Happy New Year!

I was going to post yesterday, but I got distracted!

I was busy finishing up the socks I was knitting for Juliann so that I could start my first socks of 2012!

Oh....I was also watching Smallville.  If you follow me on any social media thingy, you'll know that I'm currently working my way through the entire ten seasons of Smallville!

So, new socks! 

I'm knitting Hermione's Everyday Socks which is an incredibly easy pattern! I'm knitting it in a gorgeous yarn I recently received from The Skein Queen. It's a beautiful sock yarn and the colourway is called 'Birds of Paradise' - no, you can't see it yet. Just wait until I'm finished! These socks fulfill my SKA requirements.

After this pair I'm going to knit Aragorn in a yarn from The Knitting Goddess in Onyx which will fullfill my A sock and black yarn requirement.

I'm considering the SKA mystery sock after Aragorn as it's called Bláthnat which will fulfill my B socks requirement, but I'm not sure yet - I'm waiting to see what the pattern looks like first.

Did you have a good New Year? I went to Mel's house as she was having a little party, there was food and alcohol and lots of catching up to be done.  Mason and I exchanged presents as I didn't see him over Christmas.

Dreadlock bead

He got me a HOOOGE mug that says 'Big Mouth, Big Mug' on it, a couple of bingo pens and a thingy to attach to Isis' lead which holds poo bags and a torch.

He also got me this STUNNING bead!

I was so excited to get it and I love it! It shows up really well now my hair is black cherry again - I don't think it would've looked quite so good against the purple.

I gave Mason a chocolate tool set and a chocolate lolly maker which he's been asking for for AGES! He was incredibly pleased with this, ate one of the chocolate tools and then was promised he could make lollies another day.

I bet that will be messy fun!

I also received a text at 1.30 on New Years morning to tell me that my friend, Kerry, had given birh to her fifth child 3 hours before. A gorgeous little boy and I can't wait to go and get cuddles!  Congratulations Sweetie.

I hope your New Year was as fun as mine, whatever you chose to do.

Merry Christmas

It's now 5.20pm and - for most of you - the fun is all over!

The food consumed, the presents opened and all the shouting done LOL

Well, we've done all of that except for the food! Every year we plan meticulously for Christmas dinner, so we can eat at a halfway decent time and every year we starve all day long while the damn food refuses to cook at a decent rate.

Tonight we'll be eating about 8pm!

So, what did you get for Christmas? I got a toolkit from Mel, a little heart pendant from Mason and lots of chocolate from the kids!

But you lot, my online friends, you totally surprised me!

I tend to go through life very hard on myself. I know I can make people laugh, but I'm also incredibly pushy and I know I make people uncomfortable - especially when I lose my temper! I chat to quite a few people, but I often get it into my head that if I disappeared; I wouldn't really be missed on here...

Claire started it, I received 2 e-mails on the 23rd telling me that Claire had bought me Through The Woods pattern (Ravelry link) and Flying Cables pattern! Then Helen got in on it and bought me the Chandelier Fingerless Gloves pattern (Ravelry link) and a Damselfly Shawl pattern (Ravelry link)! Next thing I knew; Diane bought me Sweet Tees pattern! Then Elle bought me Athena pattern (Ravelry link) for my 'A' socks on 1st Jan! Rita also got in on it with the Owlsocks pattern (Ravelry link)! Then Kristina bought me this gorgeous pattern (Ravelry link) called Serenity which I'm very excited about as it's knit with two strands of KSH so will be a gorgeous warm sweater!

Eight presents! Some of them from people that I haven't met yet! I am so totally blown away by the generosity of my online friends.

Thank you so much!

Merry Christmas!

People

People are strange and completely baffling!

I've discovered over the last few years that people I thought I knew well, are a bit of a mystery to me.

I discovered that one person is actually quite prejudice and another is very shallow. I've discovered another is all gob and doesn't follow their declarations of "if I have a problem with you, I'll tell you." Apparently they'd rather ignore you completely, imply to others that you are ignorant and if addressed directly will bite your head off and be rude. I've discovered a person who'll slag other people off behind their back, but will be perfectly nice and friendly to their face. There are people who'll give you shitty news on your kids 18th birthday or when you are ill. I'm sure you know the type! The ones that'll use you for everything you can give them, then drop you when they find a new bloke or something.

I really don't get it!

Then you get other people, the one's that you don't know well, that live thousands of miles away but will bend over backwards to help you - even if they have their own problems and it's not convenient for them! The ones who'll call you every day to see how you are when you're ill or going through a tough time. The ones that seem to be on the lookout for decent people to be friends with. The ones that everyone seems to be looking for as a friend!

We need a way to differentiate between these two types because unfortunately, you can't tell just by looking at people and you don't usually find out until later!

Friendship

I've been neglecting my friends lately.

I post often on twitter and Tweetdeck posts my tweets automatically to my facebook account. I'd posted about our visit to Southampton General this week so that Matt could have a cardiac MRI and Mel left a comment that pointedly started with "Hello Stranger!"

I sat and thought about it wondering what her problem was and then realised it's probably been about a month since I saw her last. Longer than that for anyone else except the knitting and spinning groups.

I used to hate sitting at home on my own and wondered how some people could do it. I started to tell myself it was because the weather has been so lousy, but yesterday the sun appeared and I raced outside in my bikini and sat spinning and knitting in the garden........it never occurred to me to go and visit someone!

I've been sat wondering why. Am I consciously avoiding the few friends that I've got? No.

To be perfectly honest, I'm just enjoying my own company at the moment.

Life feels so....................samey!

You phone people on a weekly basis and say "Hey, how's it going? What you been up to? What's the gossip? How are you? How are the kids/boyfriend/husband/parents/siblings/cousins/nieces/nephews/theguyyoumetatthepapershop..........."

Truth is; nothing much changes with me. I have pretty much the same routine from day to day and week to week and I started to notice after a while that everyone else does too. The only thing that changes is whatever we want to bitch about and that doesn't change often enough that I want to listen to the same complaints over and over again.

I've done that for people and got sweet FA in return. People that have told me their deepest darkest secrets, come to me and cried on my shoulder and told me their fears. But then those same people move on with their lives, find new people to spend their time with and forget that I'm still here being the faithful friend.

I get so fed up with that and so I've chosen to just not bother with it all for now. I know this means I miss out on other stuff, those friends from the paragraph before move home, find new partners, get married, catch swine flu & recover, have kids...big momentous occasions and I don't get to hear about it unless they happen to post it to facebook and haven't yet removed me as a friend!

Oh well!

I'm not consciously avoiding anyone, I just honestly don't have anything to say! I would hope that my friends, my TRUE friends, would still contact me if they needed me. After all, I haven't moved house, found a partner, got married, caught swine flu OR had (any more) kids LOL.

But I'm not avoiding you because you've pissed me off. I just don't have anything to chat about and I'm getting fed up with replying "Nothing." Whenever you ask what I've been up to; it reminds me of when I was at school. I know you guys aren't really interested in my crafting, so I'm not going to talk your ears off about it. But other than my knitting/spinning/crochet, being a mum and bathing/walking/feeding Isis.....nothing's happened!