Frisian Frillies

Today, I got some work done at the allotment. It felt great! The first bit went okay, as we had that cultivated last year. I dug up until the rhubarb plant, created a compost heap and then I hit the bit which was allowed to run wild last year. Wow, heavy going that! There were a lot of roots stuck in the soil and the soil was a lot stickier than the first bit. After 2 hours of hard grafting, I had enough and called it a day. At least I got the 'potato patch' dug over, so that's good. Hopefully, it will stay dry a bit this week, and we can both (yes, the DH and me!) work on the allotment on Tuesday or Thursday. I also got to meet our new neighbours, Johannes and Lucia (from Mexico), who took over the corner patch a few weeks ago. Great, three patches in a row belonging to 'young' people. The revolution is well under way! ;) On the knitting front: I finished the second Cache Coeur (blue) and will finish both off with buttons tomorrow. And yes, I will try and finish we...

My acting heart started pounding when I heard about this: De Hel van '63 They are looking for extras, preferable ones who can turn up to auditions in handknit sweaters etc. in 60s style... Mmmmmm... Shall I sign up? I bet my Nordic sweater would qualify, and otherwise, a 60s style hat is easily knit up in a few nights... Dilemma dilemma.....

With faith in the economy restored (well, sort of... and actually it was closer to 60%...), back to knitting! The corrected version of Cache Coeur, with proper edging... and some yarn for a boy version, lovely soft blue acrylic yarn. I've decided to buy some matching babygrows to go with them as a gift, and maybe I'll knit some sockies too. And as promised, my Crisis Time Bath Mat. It has a bit of a story, so bear with me. When we got married, some 9.5 years ago, as part of our wedding gift, we got bath towels. Soft mint green, white, cream, light blue, all sort of matching and soft. Very fluffy and soft. They were used and loved, but as the last year we no longer had a dryer, they have had to face the hardships of air drying after their wash. And let me tell you, after 9.5 years of use, washing and drying, those fluffy towels ain't so fluffy anymore. Plus, when you wash them, they no longer 'smell' clean. Yuk. So, I decided to buy a whole pile of new towels (fluffy...

I'm a CHIP, I'm certain of it now. A Conscious Happy Independent Professional. Doesn't matter that the bank man I'm going to see now to talk about my pension managed to lose 80 percent of the money I saved up over the last 5 years. I'm happy, I'm independent and I'll be a working professional until the moment I keel over. Who needs pensions, humbug... :( When back from my little rant at Mister Bank Guy (you can definitely be certain of that, however much I realise that it's a case of waiting it out, keeping faith in the system, I'm still going to get a little rant in about how my money would have been better off in one of my homeknit socks), I'll take some pictures of my Crisis Time Bath Math and my re-knitted Cache Coeur. Right, I'm off to have a good rant. It's nice and cold, I'll be biking it into town, so he'll better be ready (oh, and I had a Starbucks size cup of freshly ground fairtrade coffee, so I'm all fired up). Can...

An update on my 'tour de force'. Aim: to get it finished before my birthday, mid April... I'm almost there... ;)

125 grams of Oslo, on needles nr 3, following the Cache Coeur pattern from Wheel. A little shrug for a little baby, although I'm not sure which one (Hidde, Lara & Destin are waiting for a giftie, and 3 more in utero to come...). According to wee H, it's a bit girly, so that narrows it down a bit! Lara, as soon as I get some matching buttons, this is on the way to you... Update: Lara will have to wait a bit... Even though Monique told me to READ carefully, I obviously made a mistake... Rip rip rip, back to the halfway point...

We had a great trip to Northern Ireland, although we are all still severly sleep-deprived and all airport staff can go and kiss my XXXX. On the way in my deodorant was confiscated (nearly empty, but the bottle says more than 100 mls, so hand over, missy...), and on the way back I had to put my knitting in the suitcase and had to pack my tester perfumes in little ziplock bags (which we had to PURCHASE for a pound, A POUND for 4 little XXXX bags...), packed in one of those surprise egg thingies that are impossible to open. So I stood on it. The official looking woman next to the vending machine, demonstrating the use of the bags and stopping all passengers who wanted to pass her and get to the Xray machine, looked on in horror. So what. I bought it, I can do with it what I want. And I picked up the 20 bits of plastic from the floor... I understand that our swimming pool wants us to wear those blue shoe covers and charges 20 cts for it, but an airport charging for silly see-through bags, ...