scene of crime reconstruction

Yes, yes, well all know how useless I have been recently. But it isn't my fault, 'cos I have been drowning in a sea of home baked cookies and rock buns (Yarnstorm's rock buns - seriously good, and if I may have spun a few stories about how she seduced her husband with them, mea culpa, but it certainly helped in their selling), second hand books, marmalade, and knitted butterflies. For 'tis the season to be standing on market stalls, raising money for whatevers. And the season is not quite over yet, for the children at school of knit (the genius idea of Blueadt, which is much fun, but costs us a fortune in breadsticks - used to stop that post school lack of energy crash, 'cos we vetoed the sweets and chocolate, and fruit is too messy - as well as the hi-larious sight of breadsticks as chopsticks, breadsticks as knitting needles, breadsticks in ears, breadsticks up noses, and the perennial favourite of breadsticks as vampire fangs, which is just as funny as it was a year and a half ago) still have their summer fair to come. What's that? My crystal ball is saying it can see me sitting in the wee small hours, sewing buttons onto butterflies, and butterflies onto brooch and barette and bangle backs.....

But in between all this rampant capitalism, other things have been happening. First, I have been seduced by the eternally perky Flo, (yes, my life is not complete, unless I am serving screaming cell-phone users, being barked at by bossy business ladies, and cleaning up after caterwauling children). And second, there has indeed been some knitting. For the semi-big news is the neapolitan ice-cream shawl is finished, just awaiting blocking (and purchase of accompanying real neapolitan ice-cream).

And finally, with the aid of the amazing dust/fibre/hair/fluff-ball finding and creating cats (just give me a rug, any rug, any carpet, any chair, for I must to sharpen my claws. Holes, what holes, I can't see no holes, no, that isn't a hole, in a rug, just beside me, with a pile of pulled up fibre beside it, and gosh, how did that bit of carpet get in my claws), I have been playing at CSI. For I have been stringing, reconstructing the scene of the crime, the moment of impact, the point of pointlessness. With ... wait for it ... up to 25 different bits of string in any one row.

Behold, I bring you the back of Jamieson's Cosmos Jacket. With cat. And tangles.

Aren't cats helpful.

missing in action

and I could show you the pile of flithy used tissues, to justify my absence, but you don't want to see that, do you. (Anyway, I'm an old fashioned hanky user - every xmas I pretend I am a man, and put a box of nice, new, man sized handkerchiefs in my paltry xmas stocking. When you were little, didn't you think it was so awful, how your parents used to get things like socks, and underwear, and hankies for xmas? And how it was worse than unforgiveable, when you got them too? Oh, but I know I am getting old, when I start to think how lovely it would be, to get a pack of M&S functional, comfortable knickers in my stocking.) And worse, it seems that there is something strange going on, in the knitting pantheon, that everytime I get close to actually finishing a shawl, I get bronchitis (for evidence, the olympic knit, that nearly finished me). But the ice-cream shawl, she is nearly to the edging, and if I am good today, then the end is in sight.

But I do have something to show you. To make up for my being ill, and just in time for summer (and to make me feel better for being too ill to make it down to London, to play with my frog bag owner - apparently, a big hit, and just the right thing for nearly 5 years old J.J.O. to carry his sunglasses, lip salve, and money for ice-cream, when down at the local paddling pool). Behold, I bring you 'My Dear Stalker', by the fabulous Woolly Wormhead. And hopefully, she won't mind that I made a few alterations - making it extra, extra large in gorgeous organic pure Jacob wool, from Garthenor Organics, adding a crochet brim, and then felting the f***ker. So, some before and after shots:

(yes, that is a partial picture of my, still in my pjs)

(what, you are meant to be able to see when wearing a hat?)

(the washing machine didn't eat it)

(the ears, the ears, just right to protect you from the sounds of the bells, the bells)

Now, this hat is meant to be from one of my big brothers, but it is so lovely, that I'm not sure I can bear to part with it. For it is warm, and cosy, and slightly not quite 'normal'. And when you wear the ears down, they swing comfortingly from side to side as you walk, and you get to feel just like a bloodhound working for Sherlock Holmes. Not quite clever enough to solve the crime, but you know you'll be crucially helpful to the case.

Finally, you may notice that I have changed the template - I have somehow managed to pass 100 posts. And this means that all my carefully collected side-bar delights have etherized. Oh, well. So I'll try and work on those, and get them back ('cos I love housekeeping so). And apologies, for all those who tried to listen to Monsieur M.C. Nuts - well, the sound worked for me!

I shall return, with tales of ice cream shawls, and socks in progress and local elections. Bet you can't wait.