Weekend FO and a rant

And there, you thought I wasn't going to post one this week....


Pattern: Baby Poonam, free pattern from the Berrocco Design Team (and it is Poonam, as I thought, and not Poonan, as in the URL - though I will tag it wrong anyway, because I tagged it wrong last entry).
Needle: 3.5mm wooden Knitpicks, 4mm nickel ones (bought them for a change because the 4mm wooden tips are tied up in something mulching at the bottom of my knitting bag...I like them).
Yarn: Wendy Peter Pan, lemon yellow. Less than one ball, so it must have been a 100g ball to start with. Of course I lost the ball band.
Mods: I didn't make any. I made a couple of mistakes - well, one very noticable mistake anyway, with the knotted cable on the right side, and I made a shocking job of picking up the stitches for the collar, but other than that, the pattern was knitted as is. Except that, I wasn't quite getting gauge, so I knitted the smallest size widthways and the middle size lengthways. It measured up right at the end.

This didn't take too long to knit - less than a week for the front and sleeves - but it feels like a long project, because I cast on for the back in January. I think the finished sweater is cute but I wasn't very happy with it while I was going - I only finished it because it was for Jen. I don't think knitting in pastels agrees with me. This might be why I'm never going to finish that beige chicken viking hat I started a couple of weeks ago.

Found some cute buttons for the shoulder though - check it....
















It's the day for the Tuesday 10, I know, but I have been procrastinating all evening long and it's now 10.53, and I must plan my lessons for tomorrow, and get to bed. So you'll get some waffle, and you'll be happy with it.

I was VERY ANGRY tonight. I watched James Gray, MP for Nroth Wilts, on BBC Points West, trying to whip up some public fury against a community of Irish travellers who have purchased a piece of land in Hullavington and moved onto it without waiting for planning permission.

Honestly, I have never been more shocked by a piece of reporting. His comments were nothing short of racist. He called the Romany "Romanian gypsies" at one point (at that one point, the TV might have been smashed had I had something to hand for throwing). He also said that all "gypsies" (there really is no place for that word when talking about travellers, surely?) should live on the same site, even though the new ones from Ireland don't get on with the Romany - apparently he doesn't think that's a good enough reason for them to have their own site (which, let us not forget, they have LEGALLY PURCHASED).

Perhaps next he will go to Gaza and tell the Palestinians and Israelis they shall live next to each other and that's the end of it. Seriously, with insight and diplomatic skills like that, he could have the Arab-Israeli conflict wrapped up in seconds.

Why is it OK to persecute travellers? Even if one thinks they were wrong to break the law and move there without planning permission, surely it's not OK to talk about them like that on the news? What about if a group of Jewish people moved onto a piece of land and the locals leafletted "Get the Insertanti-semiticslurhere OUT!"
That wouldn't be acceptable. Why is it acceptable because they're travellers? The Romany are still a race.

Have just realised they have moved very close to where my head of department lives. I'll ask him what he thinks about it tomorrow. And I'll ask him what he thinks of the MP.

Friday blues

It's a very grey day outside - in fact, it's been drizzly all week, after an unusually sunny Bank Holiday Monday. I haven't marked any coursework, mainly due to the fact that I'm into day 4 of the first cold of the school year, which has now settled into a grinding cough - but at least I haven't slept most of today, as I have during the rest of the week. Henry the Ka is refusing to start, probably due to some blockage in the fuel line or maybe the fuel pump or something. And worst of all, I just found out that my favourite Playscheme kid died this morning after several weeks of illness. I am gutted.

My favourite story about him is this....his mum dropped him off one morning looking very tired and when we asked if she was OK, she started laughing. It seems she'd got J into her room - on the third floor of her home - and they'd been playing, when the phone rang, and she went to answer it. While she was down there, J...made very good use of his nappy, shall we say....and then managed to get it off, and had a good roll around on her white-linened bed, and then decided to investigate where Mummy had gone, so dragged himself down three flights of white-carpeted stairs - on his bum.

She said she was cleaning until nearly 2am and crying the whole time, but all the while she was telling us this story she was giggling away and ended with a "Serves me right for having white carpets!"

I suppose this is part of the territory when you work with special needs children, but it's still a very sad business.

Hey ho.

I am starting to be a bit concerned that I won't FO anything this month, which would break my good habits of 2009. So far I have six FOs for this year, and I have another seven projects OTNs - although three are in very deep hibernation, and one I began as a ski hat and don't like how it has turned out so I will probably just not finish it....and not frog it either, because it was 50p yarn from Shaw's.

I have been working hard on the Baby Poonan for Jen's baby (which she had a couple of weeks ago - a girl, Abigail, over 9lbs, difficult birth but mother and daughter both blooming now) but I am not so keen on how it is turning out and I made a mistake with one of the cables and couldn't fix it so I am not very motivated to finish. I've also been working hard on Liesl, a stashbusting lace cardigan I started in February with the yarn left over from the Central Park Hoody - but, even though it grows quick, the feather and fan pattern is kind of dull and it's hard to keep up the hard work on that, too.

Still, I have knitting group tomorrow and a burning desire to finish SOMEthing for the month of April, so watch this space.

Embarrassingly, I totally misread the pattern for Liesl, and decided I would email the designer on ravelry to correct her mistake, on the basis that I would like to know if it was me. I double and triple checked and was certain it was an error in the pattern. I sent the message - and then almost instantly saw that I was wrong and had to send a second message saying sorry. I never heard back. I have the urge now to buy all her patterns as a way of apologising for my mistake.