Hurray!

I leave Paris tomorrow!

Goodbye smell!
Goodbye spending four hours a day on public transport!
Good riddance children and your terrible toilet habits!
Good riddance expensive cafés!
Au revoir disgusting men!
Adieu everywhere closing at 9pm!

Hello pubs!
Hello plentiful taxis that stop for you so you don't have to ride a bike in the freezing cold at 1.30am!
Hello properly cooked meat!
Hello meat that's been cooked at all for that matter!
Hello food that's been killed before serving as well!

So. Tired.

Sleepy as fuck but I keep putting off updating this and I'm actually getting a backlog of FOs!

I leave Paris in about a week and a half and then I have no idea what I'll be doing with my life or where I'll be living. I really should do what I've been saying I'll do for about three years and buy a campervan.

I've been doing lots of ice skating this week, there's two rinks been set up at Montparnasse and Hotel de Ville. I've been wearing the cabled hat I mentioned in my last post (toooooo tired to link). Click here for a like, totally rad (I'm so not down with the kids anymore...) video of us displaying our mad skillz (both on ice an with yarn).

I finished the Sari Silk earflaps hat and I love it to bits. When I wear it I can hear the silk creaking, it's got such a nice, thick texture. The best bit is, just as I'd finished I was crocheting a border around it and I came to a knot (first one!) The ball changed from a bluey-purpley colour to an orangey-greeny one. I don't know if you can tell from the picture... but I'm so pleased, it's like two for the price of one.

So here's the hat, and a close up of the fabric:

...and here's the Calorimetry I knocked up with the second colour. Nice pattern, I'd never looked at it closely before and didn't realise it was made with short rows.

(I think you can click on the photos for full size... if so that close up makes a great desktop wallpaper, although it's a bit busy).

So now I've mastered magic loop, I had no excuse not to buy an 80cm long 2.5mm circular needle and get started on some socks for Simon I'm making with some really nice Regia. My first toe ups! Going along great so far...

I got him to measure his feet over the phone the other night and he says they're 265mm (10.5 inches) long and exactly the same circumference. Does that sound wrong/strange/freaky to anyone?

Late night, overdue update from a wino

A quick FO first of all...

A hat I knocked up out of Phildar Kadischan (I'll check the name in the morning) and using this cable pattern from the Lion Brand website that I've had my eye on for a while. I've been wearing it constantly. It fits over my ears and my (still minuscule) ponytail perfectly.

I have loads I wanted to write about the huge behemoth craft fair I went to on Monday, but I've had a crappy week and I've kept putting it off. Happy thoughts now: thanks to the wonderful Sylvie Chez Plum I was provided with two free tickets. I planned to go on Saturday but I was left holding the baby. Ok, stop it - back to the happy thoughts! I went on Monday instead, and it was cool. Not a massive amount of knitting stuff, besides a nice, big Phildar stall, some ridiculously silky stuff from Mercredi & Cie (right) and a stall from Namaste Sathi, where I finally gave into temptation/curiousity/lust and bought 250g worth of recycled sari silk for €15.

Look at it, it's beautiful, even though that picture doesn't do it any justice because I was too impatient to wait until the natural light was good enough.

I searched Ravelry for patterns and could only find bags TOMORROW WHEN YOU'VE HAD SOME SLEEP AND SOBERED UP PUT LINKS TO BAGS HERE, which I kinda needed anyway and I've just had to retire my old bag so I could bastardise it for the zip and lining. But for some reason I couldn't get excited about a bag. I began to worry I'd turn into one of those terrible 'stashers' and just keep the ball on display forever, fondling it occasionally. (Wrong, wrong, wrong, in so many ways. Keeping yarn that isn't on a set of needles is like keeping booze that isn't for drinking. Wrong.)

Then as luck would have it, I had Tuesday off and spent some time wandering around Le Marais. I found a couple of hippy/incense burning/free Tibet type shops that happened to have a few scarfs made out of sari silk. Then I saw a hat, with ear flaps made out of the stuff. I tried it on and the deal was done. I was pretty sure I could make this without a pattern, but I Ravelled it anyway and bought this pattern from 'Woolly Wormhead' just to make sure.

The pattern is top down, and required starting out with 6 stitches. I tried about 3 times to do this on dpns but they kept slipping out and I nearly blew a blood vessel. So I did my first attempt at Magic Loop, and even though the yarn meant the stitch definition was almost non-existent so it was like knitting in the dark, I was pleased with the technique. I've one earflap left now.

Mmmm.... what else? Oh yeah, confession time. I was in a vintage clothes store in Le Marais and found myself all alone in the basement. I couldn't resist it so I tried on a fur coat. Someone came down the stairs after about 10 seconds and I quickly threw it off in shame but fuck me, that was the most amazing coat ever. I looked a million dollars, even in my £6 Primark jeans. I think I might have to move to Russia.