fucknits

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