Burnt as a crisp Part 2, or how I learned to stop worrying and love the funk.

It is far far far too early to be writing this on a Sunday. What on earth am I doing?

Well, I’m up and about so I might as well be sorting this out 😉

Ok, so the rest of the weekend was a bit surreal. By Saturday night, Sarah and I were probably dealing with sunstroke and booze related psychosis. We started talking to each other in a bizarre accent that was somewhere between German (or rather bad nazi accent from bad TV movies) and Italian for no apparent reason. Actually, Sarah started it. So there. Sarah has this thing going on in her head that creates strange incidents, and also attracts very strange people to within 10 feet of her. She’s just set up a blog to celebrate this fact, but I can tell you that on her way to Sue’s on the train, there was a man dressed in England shorts, a bum bag, and a t shirt that had a picture on of a guinea pig that said ‘In loving memory of Molly’, carrying a box. When he went to sit down, he practically threw the box on the luggage rack, and warned the lady he was going to sit next to to watch out as, even though guinea pigs may not fall out of the box, poop and straw might. Nice. Her blog mentions that when she went into Subway and asked for a cheese sandwich, she was asked if she wanted cheese with it.

Knowing these tidbits will go someway to describing what our Sunday was like. Sunday was ace, but one of the most surreal experiences I’ve had in a while (keep in mind that normally hanging out with Sarah does induce surreal experiences, and we don’t meet up nearly often enough). Sue took us to Oakham to the village fair in aid of the Make a Wish foundation. We knew we were in for something a bit unusual when we saw there was a Ghostbusters themed treasure hunt there. It was a stunning day – the hottest we’ve had so far this year (which may not be saying something, but lets say high 20s and the UK don’t go together very often). When we arrived, there were guys dressed as stormtroopers and Smiths, but the Stormtroopers were a bit odd – they had those kind of visor things (more like Vader’s helmet), and were wearing white wellies… In spite of the wellies, they were making a great effort. One guy was waiting at the traffic lights to cross over the road, but while he was waiting, you could hear the radio thingy on his helmet changing his voice, and he kept saying ‘move along, move along’ to the traffic. The guy on the our side of the road, when the lights changed, started talking to someone in a car, asking him if he’d seen any droids…

Here is Nic, gangin up with a stormtrooper against me. The gits.

We walked round towards the castle grounds, and when we got there, the place was full of sci fi super heroes, but with a twist. Trinity was there, with more Smiths, and the poor lass was wearing a black PVC trenchcoat (she must have been sweating cobs). Batman was there too (also in black rubber), chatting away to Trinity (or was that chatting up?). There were the Ghostbusters, naturally, but not 3 of them. Not even 4 of them. We counted 6. Quigon Jin was there too, with Obi Wan and Amidala, and thankfully there was no sign of bloody Jar Jar. There was also a powerranger (don’t ask which one, but he was discussing his special power of the extra man-arm with a Smith. A tad dodgy when there are kids around, but I suspect they’d questioning his packet anyway in that lycra), and some random guy dressed in army fatigues with a floppy black hat and a gun, and we couldn’t think who he was trying to be for the life of us.

Here we have a lovely pic (sorry about the quality guys) of Quigon having a bit of a fight with a Ghostbuster.

It was a really good laugh to go round, watching the kids asking them all for autographs, and the Ghostbusters chatting to the kids on the Make a Wish podium. We did decide though that it wasn’t the kids getting their wishes brought to life, but the guys in costumes. The charity apparently does a lot of work to help people dress up as sci fi characters from films and fulfil their wildest dreams by standing around at a fair and chatting each other up while signing autographs. Hooray!

After that, we went to Rutland Water. It’s a beautiful place, a reservoir with some wildlife reserves around it. When they flooded the valley, the ended up, in typical local council style, destroying a village with some historical buildings, but they kept the church as a monument and museu,. About half of the church is now underwater, so it’s quite a striking sight when you come through the trees to see it.

It’s a really beautiful place, and the weather was just gorgeous, so we went on a boat trip and I ended up with sunburnt arms, and that little red nose. Whoops.

Finally, we headed back to Burghley, and went to feed the deer. The does are pregnant and pretty skittish, but you can feed the bucks by hand – they are pretty used to the attention, and hang out around where the cars park under the trees. When they saw Sam coming, they recognised that he’d be brining goodies, so moved towards us, and all you do is hold your hand out like feeding a horse, and they just lift the food really delicately off your palm. They’re antlers are like velvet too at this time of year, so you could stroke them while they fed. Just beautiful creatures.

After that, I had to get the train back home 🙁 What a bummer. I know you can’t live like that all the time, but living there would help after work 😉

Time for some gratuitous knitting content.

First up, the gifty things I got from my lovely mates 🙂
Sue bought me Knitting on the Road and Spin It (and the very wonderful Jeanette Winterson’s Lighthousekeeping) 🙂

Shirls got me some cloisonne containers in the shape of kimono wearing girls 🙂

And Nic got me some Body Shop Vanilla stuff, and some vintage yarn 🙂

In there is some german baby yarn which is incredibly soft and cushy (the white on the left), some Sirdar Alpaca blend (the big ball of lilac), and some Tivoli slubby cotton (the white and orange on the right) that is so vintage it’s untrue 😀

My mates are so cool 🙂

So did I get any knitting done? Not much – it was too hot. But I did do some sewing up when I got back, and ended up with this. I’m not impressed.

It’s the Debbie Bliss Astrakhan cardi from Vogue, minus the cashmerino aran cuffs and collar. I decided not to include those because I couldn’t get a good colour match, and I also wasn’t really impressed with the collar, particularly with how it would probably look on me. It’s ok. I’ve warmed to it since I made it, but when I first tried it on, I sent a text to Sue asking if she knew anyone who’d want it… That may have had something to do with it being very hot, and the cardi being very warm. It may also be to do with it being a bit too big, and the bulk of the wrap in compensating for the size makes it a bit, well, bulky!

It might be a nice cardi when it’s cold again, but still, it isn’t a masterpiece. I’m surprisingly ok with boucle thing, but the yarn isn’t easy to count rows/stitches with, so watch out. It’s also impossible to sew it up with itself, so you need to find a good colour match and just hope that you are sewing the right stitches together seeing as you can’t see them. It could be worse, and it could be better.

Which leads me to one last thing. I’ve hit a knitting funk. I’m not sure if it’s because of the heat recently, or whether it is just me, or the projects I’m working on, but I have very little knitting motivation 🙁 I’m not making anything rubbish – the lace scarf, a moss stitch scarf, socks for someone at work, Pomotamous (which are finally going well and look cool). So what do I do? I add to the pile and try something else – another OSW now that the weather is gorgeous, but work is freezing with the air conditioning thing (are shrugs still ok to wear? I’m not the most fashionable girl, but shrugs are such a funny thing sometimes). But I’m ok. I’ll surge through it 🙂 I can finish the OSW today probably, especially after getting up so early, which might help a bit.

And these might help too 😉
Aileen sent me a little surprise birthday thing 😀

It’s Sandra magazine, Interweave Crochet magazine, and a hank of Kilcarra Tweed in the most gorgeous red with flecks of blue. Yummy 😀 Here’s a close up.

And I got a package from my One Skein Secret Pal too 😀 A ball of Rowan Cotton Tape in a tasty apple green-yellow. Yum 😀

I’ve already got a pattern for it – a little crochet cap, which might also get started today in the grand funk thing. Hoorah!
Ok, I better shut up at this point, or I might break your puters…