Stuff

The last few weeks have been somewhat busy!  In the run-up to Christmas, I decided that the dining room walls needed all of DD2's 'artwork' scrubbed off and then a fresh coat of paint.  As DD2 can't be trusted to not touch wet paint, my time with a brush and a tin of emulsion are limited to before 12 noon so the paint can be touch-dry for when she gets home from school, so it's taken me several days of fragmented painting to get it done, but now I've only got one wall to finish with a second coat of paint (hurrah!). 

I also wanted to put up a new curtain track and new curtains in the dining room.  I bought two sets of the same curtains and the ones in the bay window of the lounge have been up for months, but we'd never quite got round to doing the dining room ones.  After a fair bit of cursing, grrr-ing and frustration (our walls are plasterboard) on my part and hubby coming to the rescue at the weekend with his strength, it was finally up and, apart from shortening them by about 15cm/6", the curtains are now up.

All this has eaten into my knitting/crocheting/spinning time, especially when it's come to finishing things off.  DD1's green hoodie is finished and is now on a quick wash/low spin cycle of the machine.  Mother-in-law's scarf needs blocking (or washing, drying and steam-blocking; I'm really running out of time on this one).

I do have one or two things to show off though.

First off, a hat:

This is a simple 2X2 ribbed hat from the Patons Easy Knits booklet (it might not be called exactly that but I've put it away upstairs) for their wool-blend aran yarn.  I changed the pattern slightly to knit it in the round and avoid seaming and used some Stylecraft Life Aran in a nice blue shade that's slightly heathery.  The hat was made for my friend Martin (who's in his 50s and single, so needed something machine-washable!).  A few weeks ago Martin came into Tesco when I was working and was wearing what was/is a hideous hat.  A brown, acrylic, ribbed beanie.  It may be from Lacoste, but hideous it is, and will always be.  So, I grimaced at the brown, told Martin he needed a decent hat with some wool in it to keep noggin warm in the winter and that I'd make him one.  I saw him last weekend and gave it to him and he immediately took off the brown monstrosity and went off to a local cafe wearing the new hat!!

The hat took less than one 100g ball of yarn and although I seemed to be ribbing for England, I'm very pleased with it and would use this pattern again (the pattern booklet also has a hat variation where the brim's ribbed but the crown of the hat is in stocking stitch - maybe I'll do that one next time).

Here's our Christmas tree.  It got put up the weekend before last and is mostly the work of DD2.  DD1 and I put on the lights and the tinsel, but bauble placement is courtesy of my youngest.  She insisted we put the paper angel she made at school three or four years ago on the top of the tree, as we have done ever since she brought it home.  It's getting a bit tatty now, the wings are a bit curled up, her head is rather bowed and she's lost a lot of her glitter.  DD2 was also Director of Operations when it came to putting up the other decorations.  She stood there telling her father where each one was to be pinned!

I've been doing some spinning (as a bit of stress-buster really) so if all goes to plan I'll be back tomorrow to show you the resulting yarn.