Spinning and reminiscing.

I left home again last week and moved into Sylvia's for cat/cat/cat/house sitting. This time the dog went to her parents ( Sylvia's parents that is ). I brought some spinning and three different knitting projects and came home with them all unfinished. The cats were fun though. There is a lovely wood burning stove in the living room so I spent most of the time trying to light the damn thing and keep it going.

Lots of family stuff - my big brother came home from California where he lives now and there was the usual round of meeting, eating and catching up. Tom and I also went on a tour of old Fife venues so that he could take photos for his website about Kirkcaldy punk bands. It is a sad case of affairs when at least three of the venues have now become residential homes for older people. So much for Punk's Not Dead. Part of my enthusiasm for the trip was the chance to drop into the LYS and get even more fleece. I came in looking for reds and purples and came out with orange and green. Blame it on the autumn air. I have plans to knit a (possibly lacy ) long rectangular wrap so any pattern ideas would be most welcome. Another advantage was the visit to Pillars of Hercules which is an organic farm and cafe. They do the best cheese toastie ever. We had a great day remembering what it was like to grow up in small town Fife in the 1980's. If you want to know more, have a look at the site at

http://www.kirkcaldybands.com/

Knitting Bee last week was a salutary lesson in FINISHING STUFF. I can't emphasise too clearly the sheer horror of the box Helen, one of the Bee-ers brought with her. It was full of unfinished garments, there were hundreds of them, and they all belonged to the same person. Unfortunately this person had died and it fell to her family to untangle all the knitting leftovers. I think it would be fair to say that we all looked into the future and imagined our own families plowing their way through half done jumpers, orphaned socks and fingerless gloves. All of us except Grahame of course, he makes tapestries and always finishes them. You can see one in the left hand corner of the picture. We all went home vowing to finish every last bit of knitting that was hidden in bags all over our houses. It's only fair to those we leave behind.

Talking of fingerless gloves, here are some mittens I knitted with my handspun. They make me feel so smug. Only problem is, we're having a bit of an Indian Summer here and it's far to warm to wear them. I've also been working on Archie's 1960 sweater, only one and a bit sleeves to do so he might get it this winter after all. What was it I was saying about unfinished knitting.........