Good-bye Molly

This wasn't the post I planned to write tonight - a tale about how, yesterday, I'd got to dividing for the heel of last week's sock and then discovered that in my distraction at the hospital, I'd cast on and knitted 36 EXTRA stitches and hadn't noticed until I'd knitted 72 rows. (How didn't I notice I was knitting something that would fit an elephant instead of DH???)

Anyway, that went out the window when I got back from lunch to find an email from my sister (a.k.a. "Eldest Sis"). Eldest Sis broke the sad news that our Auntie Molly died in her sleep last Thursday, at the age of 89. She'd been living in a nursing home in Brisbane for the last three years. Auntie Molly had been my mum's youngest brother's wife.

I sat there at work feeling sad and distracted and angry. The anger was all directed at my mum for not maintaining closer relationships with her siblings and relations. They were in Brisbane, Sydney and Perth (amongst other places), we were isolated in Melbourne. There wasn't a stream of letters back and forth, nor were there frequent telephone calls (we didn't have a phone until I was at primary school). I don't know why this happened, except possibly due to the tyranny of distance.

I didn't really know my Aunt - and I regret that. I have a handful of memories from when we visited for a week when I was 10; and I spent the afternoon with her on my last trip to Brisbane in 2001.

What I do have are my mum's stories; they had been good friends back in the 1940's and '50s before mum moved down to Melbourne. There are loads of stories: how my tiny 4ft 8" aunt had to stand on a step to kiss her 6ft 4" husband; how she used to shop for her shoes in the children's department, often buying her clothes there, too, when she could get classic styles. Then there was the time mum and Auntie Molly went shopping for maternity clothes, when Molly was 7 months pregnant. A snooty shop assistant instructed mum to take her "sister to the children's department. We don't serve little girls here!". Molly turned around to protest and the shop assistant was rendered speechless.

I will always remember Molly as the matriarch: mother of 6 and grandmother to I-don't-remember-how-many. (Being 8 years younger than her youngest child, I fall somewhere between the two.) When we stayed with them in 1975, there was a big family party in the back garden. All the daughters and daughters-in-law brought food, while the boys manned the barbecue. Auntie Molly sat in the middle whilst the action happened around her, a bit like a conductor in front of an orchestra organising this daughter to fetch something, that daughter-in-law to pass around the plates. She was queen of all she surveyed.

Good-bye Auntie Molly and God-bless.

- Pam

That was the week that was

It's been a disjointed week and this will probably be a disjointed post. On the plus side, we got the remortgage approved (I still don't know for what the house was valued, so I suspect they just said it is worth what we say it is).

On the down side, DH's mum phoned last Saturday evening, "can you take me to hospital?". She'd been vomiting blood. The doctor had prescribed her a long course of anti-inflamatory tablets and she was three weeks in. The drugs had caused a stomach ulcer. We spent four hours in A&E until they finally admitted her to hospital. Apparently her Hb was 5. They gave her two units of blood on the Sunday, a gastroscopy on the Monday and discharged her on the Wednesday. She is much better. Her colour is healthier than it was a month ago.

I spent Saturday night stress knitting while we waited. DH and I'd been getting ready to go to our first Prom Concert of the year when she called, so I had a sock in my bag ready to knit. It calmed me down and kept me waiting patiently.

The knitting had the "appointment effect", too. Have you ever noticed, when you're waiting for an appointment and just get settled into your knitting, they'll call you in faster? Even if you're 15 minutes early? Well, I didn't do more than two rows in succession without someone coming in to the bay to examine my MIL or take blood or give her medication.

I worked from home on Wednesday so that I could collect my MIL from hospital. This is the first time I've seriously tried to do it, plugging the work laptop into our broadband and getting on with the job. (The last time I tried working from home, it was back when I had no work to do.) An interesting experiment. I found that I spent less time on the internet than when I'm sitting in the office. Also that, even losing 2 hours to go to the hospital, I got quite a lot done. (No, I'm not counting the two loads of laundry that line-dried.) The connection to the server was actually faster than the one I have at Site.

There were down sides: not having all my files around was a big one. Not everything has been scanned and stored electronically. Also, being invisible - maybe it's my paranoia, but I think that if you work from home you need to have concrete achievements to show for it because people can't see you on the phone to the client answering questions. Wednesday was a bitty day, one of those that whilst I did a lot, didn't result in much concrete output.

- Pam

Things that are more valuable than their price

Just over a week ago, I sent the bowl of the food processor crashing to the floor with my elbow. Naturally, with our hard as iron kitchen floor, it broke. After a bit of a search (3 separate attempts), I managed to find a replacement bowl online for £25 plus p&p. Of course, I could have purchased a new food processor but my inner-Fool rebelled at the thought of replacing a perfectly good machine when it only needed one part.

Anyway, it got me thinking about the things that I value far beyond their initial cost and I came up with a list of six things.

1. As the inspiration, the food processor gets poll position. It gets used at least once a week. I'm always whipping up pancakes or muffins in the blender; cakes, doughs, breadcrumbs and nut-loaves in the main bowl. I don't know how much time or money it has saved me over the years since DH gave it to me as a birthday present, but I do know that there are things I wouldn't make without it to do the hard work.
2. The freezer compartment of our side-by-side fridge/freezer. So much of what we buy ends up in the freezer, either deliberately (meat from our quarterly trips to the butcher) or as the consequence of other actions (an excess of lunch boxes filled on the weekend). I do not know how people survive without a decent-sized freezer.
   
3. My little Samsung mobile phone. It's six years old and counting, too old to have a camera or a colour screen. I think it cost £120 new. I'm on pay as you go, so I've never paid a penny of line rental, but I've used it on most of my trips abroad (except to North America - it's dual band, not tri-band). Oh, and calls to Australia cost 20p a minute - is cheaper than using a land-line - always convenient for those "happy birthday" telephone calls to Oz.
4. Our microwave-convection oven. Another £120 purchase, but this time 8 years ago. At the time, DH questioned why we needed a combi-oven, when we could pick up a microwave for half the price and we had a large stove with twin ovens (I think my response was an illogical but persuasive "Because I want one!"). Fast forward three years to when we moved into this house and we discovered that there was no 480-volt electric hook up for the stove (the hob is gas, the ovens are electric). Remodelling the kitchen is high on the renovations list, but until then the convection feature is getting a lot of use. I bake cakes in it, cook roasts, grill sausages, make pies, etc, etc. The usuable space is a bit small - at the most 12 inches by 8 high - and my main roasting dish is a 12-inch deep-crust pizza tray, but there isn't much that can't be cooked in there without a little planning.
5. Every knitting needle and crochet hook I have ever owned. And the entire contents of the stash. Self explanatory to knitters. For non-knitters: knitting is far more than the act of "making a sweater". There is a large amount of entertainment value in the act of creating something from scratch, particularly if that act involves cables or lace.
6. My sewing machine. Ditto point 5. I used to work off Great Portland Street, when it was still nominally London's garment district. Just around the corner from us was a little shop crammed with end-of-roll fabrics for £5 a metre or so. My fabric stash still holds several metres from those days (I have nowhere to sew.) I have made skirt suits from 3 metres of fabric, at a quarter of the cost of comparable items in the shops. Sure, it takes time and effort to sew an outfit but no more so than most people waste watching TV (knitters/crocheters excluded). The sewing machine was a gift from my mum, who taught me to sew when I was in pre-school.

- Pam (what about you? Could you list 5 items that add more value to your life than their initial price)

Hurry Up Already!

We are going through the trauma of remortgaging the house. Our five-year fixed rate will expire in September and throw us at the mercy of the bank's variable rate, 3% higher than what we've been paying.

When we bought the house in 2003, we got the longest fixed rate deal we could - they don't do "whole of life" fixed rate mortgages here. Interest rates had bottomed out (the Bank of England base rate fell as low as 3.5%) and started their slow rise again and we thought we were lucky to secure a 4.39% fixed rate for five years. There were only a handful on the market. Several super-optimistic members of the peanut gallery thought we were mad: "What happens if interest rates go down again?" Of course, they never did.

This time around, there are actually some 10-year fixed rate deals around. Or should I say theoretically available. Thanks to the credit crunch and bank paranoia, the actual availability of mortgages changes on an hourly basis. It took our mortgage broker four applications to secure us a potential mortgage - the first three were withdrawn by the time he got the paperwork completed and submitted!

In theory, we have secured a 10-year fixed rate deal at 6.39%. All we need now is the survey. Which brings me to now. This minute. The surveyor is due between 10am and 12am today. It's 10.54 by the computer's clock. And I'm waiting for him to arrive. I wish he'd hurry up!

I HATE waiting.

At the best of times, this whole process has made me an emotional wreck, but the waiting around is making it worse. Everything hangs on the surveyor's visit. Absolutely everything. I won't be happy until he's been, and gone, and confirmed the valuation we want for the house. We need him to appraise the house at a quarter higher than what we paid for it - we are extending the mortgage so that we can do much needed renovations (including new gutters, a new boiler, and proper roof for the kitchen). These aren't luxuries. The flat roof over the kitchen is in a poor state. (Did you know that they use bitumen-covered felt as standard on flat roofs in this country? The life-span is 10 years.) I want to replace it with a proper, pitched roof.

Come on, Mr Surveyor! Hurry Up!

- Pam

Coffee, I smell coffee

You don't have to be around me for long to learn that I love my coffee. I don't mind if it is instant or filter, but it has to be good coffee - none of those "International Ghost" pot scrapings for me! I frequently refer to it as "the elixir of life" and claim not to be human until I've had two cups in the morning (not strictly true, my work blend is half decaf).

I am not a coffee snob. The only reason I have a cafetiere at work is because their instant coffee tastes truly disgusting. At home, we drink own-brand, freeze-dried instant coffee most of the time, keeping the freshly-ground filter coffee to savour on the weekends. Our coffee beans are French, but only because Carefour's own brand beans are cheapest around. (Three kilos for less than €10 almost justifies the travel costs to Calais.)

Several years ago, I was lucky enough to go coffee-tasting for work. At the time, I worked for a cosmetic surgery clinic and we were tasked with finding a cheaper source of supply for tea and coffee. Maureen and I thought it was a good excuse so we went to the Monmouth Street Coffee House for a session in their tasting room. I learnt about the different roasts and how they affect the flavour; the different tastes which come from the various varieties of beans and how that taste changes depending on the roast; why coffee should be stored in the fridge or freezer; why it goes "off" fifteen minutes after brewing; that water decaffeination should be the process of choice when you are buying decaffeinated beans; etc, etc. (If you are ever in London, find the time for a visit. It's well worth it.*)

All of this is a long preamble to explain what kept waking me up on Saturday morning. We had friends staying over; I went to bed around midnight, DH came to bed some time after 3. I woke up at 4.30am, smelling coffee. My first thought was that DH had ground the coffee for the morning and the smell was drifting up the stairs.

The next time I woke up, I thought "That coffee smells strong, someone must have switched on the pot". I looked at the clock, discovered it was 5.30am (so highly unlikely), and went back to sleep before I could puzzle that one out. The coffee smell kept getting stronger. And kept waking me up! Somewhere in my sleep befuddled brain, I discounted the coffee pot theory and decided that DH must have got ground coffee on his hands. But I couldn't smell coffee on him. I puzzled this one for a while, drifting in and out of sleep.

When I finally woke up properly, the coffee smell had dissipated. In the kitchen, I discovered that DH hadn't ground any coffee. More puzzlement. Looking out the window, I saw that it had rained earlier. Slowly, very slowly the penny dropped. D'oh!

Mental head-slap time! We live 3 miles from an instant coffee factory. Normally, you can't smell it here, but when it's about to rain you can. The one thing that hadn't occurred to my sleep befuddled brain was that I was smelling the coffee company! It must have been quite a storm, because the smell was the strongest I have ever smelt.

- Pam (Coffee? You called?)



* If you are into tea, then Fortnum & Masons is the best place to go to taste a wide variety of teas. Their Afternoon Teas are good, too.

Date to remember

Most people remember where they were on September 11th 2001, how they heard the news, who they were with, etc. For Londoners, yesterday, the 7th July, was another of those dates. Yesterday was the third anniversary of the London Bombings in 2005.

It sounds cliched but I can remember exactly where I was and what I did for the whole day. I was working from home in the morning, waiting for my new laptop and printer to be delivered. To use my work laptop, I had to plug it into the phone socket (it was still on dial-up), so I was tethered to the sofa, with the TV on in the background. BBC1 was showing one of it's house-buying programs.

The first mention of the bombings was from the delivery man who brought the printer (the laptop arrived separately, later). It was about 9.50am. He said there'd been an explosion on the Underground. My first thought: "Oh, God. Don't let it be our fault!". (The engineers I worked for had multiple large contracts with London Underground.)

At 10am, the news came on the TV and I watched as the truth emerged. Four explosions. Three different tube trains and a bus.

The laptop arrived at around 11am. This delivery man was less chatty. Worried. Frightened even.

I packed up and drove to work. Even though I was listening to the car radio, I remember an absence of noise. There was very little traffic and everyone was driving slowly. Nobody was in the fast lane. Everywhere, the matrix signs read:

Avoid Central London
Roads Closed
Turn on Radio

On the opposite side of the M25 a string of Surrey Ambulances headed towards the M4.

At work, the emergency plans had come into action. The IT department where I worked had set up a call centre, helping HR to track down every member of staff who either worked in our London offices or was known to be up in Town for a meeting. By 2pm, all heads were accounted for. Nobody was missing. Or injured. Nobody had immediate family among the victims.

By 3pm, our CEO had emailed every member of staff (all 15,000 of us) informing us that even if he had to walk there, he would be working in our Central London office for the next few days. And so would all the members of the Management Board. He left unspoken that if the board members didn't make it in, they wouldn't have jobs. But we all knew. I've always liked him for that - he wouldn't put the staff through anything he wasn't prepared to face himself.

I drove a colleague home that afternoon. He was quite shaken up, one of the more sensitive types. I think he'd have liked to have had a cry, if he could have got away with it. There were many people who felt like that on 7/7.

- Pam

"UK life costs 'at least £13,400'."

The BBC Breakfast program this morning was all about a report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on how much a reasonable standard of living costs in Britain today. Apparently, for a single person it's £13,400 per annum.

"A single person in Britain needs to earn at least £13,400 a year before tax for a minimum standard of living, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) says.

A couple with two children need to spend £370 a week and a pensioner couple need £201 excluding housing and childcare costs, the charity says."

(see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7481927.stm)

I found the budgets fascinating. They used focus groups to establish what would make a reasonable budget for each group to live on, right down to a shopping list for groceries and the component amortized cost of the dustpan and brush used in the kitchen. The groups also decided what was a luxury item (and, therefore excluded) and what is a necessity.

The closest thing for us, I guess is the budget for a couple with two children. Total cost per week, excluding childcare £435.96. I've found myself studying the lists and comparing our real life to them.

Mr and Mrs Average spend more than we do on food and drink, eating many more biscuits (that's cookies for you Americans) and preprepared foodstuffs than we do. However, we spend double on housing costs - they pay about a third of our mortgage payment in rent. And I'm not sure if the assumption that the Averages live in a "band B" council house is viable. Since the big sell-off of council homes in the 1980's (sold to their occupants at a deep discount), getting council housing has been well nigh impossible for anyone with a reasonable income. The BBC were quoting living costs of £27,000 per annum for a couple with two children, which is approximately the average salary in the UK. At that level, the council housing officers would expect the Averages to rent private housing.

(NB: The "band B" thing is council tax, our local property based tax. Housing is banded based on values and each property of a certain type in an area is considered to be in the same band and is, therefore, taxed at the same rateable value. If the Averages have your standard three bedroom British house, it would fall into band D, at twice the amount in the budget.)

On the clothing front, I spend less than the £516 per annum clothing budget Mrs Average is expected to spend. If she asked me, I'd suggest that a) she shops the charity shops for some things, and b) she gets up at 4am on the 27th December and goes to the Next sale (doors open at 5am) for work clothes and smart casual stuff. That would give her more for money.

My favourite item from Mr Average's clothing budget is the £5 woollen hat, which is estimated to last for 5 years. Somehow, I don't think so - if it really is wool, it would cost more than that (even if Mrs Average did the necessary with the needles). And why does he have walking boots when his wife doesn't? And wellies, ditto.

OK, I've had my bit of fun. On the whole, I think these budgets are far more realistic than the figures the government bandy around and use to set benefits such as the state pension and unemployment benefit. At least with these budgets, you can live.

- Pam

Bug validation

We did a lot of work in the garden yesterday: destroying the old compost bin and deploying the new one, shifting the remains of the old shed to the dump, poisoning the ivy again. Sometime during the afternoon, DH turned to me: "Is that one of the beetles that landed on your neck on Tuesday?".

There, on the patio was a slightly squished black beetle, approximately 4cm long.

"Yes", I replied.

"No wonder you screamed!"

Gee. Thanks, Lover. Next time believe me when I say it was a big bug/spider/whatever.

- Pam

Wool, glorious wool

“What’s that you’re carrying?”, DH asked when I got home last night.

“It’s an emergency wool parcel from Australia.”

The Cleckheaton Country 12-ply was on my desk when I got into work yesterday (thank you Tapestry Craft). It’s the right weight and the shade seems a good match although I won’t know for sure until I knit it up. The only major difference between the original yarn and the new is that the old yarn was more heavily plied – it really was 12 ply, with the four major strands being made up of three thinner strands plied together (sorry, I only speak pigeon “spinner”). The new Country 12-ply only has four strands plied together.

If my plan of attack works correctly, any differences won’t be noticeable at all. I’m going to frog the existing sleeve back to the cuff and knit it up again, alternating yarns every two rows. For the second sleeve, I’ll do the cuff in the old yarn and then proceed as for the first. This should leave me with enough yarn (I hope) to do the button/neck band in the old yarn. I figure that so long as the bands all match, it will fool the eye into ignoring any discrepancies in shading or plying that may be visible. The heavy patterning should work to my advantage in this because it distorts the light and creates tiny patches of shade on the fabric.

The Must Have Cardigan is still in the penalty box, but only because I have to finish my “interim project” first. I’m making a present for my MIL (so no pictures, sorry). It'll get interrupted again when my next Yarn Parcel arrives from the Yarn Barn of Kansas because I have to make not one, not two, but three Five Hour Baby Sweaters within the next couple of weeks. Two are definitely girl flavoured, so I ordered some Plymouth Encore in Baby Pink. I'll wait to see what flavour the third baby is; if it's a boy, I'll use up the Aqua that I have left over from last year.

There is a definite "thrill of the chase" to ordering yarn on-line. First you have the browsing: "what yarn will I use?" "Is it in my colour?" "Who stocks it?"; then you have the placing of the order (in my case, this usually includes the Ceremony of the International Postage, where Melissa at the Yarn Barn emails me to ask if that's all I want to order because "right now, your postage costs more than the yarn*"); followed by the long wait and finally the delivery! (On that last point, Mr Postman, could you hurry up, please!)

So much to knit, so little time.

- Pam


* My response, "Does that mean I have to buy more yarn? Such a pity. What will I do...." :o)

To the beetle that landed on the back of my neck when I went to open the front door this evening:

I'm sorry, but I can only assume you deliberately chose to commit suicide. If not, then it was a big mistake on your part. At least your death was swift. Stupid on your part, but swift.

- Pam


(Honestly, it was two inches long and black. I only saw it upside down, after I'd flung it away from me. It just lay there until I squished it.)

Oh Bugger!

Thursday started well enough: good day's work, photograph taking of some FO's, nice relaxed evening, etc. Then it all went to hell.

We (DH mostly) finished building the shed on Wednesday evening. This was a saga of it-wouldn't-stop-raining-on-the-weekends-we-were-home through to our drill not charging properly. Remember the pictures of it in the snow?

In the end, he borrowed a drill and batteries from a work colleague. Here is the shed, although not in the right place - we have yet to lift it back to where it belongs.

Thursday morning, DH was running for the bus lugging said drill when he twinged his back. When I went to bed, DH was lying in a hot bath feeling the muscle relax. Then bad luck came a-calling....

DH pulled up the plug and also pulled up the plug hole (a.ka. the "trap"). Net result = small flood. The bathwater cascaded through the bathroom floor onto the ceiling in the corner of the lounge. And through that onto the suspended ceiling previous owners had put up in the 1970's. It dripped through one of the light fittings onto the futon which sits in that corner.

To be fair, it wasn't his fault. A couple of weeks ago, I'd been trying to remove hair from the trap when it had lifted up. Not knowing what else to do, I cut off the accumulated crap and put it back. (See how corroded it is. In the middle was once a screw.)


At the time, the bit underneath hadn't dropped. It was still firmly attached to the bath. I mentioned it to DH and, not thinking it through, put it on "watch and wait". That was a mistake - we have no idea how long it had been dripping. We only have one bath and the shower is over it.

The pressure of the bath water caused the underside of the trap to drop. You can see it is no longer lined up.

For several weeks it was only held in place by the pipework and some silicon sealant.



When I grow up, I want to get given B&Q gift vouchers. Their resident plumber gave me a lot of help and advice when I popped in there on Friday afternoon to buy the replacement bits since their kits don't come with written instructions.

DH put the bath back together on Friday night.

We had to wait until this morning for the silicon sealant to dry and I carefully tested it out before having a shower. Not one drop of moisture anywhere. YAY!

And the shower? After two days of sponge baths and not being able to wash my hair, it was absolute bliss!

- Pam (Oh, and the avocado bathroom suite wasn't our choice. It came with the house.)

News on Must Have Cardigan

I received the following email from Cleckheaton this morning:

Dear Pamela Please contact the following online retailer here in Australia to purchase Cleckheaton Country 12ply shade 0006 Black to complete your garment as this is the closest replacement.

Result! (I hope.) I dashed off a quick thank you email.

Sadly the retailer they linked to didn't have any Country 12ply in stock(!) which is why I'm not displaying their link. Instead, I did a quick "visit" to one of my favourite shops EVER: Tapestry Craft in Sydney and purchased 6 skeins for $27 plus p&p. Yes, I know, that equates to 300g but given my past experiences with this yarn running short, I thought buying far too much was a wise move.

I've decided to knit the second sleeve alternating both yarns, in order to blend the new yarn in as much as possible. Depending on how successful the colour and texture match is, I may have to rip out the original sleeve and do it the same way so that they match.

In the meantime, the cardi remains in my penalty-box and I've turned to small projects to fill the gap. I finished crochetting this scarf on Saturday. My pattern differs a bit from the Interweave one - I'll post the details when I get the chance to put up a photo. I'm currently working on a beret for my MIL.

- Pam


PS: If you are into needlepoint, have a look at Tapestry Craft's kits, particularly the Sydney Habour series. I've travelled half way around the world to get Sydney Harbour by Night .

Bits'n'Pieces

I still haven't heard from Cleckheaton. In fact, the email I submitted via the form on their website bounced - the pillocks haven't set up an account for the email address it was sent to! Eventually, I found an email address: enquiries@auspinners.com.au and sent it there.

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For the last two years, I've been saving up to purchase some knitting designing software, but I'm yet to make the leap. I want something that does everything including slotting in cables, lace, etc, and I am prepared to pay for it (hence the saving up bit). Right now though, I'd be willing to settle for something simpler if I could get it to do what I want - I want to design a bolero or shrug to knit out of the 1000 metres of pink lace weight I was given as a reward for subscribing to a knitting magazine. I thought a lacy shrug would work - I don't do shawls or wraps. I don't have the kind of lifestyle any more that demands wearing lots of ball gowns (thus providing an excuse to wear said wrap). Anyway, I'm busty. Anything that hangs on/from my bust makes me look pregnant.

Tama, I know you have Sweater Wizard. I don't remember from the demo I downloaded ages ago, but would it let me design a shrug?

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Did I ever tell you I "collect" yarn shops? They are such a rarity here that I always make a note of them. In the past 4 months, I've found a new yarn shop in Rochester (Annie's on the high street), Leominster and Hay on Wye. If there is nothing else on my "I want to knit that" list, I'll purchase a skein of sock yarn so at least I've given them some business. (DH tells me that doing so doesn't break my yarn diet since it's purchased in a good cause.)

Yesterday, I had to be up in central London. My choir was performing Verdi's Requiem last night and we spent the afternoon in rehearsals with the orchestra and soloists. The venue was about a mile from the newish I Knit London shop. I've been on their mailing list since Fluff told me they're hosting the Yarn Harlot in September (Yes. I have tickets.). Anyway, I took the opportunity to check out their shop on my way to rehearsals.

They have made really good use of the space in what is technically quite a small shop. Physically, it's about the same size as my living room (approximately 19 feet by 12), with a couple of couches forming a cozy sitting area on one side of the door, the till/desk backing onto one of the couches, yarn in cubes line the walls, books across the back, a table and chairs in the back half for classes. It doesn't feel crowded or cramped.

I was really impressed by the range of yarns they stock: Wensleydale Longwool; Cornish Organic Wool; springy Icelandic wool; and the legendary Shetland wool by Reynolds (which I didn't believe was sold in the UK at all!). They had Opal and Regia, plus some more exotic sock yarns from America (exotic for me). There were yarns from other small British producers, but I don't remember their names.

I could have spent a fortune; instead, I contented myself with a couple of skeins of silk lace-weight (at £7/skein), some cotton to make this from Knitty as a present for a friend (if I have enough yarn, I may modify it to add sleeves), and a skein of sock yarn. I promised myself that I will go mad at the I Knit London Show in September.

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The concert went well despite some of the quirks of our current conductor. It was his last concert with us (he's retiring). I'd feel sadder about that if he'd spent some time enhancing the musicality of his choristers - he doesn't even believe in warming up! Also I have it on reliable authority that the fact he gave us cues to come in last night was almost revolutionary.

I was about 80% happy with my performance: my inner musician awoke sometime on Wednesday evening (we rehearsed then, too), and I began to feel the count of the music from the accompaniment. That is a skill I have missed for a long time. And my "pitch a note off anything" is coming back, too. My negativity comes from knowing that I wasn't projecting properly - something that could have been alleviated if we'd done vocal warm-ups prior to the rehearsals and performance. I felt my voice catching in my throat several times and made a concious attempt to lift it "up" (hard when you're racing at full tilt through the Dies Irae). But we had a good sing, got a standing ovation from what looked like a sell-out crowd, and DH loved it.

- Pam

Moment of Truth

I've been loath to change the "What's On My Needles" box to my latest project, mainly because of my worries over yarn quantities. I did the back, both fronts and looked at the two big balls and two smaller balls left of, thinking "yes, of course I have enough yarn". Well, I was wrong. Two thirds of the way through the first sleeve, the alarm bells started ringing. I decided to finish the sleeve, weigh it and see how far short I was. Here is the moment of truth. The first sleeve:-



The remaining wool:-

see how I'm 55g short, just to finish the sleeve? I'm not sure what to do now. I've emailed Cleckheaton (see below) on the off-chance that they still manufacture the yarn.

In the meantime, here is a picture of the body of the cardigan. Instead of sewing up the shoulders, I did a three-needle cast off. It was so easy that I don't think I'll ever sew another shoulder seam.



- Pam (what the hell do I knit now?)

Dear Cleckheaton

Dear Cleckheaton

I guess I'm emailing asking for a miracle. 20-odd years ago, I crocheted a jumper from the Australian Wool Corporation's Crochet Book which used Cleckheaton 12 Ply. The jumper wasn't a great success, so eventually I frogged it and recycled the yarn to use in a cardigan.

I've done the back, both fronts and one sleeve. Half way through the sleeve, I began to worry that I'd run out of yarn so, when I finished it, I weighed it and the remaining wool. I'm probably 200g short (50g to finish the remaining sleeve and 100g to do the bands, plus 50g for comfort).

You don't by any chance still manufacture this yarn? Even under a different name? If so, could you sell it to me? Or give me the website address or email address of a supplier who would be willing to sell to the UK (I'm a misplaced Aussie)? I need it in black. I don't have a ball band, so I couldn't supply the dye number/dye lot for you to look up.

If you don't still manufacture this yarn, could you please supply me with any details of the spinning that might be useful to help me find a reasonable substitute? Any information would help.

Many thanks.

Pam