I would just like to apologise to all the people I have caused to spend money on wool today. And last week. Hem.

I need an enabler icon, evidently!

On a very rainy day in Coventry, I met these two lovelies. They are alpacas from Toft Alpaca, and where I was was at a very big Wesleyan Methodist church with white_hart, where there was Uk Ravelry Day. white_hart had agreed to help out with some modelling for the fashion show, so for a while I was wandering round being trodden on in the giant crush of people, looking at the shinies. It was so full! And I kept running into people, sometimes literally.

First out, we were wandering past the stall, when I noticed someone staring at my Rav Name badge. I stared back a bit, and realised it was Quesselchen, my German-Welsh Rav twin! She'd come along to help Jeni at the Fyberspates stall. We chatted briefly, but I had to move on as white_hart was needed to be a model. Whilst she was being dolled up, I wandered round some more. I squeezed through a gap, and someone stepped backwards straight onto my toe. The Stepper turned round, and revealed herself to be Ruth G, from Oxford G&S circles! Small world. With her turned out to be Oxford Kitchen Yarns, complete with child in duck trousers. Then, further wandering took me to see Jo, The Knitting Goddess, whom I met on telynor's Weird Knitting Techniques session.

Every so often, as well, people would be looking at and commenting on the knits of strangers. Whilst I was at one stall, the jumper I was wearing got deconstructed by someone who wanted to make it, and was pointing out its awesomeness to her friend! Very weird. And kinda nice.

I bought a few things, some for me (such as a skein of sock yarn called Fraoch, from Old Maiden Aunt Yarns; some buttons; a couple of things for my CPaAG Swap Buddy), then went to see the Fashion Show. It was a case of "Victory from the Jaws of Defeat", as one of the authors of A Stitch in Time was drafted in to do the compering, and volunteer Ravellers for the modelling, as people from a local college had pulled out at the last minute). There was much shiny.

After lunch and more shopping, we sat down for tea and a knit. Two people passed, and for some reason I had an instinct that said they were from one of my Rav groups - however, I couldn't remember their names, so I grabbed them, looked wild, and managed to stammer "CPAAG" at them. Thankfully I was right, and they understood, so we had a sit. Stressknitters got tea, and Dreamcatcher showed us her knitted Death of Rats, which was so totally awesome. white_hart's friend wot is an editor of Simply Knitting, and is beautiful, came past. white_hart was knitting a sock she designed, so her husband (The Press) took a photie of that, then went "squee!" when DoR was pointed out to him, and took that too. The four of us then got interviewed for a podcast by Girl and Dean. Stressknitters' answers were so brilliant, I do hope they make it on! Who else would make a knitted e coli (I am now considering knitted spirochetes for my medical library). I, of course, got totally collared by a random little old lady who was surprised and pleased to see so many "young people" knitting, and stunned that I could knit without looking. Of course, every time she mentioned that, I split my yarn, but hey. She must have said 5 or 6 times that she was going to leave us to it, and then found something else random to talk about. I always get them, I must have a magnet. Still, at least she wasn't mad or angry or anything, and I hope we made her a little happy.
Then we were tired, and went home. knirirr made me chilli, and we watched a strange Stephen King film (Cat's Eye). I am seriously falling asleep now, though. Amazing how tired yarn fondling makes you!

Tags: knitting, wool, yarn
Current Humour: content

...as usual. Had a lovely crafting lunch with antarra and white_hart, after which I felt really bouncy. The sun shone, and Sally Cinnamon came on on my pod, as I walked up to work. Which was nice.
I have bad startitis. I am going to limit myself to taking only UFOs with me whilst I am at a Bollywood marathon over the weekend, plus the materials for one facecloth in case I decide I hate all my knitting. I have three socks on the go, one that needs finishing asap, and two others with no deadline. I will take an unfinished vest with me, that I really want to do but can't seem to find the time.
But when I get back, I will want to start new things! So, what do you think I should do next?

Poll #1391810 What to knit next?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

What should I knit next

Yes, I know I'm procrastinating. I want to be out in the sun!

Tags: knitting, procrastinating

Goodness. So, I am home from work today. I was meant to be doing college work, but this morning has been a bit overwhelming, so I hope to make a start after lunch.
Overwhelming mainly because of the post. I really, really don't deserve the friends I have. I am humbled, and shamed, and thankful in roughly equal measure.

vampire_kitten sent me a bee care package, after my hospital visit last week...


It is full of cute and fun things - DVDs of films I've not seen, a thing to make small fluffy bunnies, sweeties, a light-up rubber duckie (now living on my desktop)... I am really overwhelmed. You shouldn't have, but I am very cuted that you did. Thank you.

Then next, the buzzer rang, and it was someone delivering ( this (3 images) )
It is a baby Dell Inspiron 9. With knirirr's skills, this should soon become a Hackintosh ♥
I have this through the good offices of someone on a Ravelry group. I whinged that my third laptop in a year or so had died, and suddenly people were wanting to donate moneys for me to get a new one! It was all so... overwhelming. They raised enough for nearly half the cost of me actually having a new computer, rather than keeping on buying second-hand ones which die.
Whoever says the net is a pernicious influence is evidently being in the wrong places. I'm just going to go into the corner and sob quietly for a bit. I don't deserve all of this. Everyone's just wonderful. I loves you all.

Current Humour: grateful

The breaking in period for new specs is always weird. My depth perception is all distorted.

I also got carded at the Royal Oak tonight. Given I'm not that long past my 30th, I was rather stunned. I have no idea whether the new glasses are connected, but there we go.

Dear Mark Steel,

Thank you for talking about my great-great-great-great grandfather on your comedy programme tonight. I have always found you very funny; your book on the French Revolution was fascinating, as was your memoir of growing up as a socialist. I was brought up a socialist, and though I would never be so black and white about my political beliefs any more, I broadly agree with your rants on social justice, or the lack of.

But please, for the love of God, wtf is up with you and the Welsh hating? Tonight's show started with a predictable story about how you weren't in the "scary, English-hating bit" of Wales, and mentions of firebombs and (yawn) The Pub Fallacy. I suppose that could be just the normal regionalist joking to soften up the crowd. But you have form. I heard you on the News Quiz one New Year's Eve, for instance, ranting about the Welsh getting upset about Anne Robinson's anti-Welsh racist comments a few years back. The Welsh are always whingeing, you said, what for, I mean, it's not as though the English have ever done anything bad to the the Welsh, is it? After all, it was only our sovereignty and our language that was destroyed, it wasn't as though we were sold into slavery or anything, what do we have to whinge about?

But see, this isn't a victimhood top trumps, you know? Just because culture X had something worse done to them than culture Y, doesn't mean culture Y should just go "oh, well, never mind, we'll just forget all about that then." Good stuff has inevitably come from "our happy union with the valorous English", but so has bad stuff.
It's easy, though, to take the piss out of the Welsh. After all, you're not allowed to be Anti-Semitic, or laugh at someone because of their colour any more, so you have to have someone to pick on, right? And we're all British, so technically you're just laughing at yourself, really. Sure.

Grow up. Get some wit. Make funnies that don't depend on disparaging someone's culture and language, why don't you? Because that's just as bad as the right-wing upper-class bigots whose bubbles you so often puncture.

Yours,
Pissed Off Welsh Expat.

Tags: comedy, prydeindod, wales, welsh
Current Humour: cranky

Many thanks to those who commented on knirirr's journal.
For those not on his flist, last night I threw up so much blood that the bathroom looked like a set from Shaun of the Dead*. I was made to go to hospital; I was kept in overnight; no idea what happened, got given some omeprazole and sent home with a referral to have an endoscopy. Hopefully it won't be a repeat of last endoscopy for which I was scheduled, where I was essentially ranted at about what do GPs know and why do they keep sending people for endoscopies, and shunted out the door told I had acid reflux, go and take a gaviscon.
I am very tired, and feel like a pincushion, because it took all sorts of shunting to get any blood out of me, as per usual.
I am going to sleep for a bit now.

*for those who care about such things (and it was preoccupying me at the time, funny how the brain works), the socks I was wearing were in fact blood red, so the staining on the sole isn't going to show. Score.

Current Humour: tired

I do like shopping in Tesco's, as often they have cute things like this...


Look! It even has a spoon with a bee on the handle!! How could I resist?

Tags: bee, cute

Tags: lolcat

Today I bought the local rag for the first time in years, because the headline was all bout darwinian_woman's No. 10 petition! She's even interviewed in it, and Oxfordshire PCT look like the total burkes they are. Woo!

In sadder news, the cotton I bought to make a cardi is really not me, I shall have to face up to it. What do you folk think I should do with it? I am rather tempted to keep it and use it on odd 4ply cotton projects, and hope I'll be able to find some in a nicer shade discounted one day. I have been collecting odd balls for a crochetted hexagon throw, and it would be nice to edge it all in one colour...

Poll #1370430 What to do with the cotton glace?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

What should I do with this cotton glace?

It is throwing it down with rain now. Perhaps this weekend was spring, then.

ETA : oooh yes, I'm sure someone here was looking for long-sleeved scoop neck tops? I found some in the people tree range, on Oxfam first floor, £6 (yay!) down from £20 (insane price!). I scored one in mocha and one in purple. Yum.

It is curry night tonight. To my deep sadness, we have no naan in the house. But it will be my favourite curry, Rogan Josh! Yaaaaay!

I had a lovely day out yesterday with antarra. We went to telynor's knitting class on Weird Knitting Techniques over at iknit, and it was great fun!
I thought the whole day would be a disaster, as it started very badly. The 7.56 bus just never showed, and with no bus then that would get me in before 10am, I had to drag knirirr out of bed to drive me to Oxford to catch the Espress. Which also meant I couldn't get a coffee, cake, and magazine on the way, which made me grouchy.
We got to London in plenty of time, but then couldn't find our way out of Waterloo station. *facepalm* We still made it to iKnit with 20odd minutes to do yarn fondling, which was good.
telynor came and bravely took on a rather rowdy class of knitters to learn backwards knitting (truly!), Norwegian purl, and a variety of cast ons. I knew about half the stuff, and it was good to get a refresher on things; new things to me were backwards knitting, Turkish cast-on (which I grudgingly like, though I got rather loose middle stitches), Magic Loop (still vacillating on whether to abandon my socks on 2 circs, but probably not; damned useful to be able to do ML though), and a Channel Island cast on, which I will have to practice - fiddly, but damned nice in two colours.
I did not buy many things, bizarrely - two things I wanted they didn't have, and I just bought some superwash DK for the Yarn Forward mystery blankie. There was the most gorgeous skein of knitwitches kidsilk in a sort of coppery chestnut colour, and I am now kicking myself for not having bought it. I wonder if I call up or email them, whether they will sell me one? It was expensive as all hell, but would make a gorgeously beeish smoke ring.
I even managed to catch some coffee with telynor and knitgoddessyarns before my stress at needing to be back at Oxford in time for the last bus for two hours got the better of me. Good fun was had, and I would love to do it again for longer. Alas, they looked at the sample of cotton glace intended for Decimal I brought with me, and declared it "too on the blue spectrum for me", which I rather suspected. Bugger. I may wave it at white_hart as well before I admit defeat and sell it (anyone want 10 balls cotton glace, will sell for £25...) I do think they're right.
We left at the right time - on the exact bus that got me into Gloucester green for the 6.45. I got home, and was led up the stairs by the smell of delicious food. knirirr had made me a chilli in time for me to get home! It was excellently tasty. There was also watching of The Last Boy Scout, which I did not think I would like, but enjoyed immensely. Bruce Willis is very funny :-)
I did run out of tonic in the evening, which was a shame, but I had a lovely day. *is happy*

Tags: food, knirirr, knitting, london, yarn

Occasionally readers actually apologise for bringing their books in overdue, with fines on &c. My normal reaction to people apologising for things is to say "no problem" or "don't worry about it". But that seems wrong in this case - after all, it isn't OK to bring books in overdue, that's why we charge fines.
So what should I respond to such readers? I don't really want to be horrid, because at least in apologising they're recognising their misdemeanour...

Poll #1338353 Sorry!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

How should I respond?

Tags: library, work

The owner of a sex shop on Anglesea...said he was happy to comply with all the conditions imposed for the shop in Holyhead...
These include a bi-lingual signs clause, which could translate his Good Vibrations shop name to Dirgryniadau Da.

Fabboo! Who's with me to go and buy our sex aids in Welsh?
(seriously, if we are to build a Welsh culture back up from the ground, you've got to have *everything*, right?)

In further cataloguers' humour, apparently the subject heading for correspondence in, from, and about France is "French Letters." I kid you not.

Current Humour: amused

My sock club package came last night. Which leaves me with a dilemma; I expect to finish my current pair of socks, for a friend, tonight. I need (yes, need) to cast on some more socks. But I have two other socks that are high on my queue, as well as the new sock club socks - a pair called Leyburn for me, from yarn that knirirr's mother gave me for Christmas, and a pair called Earl Grey, for knirirr... and then there is lovely candy-cane-pink-striped yarn from my club sitting there for me. What should I do?

Poll #1334922 What sock to cast on next?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

What sock do I cast on next?

I really need a sock icon from somewhere...

Tags: indecision, knitting, polls, socks

Well, that was a jolly old barrel of laughs.

Tags: bsg
Current Humour: shocked

The Library of Congress classmark for "Naval Seamen" is VD.

That is all.

Oops. I forgot it was Vacation Recall day, until I got to work, and saw the piles of shelving before we'd even opened. I have shelved all morning, and dude, the soles of my feet are actually throbbing. Sheesh.
If I have left a weird/incoherent comment on your blog, it is because my brain is fried and also throbbing, whilst the rest of my body is just stiff and in pain in weird ways. Hooboy.

In knitting news, I have nearly finished my Milk Yarn Vest. I'm at the hardest bit, but then it's just ends to weave in. I've gone mad on the idea of knitting vests recently, which I think is due to the recent (and also upcoming) cold snap, the many different temperatures I have to contend with at and between my workplaces, and a thought that they might look ok on me. I have more in the pipeline. Though there is more knitting that needs to be done sharpish - a woollen bakerboy cap, to keep my head warm, and two-three different sorts of ipod/iphone socks for knirirr's and my new toys. Two to be felted, one to be sockwool. Which latter means I need to knit at least one Leyburn sock, to make sure I have enough yarn...
Phew.

Tags: knitting, library, work

So. Freakin'. Bored.
What better time to do the "seven interesting things about me" meme for which knirirr tagged me. If I can think of seven things; I refuse to promise they are at all interesting...
( Read more... )
Apparently I must tag folks, though don't feel obliged, but it would be interesting to hear from peaceful_fox, velvet512, gylfinir, peredur_glyn, fu_manchu12, mrs_karen_bear and pennywren

Tags: meme

I know there are a few readers who want to learn Welsh, or just some Welsh, and in case y'all haven't seen it yet, I found the following Learn Welsh Podcast. I hope they keep it up.

For a day I've been actively dreading for a while, I've had a nice birthday so far. Lots of emails from kind people who have remembered, a voicemail from one of my students - in Welsh too, I'm all proud! He did use the formal-you, which was odd, but cute :-)
I feel a little guilty bragging about birthday-schwag, but I got some nice stuff. From my middle brother, I got Making Money (I deliberately put off getting the new Pratchetts, so family can have stuff to give me).
My parents got me a lovely shiny iPod Touch! I have to say, I mainly want this for its handbag-sized-computer-ness. Not to mention, if I have a wireless connection to use, I can listen to radio stuff on the BBC iplayer as if it were a portable radio! Totally in love with the shiny gadget.
knirirr got me some cool stuff - and some silly stuff for camping. Cool stuff = a bottle of Hendricks gin, a Per Una chocolate corduroy cap, and a white gold vintage watch. This is even cooler than it looks - it is an accutron, and so runs by using a teeny tuning fork. For added geekiness, this particular fork resonates at 440hz! I can has "A" on my arm!

Thank you for all the birthday wishes everyone. It's been very cheering.

Tags: birthday, presents
Current Humour: happy