Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

We had snow. Not very much but enough. It started on Friday afternoon, and simply chucked it down, creating a mass panic amongst drivers who suddenly left work early to go home and created horrendous traffic on the roads. Wimps. All that fuss for about 1 cm of snow 🙂 I caught the bus home at my usual time and had a lovely quiet journey with no extra length to it. I did get a bit cold in the snow getting from the bus stop, but otherwise I was happy. It didn’t melt despite beautiful sun yesterday, and as we left a birthday party we realised it was again tipping it down with snow and sleet, and had been for some time. But again, nothing to worry about apart from not having the right kind of coat on to battle it to the taxi place down the road from the pub.
Apart from one problem. I usually have a good laugh at how much fuss there is over such small amounts of snow when so many other countries, and even areas of our own continent have it much worse and manage to carry on as normal. But this time it is different – our fire isn’t working. It lights, and after holding the knob down for a while the pilot light catches the gas and creates a nice flame, but suddenly just goes out. 🙁 It is freezing in our house, even with the central heating on, because we have an open plan design, and all the heat in the lounge goes straight up the stairs, while having to dry washing on the radiators does nothing to encourage the heat in the room at all. Luckily, my mum brought an electric fan heater over a few weeks ago because our bedroom was ultra cold in an evening (apparently the heat doesn’t go in there – it just loiters around the hallway) so we’ve transfered it down to the lounge and are no doubt spending a small fortune heating the place to a palatable level. My feet are like ice, thanks to the socks being washed and the lack of fire to hold them in front of in times of need. Although I could lie down and put them on the radiators if it weren’t for the washing. Hurry up gas repair man! We’ll be calling him tomorrow. He was on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, but didn’t win. Well duh 🙂
Yuck.
To keep myself warm, I’ve been snuggling up to DB in front of the telly watching the headache inducing Forbidden Planet. It had the first ever totally electronic soundtrack and it makes your ears bleed. The musicians union had a fit when the filmmakers tried to list the people who made the soundtrack as composers because of the sounds – it just wasn’t music to them. They had to list them as writers of electronic tonalities 😀 It also has the best line in a film ever (or at least one that is meant to be taken seriously). I now want to try and include it in daily conversations. See if you can spot it in this post…
After that we watched the world’s cheesiest yet good film, Final Countdown. It was a nice way to spend a couple of hours, apart from that ending… Oooooooooh dear 🙂
And I knit too. After some struggling with figure 8 cast on for a little while, I finally caught on, and managed to stop the tail from running away from me. I also had some difficulty with using 4ply yarn on 2mm needles – the pattern calls for 2.25, but I didn’t have those, went smaller for the sake of it and got gauge straight away. Which was nice. It is very very very very tight though. Once I got past the toe increases it suddenly got much easier and the lace pattern is beautiful. It needs blocking or just wearing to stretch the lace out, but you can see it developing from the first row. The yarn is just gorgeous. I kind of feel guilty for using it in a lace pattern, as it could merrily carry a plain sock with no trouble and look stunning. There is this soft halo of fuzz around it, but it doesn’t shed and doesn’t look like it will pill easily. It has lovely definition to it, and using the 2mm needles seems to make it very firm so I think it will last well as socks for that.
Enough gabbing – pics.

This pic (without flash) kind of makes it look like some kind of giant tree slug, but you can see a bit of snow in the background, in all its meltiness.
This second pic with flash and with the light behind me gives a better impression of the colours in the yarn – soft light grey, light sky blue, pale turquoise. Yum. I wish you could all feel this sock and its warm alpaca silky softness.

Ok, on to Oscar trauma. I normally don’t take too much notice of them, but now I have a problem with the best animated film nominations. I love Wallace and Gromit. The film is ace. But Miyazaki is ace too and is finally getting some decent recognition in the west (all us good clever people knew about him before, so there. And please try and watch the original soundtracks instead of the Disney dubs. They might be very good on some occassions, but I tell you, you don’t get nearly the same film…) and I can’t decide. Who do I want to win?! Howl’s Moving Castle isn’t quite up to the usual standards of Miyazaki and Ghibli, but W&G have lots of Oscars. And I almost fell asleep watching it the other night – I didn’t mean to! I’m sorry Gromit 🙁 But, on the other hand, if either of them win, it will be cool, even if it is just another way of backslapping your friends. But the potential to see the lovely Peter Sallis get on stage for an Oscar just tips W&G over the edge I think. He deserves some recognition and credit for working so hard on doing Wallace when he is almost totally blind now and can’t learn lines (the filmmakers had to shout them to him through the glass and he repeated them). Good luck guys!

4 thoughts on “Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr.”

  1. i can’t help but think that i should finish elfine’s socks… i’ve done one repeat past the heel and simply can’t be arsed to touch them again (also on 2mms).
    these are my first socks, and i just don’t think sock knitting’s for me… maybe if i had made them in yummy alpaca like yours instead of boring knitpicks essential…
    and my computer room is FREEZING making me not want to write my paper today. but alas, i must…

  2. I would try a simpler pattern in a vvvv yummy yarn – I’ve knitted a fair few socks (not as many as Lolly, but enough to be used to them!) and these are probably not the easiest to start with. Jaywalkers are good ones if you fancy something with a pattern 🙂
    Bummer about the computer room – how much does working in cold rooms suck?

  3. Hey! I couldn’t find a link to your email, but I was wondering if you could email me with the pattern corrections for Angelica. . .pleeeease!?! I’d really appreciate it!!!

  4. Hey Girlie,
    ya know I’ve stopped by a coupla a times, and each time I read your post about the snow you got, I linked right out of here. I didn’t want any more snow coming my way, lol. Regarding the knitting pure and simple pattern, it was super easy. Maybe too easy. The sweater I made for my son was my official first sweater, but when I seen how easy it was I had to find a sweater pattern for MEMEMEMEMMEMEMEMMEMEMEME. I suggest you try the one you been eyeballing. I seen a hoody I was thinking about but I have too much on my plate right now.
    Hey Sunshyne,
    If you email Steph and Alexandra they both will send you the corrections for Angelica. I contacted both of them on the day of the KO, a few hours before cast on, and they both got back to me. I gotta tell you, they both sent me 2 different sets of corrections for 2 different parts of the sweater. They did each say the corrections were for the larger versions.
    Checking out for now.
    Necia

Comments are closed.