Highs and lows

It’s Friday again … goodness, this week has passed fast!  I hope it’s been a good one for you!

Mine has been a mixture of both excellent and awful, and of course that’s how life is.  We don’t live on a flat plain of no emotion and you have to have both the high points and the low points to remind you of just how good life can be.

The dog was entirely to blame for the awful point of the week.  Actually, that’s not true, I think it was my fault as we went for a walk to a wood that he really liked (I mentioned the walk last week as we passed a tree that I really liked) and I let him off his lead to have a good sniff around.  Not content with just sniffing, the dog was off like a rocket, running and bouncing and generally having a lovely time.  Unfortunately, I think his running and bouncing days are over and by Friday, he was clearly in pain, refusing his breakfast and even to get out of his bed.  Oh my goodness, I was beside myself as I hadn’t even thought about it being a problem, and thank goodness for our lovely vets who were able to squeeze him in as an emergency appointment.  Getting the dog into the car was another experience, but the result of the visit was a painkiller/anti-inflammatory injection and by the evening, we had a different dog as he was back to his usual self.  I can’t tell you how grateful I was – I thought I was going to be writing a very different blog post!

It’s not fun when your pets get older, is it?  I still think of him as being this dog, not one with creaky joints.  I need to be more careful with him!

The brighter side of this week has been that not so small daughter has been home.  She arrived on Friday night and left on Monday (after a bomb scare outside her accommodation block … oh my goodness, more gratitude for little bomb disposal robots and bomb squads … ) with a bag full of clean laundry, more house plants, a freshly baked loaf and a big box of biscuits from IKEA 🙂  It was so lovely to see her, and I made good use of her time here by getting her to look at the contents of a wardrobe that I’m trying to clear out in our spare room.  Both she and big daughter have got boxes of stuff in this spare room – I am not the Mum that will just throw everything out as I have my own attachments to stuff, and I think it’s important that they both make their own decisions about it – but it’s time to make some of those decisions, not just leave the boxes in the free Mum and Dad storage unit!

We managed to clear out quite a bit of rubbish and found some items for the charity shop.  My main intention was to box up not so small daughter’s collection of Sylvanian Families figures so that I could keep them all together and find a new place to keep them safely in the attic.  She absolutely loved the little characters of mice, rabbits, meerkats, squirrels and got hours’ worth of fun out of them when she was “small daughter”, and I have no intention of insisting that she throw them out.  As you can imagine, they were out all over the landing (no room on the spare room floor because of all the other boxes!) and she had a lovely time remembering the games she played with them.  It was a bit like Christmas when you get the decorations out after a year in storage and you welcome them back out into the light; it was lovely to watch!

Also this week, there has been lots of yarny goings-on …

This is what it looks like when a new design is in progress.  Books all over the table, sample stitch ideas and my knitted swatch … I always start off in a plain colour so that I can see what the design looks like and then once I’m happy with it, move over to the yarn I’m going to use for the finished design.  Because I very often design with striped yarn, it’s not always easy to see how a pattern is going to work with the stripes so I start with the design and then match it to the stripes – it’s a process that I’ve used for years and it works very well for me.  It does mean that my sample swatch can be very long as I just cast on for a sock and then keep knitting round and round as I try out different stitches, but it helps me to do that as I can see how it will look on a finished sock.  I never forget that you can knit a pattern in any yarn so I always want to make sure that my designs work as well in solid colours as they do in a pattern.  It’s not a quick process and can be quite frustrating sometimes, but I do enjoy it!

I’ve got my Emergency Sock handy too, for moments when I need to knit something different just to clear my head.

It’s grown quite a lot this week, hasn’t it, from when I first showed you the yarn last week.  The yarn is John Arbon Exmoor Sock in the shade Peggles, and it’s very nice to knit with.  It’s a blend from a few different breeds of sheep fleeces and I am enjoying the texture of it as it feels different to the West Yorkshire Spinners Signature 4ply that I’ve used recently.  This is a pair of Basic 4ply Socks for my husband and it might not be that long before he gets to wear them at this rate!

Also this week, I remembered that I haven’t finished my Kate Davies Mystery Knit-along shawl that I was working on last summer.

The knitting of the actual shawl is finished now, thankfully, but I’ve still got lots of ends to weave in …

and I’ve got one last section of the border to knit.  I don’t think it’s that big a job so it wouldn’t take me that long to have it all done, I just need to get on and do it.

My stash of WIPs (works in progress) is building up again and I could do with getting a few of them finished!  I’m no further on with the Film Reel socks that I showed you last week as I still have another pair of them to knit and I wanted them to be ready to hand over at the same time, so although I’m up to the toes of not so small daughter’s pair, I didn’t work on them while she was home so that she wouldn’t want to take them away with her.  She didn’t mention them so I’m hoping she’s forgotten about them and they’ll be a nice surprise!

Another nice surprise … my lovely husband came home on last Friday with flowers.  It was Valentine’s Day and we don’t go overboard with celebrating – but it’s always nice to be given flowers!  I very rarely buy roses for myself, and I saw the purple freesias in the “bargain basement” box at the supermarket and thought they would go well together.  They certain do, and they smell fabulous!

My other bargain flowers for this week … I do like these bunches of chrysanthemums as they seem to last for ages!  I always feel a bit sorry for the discounted flowers which are still looking beautiful – it’s as if they’ve been dismissed before their time and I have found that they don’t last any less amount of time in the vase than flowers that aren’t discounted.  I’ve found that certain flowers definitely last longer; chrysanthemums and carnations, mostly – and sometimes I get a real bargain and lots more flowers for my money!

It’s funny, this time last year, I was someone who only ever had flowers in the house as a gift but now I buy them every week when I go food shopping.  I can’t imagine not having them in the house now!

The weather forecast doesn’t look too bad this weekend so I’m hoping to get out into the garden even for a short while.  I can see lots of things that need doing before the plants and trees start growing again, and I’m also aware that my window of opportunity is getting shorter!   There’s no guarantee that we won’t get a cold snap again – but then there’s also no guarantee that we won’t, and if I don’t get a move on, another year will go past where I’m trying to work out what I need to do once the plant is in full leaf!

I hope you’ve got a wonderful weekend planned, whatever you’re up to – and I’ll see you next week!