Missing In Action

The past week or so has been somewhat hectic to say the least. I will be posting an update on 27th because, as is the tradition in Maison Fred, there will be no mobiles or internet access on the festive days. See you on the other side and hope you have an enjoyable time whatever you do.

Secret Pal Reveal UPDATED

I've been having problems with blogger not accepting my pictures but just to confirm that I've received my final SP11 parcel and REALLY happy with it. My SP included a postcard in the box and I have to say that it very firmly reminds me of myself at the moment trying to cram my stash in at home ;-)

I arrived home and found this box waiting for me:

Opening up I found an optical feast of goodies:

First of all this Italian DK yarn. Four balls of green

Along with two balls of orange and two of yellow:

Next in the box were these two skeins of green and purple lace weight yarn:

My SP had mentioned to me in an e-mail that she was making something for me but had not made any mention of exactly what it was she was making. It turns out to be this adoreable felted green piece. I'm not sure whether she intends me to use it as a scarf or as a runner as some of the flowers have been beaded

Buried under this were these two bars of chooclate with adorable animal pictures. How I wish my rabbits were this small! Also tucked away was a felted die and a 2008 calendar with a cute little snuffly nosed animal. I think it is a mouse but as it bears a remarkable resemblance to Feddy I'm not 100% certain.

I am also going to have to a have a proper sit down and read through of these two mitten pattern books as there are some lovely patterns pictured. One of the books in both English and Estonian and the other is in purely Estonian. This isn't going to cause me any problems though as I can read pictures :-D

Finally, my SP wrote me a lovely message on the back of this postcard but she got the picture so right. You would not believe it but this (as I have mentioned) is so reminiscent of my trying to get my stash in available space at home. I think I'm going to have to e-bay again.

My upward SP revealed herself to be: Kuduv koeraomanik. I've enjoyed our correspondence in the past few months and hopefully we will be staying in touch now that SP11 is over.

Meet The New Family

They are both boys. This is Teddy


and this is Feddy (with Teddy in the background)

Ish

will be missed :(

:(

Just a quick e-mail to say that I am here still and around but just sooooooo busy with 101 different things not of course including the day job.

I have been thinking about closing down the blog after SP11 as it is just getting to be a burden to keep up with blogging. What do you think?

Nightmares

Real Nightmare
My crown that I had fixed back in place last week came out again yesterday. I had a trip to the dentist this morning to get it fixed again but have now been told that I'm either going to have root canal or an extraction :(

False Nightmare
I had a dream last night where I was looking at getting myself a nice sewing box but complaining that the one they had in the shop wasn't big enough. I'm not sure why as I am most definitely not a sewer. Now if it had been a stash storage box.....

UPDATES

I've been a bit of a naughty Fred and needed to post several postings but blogger has not been playing ball with the uploading of pictures. I've now been able to post pics so the entry titles have been preceded with "update" to identify which they are as they go back over several weeks.

Enjoy

Secret Pal 2

I decided that as this was the first day I've had off for a couple of weeks I would be having a lay in. I was most disgruntled though when there was a loud knock at the door at some unspeakable hour. It turned out to be my postman with two parcels. One was my Star Wars collection which was somewhat overdue but that is down to the beloved postal strikes that we've been encountering and the other was my second SP11 parcel:



I managed to curtail my annoyance at this point and dived on the parcel and opened it up:



Inside there was this lovely card. I like pictures of poppies and thought it semeed wonderfully set against the blue of the paper:



Inside were munchable goodies:


The chocolate tastes very nutty and grainy but in an enjoyable manner. Not sure what the others are as I've yet to indulge. The yarn was not quite so scrummy though as it kept catching between my teeth. Perhaps it wasn't meant for munching on ;-)

My SP also put in this fibre for felting which she said had been hand-dyed using wild mushrooms and I must say its delightful colours. Am wondering though whether I'd be able to use Myrtle with it for spinning purposes.

The last of the goodies was this bar of soap made with honey and oatmeal for exfoliating. Am glad I read the label first as otherwise it would have gone the same way as the yarn and that would have been really silly wouldn't it?

Thanks for the wonderful spoils yet again SP :)

UPDATE: Ally Pally & Spoils

Here is my reporting in as is now the new requirement set by a certain person ;-)



My first main purchases were done at the Cherry Tree Hill stand and comprised of:



which is going to be used for a nameless (at this stage) person. I'm going to have to trawl through my lace patterns before I can make a start on it as I didn't have anything in particular in mind at the time.



I also got these two skeins of Orenburg lace as well as a "small" amount of wedding ring shawl laceweight yarn. I didn't want to get any more yet because (a) I've not started it and (b) I'll be using this as a tester to make sure its the right yarn for me.



I then stopped off at the Lantern Moon stand and rather than buying their needles I bought these two tape measures. I blame Laura for it as I'd seen her with them so I bought a black sheep and a queen bee tape measure. Its not that I am short of tape measures but rather their collectability.

Saturday saw Noonie and I having a day out and about in London. I'll not be recounting the tale of the bead shop here though !



Here is a picture of us reflected in the window of Peter Jones up the King's Road in Chelsea. You can see the balls of yarn at the bottom of the model's feet. As I remember there were also strands of yarn going up to and round her hands as well.

As the last stop of the day (well not including dinner and the cinema) was at I-Knit. I'd had an exchange of emails last year with Gerard as to exactly where they were situated as I used to have a friend who lived on the opposite side of the square to where the shop is now situated. It turns out that the shop is not where I thought (on the site of the cafe) but rather it has replaced the food shop where my friend worked.

My purchases for the day were:



Two skeins of alpaca (that were thrust in my hand by Sue who had been there for the day) as well as the Gossamer Web shawl collection of three shawl patterns).



There was also this skein of Fyberspates which Jenn may string me up for as I didn't buy it from her but that's because she was being stubborn when I met her ;-)

Noonie bought these skeins and has given them to me for a lace shawl that she saw when flicking through Victorian Lace Today. Fortunately for her I already have the book otherwise I would have made her purchase it as well.

My final purchases of the show were these from Jamiesons.

You will see that I have already cast on for the Horseshoe Scarf. This is because in my infinite wisdom I had packed the unbloggable project in my bag and it was only when I took it out of my knitting bag on the train on the way down I found I had not packed any more balls of yarn other than the one I was already working from and running out of! Its only an eight row pattern and four of those are plain knit so I'll not be having any need to be frogging this one.

The circular I am using is a HiyaHiya one which I bought from Knit N Caboodle. I'm not sure thatI notice a lot of difference between that and the other circulars that I use but time will tell when I swap back.

I did acquire a couple of other things at AP but I can't mention those as they are intended for my SP.

Tooth Ouch!

Yesterday lunchtime saw one of my crowns pop off my tooth. All I had been munching on was some chewing gum and I have to say that I'd not experienced any pain for quite some time so it came as a bolt out of the blue. I went to the dentist today and I thought that it would have meant the root being dug out as it was a clean break. Instead there was a bit of drilling that left me on the sore side and financially light :( The one thing that I am glad of though is that it was this week and not last that it happened as I would not have been happy on missing out for Ally Pally!

I took the scarf with me that I have been working on and off on since NEC last month using the green/white/brown Nepalese wool that I bought at Knitting 4 Fun. Later on in the day I did some more rows on the Jamieson scarf and then when I was sat watching Hotel Inspector I was working on the unbloggable project. Three projects in one day I think is a bit of a new experience for me. I've still got another two projects tucked to one side which I've not touched in several months which I am really going to have to get finished before Christmas especially as one is a present and given that it is just over nine weeks away...

UPDATE: Harrogate Show

This show saw an outing of Mr Shaun the Sheep and his minder Janet. Janet is also the lady who made him and she made a special trip up along with Mavis (her sister) for the show. The show in itself was quiet on the teaching side of things but we did do lots for Shaun the Ship and the Wallace & Gromit Children's Foundation due to his Sheepiness' presence on the stand.



Here is a picture of Mavis doing some teaching.

Here is John taking advantage of a quiet moment to work on his scarf that he started to make. If memory serves right he made it using two balls of Sirdar Medici:
Here we see Neal of NKM wools with a certain sheep hiding amongst the packs of yarn. Neal was the gentleman who very kindly donated the yarn for the full size Shaun way back in March.
My only purchases for the show were modest ones as I'm saving my spending splurge for Ally Pally:

Tea Cozies and Toilet Roll Covers both by Pat Ashforth and Steve Plummer of Wooly Thoughts. It was only pointed out to me on our stand that part of Tea Cozies has been inserted upside down. By the time I was able to point this out to the stand I bought it from they had sold the other copies and apparently had only had it in a day or two before they'd left for the show so it was hot off the presses.


These I bought from Meiflower and as always will play with them eventually. At the bottom of the screen are some baby dummies that they had in two sizes and both blue and pink An idea is forming for what I'll be using them for as well. Now the countdown for Ally Pally begins...

There's a good Fred

As promised I had a good sort out of my books on Sunday. I think I cleared out about a quarter of them and took them along to my local group tonight. I sold them at £1 each with the proceeds going to the Wallace & Gromit Foundation. The remaining ones that didn't sell will be going on e-bay later with proceeds going the same way.

Yarn Purge

After having bought another sackful of knitting cones in the self-same charity shop as several weeks ago here and having problems finding some spare space to place the sack I've decided to have a purge of stash. I've gone through all bar my laceweight yarns and pulled out either odd balls that I'm never going to utilise although there was a good reason for buying them when I did. What the reason is I've no idea now so they might as well go. The other are job lots of yarn that I also bought for a reason and now decided that I'll either never knit the project I had in mind or can't remember the project.

They are all listed on e-bay here

Now I've done all the yarn I'll be moving on to the books...

UPDATE: Secret Pal 1

My first SP11 parcel arrived this morning and looked something like this:



Inside were crammed a lovely lot of goodies:


This was wrapped with a hand crocheted flower:

and revealed yumminess. I did manage to restrain myself to open the rest of the parcel before sampling it ;-)

A lovely smelling lemon candle.

A postcard from SP from Estonia.

Wonderful green yarn goodiness:

There was also this lovely variagated yarn:

which my SP sent me a picture of for a shawl that she had made with being closely inspected by Mr Pooch!

Thanks again SP!

Birmingham

This is only one of two pictures I managed to take at the NEC as my camera batteries died. The lady on the right is from the Guild of Embroiderers and is being taught to knit by Brenda.

Here is 80% of my yarn purchases. The blue is alpaca, the emerald green linen, the brown camel and the green/white/brown variagated at the top is Nepalese wool of which I bought another skein that is currently on the needles being made into a bland moss stitch scarf for me.

Here are my crochet cotton purchases. I've seen the green in something finished and it looked tempting so glad to have been able to buy some. The ecru cotton on the right I will be using to make the gilot in the Vogue Classic Crochet collection book.

I bought these buttons and intend to use the two round ones (each round part is a different colour but this doesnt appear too well on the picture) on a secret project.
I then also picked up these buttons. The red ones are poinsettias and will be used on something for a christmas present. The bottom one are dogs related and I couldn't resist them.

I also picked up these two books. The Modular Knitting is for a friend of mine and the lace style was more for creative thought food than for the purposes of creating anything featured.

I got back into the office this morning to find that this book had been delivered on Friday. It was from my friend as a thank you present for the alpaca scarf that I made for her grandmother's 90th birthday.

Now time to go and hibernate and catch up on sleep.