The carrot that's keeping me going.

I'm still knitting away on the cobblestone pullover for the Resident Radiologist - I'm about 3/4 of the way up the yoke. It's been a fairly tough slog, yards and yards of navy blue yarn, but here's what's waiting for me at the finish line...

The Rainbow Chain Carriage Blanket by Erika Flory. The yarn is waiting patiently in the stash, I just need to finish a few more inches of blue garter stitch, kitchener stitch the underarms and give the whole jumper a good blocking (it currently fits neatly, so I'm hoping that it will relax by about an inch or two in circumference)...

Unexpected Visitor

I was sitting in the dining room finishing my breakfast this morning when I heard some soot dropping down the chimney. This occasionally happens, so I didn't worry too much until I heard a LOT more, followed by a scrabbling. The next thing I knew, a beak appeared from the grate and this little chap appeared. I think it was a starling.


He flew round the dining room. trying to get throught the double glazed window, then settled down to eat a bit of my orchid compost.

Then he moved into the kitchen, where I had the door already open and waiting, but he totally ignored the door and hopped around, trying out my cereal left-overs, the drying rack and the bread board...

before settling on the tap.

Finally it noticed the gaping doorway and flew off!

Wheeeee!

This is a very quick update as I'm about to fly out the door to get my H1N1 shot. The GPs in Glasgow finally have it available and since I'm in a high-risk group, I'm getting it now.

After that, the excitement starts. We've got tickets for the Proclaimers tonight at the SECC in Glasgow. The atmosphere at their live gigs is amazing and I just can't wait...

Stash relocation

As I mentioned in a previous post, my study is going to become the baby's room. In addition to merging my study contents with the Resident Radiologist's study, this change of use also involves relocating my stash which has resided for the last couple of years in a large chest of drawers in my study.

The drawers are staying, but in the future will house small vests, baby-grows and myriad other tiny items I've probably not yet become acquainted with.

My stash, on the other hand, is being relegated to the cupboard under the stairs. I have three big plastic boxes with flip-down lids left over from the house-move and these will work pretty well and stack well.

The top box has 4ply, sock yarn and lace-weight. The next box has DK and aran and the bottom box has fibre for spinning, my niddy-noddy, yarn I'm looking to swap or get rid of and my small fabric stash. I recently freecycled the bulk of my cross-stitch stash (keeping only the DMC and Anchor cottons - so useful for mending) so don't have to find a place for that any more.

Old Uppsala

On the last day of my trip to Sweden, the weather was beautifully cold, clear and crisp. Perfect for a good after-breakfast walk. The area my friend lives in is essentally car-free (there is a road round the outside of the development with parking and garages, but where the houses and flats are is only accessable by footpath). From her house, we walked through these paths, took a bridge over a main road and immediately found ourselves in a large well-mapped network of woodland paths. It was really well thought-out with notice boards illustrating routes of different lengths appropriate for jogging, walking or cycling.

We walked towards Old Uppsala, the original settlement in the area which is now about 5km from the centre of Uppsala city.

The views were stunning and our choice of direction took us up the only proper hill in the whole region.

In the above photo, the building is the church at Old Uppsala which is about 1000 years old. The three mounds just in front of the church are the burial mounds of the three most prominant Viking Kings.

The return journey was just as beautiful and the clear weather held out until we were back at the house. On our return leg, we found this little chap crossing the path...

Not a good time of the year to be a catepillar, mid October with the temperatures already heading below 0C! Somehow, I doubt that he was going to have a long and fruitful life but you never know - maybe catepillars hibernate?

Further Stash Enhancement

I realise that this runs contrary to my comittment to slim down the stash this year, but when I heard that Lilith from Old Maiden Aunt was going to do a limited edition, three-month sock yarn club, I couldn't really resist. There will be two skeins each month, hand-dyed in strong plain semi-solid colours. The yarns will be a different composition each month as well.

October's installment arrived a couple of weeks ago...

Strange Rock 'n' Rollers, a colourway that changes tone in different lights.

Bitter Bug, a lovely irridescent green...

And a lovely little beetle stitch marker.

The yarn is a bamboo/superwash merino blend and is far too yummy for socks. The rather clever Lilith has designed pairs of colourways each month that share some tones (and a base yarn composition) so that they should work well together in colourwork projects, if desired. I think that a lacey scarf might be on the cards for the bitter bug...

Stockholm

It would seem that I don't count weekends as days of the week - it never even occurred to me to blog! I can't imaging that's going to change soon, so I'm going to aim for 5 post a week for the rest of November.

The second full day of my holiday, my friend and I caught the bus down to Stockholm for the day. I was seriously impressed by the ticket system, we just went online the night before and bought the ticket and reserved a seat by credit card and a confirmation was text-messaged to us. The next day, we just showed the bus driver the text and he ticked us off the list he had on the touch screen computer in the bus! Efficient or what (and totally paper-free)?

I don't think that I really saw Stockholm at its best, as the weather was very cold and it rained on and off all day. Nevertheless, I liked what I saw.
I'd never fully appreciated that Stockholm is build on a series of islands connected by bridges and ferries. It was actually quite difficult to know which way I was facing (towards the coast or inland) because the water was all around.

Sweden currently holds the Presidency of the European Union, so this island, which houses the parliament is, for the time being, a Very Important Place. Despite this, there was no sense of it being off-limits or access-controlled as bits of London would have been when the UK held the post.

The next island over houses the Royal Palace and the old town. The Palace is very huge and square and stately. The old town, by contrast was very quirky with a warren of little narrow streets housing interesting little shops. It reminded me strongly of the Shambles in York.

Adjacent to the main shopping area is an open space that is in constant use in the summer months for picnics and street-performers etc. While we were there we saw a charity publicising Breast Cancer Awareness Week lighting a huge field of candles . The effect was really stunning as the light was starting to go.