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!