my weekend without words

leaving the fingers to Cadbury

Today I finished knitting the pair of mittens I'm giving to my friend for her birthday. She's the pretty, freckly one from Mayo and what better colour for an Irish girl than a nice grassy green? Posting yesterday about AllKnitwear has me feeling unimpressed with the sensible colours I've been choosing lately and now I really want to make something bright and cheerful. Nothing too extreme.. I'm not proposing a rainbow scarf to partner my reflective yellow bicycle jacket, but just because the weather's grey doesn't mean we have to be too!

dearest thomas, doubt no more

When one is finding it hard to keep up with all the things one has to do in a day it's an unholy distraction to remember a knitwear company one finds most inspirational. Just LOOK at how fun the colours and designs are!

The company is All Knitwear which was set up by Annie Larson who designs and constructs all the knitwear on her knitting machine. This is what she says about the process "Garments will usually be made in one day, knit in the morning and linked in the evening. Imagine me hanging out with your sweater as it is being made, listening to music together and enjoying afternoon coffee." Sounds too good to be true... but I guess had I not seen photos of her stuff then I would be saying the same about that.

And they lived happily ever after

I had an incredible red coloured yarn that made me happy in the way raw beetroot does and was waiting for ages to get around to knitting something special with it. For myself. Because, in the words of my good friend Andrew "if I don't treat myself, who will?" (Also, side note on raw beetroot - recipe for salad with pear and feta YUM thank you Jamie Oliver...)

My red yarn needed a partner as special as itself so I began looking and found a speckled wool which made the two together like a raspberry ripple ice cream . On top of a banana split. Wowzers.

But then I had a dark grey in my knitting basket. And that went nicely with the red too. Like dark chocolate and cherries. Hmm. What to do? The curse of Goldilocks! A predicamentus maximus. I had red and cream. And cream and grey. And grey and cream. All three to tempt me. Oh no, what to do, what to do? Elementary. I should leave none and weave all the lovely lovelies into a yummy scrummy snuggly snoody scarf. And my story ends without my being chased by bears. Excellent.

Yang Du I think I love you

fresh

How super cool a day was yesterday for all the ten year olds of the world whose birthday it was? Imagine, turning 11 on 11/11/11. Woah and if any amongst them had been born at 11.11 o'clock. All the timing of my birth gave me was the grace of 14 minutes. Born at 11.46pm I narrowly missed being a Tuesday's child and consequently am supposed to be "fair of face" although time has brought me to overcome the initial disillusionment experienced from this hocus pocus prophecy and I'm probably a whole lot less upset about it than the children who didn't wake up without their most desired super power yesterday. They must be feeling about as cheated as the time they found out Santa isn't real. Shhh, I didn't say it...

Well, being the grown up that I am and believing in the overtly tangible aspects of my days I had a great day yesterday with an evening spent as Super Sushi Ninja MiMi. We set out with fresh fish, sharp knives, sticky fingers and rumbling tummies. One burnt saucepan, one bottle of wine and one minor inter-sibling altercation later our make-it-yourself dinner party was in full swing.

*Insert (in)appropriate photo caption here *

mission accomplished

I should begin by explaining how a series of events came to pass...
I was on a bus. It was a long journey. The reading lights were broken. I was dismayed. The airconditioning was broken. I almost suffocated. These two elements combined led to the initiation of conversation between myself and my neighbouring passenger. Who turned out to be a very organised and motivated Occupational Therapist. I let slip how my life is a shambles. She recommended some books. I wrote a list. Soon thereafter an order of books was placed on Amazon.co.uk. The first of these books arrived a few days later. Entitled " How to Win Friends and Influence People" I'm surprised to see it every time I look at it. And all the more surprised to find myself transfixed with interest each time I read it. I probably shouldn't be giving away all me secrets, but we're here now so what the heck.
The principle of the chapter I'm currently reading is "arouse in the other person an eager want" because apparently in life the only way to influence people is to talk in terms of what the other person wants. I was going to talk about knitting and air my thoughts on Missoni's Womenswear AW11 collection before wondering if perhaps other people did not want to read about my opinions on yarns, textures or colour gradients. Because if nobody wanted to read about knitting then they wouldn't read my post. And where would the point be in that?

the cold unleaving