The ever-imaginative title: Stuff

Well, it’s probably about time for a bit of a round-up.

There’s been knitting:

This is now an FO – all ready to take with me to wear at my cousin’s wedding (and proving that I can do project monogamy).

There’s been fabric painting:

Ruth was given a bag and paints as a gift by visitors (thank you Carrie) and having decorated it (yes she did pretty much do her name by herself) she decided that her best best best friend needed one too. I attacked the remains of an old pair of jeans (and was particularly proud of myself for thinking of using a seam as the handles) and we used more of the puffy paint.

There’s been swapping:

I took part in a gluten-free swap (actually I kind of organised it, but life sort of took over and the very wonderful bjwalsh (ravelry link) sorted me out – thank you!). This is the wonderful pile of goodies I received. Do you see that Knit Picks Andean Silk there – yum!! I made the meatballs (as per the recipe on the card you can see) last night, and by the time I remembered to take photos, this is what was left:

What greater testimony do they need

There’s been shopping:

Kerrie had a bit of an oops with her skein-winder and I snaffled the smallest skein. It arrived this morning and all I want to do is cuddle it – camel and silk – it’s the softest yarn I’ve ever owned.

There’s been dressmaking:

This is the infinity dress that I first saw on Laura Chau’s blog, and then I followed the link to the instructions here and the many and varied versions on Crafster here. It did take me considerably longer than an hour, but I do love the result. I would do better photos except that 1) John isn’t here to take them and 2) all the batteries for the camera are flat. I’m cheating slightly – I had a length left over which I wrap round as a make-shift boob-tube first, which means that I can guarantee bra-coverage. Anyway, I felt sufficiently secure in it to wear it to Adam’s hospital appointment today – and it survived Ruth’s meltdown at the busstop, so I think it counts as a success.

We’ve been doing pretty well on the summer holiday front too – lots of out-and-abouting (much to the detriment of the state of the house – ah well) – we’ve been swimming – twice at the learner’s pool at Sheeps Green – this is a little spot of heaven – we’ve been early in the morning and mostly had it to ourselves. Yes, it’s cold, but the weather we’ve been having has made that very welcome, and once our midriff’s were wet there was no fuss about it. After a serious swim (at least two of us kept one foot on the bottom at all times, and it wasn’t me… ) we went over the bridge for a more relaxed splash around at Lammas Land paddling pool. We’ve been out for gluten-free fish and chips at Cox’s in Letchworth, we’ve had gluten-free pasta made specially for us at our ever-favourite Rainbow Cafe – I know I’ve gone on about them before, but I really do love that place. We’ve been round the Fitzwilliam Museum and Adam has had yet another tooth out (this is the third , but at least this time he managed with only a local anaesthetic, although he was a bit stunned by the experience). We even managed a whole day with no television or computer! Whoo hoo!

Oh, and we (the adults this time – these are totally innocent in intent, but the translation of the Chinese character ‘gan’ meaning either ‘dry’ or ‘to do’ may cause offence) have been giggling at this and this and positively chortling at this

A comment about running...

I’m not doing it. I went out the second time and realised that not only was I hating it, I hated the stretching before and after and I hate feeling shattered afterwards too (no lovely endorphin rush, just fatigue and inability to get anything else done). All that I could/would have worked through, but I realised that I’d also started weighing myself every morning, and was beginning to feel guilty for eating any snacks. That way lies very bad things. I don’t want to go there, so I’ve stopped running. For some people it’s great, for me it’s not.

So, in true knitting blog style, I’ll distract you with pictures of knitting – oooh look, pretty:

Sylph from Interweave Knits Spring 2008
Debbie Bliss Cathay
This is one of my favourite knits of all time. The pattern is interesting enough (even without the twisted stitch pattern, which I love but, as I wrote before, was biasing horribly) to avoid the ‘acres of st st’ syndrome, and so much of the seaming is done before the knitting is completely finished that the remaining portion doesn’t seem to hurt so much – and of course it gives me the chance to practice the magic of mattress stitch again