The Yarn Fairy came for a visit

This week has been a bit low for me, for various reasons, the dark evenings is one.  Yesterday I was even lower with a cold trying to kill me. Lucky me the Yarn Fairy came for a visit and left some yarn for me. Cascade 220 fingering for a shawl and lots of Drops Fabel for socks. I am going to have warm feet this winter!

I also got a Knitpro Thames bag, to keep needles, cables and other notions in. Even a small project would fit in it. It feels a little like an old fashioned doctors' bag, but with all the tools you need for knitting! I can't wait for an excuse to use it! And all the yarn certainly made my day a little better and the cold seems to be going away!

Knitpro bag model Thames

Space for needles, cables, measure tape, stitch markers and more

Cascade 220 fingering and Drops Fabel

Grey Monday

Mondays always seem to be a bit greyer than all the other days, today is not an exception, grey skies and rain. I'm waiting for replies to job applications and my head hurts. At least I have hand knit zebra socks and a couple of knitting podcasts to cheer me up and of course 2 skeins of Wollmeise twin that just made it to my door!

Pimlico - my first pattern published

Yesterday I published my first pattern Pimlico on Ravelry! I'm so excited and have to sneak a peak every now and then to see how many people have faved the pattern and how many downloads. This morning I woke up to see the first project had been started! I am so happy to see such lovely response to my first pattern!

The pattern is a fairly easy hat with contrasting stitches creating stripes which and the decreases create a twirl in the stripes. It may not look like it, but there's not much purling in knitting this.
Check out my free pattern here! 

Restart

I have really been a bad blogger and I'm intending to make up for that. It's easy to make promises to be better at posting more photos, or more knitting, or less private posts or to actually post more regularly. I am promising no such thing, my only promise is to try and take myself and life less seriously. I am going to post when I feel like it and I'm going to write about whatever I want and I'm going to do it because I feel like it.

Meanwhile, here's a couple of my knits since May

Big Apple

In the middle of May we packed our bags and took a big jump over the pond to New York. When we got to the apartment where we were going to stay we discovered that the whole street was closed off for an international food market over the weekend, win! The atmosphere was through the roof.

We enjoyed 10 days of walking around Manhattan, seeing most touristy places, enjoyed the view from Rockefeller centre, walked over Brooklyn bridge in dusk and watching the skyscrapers come to life in the night sky, cycling in Central Park, enjoying the vibrant city.

We went to McSorley's Old Ale House, a proper spit and sawdust pub, where we could choose between dark or light ale. At the table next to us sat uniformed US marines enjoying Fleet week.

One of my favourites was walking on the High line. The high line was a raised railroad track for freight trains used between 1930's and 1980 and now transformed into a park. The high line park opened the first part to the public in 2009 and now about a mile of the old tracks are open.

The last 4 days we also went to a swing dance event, Frankie100, to celebrate one of the pioneers of lindyhop. Some of the remaining golden oldies from the era joined the younger stars and put on an amazing show at the Apollo theatre in Harlem and we got to dance at the Alhambra ballroom. It was a weekend of dance and joy and we were part of something really amazing and special. 2500 dancers can't be wrong, lindyhop is amazing!

Busy bee

The last couple of weeks has been busy in a number of ways. I still have a lot of time on my hands since I'm mostly at home during the day, but we've been visiting friends and family and done a lot of stuff at home.

I've started to run around the park with a podcast called 5K101 which will get me to run for 30 mins without the need to stop for rest. I'm on week 4 of 8 now and so far so good, it's starting to be tough to keep up but I'm determined (plus I bribe myself with yarn after each completed level). I hate running and think it's so boring, but the podcast is coaching me and I have improved and my body has started to respond to the workouts. After the runs I also add some arms and abs exercise, just for good measure. I'm impressed with myself, I never ever thought I'd be able to drag myself out in the park 3 times a week, several weeks in a row!

April knitting has been on the socks and shawls theme. I've finished my Zoe - 'if it moves, shoot it' shawl, it's huge, cosy and gorgeous! I'm still working on Pop Spots, the rows are so looooong now, almost neverending.

I've knit 1.5 pairs of socks, just started on the 4th sock. I'm participating in 2 KAL's to knit socks this year. It's surprisingly satisfying and fairly quick to knit. I squeezed in a small hat in the midst, an easy lace slouchy hat, a new favourite!

 

 

Language - so much more than words

Speaking a language is not just knowing the words and what order to put them in to make other people understand what you want. Language is cultural and historical. A lot of expressions that makes sense to all the natives could be gibberish for a newcomer, even though the newcomer know the words.

I've come to accept that I won't get all the cultural or historical references in English. If someone tells a joke and everyone around me laughs, I'll smile politely and try to remember it so I can ask someone later. I won't ask in a group, that will give me too much of the spotlight and make me too self-conscious. But I'm not embarrassed to ask a friend what something means when we're alone. Friends help each other and I sometimes need help with this foreign language they speak in my new country.

Last Friday we went to see Spamalot. Even though I know the story and am fluent in English I knew that some jokes would be lost on me through language barriers, both cultural and in pronunciation. I was right, I got 95% of what was happening on stage, but every now and then a word or a reference would fly past me without me realising what it meant.

The show was still highly amusing and I don't feel like I missed out on the lost jokes. The same goes for the stand up comedy show we went to a couple of weeks ago, I had to ask A on a couple of cultural references, but I didn't feel like I missed much. The part I understood was hilarious!