A new time-eater...

Back around October, hubby and I started talking about Christmas and the talk got around to what presents to buy each other.  To be honest, there was nothing that immediately sprang to mind for me.  My yarn stash is, erm, extensive.  I have a spinning wheel.  I have enough knitting needles and crochet hooks.  There was nothing on the craft front that I really, really wanted.  We'd already said that we weren't going to go silly and buy each other extravagent presents (not least because DD1 needed a new laptop -- which ended up being a joint birthday and Christmas present from us, plus part of a present from Granny because the one that was decided would suit her best was a bit more expensive than we'd budgeted for).  In the end, I decided that I'd like a new purse (I was thinking Cath Kidston) and a new pair of Crocs.  I wear my Crocs a lot as they're very easy to slip on to pop out to the shops, nip down to the station to collect or drop off DD1 and they're very easy to clean after dog-walking in the autumn/spring seasons.  I am, however, a bit fussy about my Crocs!  I like the ones they call Crocband, which aren't quite a holey as the traditional ones.  As it turns out, I did buy a new pair of Crocs in Amazon's Black Friday sales, because they were considerably reduced, but my thinking was that two pairs are better than one pair that are very close to developing a hole in the sole.

On Christmas morning, we were up early (I'm blaming hubby for that one - I'm sure that DD2 had every intention of going back to sleep for a while after she'd gone downstairs to check Father Christmas hadn't forgotten to stop at our house during the night, but he then went into her room and talked to her, which meant she was now properly awake) and went downstairs.  By 7.30am, presents had been opened, there was a pile of gaily-wrapped paper in a heap on the carpet and I was nearly ready for a second mug of tea (I should point out here that I'd received neither new purse nor Crocs).  And then.... hubby went into the hallway and came back with two sizeable boxes, wrapped very festively and told me they were for me.  I may have mentioned before that when it comes to presents, my husband can go a bit overboard and, despite what he may have said about setting a budget and sticking to it, that rule goes out of the window if the mood takes him and he sees something he thinks I'll like.  I unwrapped the first box (I was told which one I had to open first) and.....

IT WAS A WEAVING LOOM!!!!!!

A Kromski Harp weaving loom - 32" wide.

To say I was taken aback was a bit of an understatement.  I looked at him with an "why did you think of getting this?" expression and he said that he'd remembered a while back (at least a year) I'd mentioned that a loom was something I'd quite like "at some point".  In the other box was a stand for the loom.

The loom was put together a few days later once life had calmed down a little bit after the busy-ness of Christmas and Boxing Days and then I started reading... and reading... and reading... and watching lots of videos.

It wasn't until a couple of weeks later, once normal service had been resumed and the girls were back at school that I actually got round to putting yarn on the loom and warping it.

This is what it looks like:

Photo from Spinwise.co.uk

I shall talk about my first weaving project in my next entry. 

Craftwise, I'm trying to decide what to knit next as I'm getting close to finishing my stripey scarf of many colours -- the one I started over a year ago.  I decided it was time to Get It Done!