A quiet day with friends

 I had a quiet day yesterday, met friends for coffee, wandered round the Christmas market

Once back home again a did a little spinning then washed and blocked the mitts, spotted a mistake but it can stay, they are lovely now. These are for me so I'm not too worried about any error although I would rewrite the pattern if I did them again.

nearly not a post

 I nearly missed posting today, just a couple of photos of giant Christmas tree decorations caught my eye.

Interesting reflections

back out on the street, the winter sun was low

So I decided on coffee, audiobook and knitting, now my new mitts are finished and just need a wash and block.

taking a snow day

 Well, I would if I was still working as there are no buses running down the valley. We had the first snow of winter last night, a surprising five inch worth of snow although its thawing out now. To put the excitement in context, we had two reasonable falls of snow last winter and we missed both of them due to being a different part of the country.

I ventured out early as far as the garden., this was my washing line at 6.30am

As I was putting the kettle on for my second cuppa of the day I spotted this visitor at the top of the tree.

Being up early meant a quick chat with assorted people on line before they went to bed whilst working on mitt no 1 which is now complete except for sewing in the ends. I have now remembered how much I hate knitting thumbs.

later in the day I cast on the second mitt

and spun some boring white yarn

finally finished

 I managed to knuckle down and finish the sampler ! That's one off the finishing pile.

I also cast on a mitten with the black and white yarn, not quite got the sizing right but I will add a few more row of random checks to lengthen the hand parts. My yarn has proved to be too thin but since these are to replace my house mittens I'm not too disappointed plus will design my own next time. This was a useful lesson on how to design the thumb with a pattern on it.

you can see my tension issues with the yarn. Pattern by Traci Scott

Its that time of year again

 Krampus Day !!!

At Papplewick Pumping Station yesterday

nearly finished

Its been a slow day, some spinning, the white just needed skeining, the brown needed a bobbin spinning then plying. They both need a wash

dark brown shetland,white bowmont

Just for comparison, the green bobbin is off my nano which you often see in my photos when I'm out and about. There is the the same amount of fibre on each bobbin but the green one holds 50gm and the larger one 200gm.

My editing programme is hiccupping, sorry about the placement of some of the text , I've tried all sorts but it won't behave properly.

The nearly finished object it the sampler. I'm just too tired to count correctly so I'll finish it in the morning.

For anyone who wants to see the box of doom contents, please remember that I buy from charity shops and started to stock up for my retirement stitching a while back. I may sell the tapestries just haven't decided yet as I do have a large bag of the wools as well and may be tempted in the future.

Who am I kidding? I'm never going to stitch all of these but I'll give it a good go. Mostly cross stitch but a few embroidery and blackwork ones in there as well.

Anyway, more tomorrow (Sunday)

cross stitch basket of horror

 My knitting skills were definitely lacking last night so my knitting project is in sin bin for the time being.

It's time to start sorting out the cross stitch/embroidery pile starting with the project basket.

This basket should only contain current projects but it looks like much more has been crammed in over the last year. Current projects (that I may or maynot finish) are...

As you can see, a severe case of startitis haha I do pick them up from time to time and I would like to see a couple of them finished next year.

At least they fit neatly into the basket now, I just need to see if I can get all the excess bits and bobs into the BIG BOX OF STITCHING DOOM

I'll let you know x

unexpected sunny day

 I was expecting it to be cloudy today but when I opened the curtains, the sun streamed in. Wrapped up warm I headed into town and then out to Gedling Country Park.

The park is built on the site of the old colliery which closed in 1991

There are signposted walks and importantly a cafe,  Admittedly I did end the visit with a coffee but had a walk around with my camera first.

The park is dotted around with wooden sculptures, information boards and signs indicating the species of tree that has been planted.

Some of the local wildlife was still a bit sleepy.

and the autumn leaves had mainly fallen although there were plenty of teasels around

The park is also dotted with memorials, to the holocaust and the miners

I eventually followed the paths back to the cafe for that drink.

The rest of the day was shopping and knitting, sadly not a lot to show as I undid most of it !!

WIP update

 Todays been mainly housework, washing, sorting out the stuff from the van but I did get to finish a jacob yarn hat that I cast on sometime last week.

This together with yesterdays stitching

and tonight's new hat cast on

is pretty much all I've worked on since we got back.