Water, water, everywhere

I don't know about you, but in our house my stash is threatening to take over. It has wormed its way into every room in the house and is tucked into all sorts of hidey holes. There's quite a lot in the hallway. It's stored in two hanging basket type thingies (technical term). At least, they were hanging, until they fell down (surely they weren't too heavy?) a while ago and laziness and sheer cack-handedness with drills and hooks and such like meant that they remained on the floor in an untidy heap.

It's been raining rather a lot lately. It rained so much that water got in under the front door, unknown to me at first, since we never use it. It was only when I came to dig out some yarn from the un-hanging basket that I realised it was wet.

I spent quite a long time yesterday sorting out the wet yarn; putting the wet yarn into skeins; wetting the yarn some more, with clean water and shampoo this time; hanging the yarn to dry:



and finally making it into a neat little row:



That is, from left to right, some Rowan Ribbon Twist; Rowan Polar; Rowan Rowanspun 4 ply; Blackberry Ridge wool/silk lace weight; unknown cotton (what was I thinking?); Louisa Harding Impression; Colinette Skye.

I think I have managed to save the day.

I haven't forgotten the meme - I'm just biding my time.

Long time, no hear

Yes, I know, I know. It's been far too long. It's a bit like when you don't write your thank-you letters, there and then, on Boxing Day. The longer you don't do it, the harder it becomes.

Here I am now, though and rest assured there has been no lack of knitting here in the rural backwater.

I finished the Wrap Me Up wrap and there has been a request for more pictures. Here are a few:

The front:




The side:



Close-up of the pink bobbles:



I didn't add any beads in the end - it just seemed that to make any impact at all the beads would have had to be huge. I added a few buttons for ornamentation but, strangely, there don't seem to be any pictures and no prospect of any in the near future - the camera has gone to Spain with the offspring and will be back later this week.

I am still working on the Sock Yarn blanket (174 squares at the last count.) I have received yarn donations from Jan (aka Wibbo)



and Alex (aka Little Lixie)



That little lot is certainly helping to keep me going. It's a great TV watching project and offers some well needed light relief from all that lace, which I seem to have on the needles all the time.

In fact, the green lace "tablecloth" has been languishing on the piano for the last few weeks, although I did pick it up and do a couple of rounds this afternoon. No pictures - the camera's in Spain, remember?

You know I died in the Yarn Smackdown? Well, all is not completely lost. There is a prize draw for the fallen in each round and I won a prize! I never win anything, ever, so this was a lovely surprise. I have won a book, which is good - I love books. It's a book about hats, even better - I love hats and never leave the house without one, ever. The only slight fly in the ointment is that it's a book about crochet hats. I don't love crochet - I can crochet but I don't. However, never look a gift horse in the mouth, as they say. Maybe this book will be the thing to spur me on to greater effort in the crochet department. It hasn't arrived yet and I'm thinking it must be somewhere on the high seas (or swallowed by the good old Royal Mail, never to be seen again.)

I have been tagged by Annie and I'm well aware of the fact. However, I need some time to mull over the questions (and any answers I may want to share with you), so that will be for another day. I promise that that day will not be too far in the future.

The weather is so grim at the moment (hasn't stopped raining for what feels like days); life is slightly odd since the offspring are away and that always makes the house seem strange; my place of work is closed for a week while the new owners "take over" - I live so near that I can hear them chucking things in the skip and tearing up the car park with a digger. I'm hoping there will be something left for me to go back to next week. Really, the only thing left to do is knit and that's what I'm going to do right now.