So much for the snow

Well, yesterday the news said we’d be covered in inches of snow today. It did snow, quite a lot during the day, but most of it has melted already. I’m not complaining 🙂 It looked beautiful while it happened, but we are still without fire so are using the probably really expensive to operate fan heater. Poop.
The past week has been pretty poopy in general actually. I’m going to have a little moan now, so indulge me and forgive me. If you don’t want to read this bit and want to think happy thoughts, skip to the pics below. They are worth ignoring my stroppy knicker postings for 😉 The week has been a catalogue of illness, freezing house, arguments, hormones, dealing with ignorant people, and general yukkiness. I’m run down in general, and haven’t been sleeping this week for lots of reasons, so I’ve been dragging myself like a zombie through work. Work hasn’t been good anyway, as all the dodgy geezers have been coming out of the woodwork, so they had to pick the week where I couldn’t even lift myself out of the seat, nevermind deal with someone who wants to argue over fines or some other matter. But I had to because my boss was off (probably leading to all the people with problems visiting – they saw she wasn’t there, and came in droves). Then I managed to eat wheat without realising, and ended up with a horrendous gut ache, rediculous temperature etc at 2am one morning for a few hours, headaches all week as a side effect, and because of more not sleeping, an aching body, jaw and more brain ache. Then at the end of the week, I had more stomach problems (unrelated to the wheat I think), and by the end of Friday I was the most miserable person ever. This all meant no coursework done, and no knitting. I was too tired and ill to even knit 🙁 But not ill enough to justify not going to work (you know what that’s like – someone else is in work with a worse condition than you, and they’ve just been talking about how bad the sickness was last year and how they have to watch everyone really carefully, and you start to realise that you won’t be calling in sick tomorrow regardless of how rough you feel).
BUT, look what I came back to on Friday night.

Here we have a fabulous secret pal package from my pal with immaculate timing 🙂 She has sent a book of Yeats love poems, with some beautiful illustrations in it. Yeats rocks 🙂 She also sent a Sandra magazine (the Feb edition for those who have access to it). I’ve picked out a few patterns on just a quick glance:
a lovely mohair-ish drop stitch jumper

a gorgeous cerise coloured horseshoe cable sweater (I think it’s the colour that really does it for me in this one)

and a zip up jacket with pockets and an interesting stitch pattern – I don’t think you can see it that well in the pic, but it kind of has yarn running across the front of the columns of pattern. I’d do this in one colour though…

She also sent me a beautiful card, made by her secret pal (whoever they are did a really good job! If you are reading – love the lizards :D). The card actually confused me a little – she mentions some yarn she bought for me from a little village and hopes that I like it, but there was no yarn… There was, however, a rather interesting little card from the postie asking me to collect something on Monday, and given that I haven’t ordered anything, I suspect it might be the yarn. I emailed my pal and she confirmed that she had to send it separately to the other things as it wouldn’t fit in the envelope… There is enough to make a vest, or lots to felt up, and that’s all I really know about it 😀 I asked her not to tell so that it will be a surprise tomorrow morning! Yay for my pal!
Anyway, I feel a bit better this weekend, after some sleep and a bit of relaxing, so I did a little knitting and some studying (almost a third done – woot!). And cast on a couple of times for something I want to try, but I won’t tell you about that yet, as it is naughty for me to start another project right now and I’ll try and pretend that if I don’t tell you what it is it won’t count as a project.
Here is what I did work on though – my Elfine socks.

They are now at a wearable point! They fit really well, and I think that is partly down to the lace pattern pulling the sock in a little. Yet again I must sing the praises of this yarn. It is frankly, beautiful, and sooo warm and soft to the touch. You can’t really see the lace pattern very well in that pic, so here is another slightly better one.

Yum. I love this sock. It may be taking a while to knit for lots of reasons, but blimey it is simply gorgeous. Using 4ply on 2mm needles works well for a firm fabric, but it still has give to it, which is good considering how tight it feels when you first start slipping the sock on the foot…
Oh, and the plan for using the pink yarn from my chunky socks for a fair isle project is now out the window – a colleague at work who is very very very lovely and thinks of everyone else above herself said she’d love some big chunky socks, and when I suggested a couple of colours, she proclaimed that they would have to be pink 🙂 I’ll be using that yarn to make them, as she deserves them. I just have to cast on, so I might have to wait till the Elfine is done (hopefully this week) to make them. Wish me luck for all these plans – it is rather a lot to expect but will keep me busy for a while!