Lou-quacious

My granddad would’ve been 100 years old today.  Happy Birthday Poppa!

That’s the two of us together when I was small.  He died a few years ago now, and for another few years before that wasn’t really ‘himself’ due to Alzheimer’s, but other than that he was busy and active his whole life.  He was a fireman in London during the Blitz.

He then stayed on in the fire service for the rest of his working life.  He’s on the far right in the above cartoon – I think the date on it is 1949, but it could be ’48 or even ’40.  I won’t go into some of the stories he had to tell now, but there were some dramatic ones!  He travelled a lot, too, I think mostly after he’d retired.

So that’s it, really – happy birthday to you, Poppa, and Happy Centenary!

Mirrored from Enchilada Sunrise.

I never did talk about how Christmas was in the end, did I?  So I shall inflict in upon the world now.  I actually did get everything finished and ready that I needed to.  All my online shopping arrived (whew!) even though the post was all over the place, I finished the present I was making for Mum, and I even made chocolate chip cookies with moderate success!

The scarf for Mum was the Branching Out pattern [Ravlink], and I knitted it in a lovely Merino / Tencel blend that I spun on the wheel – the first time I’ve knit with my own handspun.  I just left it as a single, and it worked really well (imo, anyway!) and I like the way the colour repeats came out.  Mum says she really likes it too, which is the main thing!

I also joined two Christmas swaps, one through the Limegreenjelly group, and one through Plurk.  The post was / is still being less kind where those are concerned.  It seems to have eaten the parcel from the latter altogether, but I have now had my LGJ parcel from Cal, and a fabulous one it is too:

Two braids of LGJ fibre (one Merino/Silk, one Merino, yum!), a beautiful skein of Posh Yarn Elinor, an Orange Blossom perfume stick which I think is from Lush, mini Green & Black’s choccy bars (om nom nom!), a set of Knit Pro interchangeable needle tips and a cable for them (which spookily I’ve been wanting for ages), and an adorable Lego keyring. :-D  I just hope she likes her gifts from me as much as I do mine.

Mirrored from Enchilada Sunrise.

I’m in the middle of getting everything ready for Christmas.  Actually, I feel that I’m doing quite well.  I’ve done all my shopping except for a couple of small things (and I know what those are and where I’ll get them).  Now I’m just waiting on a couple of deliveries, and of course finishing the things that I’m making myself.  I think I’m doing alright on those too, luckily, so there shouldn’t be any last minute panics.  Hooray!

Because all I’ve been working on recently are the Christmas things, I don’t have any pictures to post in case someone comes across this.  Well, maybe this one:

And now I’m going back to the Christmas crafting.  TTFN!

Mirrored from Enchilada Sunrise.

I don’t normally do this, since it isn’t Thanksgiving in the UK, but I think I will this year.  So here goes: Reasons to be Cheerful, 1, 2, 3….

1. My family and friends.  I’m lucky that I have people I’m close to, can have so much fun with, and can rely on.
2. The Xandermog.  The biggest, daftest, and best moggy in the world.
3. Technology.  Without it, I wouldn’t be able to keep in touch with many people so easily – wouldn’t have met many of them in the first place, in fact – and my world would be a very different place.

There are many more things I could list (music! yarn! spinning! knitting!), of course, but those are three just off the top of my head.  Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Mirrored from Enchilada Sunrise.

I have no time to make a the post I’d planned tonight (knitting & spinning related)… although it serves me right for leaving it so late.  I’d planned to have a nice bath, then post and be off to bed.  But no, fate intervened.  Or my Downstairs Neighbour did, by hitting the fire alarm for the second night in a row and setting it off (then hiding in his flat until the rest of us banged repeatedly on his door).  Luckily I was just out of the bath and decent again!  However, now I’ve had to get out of my PJs and dressed again because in all the drama, our neighbour from the garden flat is locked out – he was asleep when the alarm went off, and left his keys in the inside of his front door.  Downstairs Neighbour didn’t hit the alarm on purpose, btw – he’d probably had a few and made a mistake.  But there’s a £40 call out charge to get the thing fixed.  Luckily we had a glass panel so could do it ourselves this time, but… argh!  I really hope he doesn’t do it again.  But now I must get back downstairs and see what progress has been made Garden Flat Neighbour getting back into his place…

[Half an hour passes]

… Yay, go us!  Thanks to a group effort, Garden Flat Neighbour is now back indoors.  As are we all, warm and dry out of the pouring rain.  It took my ladder, Upstairs Neighbour’s Son#1 (to wriggle through GFNs bathroom window), and GFNs torchlight and assistance in getting Son#1 over the garden wall.  And now I’m going to dry my hair, and get myself to bed.

Mirrored from Enchilada Sunrise.