Happy Christmas etc

Hello all. Hope you are enjoying your winter holidays. Being a Brit where we tend to only take much notice of Christmas, with perhaps a little Divali at the beginning of the month for good measure, I’ve stuck with the usual greeting – I’m too stupid to know all the others (although thanks to the Simpsons, I’m aware that Kwanza exists, but that doesn’t mean I can spell it or know what it is…).
Anyway, as is usual when I manage to get time off work, I have caught a cold, DBs cold to be exact. Christmas Eve we visited my family and had an almost relaxed get together, while DB suffered a little, and I felt a sore throat coming on. Christmas with my family is always taxing to a degree, and we all know it. My mum likes driving us back home so she can escape. Don’t get me wrong, we all love each other, but once a year where we are all in the same room, for about 6 hours is enough. But it is traditional, and we do the good old Brit thing of eating till cheese/trifle comes out of our ears, then sitting and drinking till we fall asleep in front of the tv in the overheated little living room at my gran’s house. This year we fell asleep watching the first Harry Potter film, while eating my uncle’s new discovery – vanilla ice cream accompanied by raisins soaked in a full bottle of rum overnight. It was the most alcoholic thing I’ve ever tasted, and I drink vodka. And my mum managed to drive us home after eating it.
Anyway, DB and I managed a lovely Christmas Day together, despite illness, and had a long relaxing day on the sofa, opening presents, eating till Quorn roast and parsnips came out of our ears (no dessert – we forgot to pick one out, but didn’t need it, or the multiple cheeses we had bought. We like cheese a lot by the way. A lot – it is my diet downfall. Don’t give me cake, just some wheatfree bread/biccies and a pile of Roule, Wensleydale with cranberries and some good strong cheddar), and watching the hundreds of mediocre films on telly. Oh and I listened to my two new CDs too – Interpol and Arcade Fire. Yum. Yesterday we did more of the same, and today is likely to be similar, but there is one thing that was a little different…
I had mentioned in passing to my mum that I wanted a wool winder and a swift because I’m fed up of getting a big tangled mess when I try to wind up skeins of yarn, and she remembered that she had a wool winder from when she did machine knitting. She had a rummage and found it for me, so yesterday I had a little play. I unravelled some arm warmers because they were a bit too chilly to wear and used it to wind up the yarn, and YAY! it worked 😀 So I used it to wind a hank of Colinette One Zero, and it worked for the most part, apart from the yarn filling the winder quite quickly with it being so thick. And I knit things too. No progress on Angelica because I’ve not been in the mood for garments – needing to stop to blow my nose every few stitches is too annoying, so I stuck with little things, and finished my Alterknits alpaca silk armwarmers instead, although I still need to get ribbon to lace them up with 🙂 Alpaca silk is yummy. And I have just under 2 balls of it left to make a little scarf, so last night I started a small version of the Leisel Scarf with just one strip of the lace pattern instead of two. I may be knitting something new, but I finished something first, AND I’m stash busting! Yay! And I’ve started my first pair of socks on two circs, using the basic pattern in Cat Bhordi’s book and some leftover Lorna’s Laces from the cable socks (remember me complaining about that? Well now I’m happy to be able to make some socks for myself with it ;)). Plus my delivery from the other day included a lovely fishtail lace sock pattern from Alchemy yarns. I fell in love with it and the silk blend yarn at the knitting show, but they ran out of yarn and don’t sell it on their website yet. Get Knitted have some (rather strong) varigated colours, but I want some plain to use with the stitch pattern, and I should wait until I reduce the sock yarn I already have…
Soooo, while I have a little time to myself, I decided, perhaps under the influence of too much food and wine, to catalogue my stash and print off the patterns I have stored on the laptop so that I can work on reducing how much yarn I have. I will know what I have, what I can knit with it, and put it on here so I can shame myself into not buying any more yarn at all ever. Well, for a little while. I have lots of sock patterns too 😀
Anyway, I need some brekkie, and a shower, and then I will start taking pics and listing and thinking and uploading…