I've Got 'The Wanties'

For this. 

The colour palette is gorgeous and the yarn seems lofty, light and yummily woolly.

However, now that the import threshold has been reduced from £18 to £15 (including P&P iirc), that would mean that at $14.50 a 50g skein, buying 3 skeins would be approx £27.50.  Add on something like £8.20 for shipping and that's £35.70.  VAT would be £7.14 and then the post office handling fee of £8 would bring the total up to £50.84 - for 150g of yarn (753 metres).  Or, to put it another way, 6.75p per metre of yarn.  A 100g/400m skein of Natural Dye Studio Angel Sock works out at 5p per metre.

Oh well.  Maybe one day!  Or maybe hubby will have to go to the US on business and I can get him to bring me some back with him :D  In the meantime, I'll have to make do with one or two of the patterns that have been written for the yarn instead.

Not much else to show you really.  I've been mostly plodding away on my Granny Stripe blanket as I want to get it finished by Christmas.  It's turning into a bit of a biggie, this one.  I ended up ordering a second 'Lucy pack' of Stylecraft yarn from Masons last week and will keep striping until I've done 5 x 18-colour repeats, plus another 12 colour rows, then do a border of six rounds using the last 6 colours of the colour sequence I've been using.  With the way acrylic yarns relax after washing and drying, that should give me a blanket that's more of a bedspread which will cover the bed from headboard to footboard!  I'll put it on the bed once I've done 5 and a half repeats to see if my calculations are correct or not.

I've put St Brigid on the back burner for the moment.  I had a dreadful cold last week which really knocked me sideways and without the ability to concentrate on something so full of cables.

I have started something new in the last week.  I asked DD2 if she wanted a new blanket and she said yes.  We decided on a Neat Ripple and I'm doing stripes of one row cream, two rows colour, one row cream, etc.  I've done 4 colour rows so far and it's looking rather nice, if I do say so myself.  DD2 also likes it, which is the main thing.  More about that when I've done enough to warrant taking a photo!

I had DD1's first parent-teacher meeting at her new school last night.  13 miles in the car each way for a five-minute meeting with her form teacher and then a few minutes with her head of lower school (to check that if we buy DD1 a Kindle for her birthday that she'll be able to take it into school - at her own risk, obviously).  DD1 is apparently doing very well, has settled in to life at a senior school, has made new friends and reports from her teachers all seem to be of the "no issues, conscientious worker and polite" type which makes me a Happy Mummy :)

I'm off to do some Granny Striping now.