Knitting from stash...

... means that before you can knit you need to wind. Yarn into yarn cakes, that is.

I've been going a bit crazy on the winding of yarn into balls. In one frantic evening that had me bent over my swift and yarn winder for a couple of hours while my bemused husband was watching proceedings from his rather more comfy place on the sofa, I turned skein after skein into yummy cakes.


From Back left to front left, clockwise: three balls of Rowan Tweed in grey, left over from another project, two balls of Knit Picks Memories Sock Yarn in Redwood Forest, three balls of dark blue Rowan DK Tweed, five balls of orange/yellow handspun, one massive ball of laceweight handpainted 100% cashmere from Hipknits, one ball of grey handpainted and handspun merino sockyarn from Hipknits, one ball of 100% cashmere sock yarn from Hipknits, and finally one ball of handpainted wool that I got via a swap from Australia.

Phew, that was a lot of winding! I've been knitting and crocheting too, though. Mainly granny squares, but then the urge to knit something larger and I grabbed two balls of lovely soft Misson Falls 1824 wool (merino superwash) that I had lying around, and cast on for Zoe Mellor's Dinosaur toy. I didn't bother to do a tension swatch because really, what does it matter if a toy comes out a bit larger or smaller than the pattern states? Yeah, right. This is one MASSIVE dinosaur - more like a pillow, really - and I also ran out of yarn so had to do the legs and belly in a different yarn. That'll teach me... Anyway, she's called Gerti. :-)


I've now cast on for another project - Tang from Custom Knits. I love that book - how often do you get a pattern book and want to do every single project in there? I'm using a GGH yarn, also from stash (it's kind of addictive, this knitting from stash... and I have enough to keep me going for quite a while!).


More knitting from stash to come soon. Watch this space... ;-)

Well...

... what an odd sort of day yesterday was!

Because after writing that post about my thwarted Flylady attempts I decided to tidy. Yes, I was so tired that I could have dropped on the spot, but I had no kids at home today and really, if you have a day at home with your children in daycare you have to do something that uses this precious time in a valuable way. While it is arguable that a dose of uninterrupted sleep (haven't had that for about 9 months now) might have been exactly that, I instead decided to get the house ORGANISED.

Well, not quite that, but I made a start anyway. Laundry was done. Nearly all of it, including the bits of fabric that have been lying next to the washing machine for months now, waiting to be washed. Laundry was hung outside on the line.


I'm not sure what it is, but I love the sight of laundry on the line. It looks all crisp and clean and summery, swaying slightly in the breeze...

Then laundry was taken off the line and folded. Yes, it was hot enough yesterday to get several batches of laundry dry, despite a short shower around mid-day which threatened to put an end to my laundry ambitions.


Then I tackled the kitchen. I made dinner - some chicken casserole - and I tidied the kitchen table. We have a new acquisition there. BIL gave us his old aquarium and after languishing in the shed for months and months we finally decided a couple of weeks ago to get it all cleaned up and get some fish. We debated for a long time where to put it (no space in the lounge, no good in the office, no suitable piece of furniture anywhere) before we realised that we had the perfect place right there - the kitchen table. It's sturdy, it's the right hight, and we can always see the fish when we eat. It may even pursuade the Bean to stay at the table long enough to actually eat something.


Right now we don't have fish yet because the guy in the shop told us that he'd wait for at least 2 weeks with that. Instead we have a snail called Speedy, who feels very much at home and has already started to diminish the vegetation in the aquarium. He does so in a rather alarmingly efficient way, scooting over to the base of a plant and biting through the stem until it floats up to the surface. He seems to have a particular liking for a pretty light green feathery kind of plant, which is now nearly gone. Hopefully this is not a sign of things to come or Speedy and I will have to have words...

Anyway, I got sidetracked - I tidied the kitchen and made dinner. I switched on the dishwasher. Then I moved back into the laundry room and tidied and swept the floor there. Then I packed up a bunch of ebay parcels (we've been trying to declutter a bit, recently) and took them to the post office.

Then I sat down and had a well-earned cup of tea and a chocolate bar (kindly purchased and donated by D on his way back from work). After all that I felt very, very tired, but oh it feels good to have achieved something.