All change

First of all, some knitting. Since finishing that baby blanket I've been rather more productive! This Ishbel was started on Boxing day and finished on 12 Jan. It was just enough knitting for me, being the small neckwarmer size rather than the large shawl. My first lace shawl, first time blocking a scalloped edge, really quite smug with myself. :)

Here is a compare between how it was when finished knitting...

....and how is turned out after blocking.

Like wings!

I also did a Star Crossed Beret for mum, who has an ancient one from the 70s which she wears around the farm in the cold. It's rather thin and weary looking, so hopefully this will be an OK alternative for her.

I love how the random cables look sort of like tree bark. It's done in Rowan Cocoon yarn which is lovely and soft, bouncy and drapy at the same time.

So, now we're up to date on the knitting what about the other stuff? Well, we moved house. It went through very quickly, luckily - we viewed in November and moved on 11 Jan. It's been a bit of a culture shock, going from a one and a half bedroom flat into a 4 bed townhouse - lots of rooms which we don't know what to do with, a bathroom each, a garage for junk, two flights of stairs... my legs are going to get more toned! Not least because we've not sorted everything out yet and whatever I need is usually at the other end of the house...

Best of all though, because we have so much space at the moment, I can have a craft room.

So far the only storage I have is what the old owner left behind (yeah thanks for leaving your crappy shelving unit) but I'll gradually get this all usefully arranged I'm sure. I've already scoped out a big L shaped corner desk from Ikea for a starting point, and The Man's mum has mentioned a big dresser which she used to have in her kitchen but since she upgraded it she's just kept in her garage. She's just as keen for me to have a fully functional craft room as I am! (It's possible since she now has a key I may come home to find her in it quite often.) It will be wonderful to have everything get-at-able. I aspire to having one of those workspaces they feature on home and lifestyle blogs, with useful shelves in the right places and chi-chi pots for your pens and paint brushes. Hey ho.

Here is a new house / new table combo pic. This new (old) table is rather orange because it's in the process of being 'revived', having been in the barn at home for several months waiting for a new home.

It's been given a drink of a woodworm treatment shooter followed by a beeswax and noxious solvents cocktail. In two days we are allowed to buff it to a sheen. Meantime hopefully it will have absorbed what it needs and the solvents will have evaporated and it will go back to a sensible colour. It has started to already so I should really trust my (furniture restorer) brother not to leave me with a tangerine table.

Here is some old woodworm damage - love the crazy pattern. I think it looks a bit like that tubes screensaver they used to have on Windows 97.

Yesterday we had our washing machine delivered. The Man's plumber mate is on hols so we thought we'd plumb it in ourselves. How hard can it be? There's an instruction manual and everything.

Just in case, we put a washing up bowl underneath to catch any drips for the first cycle.

Ahem. Yes, well. This has now been rectified.

All this house roaming fetching things from upstairs when they're needed downstairs is just as well, I had a serious gym session with my trainer yesterday and I hurt in strange places, and if I sat down for too long I think I'd cease up. Balls of my thumbs? I presume it's due to having my first session of pad boxing, which is much more fun than ten minutes on the cross trainer.

It's taken a while but I'm starting to get into the mindset that not everything in this house needs to be done immediately, which is quite a new thing for a child of the Now generation like me. It's lovely just doing a little chunk at a time, and thinking that we can write a list and cross things off slowly. It's also lovely watching The Man getting to grips with my power drill. Hee hee. He's somewhat of a DIY virgin but seems keen so far, which is ace. There'll be plenty of just-jobs* in the next few years I'm sure.

Since Friday though he's been very happy because the Sky man came and made Sport happen again (or indeed any telly, we've been surviving on DVDs), so now we have golf / cricket / football in HD on the big flat telly, and on Saturday his mates appeared to sort out the surround sound, so we also have Kef eggs (this is a technical term apparently) around the room and disconcerting noises coming from under chairs and in the bookcases. I have to plead to being terribly girly and being happy with the telly not set to HD and with its own speakers, but apparently I'm being a Philistine and Must Not Utter words like that.

Finally, hurrah for being able to see the roads again and them not being white and skiddy, but some doom-mongerer said the other day that we might be due one or two more snow snaps this year. Noooo! I've already had six (yes, six) days when I couldn't get into work because the trains weren't running, enough is enough!

* Can you just...?