A brain the size of a planet....

How cute are these dolls?!!
I first saw the new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie quite awhile back, but it was when they showed it on the bus to Glasgow (they showed to help increase the international students' knowledge of all things 'British') that I remembered the fabulous scene where the improbability drive changes the Heart of Gold ship into a ball of yarn, and all the people inside into little knitted dolls... these ones, right here, to be exact...

Click here to see some screen shots showing the knitted ship...

I just rented the original tv series of Hitchhiker's guide, and there really is no comparison between that one and this new movie... but I still recommend renting it, if only for these few minutes of total knittedness! :)

Oh, and while the pre-made dolls are available at the bargain price of ₤8.95 each, some ingenious person has already made up a Marvin pattern so that you can knit your own! :)

Panpan

Easter is just around the corner. I think its time I made a Panpan jumper...

(okay, so its not as funny as Mr. Darcy's reindeer jumper in Bridget Jones... but its the wrong time of year for reindeers!) Oh no! I forgot to give him his right arm back!

Blah, blah, and more blah...

Which is the month that's supposed to come in like a lamb and go out like a lion? Cause at this point, I'm almost thinking its February... not 2 weeks ago it was positively mild outside, and now there's this crazy cold weather that's coming down from Iceland and freezing us to death. If it gets any colder, I might as well be back in Ottawa!

But I'm sure there must be something good I can talk about instead, so I don't have to restrict my comments to the weather....

My knitting this week has been photographed, but it can't be posted until the gift items reach their recipients... im running low on projects though, so I think I'm going to have to start something new in the next week or so. Or maybe I'll just reknit something that was frogged for being too small - most of my stash is back in Canada, so new projects would require new wool, and my yarn money is a little limited these days...

Glasgow

its been a busy week (and its only wednesday!), so I've been particularly disinclined to post anything... so instead you just get photos from my trip to glasgow this past weekend...

this is some random monument we passed as we were walking from our hostel into the downtown core

this is the front of GoMA - the Glasgow museum of modern art]

another view of GoMA - and no, Michael, I can't take normally-angled photos

Elizabeth and Stephanie at the Willow Tearoom - the interior is a replica of the original tearoom that was decorated by Charles Rennie Mackintosh - I knew him for his art nouveau stained glass, but apparently he's pretty famous for his chairs too... these ones are actually really comfortable, despite their uprightness

one of the arches leading into Merchant City

this is a really cool, just renovated condo complex - the flats are on sale now! this shot is taken sans ground floor, because that was all surrounded with wooden construction walls. but over the front door, there's a sign indicating that this was once a dorm for the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.... how typical that the students get it while its a dive, and it only gets renovated after the students get thrown out!

this used to be an indoor fruit market, but now its full of bars and restaurants (its in Merchant City, but I forget what the building is called)

forgive my canadian naivete, but i had to get a photo of this police box, à la the new series of Dr. Who (sorry, I'm too young and too Canadian to have seen the first series). Is it just me, or does the Cathedral in the background have an almost "photoshoped-in afterwards" look to it?

Here's a better view of the cathedral - the crowd in front was a wedding party - they'd just had the service inside, and were taking photos by the front door. How very Scottish that all the groomsmen were wearing kilts!

This is the altar and tomb of St. Mungo, patron saint of Glasgow

The next 5 photos are all of the necropolis, which is on a hill right behind the cathedral. This place really is a city of the dead - just check out these gravestones!

(Frobisher really liked the necropolis... yeah, he's a bit morbid that way)

And finally, a glimpse at the aptly named Glasgow nightlife (but then who am I to talk, Newcastle's really isn't all that much better):

Newcastle on Google Maps

Click here and see my flat most inaccurately located in the Crow's Nest Pub!

A few months ago I tried to find Newcastle on Google Maps, but the resolution was still too poor to actually pick out specific buildings. So imagine my surprise when I looked at it the other day, and could actually make out people around the Monument! Yay!

But now that I've shown this to you, I hereby absolve myself of all responsibility for the amount of time you will now spend looking at the pyramids, the Forbidden City, and even Legoland, Denmark.

Gives new meaning to the phrase "Where will you go today?", doesn't it? :)

ps: the images of Newcastle are several years old - take a look on the Quayside, and you'll see that the Sage (a theatre/performance hall complex) is nothing more than a dirt pile in these photos.

Yay! new yarn!

I finally found the perfect yarn for the baby blanket that I want to make! Just look at how fun it is!
It's perfect - fully washable, and a bright, non-gender specific colour sheme. 512 yards in one skein too! Yay Hello Yarn! I ordered the yarn last week, and it arrived safely yesterday, fully wound into a very big centre-pull ball. I opened it in the evening, and couldn't resist knitting it up right away - this is what I have so far (okay, so it was kind of a busy night!):

the yarn-over spaces have yet to appear fully (as in this photo), but I'm thinking (hoping!) that they will be more obvious once the fabric is blocked... the yarn is supposed to be knit on 3.5mm to 3.75mm needles, but since its really a sock yarn, I'm using 4mms in hopes that the resulting fabric will be just that little bit more drapey (and because i haven't any 4.5mm dpns!).

Keep your fingers crossed! :)

You take the high road, and I'll take the low road...

In keeping with my new term's resolution to drink more pints and travel more, I spent this past weekend in Scotland, on a coach tour of the Scottish Highlands. We went up to Edinburgh on Friday afternoon, spent the night in a hostel, and then climbed on the coach bright and early on Saturday morning. The tour took us up through Stirling to Glencoe, then to Fort William for lunch, and Urquhart castle and Inverness in the afternoon. By 4:30 we were heading south again, with a stop in Pitlochry for tea, and then home again just after 8pm. The guide said we covered about 400 miles altogether, which is pretty impressive for a day trip!

On friday night, we went out for dinner in the Grassmarket area of Edinburgh, in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle (figuratively speaking, that is - the street is south of the castle, so no shadows there!). We then moved a few doors down to the Last Drop (the logo of which is a hangman's noose) where we met a group of Welsh boys who were in town to see the rugby match. Now call me crazy, but I was pretty sure that a), the match was being held in Cardiff, not Edinburgh, and b), it would probably be more fun to watch your team from your own country, so that when your team won (which they did, 28 to 18!), you could celebrate in style, and not have to worry about annoying rival fans by cheering for the wrong team. But apparently i forgot to take into account both the fact that rugby fans aren't as um... riotous? as football fans, and that little thing called easyjet, which has really changed the face of british travel.

See, the story goes like this... these boys live in a town that is just north of Cardiff. To buy tickets to the match was about 30 or so pounds (by their reckoning, anyway), plus the 100-odd quid they would have to pay for the taxi ride from their town to Cardiff and back again (yeah, that seems a bit long for a taxi ride - hotel room in Cardiff anyone?!! - but at least they weren't stupid enough to try and drive there and back!). Anyway, it turned out that it was cheaper for these 4 guys to drive to Bristol, fly to Edinburgh, and stay there for the weekend, watching the game on Sunday from a pub, and then flying home the next day. Bizzare, eh? Anyway, the four guys (Christian, Craig, James, and his brother "the apprentice") turned out to be Connect 4 champions... who'd a thunk it was as popular over here as it is at home! :) This was our one group photo, before the connect 4-induced craziness took over!

Christian, James, Lauren, me, Craig, "the apprentice", Ellen, and Elizabeth

Here are some other photos from the trip, roughly in order of the stops we made:

the Sir Walter Scott Monument on Friday evening

Glencoe - we stopped to see the mountains, but they were pretty well hidden by the clouds!

Ellen, myself, Elizabeth and Lauren at a stop just outside of Fort William

Urquhart Castle, on the banks of Loch Ness
(no sightings of the monster, I think she was off visiting the Ogopogo in Kelowna!)

Hamish the highland cow (pronounced "coo")
He wanted to come home with me and meet Frobisher, who had forgotten to come on this trip!

This weekend was fun, and I'm glad I made the trip, but I don't think I'll take another coach tour for a while. The early morning (6am to get there on time without skipping breakfast!), combined with the rocking motion and the heat of the coach, all but induces you to sleep through considerable portions of the trip (even my knitting couldn't keep me awake!). So even though there's only about an hour and a half or so between each stop, you can't help but feel groggy and tired everytime you get off the bus... but at the same time, how else could you see that much of Scotland in a single day when you don't have access to a car (or the desire to attempt driving on the wrong side of the road in a totally unknown area?!).

Anyway, on friday before I left, I got this fun item in the mail:

It's a sample card for Coldharbour mill's yarns, which come in aran, double knit, and 4-ply weights - all 100% real wool! Jess, my secret pal 6, sent me a skein of their aran weight yarn in plum, which is how I found out about this place. I'd love to go visit, but a trip to Devon doesn't seem likely any time soon... thank goodness for websites! I'm loving the bluebell and honey shades... but what to use it for...

Oh, one more quick thing... I have added links to Lauren's and Elizabeth's blogs, in case you want to check them out. Elizabeth is the new recruit to knitting whom I mentioned the other day. And my guess was right about her too - she is already planning to try making socks when she finishes her scarf!

knitting frustrations

Wow, I have been a rather truant blogger as of late...

this week i finally made it back to the tuesday night knitting at the forth pub, and this time i took along a new recriut. my friend elizabeth, from tenessee, learned to knit over the holidays, and is well on her way to becoming as big a yarn addict as the rest of us - just wait till she makes that jump from scarves to socks! she'll be hooked in no time! (although I may just recommend knitty's fuzzy feet pattern to her - felting is a great way to hide beginners' mistakes).

My knitting, on the other hand, has been a little disastrous of late... Im trying to take a few hours each evening to sit and listen to the radio or an audiobook while i knit, as a way to relax at the end of the day... but apparently, my hands aren't getting the message, cause everything I've knit recently has come out way too small! my gauge swatches seem okay when I make them, but by the time im into the knitting of the project, my tension seems to go way off cause my projects end up too small. but then again, maybe i just have to relearn what 14 inches looks like when stretched out across someone's back! So this week i have finished and ripped yet another project. And although I am now a few inches into a larger size (adjustments made by me, not the pattern-maker, so i hereby absolve her of any of my forthcoming stupid mistakes... more details when i finish a wearable size!)

But at least this weekend i will have lots of time to knit - I am going on a coach tour of the scottish highlands, from 8am to 8:30pm on Saturday. we are leaving for Edinburgh this afternoon, will spend 2 nights there, and then return on Sunday after (hopefully) a yummy scottish brunch... do they do brunch in scotland?

i promise to take lots of photos and to post them next week! Mike is also (hint, hint) going to try and set up a server of some sort so that I can post ALL my photos, instead of just a select few. But we'll see if that works out (im guessing the olympics might be distracting some of his attention for the next 2 weeks! alas, if only i had a tv, i could've participated in the knitting olympics too... but then again, I woulda been torn about which team to join - Canada, or England? knowing me, i probably would've blabbed some team secrets, and then been thrown out for cheating... so maybe its better I just cheer from the sidelines!)

Lazy Sunday

I am trying very hard to be productive and do my homework today, but there just seems to be so many things that I could be doing instead... good thing its just a little bit of Greek translation that I'm working on, so I can easily pick it up and put it down again without totally losing my train of thought.

Lots of knitting happened this week, but you don't get to see any pics of it cause I've already finished and frogged it! The item in question was my one skein wonder, which was very quick and relatively easy to knit. I never did find the 3.5mm needle, and I'm now wondering if such a thing exists - the only time I've heard mention of it is in american patterns, which list it as an equivalent to the US5 needle... well according to my little (Canadian) needle sizer (that thing with the holes in, and whatever hole fits the needle gives you its size), a US5 is equivalent to a 3.75mm. So that's what i used, cause that's what i have several of. Besides, I figured, its only for the edgings and it won't hurt to have those just a little too big anyway... So, after measuring my back, I knit merrily away on the 14-inch back size (2nd smallest)... I finished the main part quickly, and then did the sleeves. and then had to tink my cast off and try it on a bigger needle, cause the sleeve was way too tight... and then i had to do it again... I think i cast off too tightly in general, but this was ridiculous - i was knitting with a 3.75mm but had to cast off with a 6mm!

but it eventually turned out okay, and I moved on to the ribbed edging... again with a 3.75mm, and again cast off with a 6mm. Then ta da, it was done and I tried it on... ummm... yeah.... the back was fine, not too snug and not too stretched looking. but the sleeves? no way - i could barely get the darn thing off, and when I finally did, by stretching in all kinds of crazy directions, the sleeves cut into my arms so badly that they left red marks! So that's why i immediately vented my frustrations by ripping the whole thing out. I did like it though, so I think I'll just remeasure my back and cast on 1 or maybe even 2 sizes bigger. keep your fingers crossed!

Thanks to purlpower and Impressionist for the tips on where to find little-person friendly yarns here in Newcastle... although I think I still might just get something sent over from Canada... I like using cottons for kid stuff, casuse its so easy to clean, but most of what's available here is just too thin to use in a blanket. I need to be able to finish this project a month or two after I start it, or it will just end up as another UFO hidden in my yarn stash.