Crafty Little Rat

This week has been the week of the lurgy in my house. On Tuesday night I started to get an ear infection and I’ve felt rotten for the rest of the week. The doctor wouldn’t give me antibiotics for it; but luckily it seems to have started to drain. Worked some over time at work and then yesterday I woke up with the starts of Man Flu. I am *horrible* when I’m sick. I feel rotten so often with the ME/CFS that when I get sick on top of that it’s full meltdown mode for me. It’s a massive shame actually, I wanted this weekend to work some more on my mums socks and to learn how to do some double knitting but it looks like I won’t get the chance now. Maybe best that I’ve stuck to simple things with how addled by brain has been! All of that combined with preparing for a visitor this week and helping the OH with job applications has meant that sadly not much of my weekend has been mine. All for a good cause though, but I dare say if I’d have written the applications myself it would have taken l...

  Two F.O’s today, and both from the YOP list!   1. Dr Who Socks   Blocking on my home made ghetto sock blockers. These are made from Trekking XXL in Camel for the toes, heels and ribbing and from KnitPicks Felici 4 Ply in Time Traveller for the main body. The pictures here are still a bit wet so the stitch definition looks a bit patchy in places but now they’re dried it’s fantastic. Very soft yarn, non splity and the colours are great. The stipes are fairly matchy matchy- being maybe 1/2 to a full round off in places; but it’s not really noticeable. The “pattern” is my standard 64 stitch sock one. The toe is started with a magic cast on of 12 and the heels were short row. One was standard short rows, and the second I used Shadow short rows which I preferred a lot more. 2. Create your own Dragon Adventure I whipped this little guy up last week ready for Rhys’ birthday on Wednesday. The pattern is fantastic; really detailed and I think I’ll get a lot of use from...

  No knitting updates I’m afraid. The blanket keeps getting rows added to it and the socks keep having rounds knit here and there (mostly on my commute) but it’s BORING things that don’t deserve pictures. I’ve become rather obsessed with the Money Saving Expert forums lately in the quest to pay off our debts and save for important things like a big holiday, house and wedding and also not so big things like Wonderwool and Ravelry meet ups. One of the most common things on penny pinching websites is to month cook. Buying in bulk is generally cheaper, having everything you need in for a month stops impulse buys and what may be the biggest bonus – no real cookery outside the one day a month you set aside; you just heat things up. Also bonus is no takeaways, even if you’re too tired to cook it takes 5 minutes to heat up! Annother good point is that OH is back home now (yay!) but is working shifts (boo!) which means some nights he’s home at 10.30. I don’t want to wait that long to ea...

  No F.O’s to show this week, but I have been working on a list project pretty much exclusively.   Another Ghetto project picture (sorry!) of the Dr Who Socks. I’ve just turned the heel on these using a different short row technique- Shadow Short Rows . Overall a *lot* more fussy then ordinary short rows, but gives me no holes which is better. Recently I can’t seem to do any short rows without holes and it was just so infuriating. I suspect this method will get faster with practice and in truth it’s only the Purl 3 together through the back loop that is annoying! I hope to have these finished by next week; I’m really enjoying knitting them. I don’t think I’ve EVER knitted a foot in 3 days before YOP list 2013. WIP 1. Dr Who Socks. DONE 2. From Norway with Love To do 3. Wisteria 4, Lizard Socks 5 . Ziprelaxagon 6 . Celestine 7 . Sitka Spruce 8 . Mary Warmers 9 . LLP Fingerless Mittens (Star Trek) I 1 0. Francie 11. Choose your own Dragon Adventure 12. Nip and Nora 13. T...

  My area has a RED warning for snow. Apparently this is issued so rarely it means serious business. This morning I woke to about an inch of snow at around 6am. By 9am there was nearly 4 inches on top of my bin. Despite this work was still open (even though they advised people not to make non essential journeys?) but I chose to wait it out and see, phoning in about 9. My worry wasn’t about getting in, it was about getting HOME at the end of the day; which turned out to be right. At 10am it was said that all of the bus services were cancelled until further notice. It’s slowed down dramatically now, but they sky is still white and I’m glad I called in- even if I have to use my own time for it (boo!). My prediction is that as it gets colder again tonight we’ll have even more snow fall. Newport is pretty much built within hills and mountains. My house is in the bottom of the valley, so other places on higher ground are far worse off then we are. This is our ghetto back yard; moving...

  So what I said about being a good blogger and trying to update once a week or so? Obviously gone out of the window. The other half has been off work this week, and even though I’ve been back it’s been very busy. Our living room is divided into two halves and we’ve painted the second half of the room this week.         Please ignore the bareness of it all- The bookcase needs to go up and the rug needs to be put back. I also have the task of hanging some pictures up before too long. Now we have the proper nails…. Someone *cough Rhys* felt that these would be great for hanging pictures with. A+ if we lived in the Giants house at the top of the beanstalk. They’ve been returned and more appropriate nails since acquired; and my belief that children should be taught basic DIY before leaving home has also been cemented since then! Thank you Dad for teaching me how to hammer straight and thank you mum for showing me how to paint a room. I honestly can’t say i...

Saying I’ve been bitten by the knitting bug is actually misleading; I’ve not *stopped* knitting in around 3.5 years now but there’s always something about this time of year that makes me so excited about starting a new year with new projects and excitement. So with this in mind and on the first of the year a goal for what I would like to achieve in 2013. I’m going to be treating this like a Year Of Projects, updating on Sundays where possible. Our number one goal this year is to be debt free by 2014. I don’t like talking finances online; and it’s not a horrific sum but I get very irate having to pay interest on things like my credit card! We were so “lucky” that as students our overdrafts were interest free; apart from now they want us to – understandably pay it back! We’re both currently paying interest on part of our overdraft and in September that part increases dramatically. We’re both lucky now that we’re in full time jobs and can afford to pay off these debts so I do thank my l...