overdue addition

Things have been crazy since we took over the shop and I have hardly had time to keep up my blog up to date. We have gradually been improving our takings though I do wish people would shop local and not all go to Exeter when they can get things in MY TOWN sighs....

It was noticeable on Saturday that having spent the morning in Sidmouth (Lizzies 11+ exam and time killing) - which is too far from Exeter for most people to go on a quick spree, that Sidmouth was incredibly much busier than MY TOWN....And while we had a reasonable Saturday it was still down on the week before....Though the cold could have had something to do with that.

I've decided to beef my Blog up a little by posting some of my short stories and daft poems occasionally....so here's the first dedicated to the regular battle against the bugs that is well known by all mums of primary school aged children

BUGS!

The chase is on, with comb in hand.
They search the head for grains like sand.
The smell of tea-tree fills the air
and screams, from rough combed, tangled hair

“Gotcha beastie!”, yells the mum
and ‘tween her fingernails the crumb
Is dragged along the hair so thick
It’s doused in oil to make it slick

At last ‘tis done, the beasts all dead
The battle won for mop-top’s head
But gird yourself the war’s not ended
Head-lice return to scalps untended

Colyton Grammer school and outing

Lizzie and I went to an open morning at Colyton Grammer school this morning. All I can say is *wow*. Lizzie is more than ever determined she will go there. Luckily it looks like she will be bright enough to get in - while selective it isn't *as* selective as some of the other grammar schools in the country - with about 2 kids for each place before the 11+ the head said that basically if the child was qualified to get in then they would. Their cut off point is the top 25% accademically. He said that if the kids look set to get 5s in the KS2 SATs then they should be OK - Lizzie some 5s last year...so it looks like she should get in just fine. She's very happy now - especially after he told us what the pass rates were in the 11+ tests - a lot lower than she was scared it was going to be.

Means we'll have to pay for the school bus , and if/when she starts after school clubs we'll have to find someone to lift share to get her home afterwards. But she is over the moon as she loves science and its a science academy.

Shop progressing

I have definitely decided to rename my shop.
I got a quote from a sign writer for the shop and the car and it shouldn't be too expensive.

I spent some time the last few days playing with making up some loyalty cards - I need to find a mini stamp or punch to use on them I think. Something around 1cm x 1cm.

Can't concentrate on Study today so have been putting some more rows into my wings of the swan stole. I finished the baby sweater a couple of days ago but I need to get some toggles and take a picture (which I can't do till hubby gets back from his sailing holiday with the camera.

Spinning

We are now in the process of buying a shop in MY TOWN to run. No it won't be a yarn shop - much as that is my dream shop, I need to learn how to run a shop first. This one is an existing business and running at a fairly healthy profit margin.


On the knitting front I am still working on my Wings of the swan stole, but that is on the back burner to a baby cardigan - knitted seamless with a couple of cables. Lizzie's best friend's mother has just had a baby.

I have also been spinning quite a bit recently using some lovely hand dyed tops I bought from ebay. I seem to be able to spin a single ply that is about 1 ply weight - i.e. when I Navaho ply it I get something lighter than UK 4 ply but heavier than 2-ply.

These skeins are Navaho plied to maintain the subtle random hand dying - standard ply-ing hand painted tops always blends everything together which I didn't want.

Noro Rucksack and pattern for simple scarf

Mega catch up to do here. I've been back from summer school for ages and *still* not done anything on my blog. Just before I left I finished a rucksack in Noro Kureyon. I had bought it to make a long cardigan, but just didn't like the handle enough to have in near my skin so it became a stunning rucksack

I have some more lurking somewhere - though heaven knows where. Another 8 balls of the blue that the front pocket it made of. You'd think with so little storage space I would have some idea of where I put things (sigh).

I bought another couple of balls of Kidsilk Haze while I was near Brighton at Shoreham knitting and needlecraft , one of these I used to design a lace scarf, and have just finished writing out the pattern. Which I am hoping to sell. It should be suitable for fairly novice knitters - You should only need to know how to knit and purl - and it even avoids casting on and off by being pointed at either end. I'm hoping to offer it in word, pdf and printed formats (extra for printed) - though if downloaded it will require the installation of a knitter's font. Haven't found a way round that yet.

Now I have a pohoto of it I can give it to Lizzie who has been desperate to get her sticky fingers on it since I started - Kidsilk Haze is *so* soft!

While I was near brighton for Summer school I went to the Dr. Who exhibition - which was good, but being inside none of my photos really came out good enough to share.

I'm currently working on a Pink kidsilk Haze stole with wings of the swan, a sweater from Knitter's a couple of years ago in Rowan summer tweed, which I'm rather afraid may be too heavy once knit.

I still have half a dozen thing sI must take a snap of and put up here.

I just remembered there's one more shawl I knit for a friend - this one is knit in cashmere 1 ply I bought from eBay.

Its a faroese style shawl and I got the basic directions from the shawl from a combination of the dolly shawl and the faroese shawls in knitters: shawls and scarves


And just for scale here are a couple of other things I knitted at the same time The father doll is holding up my version of the berry hats that were very popular on the knitlist 10 years ago - I never knit one then so I knit one for a /12th scale baby instead.

Shopping and so on

I went to Exeter shopping with Chris last week and discovered two things. 1) if you arrive at monsoon before 9:30 you can actually get to the sale rails 2) Taking him along means I choose things much faster and *Buy MORE*!!! I usually spend so long dithering between 3 different skirts and loosing Lizzie in the crowd that I end up too tired to actually buy things.

Now I have these two pieces of information I foresee several future shopping expeditions with him helping me to shop (of course he may change his mind when he realizes exactly how much I spent in total)...But then things are always cheaper if you buy them in the sales.

One of the things I bought that wasn't clothes were 4 balls of Rowan kidsilk Haze in a deep raspberry colour...This is Turing into a narrow stole with 3 repeats of wings of the swan and a deep diamond edging.

Over the last week or so I developed a hair accessory crochet addiction with the spare yarn from Lizzies multicoloured shawl and T-Shirt (must put a photo of that in here and will do if I manage to get round to it later)

So far I've crocheted two bun covers and a rather limp looking snood - might try re-doing the snood with some 4 ply cotton I bought yesterday and adding a few beads o something..Looked very drab.

I have finally decided on the remaining courses for my degree - I will be doing SK277 - human biology in November - which is a rewrite of a course I already took, but I did SK220 6 years ago, I've forgotten most of it and I do not want to jump straight from level 1 to level 3. Once I've started on that I will decide whether to do another level 2 (SD226 - biological Psychology) or S320 - infection disease. I am also going to do SK195 - understanding human nutrition, in September as I *hate* not studying and not working my brain is turning to mush at present. I am Also planning on doing SD329 - signals and perception, and S377 - which is cellular biochemistry. There also will either be two summer schools at level 3 or a project module.

I got the result for S103 - I missed out on the special course chair letter by 3 marks - An overall average of 84.5%, which isn't at all bad as I had a few brain fog spells in the middle.

I set off to summer school Tomorrow - nervous and excited

Some of my old knitting projects

This is my first shawl made form home made hand-spun. The yarn is natrally coloured blue faced leicester - and it changes colour 2/3 the way down as I ran out and the new top must have come from a slightly differently coloured sheep.

The shawl is 5/8ths of an Octagon (ie halfway round plus an extra 8th). I designed it this way so it would drape over my shoulders and stay put. Its a good heavy snuggly warm shawl.


The next project I have pictures for was knitted for an open University buddy's baby. This is knit using comercial 4 ply baby yarn - as the family has a lot of allergies.






Then back to handspun to make a much finer shawl. This shawl is made from a yarn which aproximates 2-3 ply and is the finest I have spun. One ply is a merino silk blend with streaks of deep pink, the other is plain merino.



I seem to have a habit of making octagons for shawls (or parts of octagons) so maybe next time I should try to make a different shape. This shawl is supposed to be a regular octagon it was calculated so that the base square in the centre had sides of the right legth to yeild and octagon which would have s sufficient wingspan for a shawl. I think the maths took longer than the shawl.

Devon county show

On Saturday we went to Devon County show http://www.devoncountyshow.co.uk/home.asp . Last year Devon got summer 3 month early and in May we were in the middle of a very hot dry spring. This year we were back to cold and wet again.




Typical grey day - view from the Ferris wheel. The view is about half the showground.









We always go visit the sheep - our favourite part. Last year we heard a massive great ram *say* "Baa", this year they were all mahahah-ing again.

Anyway Lizzie found one that wagged its tail if you rubbed its head.


This year as I have been having a lot of trouble from what may or may not be ME/CFS or even MS (We will find out eventually), I hired a mobility scooter from shopmobility. It made the day completely enjoyable - I even raced Lizzie to the strawberry stand. The only difficulty came when we tried to watch a 'robot' who was being wheeled around by a man in a "Men-in-black" outfit (black suit, black tie, dark glasses). I couldn't get a good look. But then the Robot abruptly got off his Trolly and charged into the audience - since I forgot how to reverse I got to be front of audience view for the next few minutes.



He serenaded ladies in the audience by miming to song clips - and did the whole of wonderful world by lois armstrong.















Lizzie found a great bouncy slide and managed to get at least 10 goes for her £1:50 - when she was supposed to have 5!, in this picture she'd just done a complete flip.