Hubby and I trotted over to Warwickshire College yesterday evening for our beginners lesson on making stained glass windows. After registration, the usual safety, fire drills and signing your life away to say you have read the safety procedure booklet and the part where you introduce yourself.. (I’m Mandy and I knit socks) There are some seriously arty people in this group, from registered silver smiths, people with art degrees, and others working in several mediums, oil painting/wood/ceramics/jewellery. Eeek! Then there were others much like ourselves who wanted to explore the world of stained glass.

We were introduced to the equipment and shown how to cut glass, how to snap glass along where you had scored with tools and for small pieces with our thumbs and were then sent away for a little practice session.

Curvy Glass, Impressed eh??!!

Then there was more information about where to buy and who was the best supplier of glass for stained glass windows. Who Knew… that there are outfits selling just pretty, pretty glass, simple kits etc, one chap turned to me and said.. and at this my heart sang.. “Its much like a wool shop, but with glass” and then when I must have grinned like a cheshire cat, he said, “You’ll soon find your stash getting bigger” I giggled. Am I that transparent? Can others see that I am already on the dark side?

Such a glamorous girl!

This is stage 1, which is a fitting for the base. This is the only base that the NHS will pay for, there are others, much nicer others, which would be softer on my head so therefore more comfortable, but they don’t last as long. This will hopefully last two to three years.

As you can see the base needs more work, but this is the starting point before the girls that sew the bases get to work with my measurements.

I have to ring the appliance department at my hospital to see whether they will allow me to have a longer length of hair, even though I will pay for the extra length which will amount to £250.00 plus VAT (times this by two as I’m ordering two wigs) they may still say No.. and then I will only be allowed 13 inches, which you have to allow 1.5 inches for turnover at the wig, which will then mean the hair is only 11.5 inches long, which compared to how I used to wear my hair is very short.

So, as I have to pay £250.00 for each wig on a NHS prescription, my total bill will be £1087.50 (if my maths is correct) Which to be honest, we could have a good holiday with. You’d think there would be a way of claiming back the tax on your hard earned pennies, wouldn’t you.

I find it all very tedious. It really wasn’t what I wished to be doing with my lovely hubby on a dry day in September.

Back to the knitting for a little zen like, deep breathing moment.

Seven to go… (for xmas presents)

Hubby’s pair, the smallest of the bigfoots.

Scachenmayr nomotta Regia Design Line Kaffe Fassett 4257

Son no.2’s pair, the largest of the bigfoots.

Schachenmayr nomotta Regia Canadian Color 4747 Kilt.

An amusing contrast of the big foots, although as a concerned mother I have added just a little length to son no.2 socks, Just in Case… he keeps growing!!

A worrying moment this afternoon, will there or won’t there be enough yarn left…

A close up of what was left. I find it amusing how, when, there is very little yarn left and my tension in both my mind and knitting increases I knit so much faster.. That and I didn’t move from my perch and was thankfully supplied with tea by hubby, which I was very grateful for.

A quick count up reveals that I have three pairs for bigfoots left to knit, all of which are wide and long and four pairs of littlefoots only one of which is small in conventional female terms. I’m aiming for a minimum of a pair a week. Which for me is a fair amount of knitting.

I had a lovely day yesterday at the Knitting and Stitching Show (NEC), spent with Lucy who is son no.1’s lovely girlfriend. It was a real pleasure to spend the day in such delightful company, one I am desperately trying to convince her to repeat for Ally Pally, sadly she will be back at Uni and will be entrenched in her studies.

We arrived rather early and sat and drank coffee whilst waiting.

and just to add a sense of proportion as I was the one behind the camera, here is a (slightly gruesome!) picture of me.

The first item that greets you is the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef an exhibition designed to bring your attention to the plight of coral reefs. Its quite stunning and my photography really does not do this justice. If I could crochet I would be very tempted to contribute. It always astounds me just how knitters when united (and it doesn’t take much to unite knitters) can highlight issues in such a way that it is not easy to ignore.

Lucy was highly amused by Has anyone seen my knitting? I wondered how heavy the needles were and how many people it had taken to lift them and be able to knit. I wasn’t quite brave enough to try and lift one.

Web of Wool were enjoying the show, Lucy found some black and silver/white scholler & stahl La Ola Stripes which went beyond fulfilling her expectations. Her mission was to find a black and white sock wool and when we spied this, for a pattern called Crazy Fur that she had greatly admired in Anna’s book Fab Feet & Cosy Toes, Lucy was Giddy with excitement and I knew the mysterious yet potent yarn fumes had worked their magic and she had wandered over to the dark side. Welcome Lucy, you’ll never be the same again!

Later Lucy found some polka dot black and white yarn, (Lucy is the polka dot queen!) and she Had to have it, (I know this feeling well) and needed 20mm needles to knit up a lovely scarf with it. We headed back to Web of Wool, even though she is a newbie she exhibits the intense shopping stance of seasoned knitter.

During the afternoon we attended a workshop on how to make a couture fascinator by Janie Lashford. To Lucy’s great pleasure Janie Lashford was working on a fascinator with polka dots! A picture taken with permission.

There were many art exhibitions, too many to photograph, a tree.

A very interesting marine creature.

A bag that was gorgeous.

And then there were bras and basques..

A mirrored bra.

More tea Vicar?

There was shopping… some exquisite sock yarn from fybrespates and some roving/top generously given to me by them, as I was chatting to them about my wish to start spinning.

And a new project, its been many years since I’ve sewn for pleasure, this looked so beautiful and relatively simple, I had to have it.

Then homeward bound, happy and contented although I have to say ever so slightly knackered!

The last couple of weeks have been interesting, my cyst is Very much smaller and I can see the packets of antibiotics have nearly emptied, so the queasy tummy syndrome will let up soon. I’m feeling much better, so yesterday I took son no.2 to Coventry to kit him out for the start of his A levels. Did I say the start, well Friday to be precise, do you hear a huge sigh of relief from Mandycharlie that she didn’t actually commit infanticide during the last 3 months, you do. Although I have no idea how one would actually succeed in that act against an extremely sturdy, well over 6ft (I must measure that boy) who is so sturdy that his feet are now UK size 11 and are very, very wide. (where am I going to shop for shoes if he keeps growing!) I was thinking aloud (which is not unusual) at Tuesday night knitters and wondered whether adolescence was like child birth, you forget, Anna said she’d ask her mum 🙂 I must apologise to my younger without teenage children in the household readers, for the last few lines, but its been tough.

So, back to yesterday, son no.2 and I headed off to Coventry, we had a lovely time, he didn’t growl at me once, which is, a remarkable improvement. We had noodles at the noodle bar, emptied WH Smiths of writing paper, graph paper, squared paper, files, pens, pencils, a maths equipment set, etc etc. Then we trundled towards Waterstones, son no.2 found three books he wished to read and I found a new cook book. I also happened to wander (rather quickly should son no.2 realise where we were heading) into Debenhams and splurged on a proper grown up handbag, eeek! In my defence M’lud, I was not drawn in by the rather attractive Scotty dog attached to it, the truth, as I see it anyway, it was brown and it was long and I could loop it over me And, I’d been looking for a brown leather shoulder bag for the last 6 months since my last bag of a similar description had died on me.

We headed home, content.

Then and this really is the best bit… son no.1 took son no.2 to the flicks to see The Dark Knight, hubby was working late and I had Two Whole Hours in the Evening of just me, the dogs and the cat. It was Bliss. It was rather like at the end of a gym class and the instructor says… “and just Relax”

I knit and I flicked channels and I read my new cook book, What to Eat Now by Valentine Warner which is about Autumn/Winter dishes and inspired by this new cookbook I made a fish soup/stew with my own home grown potatoes, onions and tomatoes and some cod that was going to be pan fried and served with mash, hubby came home and was greatly pleased by this new dish presented before him and we ate, gently, in peace.

Many moons ago, my knitting friend Carie who is a knitting genius and most recently a medal winner of the Ravelympic event organised by Ravelry made a beautiful, beautiful scarf from an original pattern, called Tartan Scarf, designed by my friend Anna who owns Web of Wool. and published by Rowan. (book 42 if you would like the pattern) I longed for such a beautiful scarf, but at that time, I knew it was beyond my newly established knitting skills. The memory of that beautiful, beautiful scarf never left me though and I knew I would try and knit it as soon as I felt competent enough.

At Tuesday night knitters, Rachel (who is a guru on colour) and I went on a colour party, it was great fun. My original thought was to stick to my colour palate of reds, browns and greens, but although we had every ball of the correct wool for the scarf scattered around in Anna’s window display, we could not (to our satisfaction) make the colours work. When, Rachel spied a certain colour combination that made her squeal (quite literally!) with delight. The colour combination is truly beautiful and one that will make an excellent and very fine alternative to the stable of red, brown and pink scarfs I have already knitted. The delicate background is Rowan Kidsilk Haze in Trance 582, with two stripes of Rowan Tapestry in Moorland 175 and the horizontal lines are in Tapestry Lakeland 180.

I seem to get myself tangled up on nearly every row and I’m not sure If I’m meant to be tracking back (in some way) the wool that makes the horizontal lines or if you do in fact cut them and have to darn them in, but as you can see I am making good progress on it.

Thank you all so much for your lovely messages, they made me smile. No improvement as yet, but its early days.

Son no.2’s GCSE results today, as the financial incentive I had put forward was heavily weighted towards achieving A’s, I’m not actually bankrupt. We are still waiting for one result and are not sure why it was not included. So far, he has 2 A’s, 4 B’s, 3 C’s and an E (in a subject he detested) We are all very happy with that, its a nice result for a boy that is bright enough that he feels he doesn’t Have to work. Oh, how his teachers and I disagree..

I wandered up the plot earlier today to water the tomatoes, to find disaster had struck. The tomatoes well and truly had blight. Which doesn’t surprise me as we seem to have been in a Smith Period for most of the summer. As much as I hate to spray there is no choice, its either that or lose a years work, hubby has sprayed them for me this evening.

In so many ways,

Remember me, the girl without hair, … Well.. she has a rather large cyst, in a rather delicate region… which apparently… is caused by hair growth.. how me and my doctor did laugh when I whipped off my wig. (my doctor who was lovely, had not noticed).

Which is why, I delicately perched and ooh and arrahed and said it was my back on Tuesday night knitters..

There is a certain irony that I have not a hair on my body, yet one of the little upstarts causes this much grief.

A weeks worth of antibiotic’s have been prescribed.

My fingers, toes and knitting are crossed.

Yesterday whilst hand weeding the leeks, back breaking work at the best of times without the added pleasure of a damp and rather cold August breeze. Grumble, grumble, moan, moan. I stood back just for a moment to admire our tomatoes….

We need some sunshine before Autumn is here. Otherwise there will be an awful lot of green tomato dishes and chutneys..

I am so tired of this weather. Giddy with a new plan that came to me in the middle of the night for winter carrots.. (watch this space) I’m up, Okay, not dressed but up and… Its raining… again!

I remember the summers as a child and my most abiding memory is that summers were Bright and that they were Blue. Not the dark, damp, Grey days we seem to currently have. Mind you, we did have some excellent winters then too.

Personally, I’m praying for a good, harsh winter (for at least a few days) this year for many reasons. Firstly it would do the plot good as the cold is a good cleanser against molds, bugs etc and secondly it will give me the opportunity to wear my beautiful, hand knitted by me, exceedingly warm cardigan that I have just started the arms to. Photo’s will follow.