Discovery

Today is the day i have discovered Flobots. I hope you have too.

Im here

Ok, so the weekend was HECTIC and i mean it really was. I was cooking all day Saturday, made a quiche and lasagna and walnut roll(attempt number 3). Only i swapped this time walnuts with pecans and i liked it better. The dough was great this time, just the filling turned out a little dry. So hopefully next time perfect.
Then Unity had a stomach bug so she was sick in the middle of the night (why is it always the middle of the night?) all over the duvets and basically everywhere. So yesterday it was a big washing and ironing and cooking and cleaning and putting things away day. And then i tried to put the duvet in to washing machine but it was having none of it, so i had to drag it upstairs and stuff it in to the bath filled with warm water with soap and then dance around on it for about 20 minutes and then repeat that procedure like 3 times with no soap this time to rinse it, and then log it into the garden and hang it on the scaffolding. And how grateful i was that my dear husband is lazy enough not to take the scaffolding apart, despite me regularly hustling him about it. And, just when you though that was enough, we had to change the tires on my bike. All that along with taking children to the park and having neighbour's boy around and feeding them and entertaining them and resolving their scuffles.
So it is not surprising that i didnt have much knitting done, and what i thought was gonna be a couple of days kind of project now is going for a second week!
On the positive i have finally organized my yarn into plastic boxes so that my wardrobe is not completely filled with bits of yarn in plastic bags.
Ahhh, i thought i'd never say that, but im happy to be at work. So peaceful....

The last knit

Loooooooove this!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6ZjMWLqJvM
Please watch this!!!

Cycling pic

And thats me on my little Dahon. I love my little bike, it is very fast, despite having 20" wheels.
At the moment it is in the garage looking all dismembered, because my dear husband got me some new tires (which was sweet) because my back tire has a massive hole in it, left by a shred of glass. Only the thing is that he got a wrong size tires! And he only realized that after he took my old tires off.... So hence i had to change into civil clothes and take a bus and a train like all the normal people do. I guess the good thing was i could knit on the way to work, but i still hate commuting, it just takes forever and i feel like my freedom to move is morbidly restricted by train times and such.
Aaanyway, i am so close to completing Birthday Drops vest for my mother i just might finish it before Sunday, which would be nice. Oh, and my Rowan Bamboo Tape pattern booklet has arrived, giving me a lot of inspiration. Surprisingly enough Colin got very excited about the idea of making yarn out of bamboo, thats his latest craze - bamboo and more bamboo. He just got some black bamboo to go to our front garden. When i weakly protested that it grows up to
50' tall so will eventually stop any sunshine getting to the front of the house, he enthused that it will be just like living in a jungle. In a semi detached house in southeast London. Oh well, Russians say let children play so that they dont cry...
I was spending a lot of time on Ravelry again, as you do, chatting to more people. I love all that discussion board stuff you know. I even started a new thread and it had fantastic response.
Sweet baby Unity has started her nursery this week. She is doing great, they said she loved it. They give us like these little sheets of paper where it says what she did and what she ate, it was so sweet. I can just see her sitting there on a little chair like a big girl and eating cheesy mush and baked beans with a spoon. She is off today though because she is having her MMR immunization. I hope she takes it well, poor baby.

A lot to do, little time.

Ohhh the time goes sooo fast i have no time to think! Last week i was down with the cold that sort of progressed into flu then into chest infection and i'm still a bit not too great. Have been cycling like crazy though, i mean just fast, but always stopping at the red lights and generally being careful. Ever since we came back from our holidays we have been going all the way, and that 15 miles every day, half of it up the hill. I can just feel my hamstrings turning into stone. Or wood. Anyway, point being- I have been going up Greenwich hill every day and didnt get off once. You know Greenwich hill? Then you'll know what i mean.
Apart from congratulating myself and patting myself on the back i have been cooking (a lot) and knitting (not quite as much). Oh and getting excited about alpacas. I decided im fed up with retouching and wanna have an alpaca farm. Not tomorrow of course, but like in 5 years time. Or 10 years... Just have to see. When there is a will there is a way. And i am serious.
Im so serious i booked myself some spinning classes. I want to start spinning yarn and dying it so that when i have some alpacas i can do those things. I also have been reading a lot on alpaca farming and it all makes perfect sense.
And im progressing nicely on Drops Top 2 in black for my mother in law's Christmas present. Im just being realistic about my ability to knit and also about the amount of time i have. I know i said that my next project was gonna be Superman pullover for Leo, but he suddenly slipped to the darker realms of Batman so now im left with some wonderful cotton in Superman colours (and it did take me FOREVER to find just the right shade of red) and my son doesnt want to hear anything about Superman and totally Batman obsessed. Im personally more of a Spiderman kind of girl, he is not as dark as Batman and not as unobtainable as Superman, just your local hero.
Aaaanyway, it is a bit slow at work today (as in noone has shouted angrily at me yet) so i have time to write my thoughts down. Oh, another thing is that for my mother's birthday she asked me to knit her a vest. It seems everyone is vest obsessed, but i dont mind. So i just received the lovely green wool i have bought on ebay for it. Even though the picture looked totally emerald green and the wool itself is more of a leaf green, which reminds me:
Stop fuffing with the colours in Photoshop people, especially if you dont know what you are doing!
So many ebay sellers think: "oh i'll just up the saturation and lighten it a bit to make it look prettier" It doesn't work like that, all of those things make your colours look wrong. Adding saturation makes things more yellow and lightening things make them more red/blue/green depending on your base color.
Sorry got destructed from important stuff there for a second. So yeah, another Drops vest, here i come. Not the same Drops vest though. So a lot to do, little time.

Good and bad

Ok, lets start with good - i have finished my comfort shawl! wheeeeeee hey! I, of course, have to still weave in all the ends and crochet around it and block it, but the main grueling backward and forward knitting is finished. Im so proud of myself. And i dont really mind how it looks, plus i think grandma will love it. So there it is, im a knitter, past the scarves and socks.
Have spent a lot of time (far too much time really) on Ravelry, chatting away mainly on various discussion boards. I have never participated in activities like that, and think it is great. And i get to meet all the wonderful women (and some men) and for me, who find it hard to make new friends, it feels just great.
Also i have worked out (well more or less) how to make the superman jumper for Leo, thats my new project. At the same time there are so many things i wanna do, i feel that my very presumptuous resolution of "One Project At A Time" is going to be dumped very soon. There is this cardigan i really want to make and there is of course Colin's Christmas sweater that i will have to start soon, considering how little time i have to actually knit. And Colin, bless, he had ordered some patterns for sweaters, because i offered him few designs and he said mmmhew, so i told him if he finds a pattern, ill make it for him. Which he did.
Thats for the good. And on the bad front - i have a cold. A nasty crappy snuffly cold. Which is not the worst thing that can happen and if you think about it, very small compare with massiveness of I Finished The Shawl!!
:0))))))))))))

Back from Tallinn

Here i am, back from Tallinn, still glowing with a healthy suntan... What? Sun in Tallinn? However, we were extremely lucky with the weather, it was sunny and hot every day. And yes, i did get horrendously burned, but then tanned. We went to the beach with children every day! And in the evening, after putting children to bed, we went out and just walked and chatted and kissed like teenagers. In other words, it was a great holiday. It was good to see people as well, like Milka, who is probably going to be my best friend for rest of my life, and other old classmates of mine. And it was just long enough for us to be glad to get back home.It wasnt the cleanest seaside, but the amount of pleasure my children got from just frolicking

in the sea! And Colin of course.. He was the talk of the beach because he was building sandcastles with children which is "not a manly thing to do". Hehehe!
And here is my beloved grandma we stayed with .
They are big on spinning and knitting in Estonia, which i presume is natural since its so bloody cold in the winter. I left my knitting at home because i just wanted to give all of my attention to my family.

All scrubbed up to go out for a dinner with some of my friends.
Leo was in ice cream heaven, he had one every day.
So there you go.
Im still very happy. Lets see if that lasts!