Honey Monster

After four weeks of searching newspapers, notice boards and online, we found a littly kitty and brought her home. She is a tortoiseshell and we called her Honey just because it looks like she broke into a honey jar and has is it smudged all over her little face. We are all in love with her - even Paddy and Jock, the old gentlemen cats of the house, are fascinated watching her and have been unusually tolerant!Kittens and yarn? Well, she's been tempted but sits in my lap while I reskein just watching. What a good cat she is. Guess I'd better put a note on my etsy site about presence of cats for those of us with allergies. God, I used to be terrible - my eyes would be streaming if there was a single cat hair in the room - until about 15 years ago, a doctor friend of mine who was studying homeopathy gave me some of her pills and I was as good as cured. Occasionally, I'll come across a cat that sets me off again, but basically cured.

As for knitting, I cast on my first pair of Monkeys with the Field of Flowers yarn from Sunshine Yarns (check out Dani's new website - a certain knithappens features heavily in the gallery with all her gorgeous mitts). I love everything about this pattern and the yarn is gorgeous to work with:
I brought them along to the Knit Happens in Newbury meeting in Borders last Wednesday, along with the Skein Prince and Princess who did a bit of finger knitting, and had to laugh when the lovely, and very amusing, Sue described me as knitting with four kebab sticks! Why they were my bargain bamboo DPNs from ebay, I'll have you know! We could only stay for an hour but we met some very lovely people and took over an entire section of Starbucks with about 20 knitters. There was also talk of a trip to the Knitting and Stitching Show at the Ally Pally later in the year which sounded good to me.

And a bit more knitting - I'm in the process of knitting a Skull Hat for my nephew Jack in Belfast whose favourite colour is orange. It was for his birthday, but that happened to be last Friday - oops, so better get a move on and finish it before the end of winter.
It doesn't look like much so far, but it's a clever pattern whereby you do a provisional cast-on, knit the inner lining, then fold it up and knit it in when you get so far up the patterning, so you get a nice warm, lined, professional looking hat.

For posterity, a couple of custom orders I've been working on this week:

6 skeins of Opulent cashmere in Lalique colourway

3 skeins of Opulent cashmere in Purple Turtle

2 skeins of Purple Turtle in large Blush cashmerino

2 skeins of Turtle Dove in Opulent cashmere

1 skein of Patriot in Plushness

And a little preview of the shop update this evening includes 100% supersoft merino (Divine):

Had a lovely cinema night out with the girlies on Friday - we went to see PS I Love You which I thought may have been too soppy for my taste, but actually really enjoyed it, and went from welling up with tears to laughing to crying to laughing - bit of an emotional rollercoaster. From a knitting and crochet point of view, couldn't help but notice the lovely scarves and hats sported by the main character, Holly. My mates were noticing her lovely bags, shoes and boots!

And finally, for a bit of fun, I got indirectly tagged by justclaire with this 4 Things meme, so why not:

4 Jobs I've Held:
Editor
Trainee accountant (hee hee! Me!)
Reservationist for the co. that runs boats to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket
Bakery assistant

4 Movies I've Watched Over and Over Again:
Poseidon Adventure
The Great Escape
Jaws
Loads of kiddie movies (not by own choice!)

4 Places I've Been
USA
Israel
Andorra
Monaco

4 Places I've Lived
Edinburgh
Dundee
Hyannisport, MA
Bristol

4 TV Show I Watch
The Apprentice USA
Shameless
Location, Location
IT Crowd

4 Things I Look Forward To
Spending time with my children and holidays
Knitting time
Parties
The day I'm a size 10 (or would settle for 12!)

4 Favourite Foods (I like this one)
Potato scones
Baked potato with cheese
Mince, tatties and peas all mixed up with salad cream
Munchy seed mix (chilli flavour) - or more realistically, Lindt chocolate in any form
(Never gonna make that size 10!)

4 People I Email Regularly
Skein King
Rose
Sonia
Sarah

4 People To Tag
If you're reading this, consider yourself tagged.