'Summer' travels

It's been a long time again hasn't it? Tut, tut! I have been busy trying to make the most of what summer there was here this year...

Turned out there wasn't much summer to be had though :o( I did brave two weekends away camping though - both of which were affected by heavy, heavy rain at various points.

The first was to North Wales - we took the train from Birmingham up to Porthmadog and stayed for a long weekend there - even tried to climb Snowdon but didn't quite make it - we got to about 913m but would have missed the bus back to Porthmadog if we'd carried on to the summit so we had to turn back (having to rely on public transport can cause the strangest of problems!)

The second trip was to Edale - travelled there by train again for some easier walking. I still managed to sprain my ankle on the top of Kinder Scout which fortunately didn't spoil the weekend but put me out of action and in a very bad mood for a couple weeks once I got back home - largely recovered now though :o)

Eventually though it seemed that the only place we were going to be able to experience some real warm summer weather was on our trip to Spain in September - and we weren't disappointed:

Evidently a week of rest and warmth and blue sky did me the world of good, as I finally started knitting again while I was away, look - here's the proof:


Since I've been back I've been keeping it bubbling away with the knitting and in my next post I'll show you what I've been working on - although anyone who wants a sneak preview will be able to get one courtesy of my Ravelry page.

See you soon!

Back home again

In fact I've been back home again for a week, slowly reacclimatising to the chill here after sunny Spain - sigh!

It was a lovely (as you can hopefully see from the pix) and much needed holiday.

Things here Nicola-wise are still much the same - no new job as yet, thesis still not done, the usual - I am still feeling relaxed enough post-hols though to just let everything wash over me, ahh! Things aren't 100% the same though - I have enjoyed a slight change in status...

I am now officially a Raveler ;) Yup that's right my invite arrived while I was away (and got eaten by the spam filter) and I am all set up. My profile isn't exactly thrilling at present as I haven't had time to add things but I have put on the details of the two WIPs I am working on most at the moment plus my most recent FO. If you want to find me I go by 'nicolamk'.

The second of my two WIPs is a new one. I mentioned before I think that I was thinking of working a variation of the Muir shawl from Knitty... In the end I figured that variations only mean extra work so I just cast on for the pattern as it stands. In fact I've cast on for it three times now - so the sum total of my holiday knitting has now been ripped out twice :) I've cast on again since being at home and, looky looky, we have progress:



OK it doesn't look like much in the above state but straigtened out I am quite pleased with how it is coming together so far:



This still isn't even one repeat of the chart (I haven't made it that far yet in any of my attempts) but this is the furthest I've got with no mistakes and I am inordinately proud :) I think perhaps it is time for me to figure out how to use a lifeline though...

Anyway, there we go, it is even sort of good to be back from holiday - I've enjoyed a few evenings curled up on the sofa knitting since we got back and I'm sure there will be many more this autumn - let's hope this means there will soon be more progress on Muir to share.

Playing catch-up

I'm sure people are starting to get bored of hearing how busy life has been for me between posts and how that prevents me from posting more often... I'm afraid, though, that that's just how things are around these parts at the moment. The usual demands on my time are the culprits with the added addition of a job interview (playing the waiting game at the moment) and the associated shopping (I am now the proud owner of not one, but two suits - sure I will need them at some point in the future!).

In the midst of all this I have managed to come up with an FO and buy more yarn (the latter of those never seems to be very difficult though!).





Here are my Broad Spiral Rib socks at last - who would have thought something so simple would take so long?! Nonetheless they are lovely warm socks and nice and snug because of the ribbed pattern so that's all good. I much prefer the way the striping worked out on one of the pair but the second sock is not bad either :)

So that's another WIP out of the way... Elfine's Unfinished Socks will be accompanying me off on holiday this week as will this new addition to my stash:



This is two out of the three skeins of Socrates Sock Yarn I ordered from Violet Green in the colourway Dusty Answer. I've never ordered yarn before that has turned out to look quite so unlike its website photograph... the photo I am posting here is really quite a good representation of how the yarn looks in real life - do you think it looks much like its photo on the website? Fortunately enough I actually quite like the yarn in the flesh, purples and teals/turquoises being colours I'm into at the moment so I'm prepared to let it slide, although I think I would have been happier if the yarn actually looked how I thought it would! This is destined to become some sort of lace scarf or stole, I'm not 100% sure exactly what will happen, although I will admit that I am very taken with Muir from Knitty so it might become an adapted version of that. We shall see. I plan to just pack the yarn and some needles and have a play, whether what I come back from holiday with is more than just a swatch or a tangle remains to be seen!

What I did on my holidays

Well, as we all now know, life has been less than brill since I got back from my hols, BUT that doesn't mean that the actual holiday wasn't just fantastic:

I love Croatia and I loved the warm sun and blue skies, yummy food, friendly hosts, swimming in the sea everyday, not having to do anything I didn't want to do, not turning on the TV for a whole week, spending proper time with the other half, in short it were lovely :)

Why not have a quick look a small pictorial guide to some things that you can get up to in Croatia:

You can stay in a lovely little place like Mlini:


You can walk round the Župa Bay from Mlini, stopping for a swim in the lovely clear sea along the way, and take a photo when you get to the end just to prove you did it:


You might be lucky enough to find that when you get in one evening the lovely people you are renting an apartment from have left you lemons and cucumbers from their garden and a plate of delicious home-cooked courgette fritters:

(If you are even luckier the lovely hosts might also invite you round for drinks on the very first night you arrive and cook you a slap up meal of barbecued fish on your last night :) )

You can eat your tea on the balcony (without fear of being rained on) whilst gazing out over the sea:


Of course you can also do other things whilst you are on the balcony, the most important example being... knitting of course!


Oh! How I miss my hols... I could ramble for hours, but then this post is getting awfully long. I think now might be the time to end it. That means the knitting progress post will put in an appearance over the weekend, watch this space!

Happy (early) birthday to me

This is a bit of a rushed, cop-out, cobbled-together post before I go on holiday, but hey ho, I suppose I’ve at least written something.


First of all a progress update: The first Falling in Love sock is very nearly done – I’m on to the cuff ribbing. I hope to return from holiday with a completed pair, but we shall see, if I haven't managed it while I am away there is still a little time left.

The Lorna’s Laces has also been packed into my suitcase just in case I should have a sudden spurt of activity and finish the Sockapalooza socks really early – definitely no danger of my being knitless.

Something else that has been packed is my passport in a new cover:



I know Primark are a strong contender for the title of "Root of All Evil" but sometimes the draw is very hard to resist - a super cute passport cover for only £1.00 - it's tricky, but obviously I am weak cos I gave in.

Continuing the random nature of this post...

As it will be my birthday while I am away I thought I would steal this appropriately themed meme from Once Upon a Time…

***

The rules are to go to Wikipedia and type in your birthday month and day only. Then post 3 events, 2 births and one holiday that occurred on your birthday, then tag 5 friends.

Events

1936 - Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell published.

1977 - Virginia Wade wins the Ladies Singles title at Wimbledon, the last British champion at the All England Club to date.

1997 - The United Kingdom transfers sovereignty over Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China.

Birthdays

1975 - Ralf Schumacher, German race car driver

1983 - Cheryl Cole, British singer (Girls Aloud)

Holidays

Independence Day in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.


I'll refrain from tagging people in favour of a more free-for-all approach, if you want to do the meme then please do :)

***

All that remains now is for me to bid you farewell for a week, hopefully I shall be well-rested and raring to go when I get back...

Wetterbericht

This weatherpixie is meant to show the weather for Dubrovnik (which is roughly where I am heading off to for my hols next Thursday). At the moment it seems appropriate that the yarn that I have chosen for my additional holiday knitting is this one:

Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in the nearly solid colourway Sunshine. Let's hope that this remains an appropriate match - I certainly don't want to escape rainy Birmingham for an equally rainy Croatia - come on weather gods... smile for me!

I ordered the yarn from this website on Wednesday (around lunchtime I think) it arrived yesterday morning at about 9:00am - how's that for service? Most impressive I reckon :)

The yarn is destined to become the Lombard Street Socks from Magknits. I seem to have gone a bit cabling crazy since I started the Falling in Love Socks.... Incidentally I intend to finish the Falling in Love socks before I start the next pair, but it's surely better to take too much yarn on holiday than not enough?

Back in Blighty

Indeed I am back on the island that is home, relaxed in many ways, stressed out in others - why does that always slightly mar a holiday?

I stuck to my word though and knitted feverishly on the Hedera socks:



The fruits of my labour are 1 completed sock (yet to be blocked) and the cuff and three pattern repeats of the leg of another sock:



I have to head up to Birmingham tomorrow to see a friend so I intend to carry on knitting away on my train journey and not end up stuck with half a pair of socks. Progress report to follow soon...

Holiday preparations

I finished off a birthday weekend which was busy but very fun by making an important preparation for my holiday. I have finally decided what knitting project it is that I will take with me and now I have even bought the yarn.

Socks seem to be the obvious choice for a small but interesting project and to spice things up a bit more I have picked a lace pattern. Hedera from Knitty seems to be an ideal choice because the lace will make the project more challenging but the absence of a chart will mean it doesn't become too cumbersome for poolside knitting. Lovely! I am for once using the recommended yarn - Rowan 4-ply Soft in a bright, bright bubblegummy pink colour. What I really wanted was a really citrusy green but I couldn't find anything that fitted the bill and since this was my last opportunity to buy yarn I settled for my old favourite pink.

I've been suffering from a severe inability to get anything finished - skipping between projects and spending a lot of time doing things other than knitting (shock! horror!) Hopefully the minimal distractions offered by a lazy holiday will mean I get a substantial amount of this project finished in one go.

I had some lovely news (on my birthday as well to make it extra good) that might also mean I have a bit more time for knitting in future... I am being awarded a scholarship which will pay three quarters of the fees for the Masters course that I want to start in October! Yay. Even better, the fact that I have been awarded this scholarship means that I might be more likely to get awarded one which is still more generous, I'll just have to wait a while - maybe up to the end of August - to find out what happens, ho hum.

Brighton Rocks!

Without a shadow of a doubt. I had a fantastic weekend at the seaside, a good mixture of seasidey fun and good eating and drinking possibilities. Top marks. A little photographic impression:





My time continues to seem very full of things other than knitting at the moment. This weekend is yet another write off but I think that celebrating my birthday is excuse enough for that. Then towards the end of next week I'll be off on holiday for a week. That means there should be more time for knitting whilst lounging by the pool. All I have to do is decide what I want to be knitting while I'm on holiday... decisions, decisions. At least the fact that it has to be very portable and preferably cotton will help narrow down my options. I'll keep you posted.

In the meantime I've finished the main piece of the Mosaic Bag - a sixteen by six inch rectangle which has taken me for ever! I have decided to dispense with the knitted in button hole because it would have meant my favourite colour section of the Noro I'm using facing the back of the bag. Instead I'll make a button loop to showcase my favourite section of the colours. Next up the strap - surely this can't take too long...

Can it?

Long weekend

For once in my life I decided to actually do something with a weekend (well for one day out of a weekend at least - my excuse centres around the weather on the other days!). Last Sunday though my boyfriend and I and another friend spent a day out in Stratford upon Avon and get in as much sightseeing as possible by taking a very touristy open top bus tour.

Among other things we saw Mary Arden's very pretty house:



and I met a few new friends!





the only thing lacking, perhaps, was knitting.

Roll on more long weekends!

Sometimes I don't know my own strength

Well, well it's catch up time again. My weekend in Spain was a lovely break for me. I got to do nice things like sit in this square:



and eat yumminess like this:



Mmmmm!

My recent knitting project has been the Grumperina Jaywalker socks. I've not had a lot of time for knitting recently so progress is slow, but there is progress, as you will see here:



In this picture you can also see that I am obviously some kind of very violent knitter because as I innocently knitted my first round of the evening on the sock yesterday I managed to snap one of my new Brittany birch needles. Damn. I really liked these needles, I hope the remaining four will stand up to whatever it is I did to that first one!

Not enjoying the prospect of tomorrow

Yuck, it's horrible to go back to work after a lovely long weekend like the one we've just enjoyed. There should be one at least once a month to make up for the trauma.

It was a great weekend though, full of good fun, good friends and good food. The boyfriend had a great birthday, the socks got finished (on the morning of his birthday itself) although I have no photographic evidence due to the batteries going flat on my camera.

So what to knit next? I suspect more socks alongside half hearted attempts on the Union Square Market sweater (it's quite clearly not going to be finished in time to wear this year so why rush?) I think I'll have to start something else as well that I can wear sometime within the next few months. A Convertible from the new Knitty is high on the list at the moment. Otherwise maybe a Debbie Bliss Fiery Bolero (about half way down this page) from Interweave last summer. Hell maybe even all of these, who knows?

That said there'll not be that much time for knitting this week as I'm far too excited about going to visit my friend in Spain next weekend. Yes, that's right my busy April continues apace, I've even been promised a beach visit, swimming cossie required - who'd have thought such things were possible in April? I'm soooo excited!

Evidence of Germany

Since my blog has been a bit poor in terms of photos recently I wanted to post a few to show that I haven't forgotten how. A couple of photos of lovely Leipzig are enough to show how it is a place full of fantastic contrast...

Between the very elegant, high culture side of the 16th to 19th centuries...



... as demonstrated by J W Goethe himself whose three (I think) years spent living in Leipzig are commemorated in this statue,

and the later, more industrial Leipzig shaped by the GDR and taken over by the hipster scene in more recent years...



Last but not least a quick picture of the rather minimal souvenirs that I brought back from Germany, of course sock yarn and East German confectionary were the obvious choices!



So there you go! See you soon ;o)