Actual knitting content!

It's been a glorious day today, and I've been quite busy, first cleaning (B, my best friend since school and her husband C are coming from Germany tonight, so I was hoping to make the house a bit more presentable) and then enjoying myself by sitting in the sunshine in the garden.

Mike the plasterer finished with the first floor and took himself off, so I was left with a house that looked a great deal like I had been involved in some mud wrestling the day before - dried and caked plaster everywhere. To make things worse, for some reason the electricity cut out in the morning (perhaps all the water that Mike had been sloshing around the sockets?!), and the trip switch refuses to listen to reason and always flips back to 'OFF', so I wasn't able to vaccuum-clean anything. I used a broom, wearing an enormous dust mask that made me look scarily like the 'Empty Child' from Dr Who, only without the goggles.

Managed to get rid of some of the dust, but as it got increasingly difficult to see with all the really fine dust being stirred up by the broom, I finally gave up and turned my attention to our disgusting inside/outside downstairs toilet (it's in a kind of conservatory/outhouse thingy so I can't make up my mind if it is in the house or not), which right now is the only one in the house. Spent a good hour cleaning, including the removal of the most colourful selection of assorted fungie and mildew that I had ever seen in my life (I actually took pictures, it looked that grotesque - not that I would dare show them to anyone), which I discovered hiding underneath the wallpaper in an alcove with a little window. The room doesn't really look any different now (although the absence of obvious mildew IS an improvement), but at least I KNOW it's clean...

After that, I was exhausted, so I sat down in the garden with a cool drink, some water melon, and my knitting. YES, I have indeed been knitting! And I even have a picture, so this blog can return somewhat to it's original purpose:


These are the beginnings of a log-cabin blanket - for the bean, obviously. It's surprisingly fun to knit this, despite the fact that it's all in garter stitch. The constant changes in colour keep it interesting.

Also, as if to make sure that this day was going to start off in the right way, this morning two (!) packages were delivered. The first one was some beautiful Alexander Henry fabric that I ordered a while back from the US:


I love the retro look and the vibrant colours. I have several yards of each, so I see a skirt and a Nappy Bag in the future, but I may still change my mind.

The second parcel was from Hello Yarn and contained some fibre which I treated myself to for the submission of my thesis (any old excuse to buy fibre...):


It's a delicious blend of 80% Merino and 20% Tussah Silk in a mix of colours including orange, purple, brown and grey, and I can't wait to get my wheel up here to start spinning it!

So there you go - actual crafts content in this blog! Who would have thought it?! ;-) And now my poor computer batteries are almost empty (still no electricity in the house), so I'd better post this quickly and return to the garden for some more knitting and sitting in the sun...