The snow report: day 2

No snow.

It did snow in Birmingham last night after we'd all gone home. Aston Villa were playing at home and we could see the flakes whirling down, chilling the players and dressing the managers and team staff with American football style shoulder pads, but despite several trips to open the front door and check, we had nothing save for a brief flurry of sleet at about 10 which clung desperately to the cracks in the paving stones before melting into obliteration when the rain returned.

Birmingham seem to have made the most of it though, from our upstairs window at work we could see the outlines of last night's snow angels in the churchyard, gently fading away throughout the day until only the fragile ghostly skeleton of each wing was left.

It is raining now. Were it not for the fact that (a) we won the cricket (b) we're having supper with great friends later and (c) I have a new pair of toasty warm socks on my feet I might almost be downhearted.

The socks in question are my Christmas socks, alternatively known as my Twilight socks. Started when we went to see New Moon and I needed some cinema knitting and then put to the bottom of the knitting basket while I knit Christmas sock after Christmas sock.

I started the second sock on Sunday when I wanted some easy knitting to accompany Coco avant Chanel (subtitles being a tad of a challenge with anything complicated) and picked it up again on the train rides to and from work this week and finally finished it at home last night.

I love the colours in these socks and the simplicity of such a basic pattern (plain 64 stitch sock with an afterthought heel) lets the yarn shine through without any competition. Perfect.


The yarn is Blue Moon Fibre Arts STR lightweight in Knitters without Borders. You should go and buy some, it's pretty and it's for a good cause - what's not to like!

The Cath Kidston in the background by the way is courtesy of a very dear friend who gave me a length of each for Christmas with the note: "it's a bit DIY this year" - he knows me well.

H has also been sporting new socks this week after it appeared that Father Christmas thought that he deserved more than a lump of coal;

and his wife decided that he needed some handspun socks as the icing on the cake.

The first pair are Regia Suprise in Ocean 1268, knit over 72 stitches, also with an afterthought heel to keep the spiral going.

The second are special. The yarn is my handspun 3ply from fibre from Artists Palette Yarns which H picked out at Wonderwool.

I spun it up a while ago and then hid it so that he would forget and then knit it up for Christmas.

The pattern is Sam's socks from Cookie A's Sock Innovation book. It's a great pattern and sized up quite easily (I added an extra repeat width ways) to make it boy sized. The only place it gets a bit tricky is the heel flap - which I fudged a bit and you can't tell.



I think I might be developing a serious weakness for socks knit out of my own handspun, which given the fibre stash is probably no bad thing. I just love the way the colours blur and meld together as they shift through the different colours.


And as I had to rescue them from the boy's feet to take the pictures I think they were a hit!

By starlight

I'm sat here trying to think of the last time that I went to see a film on its opening weekend and I honestly can't. The last but one film that I saw at the cinema was Fast and Furious but that had been around for a while by the time we went. I don't think I've ever been that keen to see a film that I was willing to pre-book tickets and endure the potential of hoards of teenage gigglers. Until now.

New Moon opened on Friday. My fan girl status is laid bare -I lasted until Saturday evening, mainly because H was away Friday night.

It is a very lovely adaptation of the book and both H and I really enjoyed it. All of the important scenes from the book have made it into the film, and whilst some things will have more significance if you have read the books, and can see the foreshadowing, it doesn't make the film unintelligible as a stand-alone entity.

I liked the fact that the pace of the script allowed Bella's happiness at the beginning of the film to be so clearly established, and her despair when it all gets ripped away is all the more real for it. The scenes where she screams in her nightmares tore into me, it is a portrayal of very naked grief, almost uncomfortable to watch without being able to offer comfort.

H is a big fan of the wolves and I think he may have been hoping for a big vampire-wolf showdown at the end - he'll just have to wait and see on that one, I'm not saying anything. It was interesting though, I've always been more Team Jacob than Team Edward, possibly because Jacob reminds me of my husband, and to see him identify much more strongly with Jacob than Edward makes me think that perhaps I'm not too far off the mark.

We both loved the Volturi and Michael Sheen was perfect as Aro. The bit that really gave me the chills was that the last few films and TV dramas that I have seen Michael Sheen in, he was playing Tony Blair, and a bit of the Blair charisma crept into Aro It can't be just me who could see Tony Blair as a centuries-old vampire who exercises secret control over the world - a far more scary prospect than Stephanie Meyer could ever have imagined.

There were two moments in our particular viewing that really made me laugh though. The first was the scene where Jacob first takes his shirt off to mop up Bella's head - cue a wave of teenage giggles, followed by chuckles from the older members of the audience laughing at the teenagers.

The second, I might struggle to explain if you haven't yet seen the film. Suffice to say that it ends on a cliffhanger, a question is asked and then it fades to black.

As the black hit, and in that one quiet pause before the title music began, there was a sharp intake of breath somewhere behind us, and a girl's voice groaned "Huuuuuh!" (as in "you can't be leaving it there!") - the whole cinema dissolved in a roar of laughter.

Whilst I have been knitting quite a bit recently, it is known only to me and to Ravelry because of the time of year. None of it was simple enough for the cinema, so I dug out some very special yarn, to become a very plain pair of New Moon socks for me.

Socks that Rock Lightweight in Knitters without Borders - a very Twilightly colourway. This has turned into a full sock since the picture was taken but with the most wonderful time of the year comes the least amount of natural light for photos. Even at 2pm on a Sunday afternoon I was struggling.

I have one more not-so-secret confession. A group of us at work have tentative plans to go to see New Moon, and I'm really quite keen to see it again. I'm certain it doesn't tip me over the edge of fan girl and into the depths of obsession. After all, how am I going to get the other sock knit if I don't go?

Obsession

Obsess - verb - to haunt, fill the mind (Collins Dictionary)


Is it part of the make-up of every serious crafter, that ability to focus single-mindedly on one specific that resonates within them, calling out to their inner crafty soul until the need is sated (usually by casting on)? What else could explain casting-on-itis, or those black holes where you pick up the knitting on your newest and best ever project one sunny lunchtime, and suddenly it's dark, voices are mewling for their supper, and you aren't quite sure where the afternoon went, but you do have four inches of a jumper back that was a soft fluffy ball of yarn that morning.

For better or worse, I have this kind of compulsive focus in spades. The last time I spent a day quilting, H went out for a boys night supper and I entirely forgot about supper, and am still not sure whether I had lunch. I also have a mental list of books that I cannot start reading if I (a) need to go to sleep within the next hour or so or (b) have somewhere to go within a timescale that will not encompass the end of the novel. Robert Goddard's In Pale Battalions (a book I love and cannot recommend highly enough) is one that I know I cannot stop reading, even though I've read it time and time again. I daren't start reading it on the train to work, because I know I'd spend all day resisting the temptation to sneak a quick peak under the desk.

It's always been the same, and I bet I'm not the only one; if I see a film I like I have to check whether there's a book and read the book, and don't get me started on books in series - when I was at uni I once ended up with a substantial selection of teen-lit from one particular series just because the first book was given away on the cover of a magazine I bought to read on the train and I needed to find out what happened to all the characters - literary soap opera at its best!

And so it came to pass that I watched the Twilight film. And then downloaded the audio book with my Audible credit at the end of September. And then bought the audio books for New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn in fairly quick succession. That's 64 and three quarter hours of audio in rapid succession that I finished a week ago (and then started listening to the whole thing all over again).

But that's not all. I found the Twilight fan group on Ravelry, and there was a pair of mittens, a really pretty pair of chunky mittens, named for Bella and 'sight-knit' from a pair worn in the film. And then I remembered two balls of Rowan Cocoon in the stash, and that the gauge was about the same as the pattern, and well ....

I fell down a hole and became a Twilight fan-girl:



And I'm not ashamed to admit it.

These are Bella's Mittens, knit on 5mm DPNs from a ball and a third (ish) of Rowan Cocoon in Frost (which seemed rather appropriate). On most people these would be close to elbow length, on me they come to the middle of my forearm. They are soft and warm and just the thing you would need if you lived in one of the wettest and chilliest places around (which looking out of the window today would seem to be where I live).

I finished these mittens last week and spent ages trying to take a good picture with the timer on my camera - the biggest problem being that the auto focus locks down on the background before I can run round the camera to get in the frame - so these pictures were taken on the auto timer with the camera hung just under my chin.

I was trying to do the traditional fan girl shot (the cover from the Twilight novel) but if I flip the perspective it just looks really weird so this will have to do.

I also seem to be developing a side line obsession in mittens - in the last month or so I've made pair for Dolly, a pair that are now mine, a pair for Mum, the Bella mittens and on Saturday I spent much of the day turning this:


Into this:



(please ignore the fact that it desperately needs blocking!)

Is this the future? Has my sock drawer finally rebelled and started messing with my mind while I'm asleep? Are mittens the new socks? Answers on a postcard!