Bittersweet

Yesterday - June 20^th - was my birthday. I turned 34.

It's also the anniversary of my father's death.

He died in 2007 from pancreas cancer and I miss him greatly.

Tag! You’re it!

I was tagged and apparently have to answer all these questions and at the end I have to tag 8 other people!

So, here goes!

The rules are:
1. respond and rework; answer the questions on your blog, replace one question that you dislike with a question of your invention, add one more question of your own (don't feel obliged as it's quite long already!)

2. Tag eight other people.

Introduce yourself and tell us a little about who you are and what you do:
I'm Sam, if you see Puddytat purr written anywhere with a purple cat logo, it's probably me. I'm a single SAHM (Stay At Home Mum) of four teenagers and just in case you hadn't noticed –-- I knit! I can also crochet (which I admit I don't do often enough) and I'm learning to spin.

What is your current obsession? Ummmmmmmmm, podcasts I suppose (aside from the knitting lol)

What is your greatest achievement?
Raising four children alone

Coffee or Tea? Tea, Coffee is bluergh!

What's for dinner? FGS, it's only 11.30am, far too early to be thinking about dinner!

What are you listening to right now?
The laptop fan :D I'm listening to Interesting Times audio book from Terry Pratchett and the Quirky Nomads podcast

What is your favorite ice cream flavor? Ummmm, something with a sorbet or sauce running through, like raspberry ripple is nice...I don't really eat a lot of ice cream

What do you think of the person who tagged you?
Madam Salami...........she's ok....................s'pose ;0)

If you could go anywhere in the world for the next hour, where would you go? Crikey, somewhere hot and quiet with no people, a beach and warm sea to swim in.......................whaddya mean I gotta come back?!?!?

Which language do you want to learn?
I wish I could speak Spanish, an awful lot of people speak Spanish

What's your favorite quote (for now)?
The circumstances surrounding your birth are irrelevant, it's what you do with the gift of life that matters!

What is your favorite colour?
Purple........although, if you hadn't already realised that, you're seriously slacking!

What is your favorite piece of clothing in your own wardrobe?
My goth skirts

What is your dream job? Something to do with yarn would be
cool

What is your worst habit?
Ummmmmmmmmmmmmm, I don't know, it's very hard to recognise your own worse habits, you'd have to ask someone who knows me well. Mel would probably say "not asking for help when she bloody needs it!" lol

Describe your personal style? I'm unique, I love gothic clothing and I wish I was thin enough to wear some of the stuff that's available! In the summer, you'll usually find me in leggings and a vest top because it's faaaaaaaaaaaaaar too hot for long skirts!

What are you going to do after this?
Catch up on Ravelry and then have a go on my new spinning wheel

What is your favorite fruit?
Probably plums

What inspires you?
People who keep fighting

Your favorite book?
You're not seriously asking me to pick just one? I can't pick just one! I would recommend the following authors though: Terry Pratchett, Anne McCaffrey, Mercedes Lackey, Robin Hobb, Stephen King and for romance: Jilly Cooper

What is your favorite smell?
Mmmmmmmmmmm fresh bread and clean babies

What are you most proud of?
My children, they have done so well for themselves and they're all around school leaving age and I can't wait to see where their lives take them!

How many times do you press the snooze button before you get up? At least once, sometimes twice


What's your 'claim to fame'?
I've been in The Sun newspaper, Take A Break magazine and on the Trisha Goddard show

Complete the following:

Love is…like a box of chocolates!

What would you like to make next? Something that'll wow everyone!

Have have chosen my 8 because I think that you should take a look at their sites:

Yarn Harlot

Wendy Knits

Jane's Probably Knitting

Madam Salami

The Yarn Yard

The Anxious Knitter

Smariek Knits

Martha's Vineyard Fibre

Spinning!

Look what I've got!

We have an Isle of Wight based site similar to eBay, unimaginatively called Wightbay. I placed a Wanted ad on there a couple of days ago for a spinning wheel.

Yesterday I received a call from Tina who said she had an Ashford Traditional available and did I want it for.......wait for it..............£75!!!!

I was gobsmacked and immediately thought there was something wrong with it, so dropped loads of hints to Joy who offered to come and have a look at it with me.

We went over today and Joy pronounced it "Very nice!"

So I bought it!!!

When I got back to the car, Joy told me that I could open my birthday present (look carefully in the bottom right hand corner of picture). THREE bags of fibre!

So I've bought it home, unwound the bobbins which had something smelly and disgusting on them, washed the bobbins and the Lazy Kate and now I'm just waiting for it all to dry so I can have a go!

Spinning!

I think the bug has bit me!

After WWKiPD it's all I can think about! Brenda has been talking about spinning on the back episodes of Cast On that I've been listening too, Gemma aka KraftyKoala has just ordered a wheel and when I mentioned on twitter that it looked like something I could get into, it sparked a 2 hour conversation LOL!

I spent the rest of the night prowling the net (especially eBay) pricing them up!

I arrived at knit tonight and there was no one there! OK, so quite often I arrive first, but I sat there and sat there and no one arrived.

Just as I was feeling like a right Billy No Mates, I happened to look out the window to see 4 people crowded around 3 spinning wheels!

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH, spinning wheels! So I rushed outside to find Joy, Jane, Mindy and Helen all sitting there discussing spinning. Well after last night on twitter it just felt like fate.

Helen let me have a play on her Ashford Traditional and then Joy let me have a go on her double treddle. Joy reckons the double treddle will be better for me because of my back AND it packs away; as I don't really have room for a wheel, that seems more ideal than a Traditional really!

So, Joy has said she'll loan me her Traditional wheel so that I can spend more than a few minutes playing with it to find out if my back can handle it and invited me to the next spinning guild meeting (next Tuesday) and has also mentioned going to fibrecraft in Godalming to have a play on some of their wheels too.

Now I'm hunting around looking for fibre, I have no idea what I need, but I'm entering this competition - after all, free stuff is always good, right? Right! Besides, it's all so pretty!

WWKipD

That stands for World Wide Knit in Public Day.

That was yesterday.

I met up with Jan, Rachael, RahRah, ProbablyJane (and her friend) and my daughter, Jess, whom I taught to knit on THURSDAY joined us!

Unfortunately this is also the weekend of the annual Isle of Wight Festival and Newport was packed! We managed to squish around a table and ordered drinks. £1.95 for a TINY little cup of cola. Not impressed and even less so when the waitress spilled some diet coke over Jessica's knitting (thank god it was just cheap acrylic and not handpainted stuff!). a second waitress spilled coke on Jane's friend and another spilled water on the table!

When it became obvious that we weren't going to order much, they gave us the bill as a hint that maybe we should get lost.

Jan was working on a shawl that she's making in her own handspun which has now got me pondering taking up spinning. It's never interested me before because, quite frankly, all the handspun stuff I've seen has looked exactly that: HANDspun! It's looked amateurish. But this stuff Jan was using was lovely and the shawl was really soft! Now I keep thinking; "hmmmmmmmmmm, I could do that!"

We stayed for a couple of hours then left, it was loud, smelly and not very comfortable and we had to put up with seeing this:

NASTY!!!

Why I’m cancelling Sky

If you read this blog regularly then you'll know about the great TV experiment.

I'm happy to report that it's gone very well. All we have watched on TV has been the wrestling. So I was looking for ways around losing our sky subscription (that's the same as cable for peeps in the US) but still being able to watch all those lovely men slathered in baby oil!

Then I sat down with Kyle yesterday to watch WWE.....my god it was soooooooooooo boring! Its the same crap over and over again, same fights among the same people. So much cheating going on and no one is pulled up about it.

This week, there was a major "assault" on Batista, bad enough that it looked like they broke his arm. How exciting! I did a bit of research, his bicep was actually damaged during that assault and he'll be out for ANOTHER four months, he's only just returned from injury!

And you know what? Not a damn thing will be done to the 3 wrestlers that did that to him!

Then there was a match on ECW between Tony Atlas, who is, like, retired! And Evan Bourne, who is a twentysomething high flier who leaps around like a bloody frog. They've also got this Russian guy, Koslov, who is undefeated. But that's because he weighs over 300lbs and they keep putting him against nobodys who weigh 200lbs soaking wet!

FFS Vince - sort it out! You've just lost a family of viewers!

God I miss Hulk Hogan and Bret "The Hitman" Hart!!!

So, I can quite happily do without WWE.

Kyle went spare when I told him!

As for TNA, now that's a bit better - and would improve immensely if they ditched Mick Foley - and that's on Bravo, we can get Mum to tape that for us!

How to read a knitting chart

This seems to come up a lot on Ravelry, so I thought I’d give you a tutorial – cos I’m nice like that!

These instructions are for the majority of charts and I’m assuming that you know a little bit of knitting here!

A chart is made up of lots of little squares and looks totally daunting, but it’s not really. Honest.

First thing you want to do is find the key that explains what all those little symbols mean. One square represents one stitch. A plain square usually means that stitch is to be worked in stocking stitch (knit on the right side, purl on the wrong side), it might be shaded if you’re to work it in reverse stocking stitch. A circle usually means to yarn over, a backslash usually means SSK and a forward slash is K2tog. But check the key.

Now a chart is read from the bottom right. Row 1 is the right side of your work and you start at the bottom right stitch and work left. Why? Because that’s how most garments are knit (excluding top down stuff)! When you knit a (standard) sweater pattern, you start at the bottom and work upwards to the collar. A chart is just a pictorial representation of what your finished piece will look like!

So, you work along that row until you get to the end. Now turn your work so that the wrong side is facing you (unless you’re working in the round, but we’ll talk about that in a minute), now work row 2 from left to right.

So the RS of your work is read right to left and the WS is read left to right.

If you are working in the round; work ALL rounds from right to left!

Sweet Sixteen

Today my second son, Matt, turned 16.

I can't believe I now have two children who are technically old enough to leave home!

Very mixed feelings about this.

Have a look at this:

It's a height chart, I started doing it a few years ago as the boys starting shooting up in height leaving Jess and me far behind. I measured Alex today, he's 13 and is just half an inch under 6ft!!!

Anniversary Mystery Shawl

Renee Leverington (aka Goddess Knits) is doing another mystery shawl. This one is free and I'm knitting it in 100% cashmere in semi solid plum from Joy.

I'm just approaching the end of clue 2, I'm a bit behind everyone else as I didn't start until after everyone else as I was fighting to get socks to fit!

Ravelry & Photobucket -– A Tutorial

A lot of people seem to be confused about how to post a photo to Ravelry. Now I can't tell you how to do it using Flickr because I'm not overly keen on Flickr and besides I already had a Photobucket account when I joined Ravelry.

So I'm going to give you a tutorial on how to post pictures to the forums and your projects/stash pages on Ravelry!

First (obviously) you need a Ravelry account and an account with Photobucket.

After you've uploaded your picture to Photobucket (which I'm going to assume you know how to do by following the instructions on their site) you'll want to proudly show off your latest FO or new yarn purchase to everyone else.

This next section is about uploading to your projects/stash pages.

Create the listing as normal, now click the photos tab and scroll down to the bottom. You should see a row of tabs labelled "flickr importer", "photobucket", "slurp from web" and "upload from computer". Obviously you want to click "photobucket".

Now, you need to enter in the user ID and password you use to log in to PHOTOBUCKET, not Ravelry! It might take a while to load or you might need to do this a couple of times - Ravelry is still beta, don't forget!

Once your username and password have loaded in, you should see a drop down box labelled "Album". You need to locate the album on Photobucket that you saved your picture into in the drop down box. Once you've done that a load of thumbnails should appear. You then scroll through until you find the picture. Click on it and your picture will appear above the line.

In the bottom right hand corner of the picture that appeared at the top of the page there will be a square with arrows in, if you click + hold that, you can drag the picture around in the box until you are happy with it.

Ravelry automatically saves any photo changes, so there is no "save" button to click.

Now, this next section is about how to load your picture onto a forum post.

Go to photobucket, it doesn't matter which album (I have several); under the first photo you should see the words "Link options". If you click this a box will appear, there are three tabs across the top, click the far right one labelled "Get link code" and in the selections look for "HTML for websites and blogs" and under that, tick "clickable thumbnail".

At the bottom, put a dot in "always".

Now click save and it'll take you back to your album.

Click in the box under the photo you want that has "HTML Thumb" next to it and then press ctrl+c to copy that link.

Go to Ravelry (this is where multiple tabs come in handy!), write your post and in the place you want your picture to appear, press ctrl+v to paste your link. It'll look like a load of gobbledegook until you've actually posted your comment, but once you have; a nice little thumbnail of your picture should be there!

Be warned: if you delete your photo from photobucket, or you move the photo to another album; it will no longer be visable in your projects/stash pages or on the forum you posted it in!

Clever

As you know, I enjoy knitting lace - if you didn't know this, then you've been living under a rock!

I've had a few people say "Wow, you're so clever!" and a lot of the people who've said this are fellow knitters! I can understand a non knitter saying that - a lace item does look terribly complicated, but any knitter who looks at a lace chart should realise that it's just garter or stocking stitch with a lot of yarn overs and decreases.

I don't think I'm clever for just following a pattern. The person who created the pattern in the first place is the clever one! I'm just copying what they did really.

I don't know - and I don't want to sound all conceited - but I've never found it hard, no one told me it was supposed to be hard. If it wasn't full of cables or lace, it'd be boring!

Although, saying that, I've had to do a lot of work where socks are concerned and it's baffled me that it didn't just work! I don't swatch, I can't stand it. My philosophy is knit for a bit and try it, if you don't like the look of it then rip it and start again. I suppose it's because I tend to knit to gauge so if the pattern says 12 stitches to 4 inches, that's what I usually get!

But I'm valiantly re-knitting the Vortical sock. Well, I will when I've done some more on the Anniversary Mystery Shawl I started last week!

There's just soooooooooooooooooooooooo much I want to knit - especially with all this lovely new yarn in my stash!

Podcasts

I'd heard of podcasts before, but I never really bothered about them because I didn't really know anything about them. Then a couple of weeks ago, someone on Twitter (I think it was Natalie) mentioned The Archers.

The Archers is a radio soap drama and has been running forever on BBC radio 4, you can read about it here.

Well, I'm a bit forgetful and I don't have a radio anywhere near me (there's one in the kitchen which is the other end of the house from me) but I fancied the idea of 'getting into' The Archers, especially as we're still on a TV ban. After a bit of ferreting about on the net, I discovered that you could download the episodes as a podcast so that you could keep up to date.

So I started up iTunes and decided I'd learn about this podcasting thing.

Omigosh, why didn't I do this earlier?

Podcasts are fabulous! They're a sort of cross between an audio blog and a radio show and people podcast about whatever they want.

I'm currently listening to all the back episodes of Cast On which is (naturally) a knitting podcast and was apparently the first. It's hosted by a Canadian woman called Brenda Dayne who lives with her partner Tonya in Wales and she podcasts about all sorts of things. She has a segment called "Today's Sweater" and she'll tell you about a sweater that she made and whether it was successful or a complete failure. Her very first episode was about a Clapotis she had made, the dye ran all over her and when she washed it, the thing felted in the machine - it was hysterical! Especially when she played the voice message she left for Tonya screaming about it!

I've also listened to about a week's worth of The Archers, but I'm enjoying Cast On so much, I'm listening to that exclusively until I've caught up. Then I'll catch up on The Archers and once I've done that, I'll find another podcast lol.

A pledge

Ally called me today.

Ally is my friend in Scotland. She lives the other end of the country from me and I've only ever met her twice, but she is one of my best friends!

I had a REAL bad flare up a few years ago, I woke one morning at 2am and I couldn't move, all I could do was flail my arms and legs about like an idiot. I scared myself to the point that I called my mum at work in hysterics.

She left work to come and find out if I was ok and I called the emergency doctor out too.

Diagnosis: herniated disc! I was bedridden and medicated for about ten days.

Ally called me EVERY SINGLE DAY! She called to natter when I was awake enough to do so, to check that I was ok and to keep me up to date with all the gossip.

When my father was dying of cancer, Ally called me every day again to find out how I was coping and to give me someone to vent to.

She never judges me - or if she does, she keeps her opinions to herself LOL!

Anyway, she called today, she's not been well and is having a whole batch of tests and rubbishy horrible stuff done and she told me that she enjoys reading my blogs and seeing the pictures that I post.

So, I'm making a pledge that I shall try and update my blog on a more regular basis - even if it's just rubbishy posts about everyday life!

For Ally.

More on yesterday

I thought you'd like to see a few more photos.

This is a project bag I bought, I think it was from someone called Babylonglegs, but I can't remember.

I also got given this knitting gingerbread man by the guy on the easyknits stall - isn't it cute!?!

There was some alpaca's there, wish I could've touched them, they looked soooooooo soft!

Here's a pic of the stalls outside, people inside and pigeons sheltering under a bench in the rain LOL

UK Ravelry Day 2009

I got up at 4.20am and caught the 6am ferry. Then I drove 130 miles to Coventry to attend UK Ravelry Day.

It was great!

I bought absolutely loads - I won't tell you how much I spent, I'll just show you this:

Do-over

Everyone says that's the cool thing about knitting, if you screw it up it's easy to just redo it.

I, on the other hand, hate it! I guess that's why I couldn't stand cross stitch - I couldn't see the point of going back over a stitch you'd already done!

I finished the first Vortical sock yesterday - take a look!

Pretty isn't it? Now click on the picture to make it bigger and take a closer look.

See how tight it is? Took me ages to get that damn sock on my foot!

I'm going to have to reknit the entire sock with more stitches!

I guess casting on 60 stitches for a sock just isn't enough for my wide feet and fat calves!

I'm currently swatching to find the correct number of stitches so that I can get the cuff around my heel and comfortable on my leg.

I hate swatching!

RIP Grasshopper

I just found out that David Carradine, from TV series Kung Fu and Kill Bill films among others, died yesterday. He was found in his hotel room today, it appears he committed suicide.

What a shame!

Bleurgh

I feel like crap!

Yesterday Matt had another interview for college because the hairdressing course turned him down, he went for catering instead! While he was doing that, I took Jess shopping for school shoes and to hunt for a suit for Matt to wear to the upcoming prom.

Well, shops here seem to think that men don't come any smaller than a 38" chest!

Hello?!!?!?!?! Have you seen my kids? They're beanpoles!

I wondered around for a bit then my hips started protesting so we grabbed a sandwich and went back to the car park at the college to wait for Matt.

I dropped them at home then had to turn around and drive all the way back again to knit night.

Restaurant chairs are not my friend, especially not when I already hurt.

Joy told me that at the end of the night, I looked grey! I was in agony! I drove home and promptly took two of my whammy pills. My EDS was playing up and it RAELLY hurt!

By midnight, I was bouncing off the ceiling, out of my tree. I ended up going to sleep about 3am.

Then I had to get up this morning to go and get my nails done and hunt for the elusive suit a bit more! In the end we found one in M&S for under £40! I was quite surprised, I don't go in there because their prices have always been extortionate before, but they were very reasonable and had a good selection.

We were quite lucky, all the trousers started at a 32" waist; Matt is 28" and 4" extra is very baggy. We found a pair of school trousers that matched for less than £10!

Bargain day today!

But, it was too much and I shouldn't have done it. By the time I got home I ached even more and a migraine was threatening, so I took one whammy and spent the afternoon writhing in an armchair.

Then passed out for 3 hours early this evening.

You know what that means, don't you? I'm going to be up all bloody night now *sigh*

To frog or not to frog

I started Louhi ages ago, but I'm seriously considering frogging it. I haven't worked on it in ages and while I love the look of it, the pattern itself is boring.

It's also incredibly thick and heavy! I'm thinking I might do it again later in a light weight yarn.

The trouble is, it's worked in one piece. You cable at the front then rib to the back panel which you cable then rib to the other front that has a cable.

All that rib will drive me crazy. I'm thinking of making Terra which again is very bulky and mindless which I think'll be perfect for travelling around with.

Dunno, will have to think about this

Oh, I forgot to share this with you yesterday!

There was a bit of discussion on Ravelry in the Knitting Goddesses group about 'signing' your knitting. This is doing something to it that marks it as unique and shows it was made by you.

Now, I always attach my little labels to items that are intended for someone else, but I also wanted to do something else so I decided to add a bead.

Just one bead, that's all.

I spent ages looking on ebay at beads, I thought of cats, catseyes, stars, all sorts, but they were all too big –- especially as all I seem to be making lately is lace and socks!

Then I found my beads that were left over from MD/AN! – I've got two and a half packets of beads! Another plus: they're purple! If you know ANYTHING about me, it's that purple is my favourite colour!

So here is a bead in the shawl (took me ages to find the damn thing!) and on the cast on edge of my new socks!