Stash, more Stash and a new Start

Ok, so there has been stash and lots of it.  There has also been a busy weekend and a new start.

I will begin at the beginning and go on until I get to the end.  In the beginning, I missed Love Your Local Yarn Shop Day as I said in my last post, so last Tuesday (9 May) I rushed out in my lunch hour to see what new yarns had arrived for LYLYS Day at my local yarn shop.  I had some gift cards that my family gave me at Christmas which I had been keeping for the occasion, and I came away with these:

      

The pair of skeins on the left is Eleanor of Knit Nottingham's own hand dyed 4ply yarn (80/20 merino/bamboo) in "The Deep", and my current plan is to make Helen Stewart's Talisman Shawl out of it.  The skein on the right is Fyberspates Scrumptious Lace (45% silk 55% merino) in the "Teal" colourway, which I bought because I love the colour.

In my last post, I also mentioned a project which I couldn't cast on until I had the right needles.  I ordered the needles on Friday night (12 May) and there may have been a few balls of sock yarn which also fell into the basket.

These are all Drops sock yarns bought in the on-going Drops sale at 35% off.  Top left is Drops Fabel Uni Colour in "Turquoise", top right is Drops Fabel Print in "Blue Lagoon", bottom left is Drops Fabel Print in "Berry Dreams" and bottom right is Drops Delight Print in "Pink/Purple".  There would have been more, but the colours I wanted were out of stock at the time of ordering.  This little lot arrived in the post yesterday, along with my new needles.

Then after ordering needles and yarn on Friday night, I went hunting through my stash of patterns and yarn to find a suitable sock pattern to cast on.  Having cast off my last pair of socks nearly a month previously, I was starting to get withdrawal symptoms.  I have plans for my first pair of colourwork socks but those had to wait for the needles that were on order.  I needed something that came between vanilla and complicated, something that I could knit on the bus.  In the end, I plumped for the Petty Harbour pattern by Rayna Curtis, which is a free pattern on Ravelry.  I am knitting them in Opal 20 Jahre yarn in the "Wir Sagen Danke" colourway.  

I cast the first sock on on Saturday morning - 64 stitches on 2.5mm needles.  I have gone down a needle size because I think that my tension has loosened up - I have been a very tight knitter and all my earlier socks have been on 2.75mm needles.  Apart from sock withdrawal symptoms, I cast these socks on because I was about to have a very busy weekend and wanted something relatively straightforward and portable to knit on.  

For the last eight years my Mum has organised an annual Open Gardens weekend on the street that I grew up on and this was the ninth and final year.  It may continue on a bi-annual basis but Mum won't be organising it.  Every year the event has raised money for a different charity and this year it was in aid of the local branch of Parkinson's UK.  There were 10 gardens open to the public, two cafes, a pop-up book stall, a plant stall, patchwork quilts for sale, performances by a local choir, folk singers and a storyteller and a Parkinson's UK stall.  

My role on these occasions has been to run the tombola (see the UK explanation).  The event is open from 2pm to 6pm on both the Saturday and the Sunday, and I spend those eight hours being polite and charming and persuading people that they want to pay 50p a ticket in the hope that they will win a prize.  The prizes are generally quite good as they tend to be unwanted Christmas and birthday presents donated by people in what is considered to be a "nice" area, so smellies, knicknacks, vouchers from the local garden centre and so on.

So for me, there is the setting up - we had about 300 prizes this year, the "selling" for four hours without a break, and the taking down.  The "selling" is the hardest part - I am not at all fond of people en masse, and after a while the "polite and charming" bit doesn't come as easily.  And this year there was the added bonus that one of the neighbours had organised a collection and presentation for Mum on Sunday night, and I had to somehow get her there without her knowing what it was for.

It was however a great success.  We raised over £3,700 for the local branch of Parkinson's UK, which they were very happy about, and hopefully I will never have to run the tombola again!

Also on a positive note, despite the non-Slimming World buffet at the seminar, I managed to lose another pound last week so have now lost 8.5lbs in total.  After all the weekend palaver, which included cake at the presentation, I am just hoping for any kind of loss this week.

Wishing you and yours all the best until my next.