Surfacing for air.

Well, the Christmas holidays are finally over. Including the extra couple of days the schools were closed due to snow. Snow in Musselburgh? It's practically unheard of for us to get more than an inch or so, then it's gone by the next day. This year though it started snowing a few days before Christmas and kept going on and off till the end of last week. There's still patches of it lying now, and more is forecast by the end of this week. Of course we're not used to this sort of thing in a lot of parts of the UK, we're not geared up for it at all in low lying areas and there have been a lot of problems. Us? We dug out the cars, made sure we were stocked up with a few basics then stayed in the house as much as possible. So it was a very quiet Christmas, thank you for asking! But the kids enjoyed getting out to play in the snow a lot, and going sledging in the park opposite our house.

Here's a picture of the allotment. No, I have not been working up there over the holidays! I can't even get the produce out the ground. I just went up to get a better snow shovel from the hut.



This is the pond. No, I didn't try walking on it to see if the ice was solid!





On the knitting front, I have been knitting hats. The family is now kitted out in a trio of earflap hats...Lad's you've seen, Princess has one in a very bright turquoise and even OH is sporting one (complete with dangling braids and pom-pom) in the local rugby club colours. He's taken it to wear today though, so no picture.

And, in keeping with the weather, I have started to knit a blanket.




I bought a lot of RYC Soft Tweed in various colours at a dirt cheap price a couple of years back but then couldn't find the right pattern for it. I did try a cardigan and then a hat, but the resultant fabric always looked like wool blankets to me. Finally though the penny dropped...why not make it into a blanket then? So then I tiddled around a bit with the thought of cable patterns etc, until I realised that really, with this stuff the simpler the better. So I've sized it so that one ball = one square, alternate squares of Thistle and Slate Blue, put a garter stitch/reversed stocking stitch border round the edge of each square and am knitting it in strips, five squares to a strip and four strips across to give minimal sewing up. As I'm using 7.5mm needles it's knitting up really quickly and it's going to be cosy, cosy, cosy. The squares are 13"x13", so twenty balls/squares will give me a good sized blanket.

The cats don't like the cold weather. I am mean so I turn the central heating off during the morning and early afternoon, normally, and this means they don't have too many cosy corners to cloose from then. During the night time they usually come and sleep with Hubby and I, or lad, but during the day the warmest spot in the house is the platform bed in the study. The heat from the PCs rises up there and makes the temperature just about tolerable for pampered cats.