Tuesday Ten

Ten things I like about December

1. The weather. Unpopular I know, but I like it when it is cold and dark. I get to wear all of my handknits and I don't overheat running for the bus. When I was walking home tonight it was still foggy and had just got properly dark, and the air was like velvet.

2. Being able to get away with wearing a Santa hat. Instant cheer.

3. The Christmas work wind-down. There's a race to get everything done before the holidays that makes me really productive.

4. The (seemingly now annual) Christmas shopping trip to The Most Middle Class Service Station In England, ie the one of the M5 near Gloucester. We went last year, bought, ate, then drove to the next junction and stopped at the one on the other side on the way back. Epic cheese. Great gin.

5. The school Christmas party/night out. Being so tired it feels like your face is swollen but also abandoning all cares because you know that it doesn't matter how late a night it is, you've got two weeks off. Of course, all my holidays are welcome, but the winter one especially so.

6. Christmas decorations. Especially robins. Making an effort to light the scented candles and the tea lights and switch the lava lamp on. Tinsel and Christmas cards.

7. Christmas Lush. Their Christmas range has been something for me to pore over for at least a decade now. I miss when Aliboo and I used to go to the first day of their sale and sit on the doorstep with cookies and hot water bottles from 7am to get the best bargains. We stopped doing that around the time they started opening on Boxing Day, but I still try to buy myself a Christmas box each December...not least because I like to use them for yarn storage.

8. Carols. Quite excited that my new school has a compulsory carol concert. I'm looking forward to hooting my way through God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.

9. Epic Christmas food prep. The lemon curd. The mincemeat chelsea buns. The tunis cake. Having the time to make croissants. Eating almost nothing but satsumas, cold meat, cheese and pickles for 10 days in a row. Delightful.

10. Being able to veg. I sometimes complain that Christmas is irritating because it gets in the way of a perfectly good holiday - shopping and life admin is made more difficult by having several days in the middle where everything stops. But I think that's a bit humbug of me. If there are ever a few days when doing nothing is entirely permissible, I think this is them.
Except my tax return. That still needs to be done.

Blue Monday

It's been frosty and cold of late (though apparently this is about the change). It put me in mind of the winter of 2010, when it was foggy for about 5 days and there was frost upon frost upon frost. Delightfully pretty, though not delightful to drive in.

Not blue in the most traditional sense, but my fingers certainly were.

Weekend FO: Stripey Cardigan

I finally finished the button band for this yesterday at knitting group, and then weaved in all the ends and sewed on the buttons last night.

Pattern: Shapely Boyfriend, by Stefanie Japel via Knitty
Yarn: Fivemoons Diana Aran - 50% merino, 50% silk, 100% snug delight. Somewhere approaching seven skeins.
Needle: 5mm, 4mm
Mods: I don't think I went on for quite as long in the body as she suggests (in a complete break with tradition). I knitted the sleeves longer so I could have fold back cuffs. I added (I think) one additional row to the button band to make up for the big buttons.

I am a big fan of the silvery buttons, which add just the right amount of bling in my opinion. We agree yesterday at knitting group that five looked better than six, so I have one to spare which is now sitting patiently in a drawer; but when I examined all the ones from the card, this one turned out to have a large crack in it, so perhaps it is for the best anyway.

I thought these were the first buttons I ever bought from Brimstone but my Ravelry stash page lists them as from Now Beads. I have never even heard of Now Beads. I'm going with Brimstone because the handwriting on the card was the same.

Stash-diving: a shameful confession

This evening I had cause to rummage through my stash at length. I was in search of some Blue Sky Alpacas Suri Merino, now wound ready for a hat for Sib. This wasn't listed on my index cards, so I doggedly searched through box after box of yarn, assuming I had forgotten to list it in the last reorganisation.

It wasn't until I reached the last box that I realised its omission was probably due to the fact it was stored in the secret compartment under the boxes of yarn. This holds most of my delinquent WIPs, the Rowan Damask I stockpiled upon its discontinuation and a number of other yarn purchases I have moreorless forgotten about. I rummaged deep.

In the process of this rummaging, my hand, delved deep into the depths of the compartment, hit upon a tangle. It was a big'un. I pulled....it was...

Sorry about the thumb blur. I think my hands were shaking.

Because there were TWO of them.

Long-time readers of the blog may recall my triumphant post of September last year, in which I declared that the Yorkshire Tweed was all wound, and in which I stipulated a stash of roughly 1500m. At the time I remember feeling a bit sad as the realisation that this had not been the bargain I thought it was, having spent £30 on the original purchase. It's looking a bit more bargainous now, I must admit.

I haven't told Mr Z yet. I'm not sure our marriage is strong enough to withstand the news.

In other news, I must make sure this Christmas's reorganisation and cataloguing of stash includes absolutely every last ball.

Strictly: My Dance of the Night

(In a repetition of last week's bungle, I inadvertently forgot to hit publish on this one. Forgive me my tardiness.)

This week was musicals week and, while I really wanted to pick Claudia and AJ as they are my favourites, in the end, I found Louise and Kevin more entertaining. And it is an entertainment show, after all.



I do love musicals. I thought the whole episode was really well put together.

Dubsmash

In my ongoing effort to remain at least somewhat down with the kids, I've been playing with Dubsmash a bit this year. It's really simple. There's a soundtrack, you mime over it, that's basically it.

There was the tribute.

There was 'trying to be funny late on a Friday night'

There were the school trips.

There was being Maria.

Luckily for you, that is all I have downloaded. There were several musical ones and even one involving the cat. To say I have fun with it would be an understatement.

In related news, my Snapchat experimentation buddy Vikki and I have had a great week playing with the voice changer filters and having some competitive teacher whinging. Suffice to say we find each other highly amusing.

Throwback Thursday

This song cycled round on my mp3 player on the way home this afternoon. I drove Mother Hand absolutely nuts when this came out by recording it off the radio onto a tape and playing it over and over again in the car. I think this must have been the summer we went to Cornwall. That's a long car journey.



Anyway, because I'm a geek there's a line in this that makes me chuckle about how dated it is. The second verse is all about how he thinks his best friend probably knocked up his wife. Very hmmm. But he points out that they were so close they had the same blood type.

Pre-genome, of course. That was the only way you could test paternity, back in the day (explained for the benefit of any youngsters).

It does make me chuckle. Makes very little sense now. Still quite enjoy listening to it, though.