30 July 2007
A Predicament
22 July 2007
Birthday Outings
First of all we went to see the new Harry Potter Film (Order Of The Phoenix). There was obviously a lot of material that was omitted from the film due to the length of the novel but it had the important storylines in there. I did enjoy it although I thought the way the scenes with Dumbledore and Voldemort fighting in the Ministry of Magic were staged too much like Star Wars: Attack Of The Clones with the fight between Yoda and Dooku. Anyway much to someone's chagrin I spent the entire time we were sat in the cinema knitting and I produced:
Admittedly it isn't particularly a difficult piece of knitting as its the first half of a blanket square but nonetheless I did it at the cinema and it was KIP'd! I thought better of getting MM to take pics of me in the cinema knitting due to copyright and piracy issues and the cinema staff jumping on me even though it would be either before or after the main picture was on.We then went and had dinner at Nawaab. It wasn't until I got there that I found out that Nawaab is the company that supplied Princess Diana with a take-away. I think I'll be going elsewhere in future!
After we finished dinner we went to queue outside Waterstones. Given that it was 11.00pm and the queues that I've encountered for the past two books in Leeds thought it would be rather lonely. How wrong was I!?! The queue was wormed round the store. As midnight approached the exchange of phone calls and text messages between me and other family members increased. Anyway midnight came and went and we got closer to the front. About 12.20 my friend rang to tell me that he had bought his and was on his way home. Not only did he get his earlier than me but also gets a staff discount for the company he works at (ggrrr). When we finally got to the till to pay 2 copies (one had been pre-ordered) and a t-shirt just happened to fall into my hands. After looking at the time (12.30am) I rang my friend to let him know I had got my copies. MM and I then got a taxi and went home.
The intention was that I was going to sit up all night and read it cover to cover. However, this fell by the wayside. This wasn't because I was too tired to carry on but because a certain young lady
had decided to pull out her stitches the vet had so kindly put in after she had her op on Tuesday. I did think about lifting her tail and spanking her btm but she gave me snuffles in a nice tone of voice so I had an early night. When I got up on Saturday I rang the vet and spoke to the nurse who said she would speak to him and call me back. I was due to see him anyway at my local surgery which is 7 doors from where I live on the same day but thought it best to ring in case he needed to bring anything over with him. The nurse rang me back and advised me that I would have to take Gibber over to the Keighley surgery. Well I got into a taxi and took her over. The vet had a look and said that he wouldnt bother putting them back in again but I would need to keep an eye on it. After a brief chat about how she was getting on it transpired that I should have been given some medication for her which I'd not received which I did take away with me this time. He also mentioned the possibility of fitting a collar although this was vetoed as she's a very fashion-conscious lady ;0)
Gibber is doing extremely well considering the surgery and loving and friendly as always.
Anyway when I got home I finished reading the book. I had intended on doing an exact timing of how long it took me to read it but I just did a more general timing and it took 4 1/2 hours cover to cover. I'm not going to give away any spoilers as that's not fair. I was right about several of my assumptions of what was going to happen although not necessarily in the way I had. I'm going to be interested to see it on the large screen although it will probably be in four years' time but I'll be booking the day off and seeing it on the day of release.
17 July 2007
Good News, Bad News And Knitting (!)
Well I'll start off with the happy stuff first. Had a telephone call from my landlord last night and he has said that he is going to renew our tenancy to December 2008 so that means I wouldn't have had to get rid of Mabel after all. I will get round to posting a pic of Mabel's smaller addition in the hope that someone can help identify her.
BAD NEWS
After doing some touchy feely on Gibber and Ish on Saturday night I found a lump on her stomach near her girly bits that I wasn't too happy about. I finished work early yesterday and took her to the vet. It turns out that she had breast cancer :( I booked her in for surgery for today and am just back from collecting her all safe and sound. The vet has said though that there is everything likelihood that the cancer will come back. We lost one of our first pair of rats to stomach cancer when we lived in London so I knew what I was looking for so am amazed that it went for so long undetected. In order to save a young lady's modesty I'll not be posting a pic of her operation scar.
KNITTING
One of best friend's requested me to knit a scarf for her grandmother's 90th birthday (which is tomorrow). I got the yarn from Texere a few months ago. It is the Artesano Alpaca in Flamingo colourway. I went through my stitch pattern books until I found something that I liked. It is an archway lace pattern of a 14 row repeat. I had a few false starts as I had written out the pattern incorrectly with one too many YOs as I wasn't intending on carrying the book round with me just for one pattern. Once I had finally worked out this I was away and on with it.
Here is the scarf pre-blocking:
The deadline I had was to get it to her on Monday 16 and I was really worried that I wasn't going to make it. In fact I sent her a text asking for an extension on Saturday night but I managed to plough through it, get it washed and blocked. Here is the finished object:
