Friday, March 20, 2009

Seriously?

Wow, I had to blog this article
I really hope that this is a tongue-in-cheek sarcastic article (I know, it’s American and they get sarcasm about as well as they get irony, in general)
I love the idea of an organic veggie garden at the White House – that’s what I’d do if I had all that space! No, the article must be a send up. Right?

Saturday, March 14, 2009

It's been a while...

...ten days in fact.

I spent last weekend in Bristol for a friend's birthday. Because I hadn't been to Bristol before, and because it was a four hour train journey to get there, OH and I decided to make a weekend of it. He was already on a course in Gloucestershire. He organised the hotel (so I didn't have to worry about it), he told me to get a cab from the station.
So, I had the rudest cabbie in the world! I got in (after my 4 hours on the train) and asked him for the Marriott Hotel, the one near the cathedral. He says, "which one love, you tell me" - I was astounded. I got my bit of paper out and confirmed the address. But seriously, it was right next to the cathedral and it's not like there's more than one cathedral in Bristol! What a pain!
The hotel, on the other hand, was fab. It was beautiful, the bed was massive, the room was nice and well furnished, clean, etc.
Our friend had offered to make us chilli for tea. After all the journeying that was very welcome. We got a bit lost trying to find the flat, but we got there in the end. The chilli was very nice, and we had a lovely chat before heading back for bed.

The hotel breakfast was great! I had full English, croissants, fruit and a smoothie, tea and orange juice!
Since we were in Bristol, I had to make a trip to Get Knitted in Brislington. We got a £3.70 bus ticket which allowed us to travel on the buses all day. Get Knitted was awesome! They have everything! Literally!
I bought some Malabrigo and some Blue Sky Alpacas Silk and Alpaca. This is the Alpaca. The Malabrigo is already on the way to being a VLT scarf. Both are lush. I was tempted to buy so many things, but those really grabbed me!
Bus drivers in Bristol, unlike the Cabbie, were all amazing. They'd tell people which stops were for what, and were chipper in the face of hail storms and rude people. Smashing! Well done Bristol Bus Drivers!

Then we went to the zoo. We met a butterfly with good taste in yarn and saw gorillas and penguins and lemurs. Our camera died so some of the photos were taken with my phone. Bristol Mosaic 1. Pelican, 2. Meercats?, 3. Clifton Suspension Bridge, 4. SS Great Britain, 5. Butterflies, 6. Butterflies, 7. Flamingo, 8. Pygmie Hippo, 9. Penguins

Karaoke on the Saturday night was great! The SS Great Britain and the Clifton Bridge were Sunday visits before our more-than-four-hour train journey home.
I've been a bit under the weather since then, so not much blogging.

Anyway, I'm off back to my malabrigo now. TTFN.

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Stst

Sometimes all you want is stockinette. I have several projects on the go which are complicated in some way (cables, lace and slip-stitch-colourwork).

Although I enjoy knitting these, they’re not really ideal for television-knitting (or pub knitting to some degree). February is now over, and March is not for Finishing. So I cast on some more socks. I decided to use some of the yarn I dyed myself last year. I’ve decided to make plain socks, loosely based on the Yarn Harlot’s sock recipe. I’m using “It’s black, Jim”. I dyed that one using black food colouring (and pink and green) but the black separated out into purples and browns and even electric blue in one place. It’s knitting up into 1-row stripes, if I can find the camera* I’ll take a photo.

OH is off on a course at the moment. It’s very odd having the house to myself. Even though I’m free to play on the consoles or use both computers at once, or whatever, I decided to catch up on my recorded telly and knit the plain sock. I watched Who Do You Think You Are, which was pretty good, then two episodes of CSI:CSI. I’m now caught up, nothing left on the box to watch.

* I remember having it in my bag in Cambridgeshire, and we took it to Edinburgh but failed to use it...

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Bad Blogger

Ah, I had a massive post full of stuff to talk about, but it seems a bit old mostly. So, here are some nice pictures for you. Blog Catchup To summarise:
I participated in the Igor swap on Ravelry and got really spoiled. P&E's wedding was fun. The shawl looked good. I have new glasses. Progress has been made on the sweater(s) and socks. I cast on some new socks on March 1st. I'm at the heel - they're just plain socks. I can do it from memory now I think. We got a new telly, since the old one blew up. OH got a haircut.
That's it really.