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Child of the Seventies

I feel very much at home crocheting granny squares out of brown, beige and green acrylic yarn.

Mum will be proud.

Things have been rather subdued here at Sheep Happens Towers lately. Rob did his back in at the beginning of the week, so has been hobbling around the house feeling sorry for himself and I almost lost a thumb being mauled by a savage beast... that little white cat from up the road sure does have a temper on it. I had just started the lawnmower up and didn't really want pieces of cat cluttering up my lawn, so reached down to persuade him away from it, when he turned and slashed open the side of my thumb. There are a couple of strange things about this, firstly that the cat is usually really friendly and secondly that he would come anywhere near a lawnmower that was powered up, as most cats in my experience scarper as soon as the racket starts. We have come to the conclusion that the cat is probably deaf (it does have odd coloured eyes, which seems to support this theory) so couldn't hear the lawnmower and maybe I surprised him by putting my hand down while he was looking the other way. Needless to say, I shall be more wary of little white cats in future.

The crochet blankey is being made from stash. And I was very good when I visited my local yarn shop to purchase Badger's birthday present and didn't buy anything for myself, DESPITE THERE BEING A SALE ON! except for a copy of Knit Today (which has a nice jumper in it, but that was about it) so I am feeling very virtuous. Please send polish for halo. And Elastaplast.

The Glyders

Or Biting Off More Than You Can Chew.

We spent the weekend in North Wales and yesterday went for a rather long walk over the Glyders, about 13.5 miles with approximately1800m of ascent (give or take as our gps went a bit wonky in the middle) taking in three of the Welsh 3000'ers. We climbed up to start just after the quarry at Carnedd y Filiast (821m) and walked along the ridge over Mynedd Perfedd (812m), Foel goch (831m), Y Garn (947m), Glyder Fawr (999m) and Glyder Fach (we skirted around the back over Castel y Gwynt at 950m) then Y Foel Goch (805m) dropping down to Cefn y Capel (441m) to finish in Capel Curig. Ridge walks are fabulous, as once you are up there, there are always amazing views and relatively little up and down to worry about. Of course, on walks where there are 3000'ers there is always going to be some uphill (and there most certainly was!) but it was all worth it. I think. I should probably apologise to all non-British people who ever read my blog (if, in fact, there are any) because of the way that I casually change between feet, metres, miles, etc. There are fifteen 3000'ers in Wales and they are called thus because they are higher than 3000ft, but because the OS maps are printed with the heights in metres, these are the ones I tend to use here. 999m is 3279 feet.

From Y Garn, looking over Llyn Clyd & Llyn Idwal towards Tryfan

At the summit of Glyder Fach with Snowdon in the distance

Looking towards Glyder Fawr

Coming down off Cefn y Capel

Sheepses and lambses at Gelli

Glyder Fawr and Glyder Fach means 'big mound of stones' and 'little mound of stones' in English, which is very appropriate. We have had great fun while I have been putting up this post trying to work out all the Welsh pronounciations for all the places, probably getting it all terribly wrong. I can speak about 10 words in Welsh, none of them of any use in any situation, and I am determined to learn a few more useful ones, as we do go to Wales quite often and have a week's holiday booked in the Black Mountains this year.

One of the reasons that we chose to go to Wales this weekend was because of the smoking ban that has just been introduced, which is a Good Thing. But as it was, we were so long out our walk that it was too late to go to the pub by the time we got back and we ended up with tinned chilli and easy cook rice at the campsite with bottles of beer, which went down very well.

I am a little bit achey in the legs today, but not as bad as I feared I would be and all in all and despite some route uncertainty at the beginning and severe knackeredness at the end (!) a good day was had by all.

Yarrgh, tis me Pirate Duck.

I got some cool stuff in the post today from Lapina, including me new mate, Pirate Duck! He doesn't swim too well (probably too much rum on the voyage over from the Americas) but here he is enjoying a relax by the bird bath.


I have cast on for the second Bayerische sock (no SSS for me) and also for the front of the tank top which I will do when all the fiddly cabling gets too much for me.

One completed Bayerische sock!

Yarn: Lorna's Laces, Shepherd Sock Yarn
Colour: Wisteria
Secret Santa swap gift from Hawksley!

Needles: 2,5mm Addi circs



It has come out quite a big sock, I adjusted the length to fit my size 7 feet, but although I have quite big feet they are not very wide, and these socks have plenty of stretch in them which makes them quite big even on me.



I spent all day yesterday out in the garden, tidying it up and making it look nice and then didn't hardly go outside at all today. I finished the sock this afternoon while attached to the sofa in front of a James Bond film.

Oggy the Hedgehog

I have just spent the last twenty minutes or so watching a hedgehog snuffling around in the back garden. I am so thrilled and slightly overwhelmed (that could be the half bottle of white wine I have drunk!) to have this sort of wild life in my garden. I shall not curse and hate the slugs any more for they are now hedgehog food. Better get some more flea drops for the cat....

Easter

The Bayerische sock has progressed a little since my last post. I decided to make them a bit shorter than the original design, as I am wanting a longer length foot and do not want to run out of yarn. The colours of the yarn are not ideal for showing up the pattern, the cables look more like a lace pattern from a distance, but that's ok. I like them. Or it, I should say.







The weather is not so good today, so I have been mostly staying in and playing computer games so far. When the weather was nicer on Friday I spent some time out in the garden tidying up the piles of shrub branches and bits from when I pruned the shrubs back during the winter. For some reason my neighbours thought that everyone on the estate would like to listen to their Meatloaf CD, so I felt barely a twinge of guilt as I powered up my rather noisy shredder. I've had the shredder for a couple of years now, and it is not the satisfying toy that I thought it would be. Sadly, it is frustrating and hard work to use, but it sort of does the job and it means that my garden waste can go on my compost heap rather than needing to be taken to the tip so I persevere with it.

As a reward for doing house/garden work, we went to Lyme Park on Saturday for a walk around the estate and gardens.

Lakeland Lambs

This picture was taken by Tony Richards of the Lakeland Cam website, which is one of my favourites - a daily dose of Lake District loveliness. And what could be more lovely than spring lambs!

We didn't see any to take pictures of when we were visiting a couple of weeks ago, so I have borrowed some of his :)

There's not much to report on the knitting front. The Bayerische sock is fiddly and slow to take shape, there's not much point in putting in a photo as it looks pretty much as it did earlier in the week and I haven't yet cast on for the front of the tank top.

Spring Sunday

Well what a lovely weekend it has been so far, all sunny and (quite) warm, although pretty windy up here in t'north. When the sun was shining out the front this morning, something happened for the first time... our temperature widget doodah said it was warmer outside than inside! 19°C is a bit out, as the sensor is in a suntrap, but it makes good viewing :)













Work has begun on the Bayerische sock. There are any number of things that could go bad about this sock - the coloured yarn is one of them and also the size. Eunny has much smaller feet than me and Northern Monkey already had to frog hers because they were too snug. I am using bigger needles and keep trying them on - so far, so stretchy - but there are niggly doubts.