody in History on that list because we're in mobiles and they'll go up so quickly if they catch alight that we won't be able to use an extinguisher; how comforting) and first aid training, so I have an entire day of faculty time stretching ahead of me, a prospect that I find disturbingly thrilling. Ian doesn't seem to have a great deal planned, so I am hoping to get some reports written and some marking done, and then slope off a little early to the Limpley Stoke hotel for the Christmas party. I'm even more thrilled at this. For the first time, I'll be stopping over in the hotel, and not even driving home the next day. I feel a very drunken night coming on.

Also tomorrow, in my absence, we can expect the arrival of Mother Hand's latest silly purchase. Now, I don't really think it's silly - I just think she is. When I went to see her in London for her birthday a couple of weeks back (note to self: never again - London on a Saturday in December = NOT FUN) she handed me an envelope wrapped in wedding paper and was barely able to contain herself as I opened it to reveal....delivery instructions fo a pink Smeg fridge freezer. I'm rarely speechless, but on this occasion, I didn't know what to say. How exciting! We've been putting off doing the kitchen since we got married, but may have to move on that soon, since the new fridge freezer will not fit neatly into the space left by the old one.