socherryknits

So it didn't turn out exactly how I planned, but I think this yarn was fated to have another colourway name; Glasgow City Nights. It reminds me of autumn, fireworks, dark evenings and orange city lights against red sandstone tenements. Speaking of fireworks; thank you to the 3 moronic twats who felt it would be just hilarious to light a rocket directly outside our house at 3.30 am. I was unable to get asleep again for quite some time, so busy was my brain furiously penning letters to MSPs. We found the rocket this morning next to the car - I was all for submitting it to Toryglen polis for fingerprinting ... With thanks to the boy for putting up with me and driving me around Glasgow during the 20 minutes of perfect 'evening sky' for some good blog pics.

I've been away from blogging land for abit - partially because the Ravelry forums are sucking away my life [in particular the pinny thread] and partially because I'm not having an awful lot of success on the fibre front of late. Finally Pinwheel has been allowed off the naughty step and is currently blocking [looking to be about 5cm to small in the diameter which I think is totally fixable]. I have taken something good out of this debacle however; I have learned that once I have swatched I should go up 0.5mm needle size to get correct gauge for the 'real' knitting. Clearly I tense up a bit on the waste of time that gauge squares always feel like. [Even though I'm planning on making a big project memory style blanket out of all the squares.] A Christmas knitting gift [photographed in extreme close-up so as not to give the game away - the intended recipient is a reader] went a bit awry when I realised at the final hurdle that I had cast on the wrong number of stitches...

Thought I'd get into the spirit of autumn and walk around Kelvingrove park taking pretty tree shots ... I was trying to re-find the things I love about Glasgow as it all seems a bit 'meh' after Japan. Various shots were ruined by the rubbish lying everywhere *sigh* so I went off to find the resident Heron at the pond ... instead I found a family of rats. ... and a fibre-stealing squirrel. I was on way to Knit n Stitch as well, so I was stacked with yarn. In the spirit of the changing season I decided to sort out my craft room. Above is the clean bit. Then I ran out of shelf space and a trip to IKEA was needed ... and so below is what remains to be sorted. Despite appearances there is an order to the chaos. And I got to the sleeve section of the Pinwheel Sweater - yay! Until ... It's too [expletive] small!! I could cry. I really could. I mean I gauged the arse of this I swear! I bought 3 sets of sodding Addi circular needles ... IN THREE LENGTHS. I washed every single sw...

Well we're back in rainy Glasgow, and I think I'm sufficiently recovered from jetlag enough to be able to operate a PC, string a sentence together and complete my Japan blogging. Just in case you thought we'd spent our entire time playing in yarn shops, arcades and eating - a bit of culture was also had. These pics are from the Meiji shrine and surrounding Yoyogi Park. The top pic is a big pond full of koi karp, terrapins and massive dragonflies. We had our lunch there - it was very peaceful and relaxing. The above picture was the dwarfing entrance to the shrine. We walked around the gardens and had lunch but we never visited the shrine itself. [It was a Saturday so fairly busy and really humid hot, so we were looking for a bit of peace from the crowds.] This was me walking in the park - I used my umbrella to shade myself from the sun, but on this occasion it was up despite being in the shade ... due to the massive spiders that lurked. This was just at the entrance to the ...

I made it to Yuzawaya in Kichijoji - wow! I mean wow! It was AMAZING! Unfortunately I had to be fairly restrained as I've reached my suitcase limits and am probably going to have to pay excess... There was a group of women knitting too. The yarn went on for about 15 aisles -loads of different brands and types. I bought some love variegated 'Scottish Heather' all purples and greens, and some variegated autumn colours from the same brand. I also got some organic cotton in quiet subtle shades. A few sets of needles in Japanese sizes so I have in-betweenies for those gauge crisis', and also some cherry ribbon and handle parts. I could have stayed in there all day, and spent millions... The boy didn't seem to realise just how big it was - even though we left at breakfast and I had planned dinner in Kichijoji. We also made it to the infamous Kiddyland in Harajuku - another wow! Probably 6 floors I think. I think I'm all Kawaii'd out now :) ... and I finally manage...

Just back from a few days in Osaka. We went by bullet train [Shinkansen] and it only took 3 hours from Tokyo to Osaka. [About 300 miles I think - it slows down for station but otherwise I think we were going about 130 miles an hour]. It was a great experience. The staff leave carriages backwards, bowing to the carriage before the doors close - how nice is that? The only issue was that sometimes it's going so fast that when it passes through bridges, the passing bars can create a strobe-like effect which is a bit uncomfortable. I saw cranes and Mount Fuji, and there was never more than 5 fields between more houses. Never-ending people the whole way. I did chicken out when I realised that we had to be at Tokyo station [7-8 stops away from Shibuya] during Tokyo rush hour. We went down to the desk to ask for advice - who agreed that it would be an utter-cram fest on the train. Tokyo taxis are notoriously expensive but I didn't care. The trains are so busy at rush hour that if you h...