Katie…must remember that listening to audiobook versions of I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue on packed commuter trains is not a good idea. It’s hard to have hysterical laughter quietly.

Ah, audiobooks. Why didn’t I download some of these before? If anyone has some good recommendations, please let me know. I’ve just started on The Historian, which is about Dracula, so we’ll see how that goes. It's been good so far apart from having what seemed to be a Brooklyn policeman based in Oxford. Why do so many American publications have these glaring editorial errors? At least now I can read and knit at the same time. In effect…

As promised, here are some pics of the other half of the Florida trip:

Intracoastal waterway, with some sort of egret on the dock.

Nuclear sub coming out of port, with two shield ships.

Daisy on the beach.

The Man's choice of motor.

Things I have also done (but which there are no pics for):

Been on a business trip to view some distribution centres for a very large highstreet clothes chain, which was huge and mainly automated and involved lots of robots and conveyor belts and did indeed in places look like the door storage area in Monsters Inc in its vastness.

Visited some friends and their new baby who is only a month old and still in the floppy poo-scream-eat stage but still super cute. I felt bad invading but Jo seems to be totally in control and the whole family (including the dog) working like a well-oiled machine. Impressive!

Made half a santa hat. But then I saw someone on the train wearing a variation of this, and I thought that I could improve. Trouble is I was meaning to whizz this pattern off in a few days for the Wealden Times Christmas fair which mum is manning a stall at, but I fear I’m now cutting it rather fine…

Tomorrow I'm off to Bristol for another work thing, and I've signed up for golf on Friday. The only girl to play, with about 40 men. (Essential comma there.) I'm scared!! How embarrassing, I shall be particularly rubbish, but hey ho, you have to start somewhere.

Status updates

Too many to do today so here they are all at once:

Katie…

...is repulsed by the dapper old man on the train filing his fingernails and then using the sharpened talons to pick interesting things out of his beard and peruse them.

...wonders how on earth The Thong Song got on her ipod

...is amused by the power exec in his large Merc listening to Guns n Roses’ Sweet Child of Mine at top volume at the traffic lights

...is pleased her car worked this morning – hurrah for WD40!

...is kinda relieved what she thought were just fat ankles are actually disfunctional muscle build up do to with things to do with her bad back. If the back gets fixed perhaps they’ll go away.

...likes the Green Slime chocolate rolls someone has brought in for their birthday cakes.

...is tickled by a restaurant having a caviar menu. Starting at £120.


Next week I'm away training in Paris, back at that lovely chateau. Shame.

Baby it's cold outside

We were only away two weeks! Suddenly it's autumn over here! It's a bit of a shock coming back from Florida where it's been mid to high 20s and walking off the plane and having to chisel ice off the car.


Our condo overlooked the Atlantic and in the mornings you could watch dolphins and pelicans working their way up and down the beach.

We were at the condo with The Man's family, but then we two disappeared off for a couple of days to Orlando to do the parks. There will be some more pics of Amelia Island, including of a submarine, but I had to offload them onto the MIL2B's laptop. My camera only stores pics internally, so clearly I need to RTFM. Meanwhile here are some pics from Universal Studios and Disney.

Getting wet on rides seems to be a popular theme.

Dr Seuss area was fab! One of my fave rides even though The Man thought it was lame-o and for kids.

Most sick-making rollercoaster which The Man rode twice (and screamed like a girl both times I expect, but I can't vouch for the second time).

Blues Brothers arriving for their gig.

Dancing in the street...

We stayed on in the evening for the Halloween haunted house extravaganza, which was really good. It was billed as the best in the States, and it was scary! There was a Saw house, all dark and spooky with the characters jumping out at you and hostages screaming, characters in the street following people (zombies, vampires, Texans with chainsaws), a Rocky Horror Show tribute, and loads of other stuff happening but the queues got ridiculous and we'd been there for 13hours and my feet were shredded.

Next day we dragged outselves out of bed to go to Disney's Magic Kingdom.

Capt Jack Sparrow (savvy).

Can you see Mickey?

On the whole Disney was pitched too young even for my mental age and could do with a lick of paint in places and some decent places to eat. The evening fireworks were good though.

After two days at the parks though, I felt like this:

We did visit Walmart. Bargainous and big craft section.

And KnitWitz yarn store in Jacksonville - they were sweeties and gearing up for having a midnight knit-in! When I got home there was the next Socktopus parcel! Which looks fabbo - a Cookie A pattern this time.

So, the first installment will follow. Sorry to be topsy turvy.

Ouchee

I can't read. I mean, I can read, obviously, but at the moment I'm unable to read. I have a nasty eye infection called iritis which is an infection of the iris, which involved going to the optician who recoiled in horror and packed me off to the hospital with dire warnings of losing my sight unless I got it seen to IMMEDIATELY, which scared the holy bejesus crap out of me. The completely disinterested doctor at the hospital has given me drops which dilate my pupil so I'm really sensitive to light, so even though it was a lovely day today the curtains were drawn. Sigh. What a pest.

On the plus side, it's starting to get better, and we're off on hols at the weekend so I can rest up and get rid of all these problems and hopefully come back fixed and fighting fit. Will be back in two weeks with lots of pics. Take care all!

Meltdown

I’ve been squished. In fact, I feel like I’ve been run over. I just want to lie in a bed somewhere very quietly and hear the distant noises of birdsong and people clunking in the kitchen. The lurgy has not quite gone away, I have an eye infection which is truly delightful, and I went to see a new physio this morning who was excellent but my body is in a bit of shock from being cracked from head to foot (literally). She did say that it would take 72 hours to feel back to normal, plus this rheumy eye is making the world a little fuzzy and drunken looking, so on the whole I’m feeling a little under par. Roll on hols this weekend! Plus I’m feeling a little glum because the physio drew a picture of all that is wrong of my back and apparently from the rear I look like Quasimodo.

The Man did another triathlon at the weekend. I’m sure it’s all very noble and athletic but frankly you can keep swimming in a muddy lake at 9am on a crispy cold autumn morning. It wasn’t nearly as slick an operation as the London one but I think everyone enjoyed themselves (apart from those cyclists who didn’t know the sharp bends on the route and ended up stuck in the hedges or spreading themselves along the tarmac). I am no longer enthused to do one myself. Perhaps I should start a new event of walking, riding and tea drinking. Where is the appeal of voluntarily freezing yourself in skanky water, getting onto a bike while still dripping wet, cycling yourself into the ground and then going for a run?! Why?

Surprise knitting is coming along well. Preparations from the Whisper Cardi are experiencing a slightly more stuttering start. I decided to be a good girl and swatch, but have discovered that for some bizarre reason the Malabrigo lace is actually quite hard for me to knit with. Stitches get caught up and muddled and (gah) dropped. Is this what happens with laceweight on aran needles? I suppose the swatch is therefore good practise for learning how to handle the yarn before I end up with massive ladders on the main piece. I feel like a novice again. As Ted says, how discombobulating. It’s knit group tomorrow so I can see if anyone else gets the same problems, and I’ve also been instructed to bring the last two sock club skeins in for consideration. Mitts off my Wollmeise!

Also, this weekend, I learned what a modesty bone is. It’s kinda like a funny bone but different. I hope I never stop learning things, it’s what makes life so interesting.

Socks and Crocks

Gah, I’m two parcels behind on my sock club knitting and have completely lost my sock mojo, and the next parcel is imminent. It can’t be two months since the last one, it just cayn’t!

I’ve been off work with the lurgy for two days. Being at home during the day during the week is a revelation. I suppose it’s helped that the weather has been beautiful, but there’s a very laid back industrious atmosphere in town, it’s surprisingly quiet, everyone seems to have their head down (apart from the Chavs and the slightly smug smiling mothers on maternity leave). There’s even less traffic noise outside our window. Yesterday my back was starting to twinge from too much lying on the settee so I called Clare and we went for a (very slow) walk around the Common. There was still a heavy dew in the shade and the drops tickled and cooled my bare sandalled toes.

I’m trying to plan knitting for hols. There’s the surprise knitting which has a deadline but it’s quite a way off, there’s the Whisper Cardigan which I’ve wound the yarn for (Malabrigo lace, wow it’s so soft! And so fine! I’m going to break it! And it will take years to knit up! Gah!), or some of the aforementioned sock kits. One set of dpns has gone walkabout and even my lurgified tidyings and sortings have not unearthed them. I think the clothesmoths have eaten them or taken them away to decorate their palace (they were the Knitpicks jazzy coloured ones). Bloomin clothesmoths.

One thing Clare and I were talking about was all those food blogs. My question is, does all the amazing looking food actually get eaten? Some bloggers have large families so I can believe at a push that all the cake and pies and tarts and brownies and casseroles and pot roasts get eaten, but some just have a partner in the house. Is the partner 30 stone? Do they donate stuff to charity bake sales? Or does a bit get eaten and the rest thrown away? If you have a food related blog, let me know!

Featuring FOs....

During the recent radio silence (apols) I have discovered a few things:

1. I am a sad commuter who has their own sad commuting games. Mine is trying to get through the station barriers without breaking stride. This involves being able to post your season ticket into the slot at speed without missing, and trusting that the rollers inside will redeliver said ticket into my fingers fast enough so it can be extracted so the barriers open without me crashing into them. Usually I slow down a bit, but the intention is always there to stride through. I really do need to get a life. *;)

2. I hate knitting bobbles. Lace is good, bobbles are excruciating.

3. If I somehow manage to chip a golf ball onto the green and it goes in the hole, I do a little dance. It won’t happen again for another decade though.


So, some catch-up pics.





Escaping from a conference in Cambridge, here is the inside of King’s College chapel (where they have the carols at Christmas). Henry VIII gave them the big oak screens to hide the organ, and there are his initials and Anne Boleyn’s carved into it so it’s dateable to within a few years. How weird, when you know what happened to her, to see her initials there and think that at the time they were oblivious to how it would all turn out.






There's a new clock at Corpus Christi with the Chronophage eating up time at the top. It's the world's largest grasshopper escapement, apparently, and it walks along, driven by the pendulum, moving the disc of the clock around. Sometimes it blinks with golden eyelids. Definitely something to check out!







Here is also the Mathematical Bridge. The myth is that is was built by some dons or something as a bet without using any bolts but only held together with Physics, and then some naughty undergrads came along thinking they could take it apart and put it back together, but then couldn’t work out how it went so they had to resort to bolting it. Apparently that’s all rubbish but I like the story!


We went to a wedding in Paris, as an old school friend was marrying a Frenchman. You have to get married twice, once in the town hall and once in a church. Well, you don’t need to do the church bit of you’re not religious. The church service was done in two languages so at some points the English guests were singing in French and the French people were singing in English. Cool!


And I have finished two jumpers. I know, it’s amazing.

Firstly it’s the Third Time Lucky Debbie Bliss detailed yoke jumper from her Summer 2009 magazine, done in Twilley’s Gorgeous which is 95% bamboo. This is the one that taught me that I hate bobbles. But! I also taught myself how to do mattress stitch on the seams so all was not lost.

Good job I ripped it out twice at the beginning because if I had carried on with the medium size it would have been vast. This is the small size and it’s still plenty big enough. Any why on earth isn’t this written top down and in the round? I did the body and the sleeves in the round anyway. Having done Baby Cables, I am a total convert to doing it that way. You can try on as you go! Genius!




Second is another Debbie Bliss from the same magazine, in Rowan wool/cotton blend DK. I’ve adapted this to make it sleeveless, and I think it works quite well. I keep wanting to put my hands in non-existant pockets in it though, maybe because I have another gilet with pockets. It would bulk it up too much I think. Will just have to make do with jeans.



This could maybe do with some shaping through the body, and a double ended zip. For the sleeves edging I just knitted 5st of garter stitch and then sewed that on to sort of match the front.

It should be an easy throw-on for the spring or the autumn.



The Man has also finally succumbed to being a Knitter’s Partner-Photographer too, sweetie that he is. I think, having made me pick him up at midnight from a boys’ night out on Saturday, and then sit in front of two (or was it three? I tried to blank it out) successive football matches yesterday afternoon while I finished these projects, he felt that he couldn’t really say no when I dragged him to the park to take these pics for me. I told him he was in good company (lots of other bloggers get their husbands to do the photo shoots for them), but I don’t think it helped. ;) Previous knitting pics have been taken by my photographer friend who understands the need to take LOADS so that at least one will not make me look like a gurning horse with three double chins and a beergut.

Only two weeks until holiday! Yay!



And a special pre-festive something for you all:



Fornicating reindeer here on Ravelry.