fucknits

… in this post, but I just need to write about how AWESOME my job is.  I get to handle snakes, snails (big ones), a Cuban cockroach, a South African millipede, a bird-eating spider and a stick insect.  The kids I meet are awesome too and all on their best behaviour and really enthusiastic.  John, my boss, is really interesting and really good at his job - what he doesn’t know about animals isn’t worth knowing and he knows how to keep the kids interested without getting them hysterical when the animals appear.

Here’s me looking awful with Pudding the Python.  Suggestions for a new hairstyle welcome.

Sorry it’s been so long since I posted.  My phone completely died on me for a couple of weeks, meaning I couldn’t get any photos from it and it also left me completely incapable of functioning as a human being.  That phone is my camera, alarm clock, diary, news service, sat nav, games console and email checker.  No one ever calls me on it, though.

Lots to write about.  Where to begin?  Been knitting Calorimetries like they’re going out of fashion (where they ever in fashion?  In my opinion they’re above fashion). There’s two of them here but I’ve made three. All different sizes, I took the Goldilocks approach to making them.

The annoying thing is, they won’t stay on. I think I need bigger buttons. It’s a damn shame because I wear my hear tied up in a ponytail so I need something to keep my ears warm. I’ve looked everywhere for earmuffs, but nowhere seems to have them, except a couple of shops that have ridiculously large, fluffy ones. Earmuffs are intrinsically daft anyway, I don’t want ones with extra added daft.

Still going to the knitting group. Last week Alison from p2tog was there and not only brought some amazing yarn to lust after (need some of that Lang sock yarn) she gave me a Ravelry badge! Check it out!

Currently on the needles is Woolly Wormhead’s Mystery Hat KAL. My first mystery KAL. S’good. I had a really hard time finding any aran yarn anywhere, so I’m doing it in some cheap 30% wool stuff. Still enjoying it though. I think I’ll spare you the photo right now, seeing as it’s just a band of 1×1 rib at the moment.

Last night I went to Sainsbury’s, and saw these:

Innocent Smoothie Help the Aged hats. Two years ago I made about 25. Last couple of years I’ve completely failed (there’s 1 and a half floating around in my knitting bag somewhere). But seeing them on the shelf for the first time was really awesome. Need to get my Save the Children hats sent off. I’m a bad charity knitter

Life on the boat and at uni is all going well. Going to have to reassess some stuff though. I’ll admit one of the reasons I bought that boat was as a man-magnet, and sure enough at the beginning of term I met a guy who thought it was awesome so I let him come back. Unfortunately, I or the boat obviously impressed him too much as the next night I was woken up by him jumping on the stern and knocking on the windows. And again the next night.

I know I can hide by moving the boat but I was in a pretty awesome location next to a pub and the bus stop so I was too lazy. But from now on, I’m not telling anyone where I live until I’m sure they’re not a crank, or they’re the kind of person I wouldn’t mind being scared out my wits for at 3am. I need to meet guys who live on campus, and have a tv and some sort of X-box or preferably a Wii. Cynical, moi?

Oh yeah, YEY FOR OBAMA!

I got the yarn back the next morning. I’d left it in the shop like an idiot. As you can see, I’m not letting go of it again. It’s a Brigantia Luxury Yarn in double knit, not aran and it’s lovely.

So I’m settling into my new life in Lancaster pretty well. I have my course, which I love, a job (which I’ll come back to in a minute) and a knitting group. Yes, I lost my knitting group virginity (well, you can’t really count that beautiful but fleeting one-day-stand in Paris on WWKIP day). I found the group on Ravelry, and they meet here…

… an indian restaurant, which has a gorgeous cafe in the cellar (or should that be crypt?) that serves tasty pots of tea and ridiculously indulgent hot chocolates. There were a couple of members of University staff there - one visiting from Spain - and a woman from Hawaii. I’m so relieved I’m meeting people other than Freshers. Not that I haven’t been meeting some awesome students but I’m used to having friends who have a wide range of ages.

So - to the job. I’d just arrived in the Lancaster area and I was filling up my water tank at the marina. A guy stopped to chat to me for five minutes. Told me he was an animal behaviourist and had lectured at another university and stuff. A couple of days later I bumped into him on the towpath.

“I was just coming to look for you,” he said. “You said you were a student - I’ve got some work for you if you’re interested.”

“Go on…”

“I go around schools with something called the Creepy Crawly Roadshow…”

“Wait, I have a terrible phobia of butterflies and moths.”

“That’s ok. I just need a snake handler.”

“I’m your girl.”

And so, I shall be topping up my student grant by being a snake handler. I am going to be a snake handler. My job is snake handling. No, it never gets boring saying that.

It did make me briefly question the point of going to university for four years when someone can just walk up to you and offer you an interesting job just after a five minute conversation. But I love my lectures. It’s like live, interactive documentaries on your favourite subjects, and I only have 9 hours of ‘contact time’ a week. And I’ve signed up to the Labour Party Club and the Snowboard Society now to keep me out of trouble. Tout va bien.

x

Gah.  I was having an excellent day today. I managed to pick the only dry and sunny hour all week to cruise up the canal and found a new mooring place in the city centre, then I met a couple who live on a boat who, wait for this, ARE UNDER THE AGE OF 65! They live aboard too and they haven’t got a permanent mooring either. They were really friendly.

Then I found the craft shop in Lancaster that has a wool section upstairs - not too shoddy at all, Noro Silk Thaw which I’ve not seen before, Debbie Bliss… and this gorgeous, variegated 100% wool aran yarn. And everything was 20% off. So I grabbed a squishy skein of this mystical yarn and paid £4.79 for it instead of £5.99 (100g). I also went to the yarn shop in the market and bought a pair of needles, and the girl was nice and chatty. Then I went and had cheesy chips in the pub.

All sounds good?

(This is where it gets upsetting - sensitive readers may want to look away). I just got into the library and thought I’d have a little fondle of my new yarn… and it’s not there. I’m guessing I left it in the shop. I feel like I’m grieving for it. So stupid. But I can’t even remember the brand name so I could look it up on Ravelry and at least drool at the pictures. Fingers crossed I’ll be reunited with it tomorrow if the woman in the shop is more on the ball than me. My good mood is shattered though. Gah. IT’S ONLY YARN.

Anyway, I’m getting along great with my Nine to Five socks. I’m doing them top down and with the heel flap, just like in the pattern. I was even going to use dpns instead of magic loop just to test my nerve but I only had a set of 4 not 5, so magic loop it is. I thought I’d left the heel flap behind, I usually think it’s ugly compared to the short row heel, but this with this one the pattern carries on down the heel so there’s actually some point to it.

Yes, hot pink. Rawr.

I’m going to try and cheer myself up now by posting a pic of my ukulele, which I drunkenly customised the other night. I’m going home know to learn how to play ‘Instant Pleasure’ by Rufus Wainwright on it. I can already rock out ‘Someday You Will Be Loved’ by Deathcab for Cutie on it. If I ever do an open mic with that set list people will know I’m an emotionless whore.

My dad has a great saying.  “Worry about it when it happens.”  I’d been stressing pretty badly about crossing the Ribble Link, I thought that not only would I be the only boat that day venturing out into huge open waters, I’d be sailing single handedly.  Then my dad bought two life jackets, one for me and one for him.  This only stressed me more.  My dad isn’t as sprightly as he used to be - he has bad hips - and I didn’t want him going to any trouble.

In the end, after the cowboy motherfuckers had pronounced a premature death on my engine, I arranged to get towed across by a local boater.  This guy boosted my confidence a lot - he was an older, grey haired sailor type in a navy woolly hat.  The hat made me trust him implicitly.  He looked like he was at home out at sea.

Another turn up for the books was that after weeks of rain, the sun came out on the day we were crossing.  But it had been a cold night.  When my dad arrived I made sure he had a waterproof and a fleece.  He humoured me by bringing them along, but this is Scotsman we’re talking about here, and immediately stripped down to his shirtsleeves.  Me, I had my mittens at the ready.

So I was really worried that he’d be bored or tired or seasick. Pah. He loved it. At lunchtime I told him there was stuff for sandwiches in the kitchen and he looked at me incredulously and said, “I’m not going inside! I might miss something.” He’s always liked boats - apparently when he was younger his dad dragged him out of the queue for signing up to go to sea. And I think the story of the adventure will go down well with his pub and dogwalking buddies.

The tugboat dropped us off at the entrance to Savick Brook and there was a James Bond moment when I had to walk along the side of the boat to the bow and unhook the tow rope. We then had to go up 9 locks to reach the Lancaster Canal, and because we were the only boat that day, two lockkeepers from British Waterways did all the work for us. We moored in a really nice, safe speck in Preston and got the bus back to our cars in Tarleton. Then we had a well earned and very delicious pub dinner.

The next day when I woke up in Preston, everything seemed to be falling into place. I was moored a short walk away from not only a Booths Supermarket (best selection on real ale, delicatessen and tea cakes in the country!) but smack bang opposite was also a yarn shop! I was able to get a third ball of Sublime Cashmere/Silk/Merino to finish my dad’s scarf. I spent the day cruising up to a place called Bilsborrow, where there’s this crazy ‘thatched hamlet’ which has a pub and gift shops and hotel in all these olde worlde thatched buildings and I watched Everton’s thrilling 2-2 draw with Standard Liege.

Next day I cruised to Garstang. Ok, good bits first. YARN SHOP! With Noro Kureyon! So I bought a ball in colourway 220 for my Lizard Ridge, even though I have more than enough on the needles at the moment. I really need to start thinking like a student with no income. This yarn shop (Stitches) was super-friendly, and when I explained to the lady what Ravelry was, she seemed really enthusiastic and wrote down the URL. Most people I speak to sound interested but immediately say they can just about send an email.

Ok, the bad bits. I knew there was something up with my water pump (no, not the one I’d just paid £180 to have replaced, the one that pumps fresh water to my taps and shower) because it was running constantly. Then as I was about to go to the pub, I picked up my bag from the floor and realised it was wet. The carpet was wet. So I opened the hatch in the floor and saw exactly what you don’t want to see in your living room on a boat - water. Full to the brim.

So I spent over an hour on Saturday night bailing out. Bucket after bucket after bucket. Then I went to the pub anyway and treated myself to a steak sandwich. You can see I’m in some sort of economic denial here. I’m optimistic that this problem won’t need a costly repair, I may well be able to do it myself when I locate the leak. But I’m pretty sure locating this leak will involve dismantling a big part of the interior of my boat. Ah well.

So here’s my water feature in my living room. I was pissed off when I took this picture because it was keeping me from the pub, but I’ve grown quite attached to it. It’s equal parts feng shui/booby trap/foot bath.

Gah. The last 24 hours have been sucky. I need to sail along a tidal river to get to Lancaster Canal, where I’m going to uni. I’ve had my passage booked for months, for tomorrow, Wednesday. Last Wednesday, I realised there was something up with my engine. Called out the engineer who came on Thursday and said I need a new water pump. In the meantime, the lock keeper rings me and tells me I can sail the river Tuesday (today) and have other boats with me, or Wednesday and do it ALL ON MY OWN, which by all accounts is fucking scary. Engineer motherfucker doesn’t come til last thing on Monday (yesterday), takes off my water pump and declares he hasn’t got the right bolts and he’ll be back. When? Tomorrow morning. I was like, ‘Motherfucker, I have to be at Tarleton Lock, an hour away, by 11am tomorrow morning. I was going to sail there tonight until you dismantled my engine’. He was like ‘I’ll be here tomorrow morning at 8am’. At this point there was a ripple of laughter from the audience, other boaters who knew what was in store.

Motherfucker shows up at 9am this morning (by which time my dad had shown up so my plan to reproach him with a blowtorch and hot tar were cast aside), spends two hours bodging in a new water pump so I miss high tide, then declares he can hear a clatter which means OMGFZ MY ENGINE COULD DIE AT ANY MINUTE AND IT WON’T GET ME ACROSS THE RIVER UNLESS I GIVE HIM HUNDREDS OF POUNDS. Charges me £182.50 (paid by cheque, which I may well cancel). Luckily the other boaters (who’ve been my neighbours the past few weeks but I only got to meet yesterday) told me he was probably full of shit, and sorted me out with an escort to tow me across the river to be on the safe side.

I’m fucking bummed. I’d been really nervous about sailing this river, and at the same time really eager to do it, because I love doing things I’m scared of (which is why I let some slimy millionaire take me horseriding last week… don’t ask). Now I won’t be doing it under my own steam.

But anyway… you got to accent-u-ate the positive as some old smoothy sang. I had my buddy Mike visit me yesterday, so when all this shit with the engine wasn’t happening we were gorging on cake and curry, re-enacting the Like a Virgin video and getting incredibly stoned. If it wasn’t for him, I’d have committed murder by now. A friend with weed is a friend indeed.

Also, on Saturday I visited Chorley because I’d heard about a yarn stall in the market. At first I was really disappointed because I found one that just had a few bags of acrylic, and thought the owner must have been working at a show that day. But no! There are two yarn stalls in the market and the other one, DKY, is *awesome*. She has Colinette Jitterbug and Noro Sock Yarn (Noro Sock Yarn! In England! In the North West! In real life!) for £9… she happily told me it should be £9.95 but she knocks the 95p off. I was tormented because I’d just spent £8 on some Sublime Cashmere/Merino/Silk to make my dad a scarf for his birthday, and didn’t want to spend too much, so I put the sock yarns down but couldn’t resist some Colinette Giotto - a sexy ribbon yarn for £5, and some Patons 4 ply cotton in hot pink for only a pound - I made my super shiny spiral socks out of the same stuff, can’t wait to have shiny hot pink socks. The lovely store owner even threw in a couple of free leaflets on how to knit and crochet in the bag. Motherfucker engineer is from Chorley too, so she’s gone a long way to restoring my opinion of Chorleyites.

I’m on dial up internet at the moment and laptop battery, so instead of spending forever trying to get a nice layout, I’m just going to spew some yarny pics here. I’ll try and add one of Mike being Kate Winslet in the Titanic soon too.

Chorley Market: Jitterbug and Noro Sock

Big fat unspun wool in fit colours

Sexy drool-icious Giotta. When it’s all got to much for me lately, I cuddle this.

Hot pink sock yarn and free leaflets!

xxx

… but first, I want to point out that some people make me sick.

Nothing to see here. Either they realised how fucking offensive putting Hitler in an avatar is, or they got their arse kicked. But worth remembering who thought it was a good idea.

This is me right now:

So far I’ve queued Camden, cos it’s so darn sexy… but I think that might have something to do with the waspy waist of the model, and Kinetic, a Norah Gaughan shawl that I want to make as a scarf for my dad. As I was saying to the owner of a yarn shop recently, I want to make him a cashmere scarf because it will look like a mega-generous gift, but also I get to play with cashmere. And I just realised his birthday is only 2 weeks away. Looks like I need to buy some yarn… mmmm….

Still haven’t posted pics of my super sexy tank top yet, have I? That’s because I was waiting for a sunny day to take photos and it’s rained pretty much non-stop since I finished it. The sound of the rain on the roof of the boat keeps me awake at night sometimes, so I got earplugs. Now I’m kept awake by the sound of me breathing

Gawd I’ve had knitting diarrhoea lately, what with unemployment and the rain and stuff. Unfortunately the weather hasn’t been good enough to take pictures of my ULTIMATE project, which I will show off in all it’s glory soon. In the meantime, that thing up there is what I call my Tiller Condom. I just put it up on Rav and within seconds got two comments, which must be some sort of record. I made it out of the Kureyon Sock I had left over from the credibilty-killing socks. There was almost enough left for a whole third sock, if it hadn’t been for the inevitable colour-leaping knot.

OK, how awesome is this hat? I found some Sirdar Click Aran (previously only ever seen it in DK and chunky) from a new yarn shop I found in Ormskirk, when I was supposed to be looking for a job agency. Ah well.

I told someone I was going to wear this hat to chase hot 18 year old boys when I go to university. They asked if I was really going to do that. I said, “well, they aren’t going to chase me“. I fancy myself as an alluring, mysterious Mrs Robinson type… but in reality I’m going to be some terrible gender-reversal of Benny Hill.

The pattern is Ziggy by the stupendously awesome Woolly Wormhead. I discovered her when I was looking for a pattern for a simple hat with earflaps, and instantly fell in love with her crazy hats and her beautiful hats which are crazily constructed. A lot, like Ziggy, are knit sideways with lots of short rows and then you kitchener-stitch up the edges. This makes for a great, challenging knit with awesome results. Have I said awesome enough yet?

I discovered yet another little yarn shop in a town called Longton. I find it odd that to me, the resurgence in the popularity of knitting is being led by the Yarn Harlot and Ravelry and Knitty and Twist Collective (if you haven’t seen that last site yet - google it. Then wipe the drool from your keyboard), yet most of the proprietors of the yarn shops I visit confess to being technically illiterate when I ask them/start eulogising about Ravelry. Anyway, it’s not stopping them finding good yarns. The one in Ormskirk stocks Mirasol Hacho and in Longton I picked up some Kaffe Wassisname Regia Sock Yarn. I started making Bellatrix in the Regia but I found the colourway and the pattern didn’t like each other much. I may make Charade instead.

Phew, I’m all blogged out now. I shall leave you with this picture of Sirdar Click Aran I took on a hazy evening, just cos I think it’s lovely.

Well, my epic journey is nearly over. Approximately 150 miles and over 100 locks all navigated single handedly - and a large proportion single-footedly because I sprained my foot somewhere south of Stoke-on-Trent and had to hop through a lot of locks.

So I treated myself to some Ravelry swag, and it came in a mere 6 days. The disagree(1) t-shirt couldn’t have come at a better time, I’ve been mashing that button furiously lately due to a grievance with a self-appointed authority figure… but meh. Who gives a shit. I also got a Bob sticker for my laptop (and there was a sheep sticker stuck on the parcel which I peeled off and stuck on there too) and a little logo badge.

I may very well wear the t-shirt for my first day at university. Oh didn’t I mention? I got a place at Lancaster University, a four year degree in European Studies with French and I’ll be spending the third year abroad (in Montpellier most likely, my favourite place on the planet). I can’t fucking wait. Four years spent working for me, all for meeeeee, not for THE MAN.

So things are kinda awesome at the moment. For every inconvenience, like breaking down in the middle of nowhere with a full toilet, there’s something awesome, like a visit from a dude I’d not seen in years, an owl flying past, a mouse sitting on a lily pad, saving a hedgehog from drowning, kick-ass sunsets and misty mornings.

And I’ve been knitting like a maniac.

I have two Lizard Ridge squares done (there’s a horrendous shortage of Kureyon stockists on the canal network), a made a pair of Jaywalkers out of 6-ply Regia in about 4 days, and I’ve started a vest out of some gorgeous Super Doux that I bought a while back in not-gorgeous Toulouse, but I’m making that up as I go along so I haven’t added it to Ravelry yet as I may rip it out and start again. Hope not though, it’s looking promising.

On my cruise I visited Lichfield, which is fricking AWESOME. It’s steeped in history and I visited the cathedral, Dr Johnson’s birthplace and Erasmus Darwin’s old home. Er, then I went and snorted some cocaine and had a threesome*. I also found a yarn shop, and bought two balls of this yarn called Mary, which were the last two balls in the sale bucket and I thought they’d be perfect to make the fantastic Ziggy, which has been in my queue since the moment I laid eyes on it.

Ziggy is knit sideways, you repeat the pattern to make around 11 panels. Unfortunately, 1 ball was only enough to make 4. GUTTED. So I tried googling the yarn, but it’s not for sale anywhere. I should have known something was up when I had to enter it on Ravelry because no one has added it to the database yet. Pain in the arse because it’s a beautiful, squishy yarn and I love the colourway. Fucknuts.

* May not be factual and only added to enhance credibility.