Of shopping

There I was, trawling through e bay this morning, sighing over red kitten heels. V peers over my shoulder
It's going to be a hell of a shock for you when you get to heaven and find that there's no shoe shops
I give him my most pitying glance and shake my head.

Everyone knows it won't be heaven without shoe shops...

Excuse me...where's Summer gone?

I am frozen and have been all morning. Almost the solstice and I've got the coal fire going. It's not on, really it is not. So there I was back under the duvet, grumbling at the wretched freakish nature of British weather, vowing not to get out of bed until the house warmed up a bit.

Then there's a knock at the door - postman - aka Santa Claus. When Postie knocks it is always worth getting up because it means there is a parcel, which means books, yarn, wool, beads or something pretty what ever it is. So off I leapt like Pavlov's dog and waiting for me were these little beauties...

My part of the web trawl of goodies for the posh frock do and they are as comfy as slippers which is always good news. So, who needs sunshine? I have satin shoes to keep me warm...

Latest Yarn

Emeralds & turquoise, violets & boysenberries, infused in black. Outrageous, playful, colorful, enigmatic. Vibrating life force in each and every feather.
Description: An ever so slightly heavier version of our silk thread. Still thread-like, just a step up from cobweb.
All measurements are approximate.
Content: 100% Silk
Weight: 3.5 oz / 99g
Length: 1,125 yds / 1,028m
Gauge: laceweight

The picture and above text comes from Blue Moon Fibres

I have been looking for the perfect yarn to do an Icarus shawl for about a year. I have bought one or two but for some reason they just didn't look right or feel right. I don't know, one of those funny annoying things. I am hoping, however, that this is it. Silk and plenty of it in a beautifully dramatic colourway and due to the bird like name - Rooky- rather appropriate I feel.

Ahem...

May I suggest marscapone cheese and really good raspberry jam as a filling for today's cupcakes?

Yes, I know I am hacking on about cake an awful lot these days. Don't worry, it will soon pass off. Only another ten or fifteen recipes to go.

On the yarn front, I am crocheting this for Faith and Jonathan's baby, in a delightful lemon hinted yarn in a sensible easy care blend but with a touch of cashmere to unsqueak it. Don't you find synthetics squeak when you work them? I don't much like man made fibres but what use is a handwash baby blanket? This baby is due any minute now really. Poor Faith must feel like she has been expecting forever and, once again, I am making this at the absolute last flipping minute. It is a dinky little project though, it really looks as though I am working on something (to muggles at least) but it is in reality very very easy.

In other news, I have overdone the gardening rather in the last few days. And after hacking, chopping, raking, lugging and burning eighteen months worth of neglect I was naively surprised to find myself a bit below par this morning. Consequently, I have been confined to quarters by the CO, robustly told that I am not to pick up secatuers for at least a week and that he will attempt to master the secrets of the washing machine for the next few days. I am having a holiday folks. Pass me my crochet ...and put the kettle on will you?

Have a snug, cashmerey kind of day.

Update: 2:30 pm
Not content with current project or even the project after that (the fire yarn), I have bought yarn for the third item in my queue and it is here. I am in love.
I ask you, how could I, in my lowered state, resist a yarn that is from the Raven Clan...? Over a thousand yards of laceweight silk gorgeousness coming my way. And it is going to take long enough to arrive for me to finish at least the current project and get well into the second so, no project queue guilt for me. Hurrah!

Well...

I went and got the stuff for the quilt...

To be honest I feel a bit daft, like I've set myself up for a fall. I mean, I know nothing about this and there is no class or anything around for me to run to. Just me and the ton of books I've borrowed from the library. Still I'll give it a go eh? You never know, it just might work.

Aside from that there is little news to give. Easter holidays are progressing along the usual lines - baking, painting, raiding the dressing up box and huge amounts of chocolate. (I am talking about the children now, not me!)
We went to the Gnoll park this morning and ran around in the bamboo. Making dens is the best. Too busy to take pictures, sorry. But it is a brilliant day. High fluffy clouds and bright blue sky. Time to mow the lawn I think, get the kids outside for the afternoon and then they will be too wrecked to hurtle around V when he gets back from work and I pop out to mine.

So must get on...I want to cut the square out and get the embroidery design down so I can make a start on it this evening in work. Work, hah! Can't really call it work can I?

Hope you are having a bright sunshiny day.

The Ladybird and other stuff...

All done and I'm pretty happy with it actually. That doesn't happen very often, normally I am hard to please, but I think this little bug's ridiculousness makes me smile.

The weather doesn't know what it wants to do here and the sea born wind is bringing us everything from snow to rain to bright golden sunshine. I think it was bordering on gales last night and it is certainly very brisk out there now. My bin was last seen making a bid for the next county I think. I'll probably find it at the bottom of the hill tomorrow unless one of the neighbours wrangles it back home.

It is weird not having V here. I found it hard to sleep last night. Just lay there listening to the wind whistling through the wires, sleeping children scattered around me like dead bumblebees and I felt almost vulnerable without my man in the house. Maybe I need a big dog. I can imagine V's face if he was greeted by a dobermann on his return. Maybe not.

The girls are making hells own mess upstairs I just know it. They are already glittered out from card making this morning. Baking this afternoon and then I shall just bide my time until they zonk out tonight and I shall get to watch Beowulf I think or maybe 300 if it is in the video store. I like a chick flick as much as the next girl but Leonidas makes a chick flick all on his own. Which reminds me I need more chocolate :) Happy day.

Hope you are having a happy day too.

Update: 4:30 pm
It is always the same, whenever V bogs off somewhere I get just too bored and start surfing the yarn stores. Okay I surf yarn stores daily but when he is away I order stuff because he is not sitting with me making me feel guilty that I am spending his hard earned cash on stuff that I have an attic full of anyway. Not that he ever says anything but you know how it is when you are a yarn addict (hiding the yarn/fibre stash in black bags in the bottom of the wardrobe - I can't be the only person to do that surely?).
That said, and indeed I said it to myself just before I clicked on the "place order" button - I have a job of my own now, why not blow some of my money on yarn?... and a pom-pom kit for Rose and a 4 mm bamboo crochet needle (I don't have one remember and I want to make another baby blanket for Faith who is about to sprog any day now). Oh gosh yes, I bought some Debbie Bliss cashmerino for that little project. I ask you, how can anyone resist a baby yarn in cashmere and finest wool that is both washable and tumbleable and is called Pixie? I couldn't
And talking of irresistible, how about this?


Freedom Spirit 100% wool in Fire from Dragon Yarns. Isn't it stunning? All my favourite colours. I did not buy it because of Project Spectrum, but what a beautiful expression of the element. I have a pattern all set and waiting for this, a beautiful swingy, shawl collared cardigan from the best of Interweave Knits.

Right I cannot, absolutely cannot go to amazon from here. I will go and bake some cup cakes for tomorrow. Easter means pastel butter cream icing and plenty of little chocolate eggs. Then, as I could not get Leonidas :( I went for James Macavoy in Atonement. I love the way that man acts, still haven't forgotten him in Becoming Jane, so intense. Lovely.
So... have a great evening. I'm off to the kitchen while the twins are asleep.
ttfn!

Post!

How much do I love shopping online? Lovely, lovely stuff from amazon and fibrecrafts. Two books, silk laceweight yarn and acid dyes. I so wanted to get right in on that yarn but I am forcing myself to read the book first so I don't make a hash of it...or if I do make a hash of it at least it won't be for the lack of information.
So I am resting the old foot which is playing up again as I spun a little bit yesterday and now is bugging me no end with this dull constant background ache. Not anything agonising which would warrant a trip to the doc's or even a physio but this nagging blahsomeness.
Never mind, I have stuff to read and then stuff to do.

Hope you are having a colourful, busy day...

Jewels and Eden

I so love the internet: it is coming up on midnight and I have just bought half a pound of fibre from half way round the world. How? The fell word for craft addicts across the 'verse - Etsy. Etsy is fun and a great way to kill an hour but I have never seen anything that has made me want to part with my cash when I have Winghams only up the M6 (Okay, it's in Yorkshire but still a heck of a lot closer than pond hopping innit?) But They Told Me Sew was just too much. I was boasting to V only the other day that I have not bought any wool or spinning stuff so far this year (okay, I have bought dye, silk and silk paints, but hey they are not my number one habit so they barely count eh?)

But, honestly, look at these and then tell me that you wouldn't have bought them too...

Superwash Merino and tencel so it should be super silky and oh deary me look at the colours! Jewel is top and Eden is bottom and I can't wait 'til they are here. They are coming from South Dakota, where ever that might be, sounds very injun country to me but really all I care about right now is how good the pony express is out there. It can't take more than a month can it?

Christmas Shopping

Whew! What a nightmare and it has barely started yet. Swansea was heaving, full of people who pushed, shoved, ignored personal space - old women are particularly good at this. I leant into one old space invader in the queue in Marks, really put some weight on her, evil of me I know, but she was a sturdy old bird and didn't budge an inch. So I brought out the big guns. In an act of staggering violence, I turned around and raised my eyebrows at her. She stepped back. Never have met a Brit that can stand in the full glare of a raised brow.
Feeling much better we went to Debenhams and I promptly lost my sister. She could not have disappeared more effectively if she had been kidnapped by aliens. It took me well over half an hour to find her and we could not figure out who was more annoyed with whom, though as the younger sister I naturally took the blame because hey, I'm the youngest right? And if my eyebrows can make an ignorant old biddy take a step back, my darling sister's lifted eyebrows would have made her spontaneously combust. I know my place. I love my sister by the way, she is my absolute hero.
As a particular treat, it was off to the LYS (see, I know the lingo)* to pick up some Y obviously. But while there I succumbed to the lure of some particularly stunning ice blue frosted glass beads...and some bugle beads in mixed colours and some sequins (tacky I know, sue me) and little pink cubes and some frosted plum ovals too. Have I told you I have a serious bead habit, it is worse than wool really because they are so much easier to store ie, keep hidden from V's sight.

So, back home and hide the goodies. My husband is out to the rugby tonight, not an uncommon event in Wales, but my dear V has lived on this earth for over forty years and has never, in my knowledge, gone to a rugby match in any of them. I wonder how he will like it? He'll probably shout himself hoarse, have a whale of a time with Uncle Daisy and probably take another forty years before going again.
What shall I do tonight then? Oh I know...some beading I think.

*
LYS - Local Yarn Store, whough Swansea is only local-ish for me. There is no YS near me' cos I don't count the acrylic nightmares that Shaws in Neath offer us as yarn. I've got nothing against man made fibres, but make them soft for goodness sake.

Well My Friends

It has been a hellish day frankly. The kidlings are making stew of me and insomnia sucks big time. I am on my knees.

So what am I going to do tonight? Thats right...get out the glad rags and go out with the girls.

I am off out to Kellys with Sara and Ann, a recipe for fun if ever there was one, and I will attempt to have a ball unless the presence of sympathetic females doesn't turn me into a heap of teary jelly.
I will let you know how it went!

Have a great day and try and get some sleep for me will you?

Apologies

For lack of blogging, but I have not been crafting either so there is not that much to blog about. Other than, listen to this...I have a comission! Wooo-hoo! Out shopping with Sara and she fell in love with a shrug in M&S. They were asking £20 for a rectangle of chenille-honestly. So of course I said, heck I could make one for you, don't waste your money.And she took me up on it!
So that is it really. Now have the pleasure of spinning something for a purpose and it is not my fault that I now have to put an order in to Winghams now is it?

Oh deary me...

Check out Hobgoblin Music here

Did I say that retail therapy had to stop? Well colour me changeable 'cos I'm off to Bristol on the morrow with long suffering V in tow to try out a mandolin from Hobgoblin. I don't know...I've just always wanted one okay? I'm alright on the guitar, but my hands are so stupidly small ( seriously, I can just about stretch an octave on the piano) that it is very hard for me to play well. Thus I reason that a slimmer neck will suit my literally child sized hands rather better.
And this one is so funky, don't you think? It is a little more expensive than I was prepared to pay considering that I am a beginner, but well, you don't want to scrimp do you? And it can always come out of the Christmas money that my dearest MIL has promised to bestow on me, ostensibly to get a new coat ... but I wont tell her if you won't!

Nos da cariad

Fantasy Fibre Order is Go!

Oh what fun I have had over the last few days. Since I could not go to Woolfest, due to a nervous husband, I have been celebrating my own personal wool festival with the help of Posh Yarn and Winghams. I'm sorry to see the last of it. I really cannot allow myself to spend anymore until I have spun up at least the rest of the lime merino that I ordered about a year ago. Funny how these things get shoved in the back of the stash and get forgotten.

So here it is:

• Space dyed tussah silk in seascape - destined for laceweight yarn.
  
• Delphinium merino wool - for Rose to have a poncho that will set off her sky eyes to perfection.
  
• Royal purple tussah silk - to ply with the blue black in my stash.

And that's it, hardly anything really. I was going to order some cashmere but I found some in the bottom of my stash, it was incorectly labelled as merino and I was going to felt it. Yikes!

I didn't get the peppermint alpaca top, the bluefaced leicester humbug - very lustrous, but I'll probably get some in the Llantrisant sampling day in October and I didn't get the tussah silk in herb garden either. I really could not spend any more considering the Posh yarn order and the books I have bought from Amazon. All good things come to an end alas. Retail therapy must end here.

Wow!

Blueberry Hill by Posh Yarn

Wolves I tell yer, wolves! Who'd have thought that it would have been such a frenzy! I got the giggles it was so bad. There I was at 6 sharp, poised as I said earlier. But it was no good. The fastest 'putor wins I suppose. I missed both the yarns pictured below but managed to snag my third choice, blueberry hill, a lace weight 100 per cent cashmere and I had to shift I can tell you.

Still, very happy with it and have decided that I will do Icarus in this which gives me a few more days to finish cobweb and think of an equally lovely project for the Samba yarn that I originally bought for the Icarus but somehow it just didn't gel. I think I will do something from Victorian Lace Today with it, perhaps the small shoulder wrap, but that will be sometime next year I think!


Update
Yarn arrived on 4th July, hurrah! Really quick service Dee, thanks. And I have spun 100 per cent cashmere yarn, so I knew how soft it was going to be, but whenever I do something it never quite meets my approval. This yarn is absolutely scrumptious, it is called blueberry with good reason, it has a purple bloom running through it and it is a soft matte texture. What a pure pleasure it will be to work it. Yay!
But first Cobweb, which needs to be ripped back three rows :( and I am dreading it. The Sherriff has had such a nightmare with ripping back Kid silk and she is an expert, what's a poor moron like me supposed to do?

Spent Out...almost

Borders was fab. Had company this time so it was a bit more fun. Debated the relative merits of David Gemmel versus Robin Hobb (Gemmel, no contest) with my middle nephew and got treated to coffee by my dear sister.
I was rather sad to find that there were no spinning books that I could find. Plenty of crochet offerings and I managed to have a look at Flirty crochet and I'm glad I did. I was thinking of ordering it with amazon but really, flirty it was not...and I think that is all I can say and stay within my kind blog remit. I didn't buy it shall we say.

Had a good gander round the history section, Sis bought a grim book on the Cesares and the new book by the editor of GQ magazine on ettiquette for the modern man. I read a paragraph of it and indeed it seemed invaluable, quite pungent, but dealing with some relevant issues that a young man might come up against in life in general. How come kids are not taught how to break up with someone nicely in school? Anyway, Tom is getting this as a parting gift when he leaves for Uni in September. A black day that will be too, not looking forward to that. It strikes me that this book by Dylan Jones I think his name is, would also be quite a handy users guide as it were for females. Always interesting to get the insiders view point and sometimes quite handy when one is at a loss.

It was not too long before I inevitably gravitated to the poetry section. Well, I've seen better shall we say. There were the usual suspects...Poetry Please! The Rattle Bag, Andrew Motion, Benjamin Zephaniah - even angrier than the last time I read him. There were some delicate little books on haiku and a clear mile of W.B. Yeats, is there a centenary coming up or something? And there was not an anthology there that did not churn out the same old same old that they always do. I didn't want the slim volumes of a single poet, though I did think about a pretty little volume of RS Thomas, but at seven quid for a book that was less than half a centimetre thick...No, not really. Then just as I was about to give up I found Poetry to MAke You Smile. I could stand that I thought, picked it up and read three harmless little ditties that I had never read before. Printed on paper so thick as to be almost chunky, it is pleasingly modern in design with a decent size but not obtrusive print

The Rabbit
The rabbit has a charming face:
Its private life is a disgrace.
I really dare not name to you
The awful things that rabbits do...

Anon

That is a little exerpt from one of my favourites. And it's not as awful as you might think at the finish.

From Borders I had a few errands to run in town and as I didn't have the encumbrance of a double pram, took the opportunity to have a browse in some clothing stores. Hardly ever get that opportunity. And there waiting for me was this funky little halter neck dress in a lovely soft slinky cotton. Sold. Can't remember the last time I bought a new dress. Now all I need is somewhere to wear it.

So an enjoyable afternoon, just what I needed. I haven't had retail therapy session like this since last Christmas and I don't think it's over yet. Just don't tell V that's all.

Almost ten o clock now and the insomnia of last night is starting to bite. I'm off to bed.

Nos da my lovlies

Not Well Again!

Yuk, bleaurgh I'm not well at all. Sniffing and snooshing, red nosed and gasping with hayfever on top of a summer cold. Sore throat, itchy eyes and drugged up to the eyeballs. If this is what full medication turns me into then I dread to think what I would be like without it!

So, to take my mind off it, what shall I do? Spinning makes me sleepy, ditto knitting and I don't think I can concentrate enough for cobweb. I could crochet, finish off the simplest sleeve ever but that means I have to take this lovely warm laptop off... well... off my lap rather appropriately. The weather is foul. Grey whistly drizzle swooshing up the valley and I have to go out and pick up Rose in under an hour when I can barely see to drive.

Nomads have the coolest clothes, they are fairtrade too

What shall I do? Not dishes, not laundry. It's going to have to be surfing. A spot of retail therapy I think. Nomads have got some very pretty skirts that I've been wanting for some time. And I think, seeing that Woolfest is now definately off, I will pop by Winghams and get some seascape tussah silk that I have been wanting for ages.

silk hankie, colour way seascape

Yup, Woolfest is off. V really didn't like the idea of me going. It is a long way and really what would I get there that I couldn't get over the web? So, save the petrol and spend the money on silk instead. And maybe a poetry book?

That said, I have just remembered that I'm off to Borders tomorrow with my sister. I went on Saturday on my own, but it is really a place for company. I sat on the balcony, on the high seats like barstools, all on my own and talked to myself, but then I laughed out loud at something my imaginary companion said and I realised that I could well become the floor show if I was not careful.
I finished my coffee quickly and slunk off. There is an amazing array of books there and dvd's but was somewhat bemused by the service. I asked a perfectly intelligent looking young chap if Brief Encounter was in stock and he told me the sci fi was over the other side of the store. Understandable I suppose, Brief Encounter came out in1945, but nevertheless possibly the greatest film ever made. I don't know. Still, he didn't look as if Celia Johnson was his type.

I've ordered it since on amazon, should be coming tomorrow. I'll send V out somewhere and sob into my popcorn for doomed love - it is the best weepie in the world, ever so much better than the horse whisperer.

So, that's my day. I'm off now, surf's up!