My Fibre Obsessed Life

…so hopefully I should be able to get back to posting on a more regular basis.  I’ve been managing to grab some craft time, I made sure I could for my own sanity lol, but uninterrupted time on my computer hasn’t been too easy to get these past few weeks.

Took the kids to the Industrial Museum in Bradford yesterday afternoon and I think I’m going to have to go back for a more leisurely look round once they’re back at school.  I particularly enjoyed  all the textile industry exhibits on the first floor- so much so Xan exasperatingly said ‘You’re fibre obsessed Mummy.’- I think he even managed a little eye roll lol.

We have a rich history of textile manufacturing in this area and it was fascinating to get a closer look at some of the equipment that was once in use. This machine in particularly made me chuckle:

And all the combed top surrounding this one made me almost want to move into this display:

And look at all the bobbins this machine could spin at the same time:

At the moment I’ve got a more craft projects ongoing than I can really handle, lets see… I have two pairs of socks, a scarf, my forest canopy shawl (still) and a cardi on the needles; I am in the middle of weaving a scarf and I have a woven wall hanging to embellish and finish off; I’m in the middle of dying some handspun corriedale, I’m in the middle of spinning some BFL humbug on my rose and am corespinning a merino blend on my Julia.   Takes a deep breath- hhmmmmm maybe I’d better focus on getting some of these finished before I add any more to the list lol.

Core spinning:

Wall hanging on the loom:

So I had an amazing time at the Damned gig on Thursday night, its been so long since we went to a gig (years actually, last time I was heavily pregnant with Xan who just turned 7 :O ) and I’d forgotten just how great it was seeing live music from the moment you walk in and you can feel the beat thudding right in your chest.  The venue was really good, it only has a capacity of just over 500 so the whole thing had a really intimate feel to it- I much prefer to see bands somewhere like this.   The damned were awesome- they played a really long set and I enjoyed every single minute of it.

Did I mention there was pain involved though?? Yes, I believe I did- well I wore my new shoes (a birthday present which I was allowed to have a day early so I could wear them to the gig):

They look awesome and whilst being perfect for the occasion, were also terribly impractically for dancing for hours.  My feet were only sore for one day afterwards, so it was still totally worth it lol. Besides it meant I could spend my birthday chilling out, knitting and watching movies with the family.    It also meant that I made a lot of progress on my sleepy hollow socks:

I’m really enjoying this pattern, I particularly love how the heel flap and gusset are worked at the same time- it makes for a very neat, well fitting heel.  Not far off decreasing for the toes now.

Time seems to moving so quickly at the moment.   My mum was visiting from France last week and it was really great to see her.   And as an added bonus she baby-sat for us on the Saturday night so we could have our first night out together in seven years.  We didn’t do anything spectacular, just had a few drinks in a local pub, but it was still really good.  I finished the stripy socks I’d been working on whilst she was here and I sneaked them into her luggage as a surprise thank you (so no FO picture of that pair of socks)

I’ve also been plugging away on my rainbow shawl for the shawl-a-long- I’ve gotten 19 lace repeats done and have over 300 stitches on my needles so each row is taking about 15-20 minutes.  As you can imagine its slow going with it now, but I’m determined to keep increasing until I’m absolutely sick of knitting the thing and then start the edging chart.

Xander’s birthday last week went pretty well, although at times he found all the excitement a bit too much to cope with. Its hard to believe that he’s 7 already, he still seems so much younger at times.   He loved all his presents though, but as you can probably tell his skateboard was his favourite one:

Am suffering from a strange mix of excitement and anxiousness at the moment, which is an interesting combination to say the least.   Our night out whilst Mum was staying with us went so well that we decided we could risk doing it again with the MIL babysitting and yesterday these arrived:

Yes, my awesome husband is taking me to see The Damned for my birthday! !! This is the bit causing me the excitement.  The related anxiety is caused by the fact my MIL has never looked after Xan and I’m stressing about whether it will go well or not.  (I really hope so cos we want to go see the buzzcocks next month and it feels so good being able to do this kind of stuff after such a long time).

Just enjoying a (relatively) chilled out Sunday after the craziness of the last few weeks, the kids are all happy doing their own thing so I finally enjoying a bit of head space (and some Vince Ray and the Boneshakers ).  My sock knitting obsession is still in full flow (am making the most of it to get stocked up with handknit socks before it ends and I can’t be bothered with socks for a while).  Finished my pair of green rose socks yesterday and they fit like a … well, like a sock but you know what I mean:

And my next batch of sock yarn arrived from MyLYS in Germany right on time yesterday morning and I was spoilt for choice for what to cast on for my next project.  I got some lollipop yarns sock in a gorgeous red, hopefully to make a pair of my vampire boyfriend socks (mine would be Spike btw ):

And a zauberball in really nice shades of green (not decided on a pattern for these yet):

It took me a little while to make up my mind, but in the end I couldn’t wait to knit with my final skein from myLYS, simply because it feels so amazingly soft and has such a deep colour.  Its another lollipop yarns one, this time Cherie, which is a blend of merino and cashmere:

Unfortunately its not a clear picture, but the stitch pattern for this pattern is really pretty (I’d originally started this with the yarn I knit my green rose socks with posted above, but the yarn was just too busy for the pattern). It works so much better with a plain yarn.

…cos I think things are finally starting to settle down again (but don’t tell anyone in case we jinx it).  Of course it really helps that the school holidays are starting on Friday, it means that Xan can have a much needed break from having to cope with the sensory overload of the school day (and we can have a break from having to deal with the after effects).

I even have good news on the knitting front, I seem to have gotten my love for sock knitting back and since I last posted have finished another pair of socks……………don’t get too excited though, they don’t match lol:

Hopefully, once the summer break has started and I can ease back on my coursework a bit, I’ll be able to get caught up with my blog reading (and post a little more often lol). I’ve also got loads of craft projects I want to get done over the next few weeks because all that stuff has been pushed to the back burner in recent weeks (including knitting two more socks to match these lol).

So as a consequence I’ve become a terrible blogger.  I won’t bore you with the details except to say I’d had a lot on my plate and have also been trying to get through the last few weeks of my current module in the short space of time I have left before the kids break up for the summer (9 days and counting eek!).

Despite everything that’s been happening I’ve still managed to sneak in some knitting time (including a couple of good SnB sessions with an awesome local ravelry friend) and I even have a finished object picture to share, not only that its a pair (yes, that’s right I said a pair :O) of socks:

After my recent appalling track record with socks, I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to actually have a finished pair.  I was so excited I cast on for another pair immediately after sewing all the ends in on these two, and *whispers so as not to jink things* I’m almost finished with the first sock.

My rainbow forest canopy shawl is also coming along nicely, if a little slowly, I’ve just not had much time with a clear enough head to get through much- the colour changes are already looking awesome though so I’m determined to finish it, will try get some WIP shots tomorrow.

As you may remember this week was cast on week for the shawl-a-long Jen invited me to take part in and I was off to a bit of a bumpy start.  I was supposed to be knitting a rainbowtastic Northern lights shawl, but after struggling through the first 30 rows and having to fix a mistake on almost every single one I decided enough was enough and frogged it.  I don’t know why I was finding it so difficult, the chart is super easy to understand, but it just refused to go into my head.  Since I knit to relax and this was turning me into a hair-pulling, foul-mouthed ball of stress I figure frogging was the right way to go, even if a pile of frogged yarn always looks a little sad to me:

So now, using the same yarn, I’m working on a Forest canopy shawl and (apart from a small mishap yesterday when I pulled half the stitches off my needles when the cable caught on the corner of my desk) its coming along well so far.  It even survived a bout of sleep knitting last night when I foolishly decided I wasn’t too tired to do another row and then proceeded to doze in and out of consciousness all the way along.

In the spirit of getting out there and seeing what life has on the menu we took the kids on a picnic today and I took my knitting with me.  It was so nice sitting out in the sun surrounded by wild flowers, butterflies and bees, especially given the spot we went to was like a little hidden treasure without another soul in sight:

I think this one is going to take a while because I’m wanting to make it huge and I have 1600 metres of this lace weight to use and so far I’ve knit just a tiny fraction of it:

I’ve been trying to work my way out of this semi-hermit like state I’ve fallen into over the past few years, even though sometimes it all just seems like an impossible task (hence the 6 months delay in actually getting to a knit night). I’ve tried changing my thinking to incorporate a kind of ’seize the day’ attitude but thinking like that didn’t get rid of the sense that making these changes would be hard work.   I’ve always been shy, but over the last few years my social anxiety has gotten worse and I don’t like it, but felt like changing would be such a huge thing to have to do.

On Sunday night I was inspired by the most unlikely source- we were watching an episode of Family Guy and much to the annoyance of Lois, Peter had signed himself up for the local rodeo.  She was worryingly pointing out to him that he didn’t know how to do any of this stuff and he just interrupted her and said (paraphrased cos I can’t pull up the exact quote): “That’s your problem- when life comes knocking you go hide in the kitchen. Whilst I open the door and say ‘Hi life, what ya got??’”

Such a small thing, I know, but it honestly felt like someone pointing out an obvious truth to me that has been eluding me for years.  Rather than thinking that I need to make myself get out there and do stuff (something that seems like such hard work), I need to think of life as a menu with many options for me to choose from.  I don’t have to make loads of changes at once, instead each day I have a chance to make a one or two little choices that lead me way from hermithood.

On Wednesday I chose to get on the bus and go to knit night- and even though I don’t think that group is the right fit for me I’m already planning to try another next week that might be.

Yesterday I contacted a local ravelry member about meeting up, despite being nervous about doing it, and I’m hoping we get to do it soon.

Today I chose to get out of the house and go for a short hike with my sweetie and this was my reward (as well as the aching legs and sore nettle rash from foolishly going in a skirt):

I kinda like feeling like tomorrow I could chose to do anything, I hope I can hang onto this feeling.  Thank you Peter :

Despite not feeling too optimistic that I wouldn’t chicken out when I posted here yesterday I actually went to the knitting group last night and it really wasn’t that scary.  Its only a tiny group but everyone seemed really friendly- there’s another one that’s supposed to be popular that meets during the day and I’m planning on trying that one as well next week.

This is what I have to show for my time at knit night:

Despite the blurry pic I think you can still make out that this is in fact that elusive creature known as the second sock!  I was starting to think that it wasn’t ever going to show but yesterday morning I sat nice and quiet with my knitpro trap set and managed to catch it by the toe

I’ve also finally manged to get pictures of my Travelling woman shawl:

I made some changes to this- in an attempt to make it big enough I added extra repeats to the stocking stitch section and extra to the lace section.  Sadly I’m really not sure I like this shawl, I think its partly that I couldn’t block it as aggressively as it needed (I think I need better blocking equipment I just use normal pins at the moment).  I think I’ll see if blocking it again helps and if not I’ll frog it.

I enjoyed knitting with the zauberball, the colours are nice and its lovely and soft.  My only complaint with it is that it has some spots as thin as sewing thread and others as thick as worsted.

As I mentioned yesterday whilst catching up with my blog reading I was touched to see that a couple of my blog friends had listed my blog in their 10 beautiful blogs. Now I need to think of ten things that are remotely interesting enough to share on here, which is harder than it sounds lol:

1) Right now I am wearing a polka dot halter-neck dress that is much too fancy to messing around at home, but I’ve just finished adding a couple of tucks to it, had to try it on afterwards and can’t bear to take it off right now.

2) I pretend I don’t like Guitar hero, but really I just suck at it.

3) When I was still at school I was sure for years that I wanted to be a teacher when I grew up, after a year of teacher training I realised that I didn’t actually enjoy spending that much time with kids (of course that’s different for my own…well a bit lol).

4) I am incredibly shy, but really wish I wasn’t.  I’m going to try pluck up the courage to go to a local knitting group tonight, but whether I will or not is only looking 50/50 at the moment.

5) I once delivered a baby- I was a student midwife for a year (which I loved), but had to give up because my autistic son (my eldest who was 4 at the time) couldn’t cope with all the changes when I was working shifts.

6)  My toe nails are painted a colour I call ‘zombie green’ whilst my finger nails are painted purple. I very rarely paint them the same colour.

7) The most recent dream I can remember was that Fat Mike (from NOFX) came round to my house to personally tell me, in song form no less, that he was retiring.

I was born on Friday the 13th and Christened on Halloween. Mwahahahahaha.

9)  I’m currently reading the True blood books- totally trashy, but sometimes that’s just what I need to shut my busy brain up.  Strangely enough I wasn’t particularly fond of the TV series.

10) If I had the money and time I’d love to learn to play the upright bass

As for the ten blogs I think are beautiful I’m going to have to cheat and say all 11 on my blog roll- I enjoy reading everyone’s blogs and can’t bear to miss just one person off.

I’ve been looking for the perfect sock knitting bag for a little while now, something I can pull shut and shove in my massive handbag .  For the past few weeks I’ve been using a cheap wash bag I got from Morrisons- it has an awesome print that makes me smile, but its just that bit too small:

I can just about squeeze my yarn and sock-in-progess in there, but its too much of a squeeze to add the finished sock and other bits I might need, so since I had the sewing machine out to alter my dress I figured I might as well knock something larger up: