its all getting very silly

lovely lovely lovely.... when the snowdrop cardi is finished (am out of wool, a friends giving me a lift to the wool shop on thursday after work, am hoping to finish it by the weekend) this lovely yumminess is going to begin its journey to hopefully become....
....a pair of thesem which i love to bits - no idea if i can manage to make them one way to find out - i dont have the worlds most copious amount of patience, so we will see... can imagine them being hurled half made across my teeny tiny living room on more than one occasion


plus i must make myself something along the lines of this, i love both the skirt (but longer, ballerina length) and the gorgeous shirt
..my listening choice at the moment, found her accidentaly on good old utape and am pretty hooked
shes not the worlds greatest singer, but shes got a quirkily likeable voice, shes a violin child protegy (or was, rather, shes no child), used to be violinist with courtney love (but dont let that out you off)
i think she looks stunning something along the lines of how i would LIKE to look but never have / never will! hairs the same colour though ;-)

(someone said at work yesterday that i looked very '16thy century' and someone else said i had a look of russell brand around the hair area - so i am a 16th century version of russell brand? minus the long skinny legs. and the maleness. and the beard)

hmmmm....oh, who is she? emilie autumn

i have a pattern ordered for a coat very similar to this, nice.... (where the hell do i think i am going to find the time to do all this? i dont have another holiday for 6 weeks!)

there you go, pretty things
lots of them

hope you are well, and happy, and keeping dry

potentially very very good (exciting as hell!) news on the teaching / wrriting front, watch this space

friday. thank gawd.

i made this a little while ago for a lovely woman on ravelry (you know who you are ;-) ), her beloved cat died very unexpectedly, i nosied at the piccies she has on flickr, and did what i hoped would be a half decent likeness - it was received today, and, without blowing my own trumpet too much, is loved as much as i hoped it would be

i make no claims to being a super artist, i know i am not, and its been a very long time since i sat and did any painting at all, but i enjoyed making this and rather like it (i have another painting, but its for a swap - and with my luck, if i posted it on here, the one and only person to look at this blog in the next few days would be the person the swap is for!)


also had fun turning this...
into this (the camera hasnt picked up the colour very well), sadly i have run out of the blue kool aid, and really need a few more packets to get a more intense colour - its for the druid mitts in vogue, for my daughter (she requested electric blue, who am i to argue...)

its been a very long week, i plan to do nothing more strenuous than watch ncis repeats (ahhh, you silver fox gibbs), and continue knitting the very dull back of the snowdrops cardi

happy weekend people

work.bugger.

this is progress so far on the snow drop cradi wotsit, 2 fronts, 1 sleeve, 1 pocket last night, and started the back tonight...yes, i ignore the order its meant to be knitted in, no i dont care because thats how wild and rebellious i am

knitting instructions? pah
see
wild

and back at work, hence a disjointed, babbling, nonsensical mutter today... 2 days back and i am shattered, non stop meetings, 3 kids in tomorrow (yes 3, they will be very very hard work), roll on saturday - spent the last 6 weeks wanting the weeks to go as slowly as possible, then 2 days back in and i am wishing for the weekend!

this is what i wish i was doing ....
my poorly feet would love this (although ideally on a day like the one when this was taken, our one and only hot week of this summer) these poor swollen, misfits of footsies would love to go paddling on a warm day
(will write more about the misfit footises another day, had the most bizarre shoesies shopping experience ever last night, was like being in a victoria wood sketch...)


the results of my summer 'grow your own' pea planing endeavours - yes its one pea pod
but they were very sweet
3 peas
damned impressive


found out last week that poor little noddy is almost a nonentity in america - the americans i know on ravelry have NEVER heard of enid bloody blyton! how is this possible! i am almost finished reading a brilliant memoir of enid the genius, looking for enid by duncan mcsomeoneorother (cant be arsed to get up and go to find his surname), its very very good indeed, a mix of fact, insanity, babble, perfect stuff! no mention of enids penchant for nekkid tennis yet tho'

and no idea where i saw this in blogland (if its from your blog please say, and i will credit you for it!), i think its beautiful wool, maybe a tad too white in places for me, but otherwise beautiful

cant be bothered to read this for typos, bear with me if its gibberish...am going to go and drool about this lovely coloured wool

grumpy old cow...

...thats me

a mix of the summer holidays coming to an end (where did it go?), back to school nerves (sheer horror / terror / confusion / disorder / panic), a run in with a patronising cow when i tried to return a (very expensive) cardi that was shedding so much it was coming off in lumps and making me sneeze (its got mohair sweetheart, its what it does, you should read the label) to which my reply was can i have head offices number please, i am not your sweetheart so please dont patronise me, and where on the label does it say this garment will shed all over the place, ruin what you are wearing underneath and make you sneeze

cow
and with my luck today she will be my one and only reader
in which case - i think you are a patronising cow
so there

ahem

on a knitting front:

have started this beauty:

from this lovely assortment (the rowan is as dark a charcoal grey can get without actually being black, i would have preferred black but this is leeds and one takes what one can get)

(unless its a very moulty expensive cardi)

have finished one side front (and how confuseled was i? AT THE SAME TIME increase 5 million stitches whilst standing on your head listing to the left AT THE SAME TIME decrease 3.456 whilst whistling the national anthem AT THE SAME TIME blah blah blah

got there eventually, 2nd time around
and one sleeve almost done, loads of snowdrops to sew up later on... love love love the colours together

knit. stay sane. knit. drink wine. knit. and ignore patronising cows.....

colour

just an assortment from the last couple of days... i almost missed the bus getting this shot today! from the bottom of the hill near my house, right next to the bus stop of prettiness (theres isnt much thats pretty near here, except for this nice countryfied bus stop with a chunky wooden bench (the rest of the area is manky as hell!)


a bunch of these and white (dying rapidly) freesia in my living room at the moment - i always wanted to be able to afford to have fresh flowers in my house all the time, and i can - i dont have much, but i do have the flowers!
these nasturtiums are ENORMOUS! they are trying to trap the postie i think, with their curling stems and cheeky little bright faces spreading aroiund the path

all gone now, but this summer (yes, that week that the sun shone, that was it) i had a mass of purple and lilac violas and pansies, really really lovely

and last but not least - adventures in kool aid - this has been posted off to my swap partner on ravelry, i really like it- sadly theres a touch of brown where the greens and pinks met, but apart from that i am pleased with it (i LOVE pink and green together)...hope you like it aksunflour!! (http://www.ravelry.com/projects/sulkycat)

where did the time go?

my summer holiday mission was to learn to spin on my drop spindle - that has not happened, and only one week to go - where did it go? why has it rained almost the entire time? why is the house still a mess?

but something i DID manage to do over the holidays is this: thanks to the monthly adventures group on ravelry, i learned how to salvage the wool vomit below into a ball (spit splicing, excellent! i legitimately get to gob on my wool!)


yes this is what happens when you decide you know it all and that theres absolutely no need to wind a skein into a ball before you start to knit from it.... took hours and hours to sort this mess out


and this is the result - luna moth, my first piece of lace knitting apart from a floaty wisp (which is so straightforward it barely counts)

yes its taken in the toilets (after seeing mamma mia at the cinema), yes we are damned classy like that

not everyone gets to show off their new lace shawl in a toilet, ohhhhh no
i love it, love the colours, love the wool, love the pattern - am half way through a second shawl in a different pattern, am hoping to finish it by this time next week

i have, however, also just cast on for the snow drops cardi in the auntumn vogue, its gorgeous (and complicated) (twit that i am)- will add some piccie another day

meanwhile, this is whats going on in the teeny tiny garden - trial and error with my camera, i twiddled a few knobs (ooh er missis) and i LOVE the dahlia picture, one good thing to come out of all the rain... theres a few more of the dahlias (which are about 4 foot tall, and covered with flowers), i want a couple of them enlarging onto canvas for the living room


...and these, these are massive and sprawling all over the path (not my favourite plant but the smell takes me back to being a nipper) - used to be covered in caterpillars if i remember correctly

i wish i could make photos larger on here, never mind
i wish i could work out how the hell to make the links to crafster and ravelry actually work, and be in pretty little professional boxes at the side, never mind
i wish someone would actually read this blog!....

....never mind

long time no see....

i think the easiest way for me to cope with this silly picture loading / manouvering is to load them and then write - so bear with this being so disjointed (i simply cant be bothered tonight!)
this is the sky on the last day of my holiday at scarborough (yes, throughout this blog there are several piccies of scarby, its my favourite place)- it was really warm but the sky looked fantastic, really dark and moody...

midweek it poured down for the afternoon - again very very warm, so i sat on the beach under my brolly, hence the black frilly top edge to this pic
i ended up all on my ownsome, which suited me! i only left this little spot (my favourite place and worth the walk - theres absolutely nothing there apart from sea, sand, rocks and grass) when the tide came right in...then walked a long way and sat on a wall watching the sea crashing against the sides, heaven
this would be the perfect place to move to (er, not this actual spot on the beach you understand), if i could get a decent job here i would move like a shot...one day ,maybe, one day

i LOVE this - they walked so so slowly, one clutching her back all the way..i overtok them several times, i kept stopping to look at the view and play with my camera, they overtook me, then i would overtake them....just where the path dips infront of them is a very steep walk down towards the sea, i bet their poor knees felt every step

thank you girls, you made my day!

i have no idea what pattern this is - i started it absolutely ages ago and finally got round to adding the beads to the points - its in debbie bliss cotton angora i think (i think, could be totally wrong, although i know for sure its debbie bliss something) in a deepish purple, i really like it - i altered the patter to have a band of lace and a panel down the front instead of it being all over, and i like how it turned out - not too keen on the wool though, it split quite a lot

i finally found how to do macro piccies with my little camera, and i like this - i jotted it all down somewhere and one day i might find where i put it - its in a 'safe place', which is rarely a good thing

i would love to be much better at photography than i am, but cant really justify buying a better camera - the one i have is my 2nd decent one, and i am trying to do what i can with it

its just one more thing on my very very long list of things i want to do well (this is a problem i have - i cant settle for doing things 'okish' and simply enjoying them for what they are, i always feel this need to do better and better......and seem to be jill of all trades, mistress of none!


and this is my lacy wotnot that i am working on for ravelry - and about 5 minutes before starting to update this blog i realised it was very very wrong for the last few rows...no lifeline, very fine fluffy wool, unpicking this back a few rows is not going to be easy or fun
gulp

i also have a luna moth shawl halfway completed in a totally different wool - bfl from yarnpirates (thank you martha!) in shades of black, grey, purple and jade green, very very beautiful - the 2 types of lace seem to sum me up pretty well, pink, fluffy & girlie, and dark gothypunkiness!




2and a half weeks into the holidays and i dont want it to end!

ahhh, time to knit!

after finally admitting defeat with the farce that is this years exam marking system, & emailing them to collect my unmarked papers (& yes, i feel guilty, but theres only so many calls to helplines you can cope with when the whole system goes belly up for the umpteenth time....), i now have TIME, that luxurious commodity! so i started the above...how could i possibly resist?
autumn asters cardigan, in the summer interweaves, i absolutely love it! (http://www.ravelry.com/projects/sulkycat/autumn-asters-cardigan)
first time i have tried to follow a chart, albeit a mini chart for the leaves, so far so good...

the wool is a gorgeous debbie bliss handspun, more debbie bliss on the way from fleabay, in varying shades of pink, also some very vivid green silks (& i have some pink rowan silks upstairs that i might throw into the mix too)


and this is what you get when you do 'an edible colour wheel' at school! absolutely loved it, great fun - the kids were clarted to the eye balls, behaved perfectly (i teach kids who have been thrown out of school) & ended up with purple tongues.... fill 'em up with colouring & sugar & send 'em home (insert huge leer here)
enid. i love my enid.
playing with bits on my camera, & really really pleased with how clear most of my shots were...more to come, you lucky lucky reader(s)
and this just about sums up my week, which has been pretty grotty & has reduced me to tears of frustration & anger on more than one occasion

busy busy busy....

Hmmmm... what have we here?

Lordy what a week...far too much going on at work, none of it good, so am seriously glad it is the weekend!
I have oodles of marking to do still, in fact I had some silly plan to do 50 papers today but so far I have done the grand total of - er - none.



I have an excuse though! I got this assorted lot of marvellous swap goodies from the very talented & lovely Eukarya in a recent swap, obviously a sea themed swap (total self indulgence, I organised it!!) , how can I possibly mark exam papers when I have choxie to totally gorge myself on, & these brilliant goodies to look at? Fellow crafty people i am sure you will understand....

Plus I also have these to get on with - the little cardi is for a colleague's new granddaughter, but at the rate I am going she will be a teenager before I get it finished, not sure what it is about it, bhut I just can't get motivated to finish....

The black goodness, which is very badly photographed, is from Knitting Lingerie Style, the shaped lace tee, & it is sooo easy to do! Again, my motivation went astray, but I have picked it up again, finished a sleeve & started the front last night infront of NCIS (ahhhh, the silver foxiness that is Gibbs....) (the pinkness behind it is a gorgeous dress from East, very expensive & in need of alteration, & has been since last summer). One day, one day...the things I plan to do in the summer holidays beggars belief!

OK, I suppose I had better show willing & go to do some marking....toodle pip people

sulky, you are one sexy lady

people have asked me in the past, what do i look like......(obviously these are people online - people i know in the flesh tend to already know what i look like....)

oi sulky, you gorgeous bird, reveal yourself in all your true glory, they shout

honest they do

so here i am....

imagine this:


mating with this:





i am the offspring

betcha drooling

sunny weekends...& chubby feet

this was my birthday, the long awaited days at the seaside...was on the local news the day before, absolute downpour! so this wasn't really a surprise - we went laden with brollies & jackets....the mist cleared, the sun came out, & we had a fantastic (expensive) day!
this little beauty was at the sealife centre, which was sooooo busy that we had to shuffle along the first part in a very very sloooooow queue, but we skipped past part of it, got outside, then pretty much did it all backwards as the crowds moved away

i was surprised that my photies came out so well, obviously i had the flash off & at times it was too busy to do other than point & click - but i LOVE this picture! sadly my seahorsey pics didn'[t come out very well, but mr penguin & les otters of cuteness made up for it...(will download those another day, my nerves are never good with this flippin' photo lark on here)

looksee, all out of synch.....back to the putting green in the blink of an eye!

and here it is again! in all its pinky glory - its more trouble than its worth to delete this repeat post

and after the rain - i got sunburnt the next day! this is why us brits talk about the weather so much, it's completely mad!

ah, the chubby feet? what i have always thought of as just being annoyingly small chubby feet, are apparently not as they should be - am having a lot of pain in my right foot, the dr is referring me to the hospital asap, so bang goes trying to run at the gym to shift some weight....

on a plus side, its a beautiful day & i am heading to the garden again to finish a sleeve for my shaped lace tee from knitting lingerie style, not convinced it will be flattering but so far it's an easy knit....

toodle pip

happy holidays! random pictures & waffle...

just a nice pic from my last 'day off' (ok, it was the teacher's strike, all go booooo hissssss,but i thoroughly enjoyed it!), went to tropical world here in leeds with my daughter, i don't think we have been since thew first year we moved here (about 5 years ago)...


(sorry, i don't know who the artist is but i love this!) - have just looked at the week's forecast, & suspect this is what my birthday trip to the seaside will be! have lined up plenty to do incase of rain, i don't mind at all, i LOVE being at scarborough!

must make this, i love the style, the colour, everything - obviously as soon as i make it & wear it, i will look exactly like dita....

& this too, i like the neckline very much, will have to play about with some paper (oh thank you, all that time pattern cutting, i hated it but it has been so useful!)

am very dizzy/faint today, like some victorian lady with the vapours, i suspect after midweek's bout of food poisoning i am simpy very tired... but it's half term, am going to attempt to tidy some of the clutter in my tiny living room (it's beyond a joke at the moment, i can't find anything & have a lot of crafting to do for a sea themed swap), then i think an old lady's stylie kip on the settee, just because i can!

thank you for the comments everyone, always nice to see that people DO pop by every now & again!