Life in general.

Thanks to all who`ve clicked on Hubby`s Test Blog. Much appreciated! Keep `em coming though, if you don`t mind. I know I get visitors from places like South Africa, Japan and Uzbekistan (no idea why!!) and it`s fun to see the foreign flags pop up.

How`s life with me since my last proper post? Well, though the hell that was the windows has passed, next came the lesser hell of half-term, then the hell that was the kids getting a dose of the current school lurgy (Duncan got the bottom half, Mairi got the projectile vomiting varient.) Both of these they then passed on to me and so I`m feeling a bit washed out, all things considered.

However the house is proceeding...we got all our various pieces of Council permission paperwork through at last, which was a relief. Not that we`re doing anything that controversial to the house but the ways of the Planning Office are exceedingly strange. We`ve had a couple of minor but fixible design issues with the front and back doors, but finally everything seems to be coming together and I can just see the faintest glimmer of hope on the horizon that this phase will soon be finished. Today for instance they are putting the final coat of render on the walls...as this involves skimming a layer of ochre render onto the walls then hurling variegated golden gravel against the wet render so it sticks...well, it`s noisy. But it looks several hundred times better than plain grey render, I feel. Instead of living in a grey concrete brick of a house, we`re now going to be living in a variegated olde gold brick. And with nicer windows and a posh front door. Better, no?

On the knitting and spinning front, well, I`ve done a few things. I got three balls into the Bettna jacket when I realised I`d tried to be too clever by half and it wasn`t working. The lower back and fronts are knitted as three rectangles then the sleeves and upper body joined on. I decided to knit the three rectangles as one...and in the process, lost most of the effect of the Noro striping across the 186 stitches I was working on. So I`ve frogged it and started again as per the pattern.

Spinning? The Edinburgh Stitch & Bitch group, City Knitty had been invited to come and participate last Sunday in a craft exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. The exhibition was called The Cutting Edge and showcases several contempory Scottish artists. City Knitty were asked to do something contempory as a sort of live counterpoint to the exhibition, as local craftspeople. So the girls and boys turned out in force, ready to do plastic bag knitting, wirework crochet, contempory knitting and...well, I`m not quite sure what else, because after I turned up I barely moved from my wheel for the next five hours and didn`t go up to the upper level to see what the other group was doing. In fact I didn`t manage to see the exhibition or even go for the complimentary lunch either. Nope,, from the moment I sat down with my old painted Louet I was faced with an almost constant stream of small children all asking "What`s that???" and "How does it work????" and all the rest.

I had taken a pile of soy silk fibre to spin (contempory fibre, okay??) but soon found out it was tricksy stuff and I couldn`t pay attention to it and talk as much as I liked, so switched to spinning up the bag of variagated scraps of wool roving I carry to show folk how to drop spindle instead. The result was a bobbin of nicely spun but unusable for anything singles, but I`ll ply it up as a sample of something or other, I`m sure! However I do enjoy talking to kids about spinning...they ask great questions!

Great fun. I don`t get out much and hardly ever in the weekday evenings so I`m sorry I don`t know all the CityKnitty names. But it was nice to meet you all!