Mumblings

No pics today I’m afraid. The power cuts continue to come sporadically and have done on and off for a few weeks. Apparently there are local problems – you just get a recorded message when you phone the hotline, but it doesn’t seem to be the supply problems economists etc went on about last year. Soooo, that means that I have to produce blogging I can do on notepad offline, and emailing is out the window because I can’t read what I want to respond to :/
Anyway, to make things more interesting without piccies (expect a pic fest if power improves this weekend), I have a few stories to tell. Power cuts have left DB feeling a bit lost for what to do with himself. He’s a total techie, so everything he enjoys doing is linked to his puter. He’s also very into Alfred Hitchcock, so his research is done on the web, he gets DVDs sent from all over the world (including occassional review copies from the distributors) and he has his own wiki and site with quality comparisons and stuff. Take away the electricity and he can’t do any of this at all. Yeah, he has a few books, but that isn’t the same. I, on the other hand, revel in the peace the power cut gives me. Yeah, I worry about the milk going off and that kind of stuff, but I like being able to take advantage of the time to craft and read. The gifty scarf is growing merrily, and I reckon I’ll have made enough squares to finish it this weekend (maybe 7 more). I’ve also played with joining the squares with single crochet and worked out that I can make a nice flat side and a bumpy side by doing that without having to do pooey sewing together. And what is extra fabby is that I may even stick to the one skein rule in doing so (or maybe get a couple of metres from the second skein). I’ve also been having fun with something very silly indeed – a paint your own money box of Mr Bump from the Mr Men 🙂
I’ve also fallen in love with two very very beautiful inspirational knitwear design sites – probably only new to me, but still, I can spread the love… First up is Constance Eyre, who does some truely gorgeous machine knitted garments. They have a classic look to them, but with a little bit of an edge. Yummy. Second is the also beautiful and inspirational site of Ink Boutique who are much cheaper than Constance Eyre, and a bit more edgy, but only sell up to a medium (yeah, even I could afford one of their knits as a treat). The latter site has also got me thinking about designing something myself – the stuff I like on the site is mostly made up of simple lines with something a little subtle or unusual, like the slash neck tank with a flower belt running through the hem, or the empire line t-shirts with ribbons running round the neck. Something like that could be easy to create using a pattern and just adding a twist… Double yum.
However, this had to happen at the wrong time didn’t it. Regular readers will know I’ve been having problems pinning my tutor down, resulting in changing my masters submission to November. Things are now moving again, and I suddenly have a ton of work to do, and fast. Poo. But a good thing too. I might actually finish the bugger off this year 😉 Studying and knitting aren’t too bad together, but studying and doing complicated knitting that you are making up yourself does not make for a good pairing. Do me a favour and remind me when I’m done that these sites exist and have cool things that I might be able to make. In the meantime I’ll have to stick to stashbusting and gifting and using really nice easy patterns.
Oooo – almost forgot! I finally got some more sock needles from Pavi Yarns, and bloody quick they are too. And they wrap things up in tissue paper. I like it when companies do that. A small touch but enough to make you feel like you are important to them… I got some yarn and a book too, but I’ll post more on that another time. Now the electricity is back on and I want to read instead of looking at a puter screen.