An Evening In

I'm looking forward to a rare treat this evening. Everyone is out, so I will have the house to myself. This means a nice relaxing evening with a film of some kind (probably some sort of chick flick that Pete would never watch), a glass or two of wine, and a bit of knitting.....sheer bliss.

I rather expect I shall need it after a day at work. People are definitely starting to get that look of Christmas panic in their eyes, and we are much busier in the shop now than we were. I can relax, safe in the smug knowledge that I have done all my Christmas shopping..no last minute dashes to the shops on Christmas Eve for me. Well, not unless I realise that I've completely forgotten something desperately vital. This is entirely possible.

I must respond to some comments. I'm very bad at that. Maxine, I'm afraid I have to shatter the picture you may have of me - much as I would like to claim that I am sitting here day after day dilligently inserting the stripes and patterns into my Opal sock, I have to confess that all the beautiful work is done by the wool. This is what is known as self-striping sock yarn. All I have to do is knit row after row of plain jane knit stitches and the wool is cleverly patterned so that it comes out looking stripy or mottled or fair isle-ish. Self-striping yarn is one of the many wonders that have happened to knitting since I gave it up way back in the early 1990s - and I think it's wonderful. Someone remarked at work that I was doing "clever knitting", to which I could only reply - "not clever knitting, just clever wool".

Hi Jo, welcome to my blog. It's nice to meet fellow knit swappers and I've been looking at your blog - you're doing some seriously lovely work there, girl. I have to admit that I've had to put progress on the spinning to one side until after Christmas as with working 4 days (or more) a week I'm just not finding the time to be able to focus on it. Come January however I shall start to go to our local spinning group and will have more free time to devote to practising.

There are no photos this morning as it's still dark, and as it will be dark again when I get home from work don't be holding your breath for some later either. I totally forgot to take my camera to the reading group party (see I told you I was an idiot), but we had a good time, even if some of the quiz questions had us stumped. I came back with a huge pile of books. Some from Karen to review for EuroCrime. Thank you Karen, I will get the reviews off to you as soon as I can. On the reading group list for this month is the new Andrew Taylor - A Stain on the Silence. I already have this on my TBR pile and have been looking forward to it. Andrew is a great writer and a lovely man too. Also on the list is The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. I've been meeaning to read this for a while but haven't found the time yet. Sooooo many books..........................