Apologies...

Apologies for the lack of posts over the past week....I`ve been busy, busy busy. Allotment, kids, rushing around...and I`ve been sorting out all the camping gear. Finally a gap in Duncan`s complicated rugby schedule has appeared, and we`re going camping this weekend. Yeah! Keep your fingers crossed for decent weather for us.

Pix to follow next week.

Two stitches forwards, and back, back, back.....again.

I spoke about the apologetic neckline on my Silk Tweed Sweater two weeks ago, didn`t I? And said that I had ripped it back down to the armhole line and left it on the needles ready to go, otherwise I knew I`d never get going with it again.

Well, fear not, I did get going with it again...and again...and again. Rowan Summer Tweed is a very easy yarn to frog, did you know? It unravels nicely without catching, does not go into an instant snarl on the floor and it`s easy to pick up the stitches again. Very well behaved yarn while frogging. Belive me. I know.

So...I got going again using the clever tactic of taking my other projects out of my knitting bag when I was next going to meet up with
Gourdongirl during yet another school holiday day. (I am fed up with school holiday days, did I say? ) Therefore I had to knit the Silk Tweed Sweater or...knit nothing. So I started the neckline divide again at the armholes.

Ten rows in I held it up and had a look. Hmmmm. The model in the picture of the sweater has...well, the bustline of a slim twenty year old and the neckline looks high on her, no? I have the bustline of a not-slim forty-plus year old and even with the best efforts of the finest support bra that money can buy in M&S can make my boobs look like hers. I put eighteen rows of short row shaping in the front, so that should tell you something. In fact, I`m beginning to wonder if the short row shaping is the problem? If it wasn`t there then I`d have to be constantly hauling the front of the sweater downwards during wear and the neckline would come down too. Maybe. Or perhaps I`d still have the neckline in the wrong place and the sweater wouldn`t fit in front either?

Anyway, back to the neckline divide. Still looked a bit skimpy. Conferred with Gourdongirl (also a busty gal) and we decided that yup, go for broke, still too high, put it lower. I could always sew it up a bit if it looked too indecent, or wear a camisole under. Sigh. Rippit..........

I ripped.....secure in the knowledge that though I was now taking the sweater back to below the armhole shaping I could only go so far, because I certainly wasn`t going to attempt to pick up a row part way through all the short row shaping, complete with 36 wrapped stitches. So this was the last time, yes?

Umm...no. About this time Thereyougothen walked in to Prestongrange Museum cafe. She`d brought her family down for the afternoon but as we three hadn`t seen each other since SkipNorth she sent her Hubby off round the site with the boys for a bit and sat down for a blether. Meanwhile I started knitting the neckline again using only half my brain and a quarter of my attention. I`d done this so many times already I didn`t need the pattern after all...or did I? I got back up to the point where I needed to put in the armhole shaping...then realise when I`d divided for the neck, I`d used the stitch count for above the armhole shaping, not below. So now, though the neckline was deep enough, it was also six stitches off centre.

I ripped it back for the third time. I started knitting the neckline again for the....fourth(?)...time. (I used a new ball of Summer Tweed here..even the best behaved yarn doesn`t like being ripped three times and knitted four, methinks.) This neckline has to be right this time round. There`s nowhere else it can go, and nothing else can go wrong, surely?

Well, nothing apart from me losing the piece of paper where I wrote down my altered row count for the shaping on the neck. So now I have one side of the neck done, nearly, and no way of duplicating this on the second side without a very, very careful inspection of the first side. And if I get it wrong, I`ll have to rip it again...or, more likely, throw it in the bin?

Wish me luck.....

On an aside, the sharp eyed among you may notice that I`m writing this at nearly 5.30 am my time. Up early? Yes, at four o`clock, actually. I have a good solid streaming cold and I was so hot and feverish I couldn`t sleep and had to get up for paracetamol. Then I decided I really, really wanted a cuppa so that`s me good and awake now. Hubby will be up soon to go to work, and the kids not long after. Not worth me going back to bed though I know I`ll feel dire by mid-afternoon. What is it about viruses and bugs? You get one, you get better...but before you get really 100% better another bug sneaks in through your lowered defences and pounces. When do you get the chance to get really better, especially with two lively kids around that keep insisting on having yet more school holidays, a house to look after (sort of) and it`s rush season at the allotment?

A Fishwife`s Garden.

I`ve decided to split off the gardening and allotment blog content to a blog of its own, over here at A Fishwife`s Garden. I want to keep a visual record of the allotment over the coming year with comparison pix from previous years and these of you that come for knitting and spinning content may get bored to tears with too much gardening if I post it here.

I`ll put up the occasional reminder link across, if anything particularly exciting is happening. The first potato of the year? Whooho!!

Spinning is a no-no.

I can`t spin at the moment. My hands are like sandpaper. I just counted up that I`ve spent over fifteen hours on the allotment since last Sunday. Doesn`t sound a lot if you say it quickly, but that`s the equivalent of two full working days. I wear gloves most of the time for gardening but there are some jobs that you can`t wear them for and as a result my hands are rough and dry. Spin? If I even touch roving it gets caught on my finger ends. I couldn`t possibly draft.

Oh well, on with the shea butter, the cocoa butter, the almond oil and the rough skin scrubs. None of them actually make much difference. But I can still knit...except of course, I haven`t got much time except for when I meet up with Gourdongirl when we take the kids to play after school. I am creeping slowly down the final section of my Opal Magic socks.

Hasn`t stopped me from buying yarn though. The cash from my big ebay destash has been burning a hole in my pocket and one of the LYS has recently started stocking Colinette. Bad combination. I resisted for two weeks after Gourdongirl told me about the newly arrived Colinette, then I could resist no more. I bought a sweaters worth of Giotto in the Banwy colourway. The picture does not do it justice because there is also a tinge of green in it...it reminds me of pistachio and chocolate ice cream. I see a very plain V-neck sweater being made from this.

I also bought some Noro Shinano off Ebay. I had five balls of this in Colourway 10 that I bought for an absolute pittance at the end of last year just after Shinano was discontinued. Five balls isn`t enough to make anything more than a shawl or big scarf, so I looked for more. And looked, and looked, but did not find except over the big water. I`m not keen on paying transatlantic postage prices so I had nearly resigned myself to Ebaying the pointless Shinano when I discovered someone selling the exact number of balls I needed, and in the UK to boot. Fortune smiles on the patient!

I am going to make Bettna from the Noro Revisited book by Cornelia Tuttle Hamilton. BUT...big BUT...I must finish these socks first, and at least the front of the Silk Tweed Sweater.

I`ll leave you with some pictures of the allotment, just to show you I`m not totally wasting my time here. It`s still only April so things are only just starting to grow. I`m sowing and planting tons of stuff, but very little to show by way of results.



It`s actually quite a big allotment for one person to run solo...most allotments of this size on our site are run by couples or families. (Hubby is of the concrete and paraquat school of gardening.) All of this is mine...about 80 x 60 feet in all.



As I said, it still looks a bit barren, but have a look at these two pictures. First one was taken in January...



...and this one was taken two days ago.



What do you mean, you can`t see the difference? I have been slaving on that allotment. There is a HUGE difference!

(But yes, I admit, must to weed and mulch these paths. And go to the dump with the rubbish piled along the hedge. But you just wait a couple of months until stuff is really growing...you`ll see then.)

The morning after the night before....

Well, it went fine. It did. In the first half of the evening all the families turned up, lots of kids, lots of the people I know. The food was great. (Anyone want a couple of dirt cheap, inventive, very professional lady caterers?) I survived...well, I was too busy to do anything else. It quietened down a bit once the kids went and that`s when the serious drinking started. Not sure when Hubby rolled home....kids and I were in bed by midnight.

I think the person who most enjoyed themselves was Mairi! She`s very good at going to evening parties...though she`s four and a half and daytime naps are a long gone thing, she`s always willing to go for an afternoon sleep if there`s a party in store. So she was bright as a button and raring to go...she even made me take a second outfit for her so she could change from pretty party princess to disco diva half-way through the evening, lol.

And today is a lovely sunny day, and I`m off to the allotment for my committeee meeting and a planting session. April is a busy month for gardeners in this part of the world. I love it....busy busy busy, things are starting to grow and it`s a pleasure to be outdoors.

I wonder if preferring four hours gardening on a fine sunny day to four hours of party is a sign I`m getting very old? I prefer camping to hotels, gardens to parties, barbecues to dress up functions. At the moment one of my favourite low-key pleasures in life is an afternnoon spent knitting and gossiping with my good pal
Gourdongirl in the outside garden of our local industrial heritage museum, Prestongrange, while the kids run riot in the woods in their best LOTR outfits.

Older or maturity? Who knows? I`m off to plant the potatoes....

Stress bottleneck.

This Sunday is my Hubby`s 50th birthday. So on Saturday we`re having a party.

It`s at the rugby clubhouse and it`s going to be a pretty simple affair...food, disco/country dancing, bar open till twelve-thirty. Lots of families/solos invited, lots of kids coming, should be fun.

Or will it? I have no idea who`s coming or not. Hubby and I drew up a rough list of folk to ask. Mine was smaller and of them, I do know who`s coming. I have no idea of whether some of the folk Hubby has asked are coming or not. He can`t remember some of whom he`s asked and whether they said they were coming. We did have printed invites....but most folk didn`t get them, and certainly there`s been very little use made of the formal RSVP requested.

Not to worry, I thought, and made a rough guess at the catering and bar figure, added on ten percent and worked from that. Catering? Yeah, of course I subcontracted it, to the very highly thought of local ladies who do most of the rugby club catering! The rugby club sure as heck isn`t going to run out of beer, that`s for sure.

But of course I`m still worried, to the point where my underlying anxiety is costing me sleep. Too casual, that`s my thought. What if all these people think it`s only an invite for a quick pint at the club and don`t turn up? I have this vision of about twenty people trying to consume a giant buffet....and then at other times, I have this alternative thought of half of Musselburgh turning up and stripping the plates to crumbs in seconds. Of a few guests rattling around in the vast function room.....or the bar manageress asking half of the guests to leave because they`re contravening the fire regulations.

Stupid? Rationally, yes. But it hits me straight in one of my depression triggers in that I have no control over this thing now. I hate feeling responsible for all these people enjoying themself, y`know? Never mind that I know 80% of them really well, know their children, know their houses, have gone on holidays with some of them. These are friends. This makes it worse....

To add to the general feeing of awfulness, Hubby has now announced he wished we hadn`t bothered and me being stressed out about it is taking away "what little pleasure he was going to get from it". I should have told him no, that I would find it too difficult to have a party. Well, some weeks ago I told him just this. Somehow we are still having a party. Hmmmm.....does this say more about me than him, do you think?

It`s frightening to find out how close recurrent depression is, sometimes. You think you`re doing fine, then something happens and you realise that no, you`re not fine, it`s just that there weren`t any of your stress triggers happening at that point in time. You`re fine when things are fine, you fall apart at the first signs of stress, or so it seems. Yes, I`m a lot better than I was two years ago when I finally stopped struggling and went to the doc for the happy drugs, but I`m not half the woman I was back in the old days before Robbie got ill, I was seven years younger and a lot of other bad things hadn`t happened. I`m just exhausted....no mental reserves at all. And when something as (realistically) minorly stressful like the party comes along, my anxiety rating goes sky high because I just can`t deal with it. But I don`t want to go back on the anti-Ds. Not after the four month horror of coming off them, oh no.

It`s at times like this I`m very glad I don`t drink...or at least, don`t drink more than the odd social glass of wine at a meal. Chocolate though....can you OD on chocolate? Should I buy a chocolate fountain to take with me and sit next to it all night?

Oh well, I`m of the opinion that whatever happens, Sunday morning it will be all over. And I have an allotment committee meeting at 10am Sunday so I`ll have to leave the birthday boy alone with a no doubt monsterous hangover and the kids, hehe.

Oh, and on the knitting front I thought I`d better go and do something other than more chocolate to cheer myself up agsin, so went up to my LYS and pigged out on Colinette instead. I bought six skeins of Giotto in the Banwy colourway, plus a pattern book. Stashalong? Oops...oh well, the rules do say that you get one shopping day a month, the money I used was some of the proceeds of my destash on Ebay last moth....and lets face it, this was an emergency, no?

I`ll let you all know how the party goes. There may even be pictures.....

Ugly.

I just want to further explain a statement I made a couple of posts back when I was talking about Mairi`s hair. I`ve recieved a few emails on it, so might as well clarify what I meant so as to save further offence...

I kept on thinking how my mother had cut my long hair very short when I was four and 43 years later I still haven`t forgiven her for sending me through childhood ugly. I wasn`t going to do that to my girl for the sake of a little effort on my part.

My mum cut my hair short....and I mean short. No4 razor all over short. I had (and have) a big square skull, my hair is very fine and looking back on the photographs it wasn`t a short cut...it looked like I had ringworm. And little girls in the sixties didn`t have their hair cut like that. They had bobs or plaits. I wanted a bob or plaits. I didn`t want to be different but my mother didn`t listen. She just wanted easy care hair. My hair was (and is) fine and tangly and I know from looking after Mairi`s identical hair that it takes time and effort. And we have good conditioners and spray-in detanglers now.
I can see from the pictures of me at three that I had beautiful long ringlets. At four I looked hideous. Why did my mother do that to me?

Anyway, back to Mairi. If I`d cut that hairbrush out it would have meant cutting the hair off at scalp level. And cutting all the rest off at nearly the same length...just like I used to have. I hated my hair clipped , I knew she would hate it. So worth the effort.

I don`t think all short hair is ugly. There are lots of little girls at the nursery with lovely short hair that looks really pretty. If Mairi wanted a short cut like that I`d actually be quite pleased....easy care! But not a "ringworm" crop, nonono!Not for a little girl that wants to be Rapunzel, or a mermaid.

And as an aside, I know people lose their hair from medical treatments and such and feel really sensitive about it. My elder son lost all his hair when he was undergoing chemo. He actually quite suited it, once we got used to it, and his friends thought it was a pretty cool extreme haircut! But he hated the way it made him look different and how people stared, and he wore a hat all the time he was out in public.