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That picture there? Christmas Eve dinner. So delicious. That’s exactly what I wanted. Didn’t care about presents, just wanted the fish. And boy did I get my fish. :D (It’s a bit odd really, that I can’t find fish I like here in the UK. It’s an island for crying out loud! There should be lots of fish. But no, I can’t find fish I like. /rant)

Anyway, December happened. The dance comp kinda threw off my blogging groove. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. The snow came, then I worked tons of overtime to make up for not going to work because of the snow and then for leaving early to fly to Finland for Christmas and then we were short staffed and really, I was just plain tired most days. So I knit. And did not blog. And played lots of Rock Band 3. O & I spent New Year’s Eve by playing Rock Band 3 and Halo with two of our friends. (Well, the boys played Halo. I played Civ5 on my laptop.) Oh and a pipe burst in our kitchen the day that I left! So that was interesting news when I spoke with O the following day. Things are fine now. Our landlords are really great. We have a problem? They try to fix it asap.

I’m still planning on getting a bookcase and O wants a games table, so it looks like we’ll be going to IKEA at some point (unless I can find them in a charity shop first). I have cleaned out the yellow room a bit and now I’ve got plans for that, but I’ll need O’s help so that might not happen for awhile. And if I rearrange stuff up in the purple room, then I might be able to turn that into my little sewing corner.

I have finally updated my Rav projects. Pictures have been uploaded. Lots of pretty things. And speaking of knitting, I’ve just finished a pair of socks! The very first pair for 2011 was Cookie A’s Pointelle pattern. The yarn I used was Cascade Heritage Sock that I bought while in Chicago a few months ago. I’ve already cast on something else, but I won’t talk about that until it’s ready for its debut. I will be needing test knitters again, if anyone wants to volunteer?

Just made my first snow angel of the season. :D I didn’t go to work today. I did try. Got up at 7am as usual, made breakfast, got dressed, packed my lunch, all the while watching BBC Breakfast and checking Twitter and travel websites for updates. Katie also happened to be on Twitter while I was doing all this and tried checking bus websites if there was any news for me. Turns out that the almost foot of snow that we got was enough to grind everything to a halt in Sheffield. Even the very few buses that were reported as running limited services (none of which reached my neck of the woods as far as I could tell) were cancelled by 9:30am (and still aren’t running as I type this at approx 2pm). So even if I had made it to work, I don’t think I would’ve made it back by bus. And I really don’t fancy the idea of walking over 3 miles in almost knee-deep snow.

We cleared off our car last night at about 6pm. This is what it looked like at 7:30-ish this morning:

Doesn’t really look like we did anything at all. And we cleared it off again just now, but since it’s still snowing, it’ll probably look like that again in a few hours. But yay for snow angels! Later I might try convincing O that we need to build a snowman in our back garden. :D

Well, I’m back from Chicago. Spent a week with my older sister’s family. Awesome time. They predicted snow for Thanksgiving, but none fell. So guess what I came home to? The above! That’ll sure make tomorrow’s trip to work interesting. I took today off to help with recovering from jet lag, so I haven’t really left the house since bringing our car home yesterday. I know I’m not experienced enough to even try driving in that, so it’ll have to be the bus for me. If they’re running that is. According to Travel South Yorkshire they aren’t running right now, so who knows what the case’ll be in the morning.

And with that, the rest of my updating will have to wait until later. Now, it’s time for bed (since I still do need to try to get to work, even if the weather’s not ideal).

Those of you who follow me on Twitter or Plurk already know this: a bus hit my car on Saturday. The car was parked and we weren’t in it at the time. It hit the rear of the car, so now there’s a dent and some scratches. After a few days of playing phone tag with the bus company, the manager came out to see the car last night. His first response after seeing the damage: “Yep, that’s us. Sorry love.” So they’ll fix it.

As a thank you for the neighbor who saw it happen and got all of the details for us, I’m baking. Tonight, it’s mocha brownies from the book I got for Christmas from O’s sister. And tomorrow morning I’ll bake some peanut butter cookies. We’ve got to head out to O’s parents’ place to give O’s dad his birthday present, so I’m dropping off the baked goodies then (we were parked outside of O’s parents’ place when the bus hit the car).

I’ve never met the neighbor, but his dad was my driving instructor, so it could be an interesting visit tomorrow.

I got some very good mail yesterday. I bought some perfume from a destash and as an extra, she threw in that yarn. It’s perfect for my blanket (I’ve actually run out of leftovers so this is a great help for keeping my blanket going while I knit up other stuff). I’ve already tried out two of the perfumes (one yesterday, one today) and they’re exactly what I’d hoped. So yay! ^_^

Those books in the background are O’s sister’s. She lent them to me back in August and only today have I been able to start on them. I blame Lucy for lending me her copy of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. That is such a good book and it immediately jumped to the front of the queue. But I finished that this morning, waking up at 7:10 (thanks to the clocks falling back an hour, otherwise it would’ve been 8:10am) and then just zooming through what I had left of the book. So now, it’s back to reading about vampires. I’ll be starting with the Sookie books since I’m about halfway through the series already so it makes sense to finish those off before moving on to other books.

As for knitting, it’s still all secret stuff. Except for the socks that I’m about to cast on as soon as I’m done with this post. Those will be for me. I’ve decided to only make socks for me unless people request them.

Proof that my Snow White is done! Whenever I’ve put it on, I haven’t wanted to take it off. The yarn is so soft and warm. ^_^ The knitting went really quickly (I’ve never finished the body of a sweater in just two days before this!) and the only thing that slowed me down was trying to find the right sized circs for the sleeves. Some people on Ravelry have said that they probably would’ve knit a size up because they’re not used to sweaters being so close fitting, but I knew going in that this one would have 2" negative ease on me so I expected it to be tighter than my other sweaters. I probably won’t knit it again because I really don’t need two sweaters that are identical, even if they are different colors. But I do recommend the pattern. Really easy to follow and I didn’t find any mistakes in the size I knit (40"). The only thing I had to look up was how to do the picot bind off and then play around until I found the right amount of sts and where to place them to get the look that I wanted.

Finally a picture of my finished Polly Jeans (there are more pics and details on my Rav projects page)! Or well, of me just wearing one. It’s been a pretty wet and dreary day here, so it was hard to find good light. Turns out that the best light was on the kitchen counter. And that’s exactly where my foot is. You can see in the background the paper towel roll and the black wire is connected to the fridge (which is why I didn’t unplug it to move it away from the background!). All in all, these socks were fine to knit. Not awesome, just fine. The repeat is easily memorized, but I kept messing up on the heel flaps (had to rip back both flaps at least twice and I wasn’t even knitting these at the same time). And I forgot to do the pretty toe pattern decrease and by the time I noticed that, I’d already kitchenered the toe so I just decided to make the second one to match.

My dad texted me yesterday. Apparently, it has snowed in Finland and he just wanted to let me know how great it is wearing the hat I knit for him last year as a Christmas present. I take it this means that my mom hasn’t managed to throw it in the washing machine and felt into a little bowl (just a little worry of mine ever since she felted the socks I knit for her (Twisted Flower by Cookie A) and the Baudelaires (also by Cookie A) I knit for Jaz).

And finally, a sweater update: Snow White is progressing. I now have a sleeve and the second one has been cast on. I’m hoping to get the cuff done by tonight so by next weekend I should have a finished sweater. Yay.

That is my little collection of tea. There’s tea from the Sip N Stitch shipments (the third tea is in the container that’s next to the coffee grinder) and tea from Palais des Thes in Brussels. There’s more tea in the cupboard (ie O’s Earl Grey). The whole reason why I’m showing all this? I went on a little cleaning spree yesterday. I took everything out of the cupboard, cleaned it (found licorice that expired in Dec 2008!), and decided I should rearrange everything so that there’d be more counter space. So now, instead of hiding all of my tea, that’s out on display and all the ugly stuff that was cluttering the counters? In the cupboard all neatly organized. I hadn’t realized how much I disliked being in the kitchen until after I’d cleaned it thoroughly. Now there’s more space and I don’t feel claustrophobic. Things won’t to topple over when you walk by. In hindsight, I probably should’ve taken a a before picture just so you all could see how bad it was. Oh well, too late for that.

In knitting news, I finally cast on Snow White yesterday. I’ve already completed the waist decreases and if I remember correctly, on the next round I’ll be starting the panel bits at the front. It is such a fast knit. But I do need to be doing something else at the same time, like listening to podcasts or watching TV, because 2x2 ribbing can get boring. It’s a good thing I’m working with Malabrigo. It’s like a dream to knit with. No splitting, it’s fairly even, sooooooooo soft.

The baby stuff still has no buttons, the squares are coming along slowly (which reminds me that I need to update the counter thing), my Polly Jean socks are nearing completion and I’ve already decided what my next portable project will be. Can’t say what it is because it’s a Christmas present and I don’t know if they read this, but it’ll be pretty that’s for sure. I guess I should also get a move on O’s hat. It’s starting to get chilly here so he might need it soon…

Where have I been? Cursing a certain yarn and the baby stuff that was requested to be knit in it. Seriously, the yarn is the most awful stuff ever. Especially when one loves stitch definition and this yarn has none. None at all. The stitch definition thing is also why I try to avoid mohair and angora. I want to see stitches!

Anyway, now that the baby knitting is finally done, I can catch up on my blogging. Ages ago I got my final Sip’n’Stitch tea shipment:

Don’t know what the yarn wants to be yet. The second shipment definitely wants to be socks (even now, after fraternizing with the other yarn in the stash). This one hasn’t made up its mind yet. I haven’t tried out the tea or the soap yet either, but they smell divine. I’m really happy with this shipment. Just a bit sad that I won’t be participating in the next round of Sip’N’Stitch (coffee again).

Then last weekend was the Wool & Textile event that my LYSO organises every year. I went there in search of 470 yards of worsted weight to make a Peaks Island Hood by Ysolda and 6mm needles. I got the needles from Wingham Woolworks’ stall (and I resisted buying more fibre), but I didn’t find the yarn. But I did come home with this:

That green yarn is 4ply 100% lambswool (I think the color’s called Stonehenge?). It’ll be paired with a pretty yellow (Marzipan) to make colorwork mittens. And the yellow will also be paired with an orange-y red (Spice) to make another pair of mittens. Those two colors were in stock at the fair, but Jill (LYSO) said that she’ll order them in and let me know when she’s got them. Can’t wait!

I’ve also recently broken down and bought Lady Gaga’s The Fame Monster album (which we listen to in the car) and now I can’t get the songs out of my head. So darn catchy.

Sadly, I had to rip out the above sock. The pattern and yarn combination just wasn’t working for me. I let it sit for about a week and last night I cast on again. This is what I’ve got now:

A much better fit, don’t you think?