Progress and Finishing

First, some finished items:



Alright, so you could claim "item" here but as it's a pair of socks I'm saying items! Vellamo pattern from Ravelry.

Today I sat down and got a huge chunk of Oriental Impressions done:


Doesn't look like much until.....by the magic of pins....



TA DA! Only 165 rows left (over 400 for the whole thing)

Finally, it was my Grandad's 90th birthday a couple of weekends ago so I took my Flower petal shawl to work on...



I'm resisting this as it's not due as a Christmas pressie.

Thinking of the dreaded C holiday, I have:

• Mum's socks
• Oriental Impression
• Dad's hat

All to complete by December.

Add to that the possibility that we're moving before Christmas and I'm a little stressed atm. We have had one couple come look at the house and it's getting so late that now we're looking at renting it out and ranting a place in Preston until this one sells.

Yes that means two moves but that would still be cheaper than Jo renting and travelling for months.

I also partook of some dyeing yesterday. Lidl had sock yarn last year so I bought a couple of packs with the intention of learning socks, well by the time I learnt I'd found out that the yarn felts! No good for socks! So it sat and languished in my stash, unloved, until the dye bug combined with the lace bug both bit me!

So, some blue, yellow, orange and red dye, a steamer and some fun later....



First is 4 hanks of "fire yarn" as I've called it:


Unfortunately I dyed one hank a lot more red than the others so I may give that one away and just use the the other three on some lacey project. I've seen so many fire inspired lace and never had the yarn for it.

Then, there's deep blue something...


The yarn originally was shaded from black to natural so I just over-dyed with blue and voila!

That's about it really. Life is progressing, avian 'flu is making its way around Calderdale and I have an ear infection on top of it but, I have anti-biotics and it's clearing slowly.

The doglet is doing well, still really hates the rain! This morning I got up at 4:30am and she was whining to go toilet, I opened the back door and she ran from the living room, across the kitchen and then made a sliding halt when she saw the rain! Dogs+tiled floors = amazing stops! 2 hours later I said "walkies" to her and got her coat on, leash on, opened the door and nudged her out, mean mum that I am, still, she emptied her bladder and has spent the rest of the morning snoozing blissfully at my feet.

The ferrets are also doing well, the noisy duo (Nushu and Rumble) have grown super-long, super thick fur coats and look like bouncing balls of fluff, Nushu has now lost sight in one eye, luckily they're not super dependant on their sight and as she has Rumble she's coping just fine, all I need to do is make sure she sees me before I pick her up.

The gang of boys are a bit slower on the uptake, Barry floofed first, Fred is almost done, Smithy is about half way and David is only just catching on, he's always the last to floof or de-floof. They still refuse to have anything to do with the noisy duo but atleast tolerate their existence.

The fish have had an interesting couple of months. The babies are now bigger, almost big enough to not be edible by the adults, the adult males are proving to be very randy little boys who have a very strict heirarchy, the females are little harlots and will up-end themselves for any male. Unfortunately I lost my clown loaches at the end of October, I thought they had white spot so I removed the carbon from my filter and got treating, turns out loaches can look to have white spot when the water quality drops, they get lots of little white sugar granules on their skin and rub on things, the only way to tell is to do a big change and see if it improves, if not then treat for white spot! Why not the other way? Because white spot treatment needs atleast 3 days to work and during that time your filter isn't as effective and the water cannot be changed. So, lesson learnt the hard way there. George the huge pleco is alright though and I've had a good chat with a guy who knows his stuff and now run my tank at 27'C which seriously lowers the chance of white spot ever happening.

I'm hoping when we move I might be able to get a bigger tank on Freecycle, when I got George I was told that 1foot was the maximum they reached, but now I've personally done more research and found they can grow to 3 foot! George isn't even sexually mature and he's just shy of 1 foot so I need a longer tank! Moving is going to be fun(!), I did have considerations of moving them all in the smaller tank but I'm not sure the seals will cope, so I'm on the lookout for a big lidded bucket. The babies will easily go in the lidded bucket I already have but after moving George in that once before I know he can't settle and would go crazy over the 1.5hour drive. I'm actually considering a loc-loc tupperware just for him.

Anyway, that's about it really, now I'm going to check a possible leak on the big tank and then knit some more.

Oh, I have a Kindle! So, any cheap/free book titles most appreciated!