To infinity and beyond?

Happy Saturday to you!  Oh, it’s been a busy week and I woke up early to finish writing this post … there’s something about the early morning that’s so very calm and I am glad to see the sunshine and hear the birds.

Today’s post is a bit of a mish mash of all sorts of things so I hope you’ve got yourself a brew because I’ve got lots to tell you!

First of all, you might be wondering what the blog post title is all about and I’m not ashamed to say that I really thought we might have visitors from another planet on Monday night when I went out to the bin and looked up to see what I thought was an aeroplane’s headlights in the sky.  It always makes me smile to think that planes need headlights and we get a lot of planes that circle over our house from both Manchester and Liverpool airports so I get to see the headlights quite a lot!

On Monday, though, as I waited for the plane to move closer so that I could see the lights, I realised that it wasn’t a plane at all, but a really bright light travelling through the sky.  My next thought was that it was a microlight aircraft, but I don’t think they fly after dark and there wasn’t any engine sound.  Hmm.  Very strange.

As I watched, it seemed to change shape as well and by the time it was nearly overhead, the hairs on the back of my neck were well and truly standing on end, I can tell you!  I am pretty sure that we are not the only beings in existence in our galaxy and it may well be that visitors regularly come to check out our little blue planet – but it didn’t half give me a shiver to watch whatever it was glide overhead.

As it passed, the bright light surrounding it started to form a spiral but it had gone behind some trees before I could take any more photos.  Well, as you might imagine, I was straight onto Google to see what it might be!

Space debris, apparently, from a rocket launch in the US earlier that day.  A fuel dump that was spinning its way around the earth – I have no idea what happened to it after it passed over our house, although if you take a look at this link, you’ll see that it headed over towards Manchester and you can see the spiral in the photos as well.  It was very pretty in a funny sort of way, but at the same time, I’m not sure how I feel about stuff being dumped into space.  Don’t we make enough mess down here?  Anyway, that’s what it was so if you saw it and didn’t know, you do now! 🙂

There was something else peculiar in the sky this week whilst I was out with the dog.  Can you see a giant mushroom in the clouds?  It was the strangest thing, it looked like a box of clouds!  Behind me, it was raining.  That’s also a strange thing, when you can see the rain coming towards you but it’s not quite reached you yet.  The dog was meandering along, sniffing every blade of grass as he likes to do now, and I could start to hear the raindrops landing on the crops in the field around us long before we started to get wet.  Oh yes, we did get very wet as the dog hadn’t finished his sniffing and wasn’t going home until he had!

That’s a bit of a grey and gloomy photo, but it hasn’t been like that all week.  We’ve had some glorious sunsets …

and days filled with spring sunshine with more and more flowers starting to appear in the garden.

I bought this primula plant last year and it flowered for months, and now it’s back again!  It’s so pretty, it makes me very happy every time I see it outside the front door.

Our Magnolia stellata is in full bloom now …

Those delicate pink flowers are just gorgeous; I can see them from the bedroom window and every morning there are more of them!  They don’t last long, sadly, and in a few weeks the show will be over but it’s worth waiting for every year!

There’s been a colourful theme throughout this week – honestly, there’s magic everywhere if you just stop to look at it, isn’t there?  Look at all these fabulous colours …

Not quite so fabulous, perhaps, when I tell you that this is our collection of pots of Play Doh that I found in the garage (oh my goodness, this garage clear out is never-ending!) … and I am pretty certain that it will have been at least ten years since either of the girls touched it.  Strangely enough, it did still have that particular Play Doh smell to it, although I didn’t get too close!

More colour in the dishwasher.  You can’t buy a yellow dishwasher rack like this, you know.  You have to wash your dog’s food bowls in it, but only the ones which have the turmeric tablets you’re trying to feed him for his arthritic leg stuck to the sides because he’s refused to eat them and couldn’t quite get them out of the dish to mash them into the kitchen tiles.  Big daughter is calling it the “Disco Dishwasher”.  And yes, the rack is very old and rusty because it’s been in about 3 dishwashers now because I like the way the back rack folds flat 🙂

Want to see some sock colour?  Coming right up!

Here’s my husband’s pair of red socks in progress.  The yarn is John Arbon Exmoor Sock in shade Peggles, and it’s knitting up into a lovely pair of socks.  More woolly than the West Yorkshire Spinners Signature 4ply that so many of my socks are knitted in, but it’s a different composition so you would expect it to feel different!  It’s lovely, I’m really enjoying it.  Knitting with a friend … brownie points for you if you recognise who it is from the bag 😉

A couple of weeks ago, I asked if anybody would be interested in test knitting for me and I was overwhelmed by so many kind offers!  Thank you so much to everybody who got in touch; I have enough people for now, and those who got in touch a bit later are on my future list because there will be more tests in the future – already, this process has been invaluable, and more fun than I expected it to be!  Whilst there’s a serious side (to spot all the typos that have I added into my patterns, and there have been a few!), the test is running on a platform where everybody is able to chat, ask questions and share photos, and it’s been really good for me to see what everybody is up to and also see their thought processes as they navigate the pattern!

Here is Sarah’s sock on the go, doesn’t it look lovely?  There have been some great colour combinations and I’ll show you more over the next few weeks.

The pattern is called Ryegrass and the new version is going to be available in May (it was originally published in a magazine many years ago).  May might seem to be a bit of a way off – although it’s April next week so it’s not that far away really – but I wanted to give the test knitters a decent amount of time to knit the socks and make sure they really understand what I’ve written, and there’s something else coming up that I want to focus on first.  This year is the …

Winwick Mum Sockalong 10th birthday!!

Can you believe that?!  Ten years of helping people to knit socks through the Basic 4ply Socks pattern and tutorials … part of me can’t imagine that it’s been that long because I am still only 28 years old* and there’s no way that 10 years have passed, and the other part of me is absolutely thrilled that I am still able to help new beginners knit socks after all this time.

I’ve been celebrating the Winwick Mum Sockalong birthday every year with the Annual Sock Count (we’re up to 21,336 pairs of Basic 4ply Socks now!) and a giveaway, but this year I want to make a bit more of a fuss so I have got my thinking cap on, and I’m looking forward to the party! 🙂

 

One of the other things that I am working on this Sockalong 10th year is to make some updates to the blog – I’ve already started by adding in a clearer “How to Knit Socks” page which you’ll see at the top right hand corner of the blog.  I like my blog in the format that it’s in with the sidebars and the latest blog post, but I do know that it’s not such a fashionable style these days and people like to see pages set out differently, and hopefully this will help!

Next, I’m planning to update my Patterns and Printables page which has a few patterns missing, and hasn’t really changed format for as long as I can remember – technology moves quickly and I need to make sure that my pages are easy to read on mobiles.  I look after the blog myself (rather than outsourcing to a web designer) as I like to do that – fortunately, I think I’m quite good at the tech stuff although I’ve got list of new things I need to learn!  What I’m saying here is that if you go to the Patterns and Printables page over the next few months and it doesn’t look quite the same (good or bad!), it’ll be work in progress and I’ll get there! 🙂

Right then, I think we’ve caught up with everything for now and it’s time for another brew so I will leave you to your weekend!  It’s Mother’s Day in the UK tomorrow (Sunday 30 March), so I will wish everyone who mothers a very Mother’s Day and if it’s not a happy day for you, please know that I’m sending you all my love.

 

See you next week! xx

 

 

* that’s my showbiz age and I’m sticking to it.  Haven’t you got a showbiz age? 🙂