emily at beSottied.com

In Mr Boyfriend’s village, there is a local pub that is revered by many for its food. Despite it being just a few minutes away from his house we’ve never managed to be organised enough to reserve a table; it’s small and tables get booked up fast. Last Friday we threw caution to the icy wind and trotted along on the off-chance of squeezing in for a hearty pub meal.

(I feel I should probably point out, for Neil’s sake, that I trot and skitter, but he does not. He strides sure-footedly in a manly sort of way.)

However, due to the popularity of said pub it was a good couple of hours before we were seated. By the time we had sat down I had imbibed a fair bit of wine and had also considered destroying the banana which resides in my handbag. I ordered scampi (pub classic) and there was a lot of it. There was a separate dish chock-full of lovely looking chips. I think the food was good. Sadly, mostly on account of the wine, I can’t quite recall. We ate and paid and went out to brave the cold again.

When I woke up the next day I was greeted by more snow. More snow! It’s only just melted! Obviously that’s what the icy wind was all about: it was ushering in its chilly friend, to ice up ponds and pavements and Muriel’s windscreen washers! I was meeting Laura for an early afternoon hot chocolate but only had inappropriate footwear: slippery of sole and wobbly of heel. As a girl who is fond of her wellies my feet felt woefully naked as I tottered out into the bleak midwinter.

The snow quickly melted away and had turned to rain when I returned to university in York on Tuesday. Unfortunately I’m back to 9 am lectures, which means a 6.20 am start to catch the half past 7 train. It’s not too bad, though: I don’t have much time lounging around in between lectures this semester and I’m home for 5 pm, unlike the 10 pm hometime of the first half of the year. Of course, university usually means…. train knitting! Recently I’ve been eyeing up two of Connie Chang Chinchio’s patterns, Peyton and the Apres Surf Hoodie. However I had the beginnings of a migraine on the way home yesterday, so didn’t knit. I actually fell asleep on the train, which is something I’ve never done before. Luckily I didn’t miss my stop! I got home and went to bed, fell asleep again and was late for horse riding with a bouncy, bouncy head.

When I got home from the stables I ate some mashed potato (I couldn’t bear chewing any solids) and went back to bed again, sleeping through until this morning. This migraine thing is quite new to me, and I’m a bit worried I’m going to become one of those women you read about in post-wartime novels. You know the kind: lives in a grand old house, vanishes up to bed for days at a time, shutters drawn, appearing all dolled up in a fine silk blouse as soon as there’s a sniff of a gin cocktail.

Actually, that doesn’t sound too bad! I might just go and get myself a Tom Collins.

Well, I didn’t quite hit my 24-hour hat deadline - not quite, but almost. I cast on shortly after my post on Saturday:

And this was about an hour later, when I finished the ribbed brim. Mary Mac is making a debut appearance, poking out of the background. She is lovely.

(I went without tubular cast-on, as it takes me forever to do it in the round and it makes me stroppy.)

On Saturday night, I went out to eat and then to the cinema with Helen. We saw Up In The Air with George Clooney. It was good! However, it impacted greatly on my knitting time. Still, I got two full pattern repeats done when we got home.

On Sunday morning, Laura and I went for a stroll at a country park near my house. There were lots of swans, swanning about and generally looking a bit threatening. We had a nice energetic walk and a bargainous cup of tea.

I headed home back to my knitting and finished the third (and final) pattern repeat before nipping to Boyes (weird department store type place. I had a ribbon emergency (if such a thing exists) and Boyes sells ribbon) and having to get ready to go out for Neil’s sister’s - also, slightly confusingly, called Helen - birthday dinner. So, at three o’ clock yesterday, my deadline, my hat looked liked this:

The brim is split open like that because I knit it flat and sewed it up later. Time was money! I suppose I could’ve just left it like that and always worn a ponytail poking jauntily through the top.

After our meal, I got clacking on the last 6 rounds before the crown decreases, and finished them last night. I had to stop there because I was at Neil’s and didn’t have my double-pointed needles, tapestry needle, or (crucially) the pattern. Not to be beaten, I got home after work tonight and finished those last few rounds. The hat is complete! Over deadline, yes, but I think my excuses are valid: I was barely home this weekend.

I liked my little deadline idea. It made me focus on one thing instead of flitting about procrastinating. I think I’m going to go and steam block Mr Hat. I wet-blocked my red one over a plastic picnic plate, but my brim stretched out pretty badly. Without blocking, however, the hat has little points poking out all over. A bit like a pine cone. Snazzy!

I’ll be trotting off to work tomorrow in my pine cone hat. I hope you all have a merry Tuesday at your various places of education and business. Powerdown!

I am being silly. I want to do so many things that I’m managing so achieve absolutely nothing.

Switching on the computer to give beSottied a bit of a spruce up results in ten minutes of drooling over gorgeous websites made by professionals whose skills far exceed my own, before going onto Neopets to play 40 consecutive games of Hasee Bounce.

Thinking about knitting anything of my own design ends with me faffing about with numerous tension squares and accomplishing little else.

Checking my email reveals many fantastic discounts on Viagra pills, which I am (foolishly, I’m sure) not taking advantage of.

The type of mood I’m in, I daren’t get started on the Amy Butler bag I mentioned in my last post: the cut pieces of fabric will just end up languishing, lonely and unloved, in a creased John Lewis carrier bag for weeks.

But, as is often said, I want solutions, not problems! In order to get myself out of this funny mood, I’m setting myself a challenge.

A 24-hour challenge, no less.

I am going to see if I can knit another Grace Lace beret by this time (3 pm) tomorrow.

I’m using white RYC Extra Fine Merino DK from my stash and I’m not going to mess about checking my tension. Oh no. I’m just going to go for it, all guns blazing.

Will I do it? Only time will tell. Hold on to your hat, and await news of smug success/pathetic failure!

(PS, I got my hair cut yesterday and I now have a full-on fringe (bangs). I would take a photo but I’m not very good at styling it yet. It’s quite angular. Maybe in the next week or so!)

Lady beSottied (that’s me, I’ve decided) has had a hard time settling down to do anything of late. Very little progress made knitting-wise, blog-wise, haircut-wise et cetera. I’ve clicketty-clacked my way through a few rows of spare stash yarn on fat needles - because sometimes I just feel like knitting a little square - but nothing fantastic has found its way onto (or off) my needles this week.

I did have a little jaunt to Newcastle on Sunday though, with Mr Neil. And I bought very little, frugal as I’m being. Just three metres of fabric: one metre each of three different Amy Butler fabrics, to be precise. A few years ago, I made myself an Amy Butler Swing Bag. I made one for a friend’s birthday, too. Though I find sewing much harder than knitting (plus all that getting up and down to and from the sewing machine, ironing board, table (for cutting)) I quite had the urge to get the good ol’ sewing machine out and whizz something up. The Swing Bag uses three fabrics - one for the outside, one for the inside (it’s reversible) and one for a nice big flouncy bow on the side. And since John Lewis recently started to stock Amy Butler patterns and fabrics, I thought it would be rude to go past and not pick something up.

Unfortunately, I’ve just had a rummage for said pattern and, though I can find the paper pattern pieces, the pattern instructions aren’t with them. Hmm. I’m sure I won’t have thrown them away. Not 100% sure, but quite sure. Well, not sure at all really, I hope I haven’t thrown them away, anyway. I’ll have to go and have another rummage once I’ve eaten something.

I have been exercising a fair bit, now that I think about it. I’ve even broken out the hoola hoop, and managed to get out on my bike now that the snow has finally almost completely melted. I just went for a quick pedal, to make sure that I’d put my rear wheel back on properly after fixing my latest puncture. I must’ve done, because I didn’t fall off and knock out all my teeth on the tarmac. Job well done on the bike maintenance front!

And now I’ll have to excuse myself. Laura is popping round in a while and I’ll have to cook myself up a treat before she arrives. We’re going to be super active and walk from my house to the pub for a drink and back. The only downside to that is when it’s cold and dark and horrible outside, an icy cold Diet Coke doesn’t quite hit the spot when you’ve walked three miles. Is it too late to get the mulled wine out??

Happy Monday to one and all!

I’ve lived all of my life on the coast, so I’m used to lacklustre snow that tends not to stick - with a few memorable exceptions of course (February ‘98 being one. See? So rare, I remember the year and the month).

I can’t remember us ever having snow like this. Not that there’s feet of it, but it just won’t stop! It all seemed to be petering out last night, until about half past ten when another flurry descended. Very pretty, and a bit bizarre: with no cars on the roads and no other people around, it felt as though Captain Neil and I could were the only people in the country. Until we heard the next door neighbours crashing about, that is.

I cleared Muriel of snow this morning before tootling off to work in my wellies. I’ve been keeping my shoes under my desk - there’s definitely no use for them outside!

The snow was really coming down all afternoon and, at 4 o’ clock, when an email whizzed around telling us that one of the two routes out of town had been closed, I decided to make a break for it. I trotted the three-quarters of a mile back to Muriel (I’m too tight to pay to park, plus, it’s exercise!) and found my poor French bean loitering under another thick coating of snow. All scraped off and heaters blasting, we made the 10-mile journey home in about 40 minutes. I was very glad I got away before rush hour!

I do like the snow but I’m getting just a bit sick of it now. I haven’t been exercising much (even riding was cancelled) and the cold’s making it very hard to resist gorging on cake. I think that if I was off work, I’d be thrilled with the weather: lots of schlomping on the sofa in the warm, big jumpers, reading, knitting and tea. Somehow, when you’re tearing yourself out of bed and squeezing into a pencil skirt and tights, the snowy weather doesn’t have quite the same chocolate-box appeal. I’m pretty jealous of all the schoolkids who’ve bagged bonus days off this week!

On the knitting front, I’m clicking along on what I hope will be my second beSottied knits pattern. All I’ll say is… everyone loves fingerless mitts! I can’t say I’m in a huge rush to finish them, though: I think we’ll all be wanting to keep full-fingered gloves on for a good while yet. Oh and, apologies for this photo: I know that the flash makes it look like something snapped at a crime scene. We haven’t had much daylight here of late!

This weekend, I’ve decided to try tackling my IT ‘to do’ list. Most things on the list are beSottied related. I’ll write them here, in the hope that it will shame me into doing some of them:

• Sort out what’s going on with bullet points in the blog. Sometimes they’re there, sometimes not. Why?!
• Make it so that my lovely visitors can browse my entries by tag
• Have another go at setting up the beSottied mailbox on the new computer. I can receive emails, but not send them
• Update the Year of Adventure page somehow
• Update my sidebar accordingly

(…crikey. This is longer than I thought)

• Give some thought to giving the site a bit of a spruce-up for 2010
• Update my ‘favourite links’, as they are woefully out of date

Hmm! I wish I hadn’t done that now!

Happy weekend to everyone. If it’s snowy where you are, have fun, and keep warm! And follow mutti’s advice and stick a blanket in your car, just in case (though I do draw the line at carrying a shovel in the boot).