A Flumpy Week

Flumpy is how I've been feeling this week.

Monday was fine, but things went a bit downhill on Tuesday around 7.15am, five minutes before we were due to leave the house for the train station when DD1 came downstairs and said "I can't find my train ticket".  The monthly train/bus pass I'd paid £65.75 for the day before.  Not amused doesn't really cover how I felt.  Coat pockets were checked, the bag she'd used the day before was checked, her pencil case was checked and she went back upstairs to check the books she'd had with her the day before.

No ticket. 

I have to admit that this was something that I'd been half-expecting to happen, but her attitude got to me.  I know she's 12 and on the cusp of womanhood, so moodiness and a lack of consideration is to be expected while she's going through the teenage 'head up backside' phase, but an apology wasn't too much to ask, was it?  Her reaction to having lost her ticket was "you'll have to buy me a daily ticket instead". 

I spent half of the time the girls were at school on Tuesday clearing out DD1's bedroom, getting rid of loads of rubbish and organising her shelves, but still no ticket.

This morning, however, she found it.  In one of the books she'd had with her on Monday.  I asked her why she hadn't looked through that one.  "I did" she said.  I looked at her.  "I flicked through it" she added.

Quite honestly, this saga has been like a cloud hanging over me for the last few days. The attitude of my first-born, plus the cost of extra tickets and the £20 admin fee to get a replacement if it wasn't found/handed in to Lost Property or the ticket office at our local station, never mind the inconvenience of getting new photos with autistic DD2 in tow so a new travel card could be arranged.

As a result of this one Thing, I've felt rather flumpy this week.  I'm sure you know what I mean by flumpy.  A bit fed up, a bit down in the dumps, a bit 'what's the point'; unmotivated.

So, I haven't really been doing much knitting.  A bit, but even my ongoing WIPs haven't called to me, never mind Betty, my spinning wheel.

I did start the second of a new pair of socks at knitting group on Monday morning.  The pattern's the same Charade one that I used for the orange socks I blogged about a few posts ago, but I've jiggled it a bit so the pattern's sort of doubled up, with two lines of the herringbone rib, separated by 4 knit stitches.

The yarn's Trekking XXL, colour 401.  I wasn't sure about the stripes with the pattern at first, but after a couple of inches I decided that they did work together.  I think that I've done two rows on them since Monday morning though.  Not very good really.

I did pick up crochet hook earlier in the week and made two felted things.  I'm not sure why.  I think it was simply a case of having the leftover yarn from my Marmite socks hanging around and wondering what to do with it.  I was looking around Ravelry and found a pattern for a pot-holder and decided that if I made one quite big, I could felt the yarn. 

It's quite ugly, but my saucepans are copper-bottomed stainless steel and the handles get hot.  I'm not sure yet if it's felted down too much so will be too thick, but if it is, I'll give it to the dog - she likes carrying fabric things around!

I still had yarn left after doing that and so decided to make a smallish circle, then just do rounds to build up sides and felt it into a pot.  I use rechargeable batteries for DD2's various toys, remote controls etc, and they tend to end up lying on the stairs, so the pot's being used to hold the charged batteries. 

I felted them by putting them on a 40C wash with some towels and then I moulded the pot by upturning my 1 pint glass jug as that was just about the right size before putting them in the airing cupboard to dry.

I did a bit of spinning yesterday and plied some merino I've been working on for ages and today I got a bit more motivation to do something crafty and once DD2 had gone to school and I'd walked the dog, I thought I'd do some spinning for a while before getting ready to go to Friday knitting group.  Except.... I got into spinning and by the time I looked at the clock, an hour had gone past, so I didn't make it to Dedham and spent the time spinning instead.  These are my two latest skeins:

The fibre's from the lap waste bag I got from World of Wool earlier this year and I spun up singles of various colours as I only had a bit of each and then plied them together for the purple skein.  The orange one is my first attempt at spinning from rolags made using my hand-carders.  I had a bit of red, a bit of yellow and a bit of orange merino in the bag, so carded them together into rolags and spun two singles which I then plied.  Both yarns are 52g and just over 100m, which makes them heavy DK/light worsted in weight and there's enough of each to make a hat.

So, yes, a bit of a flumpy, unmotivated week where, although I've achieved some things, they're not the things I was planning on doing.

Maybe I need to start something new.......

Actually, there's something in the pipleline which I'll tell you about next time.

Have a good weekend - even though the weather's probably going to be pants.