Priceless.

Film Festival Flag.

Or should that be prizeless. We didn't come home with a Tiger Award but I felt like a winner anyway. Three out of four of our screenings were sold out and that included one at 9.30am on a Saturday morning. The audiences were grand, they hummed along with us, laughed in all the right places and gave my knitting a round of applause. Best of all, a delegation of Rotterdam knitters came out to the cinema to knit with me before the Premiere. That must be a festival first.

Our boat turned out to be the perfect place to return too after a hard day's humming. I could go for a snooze and wake up to the sound of the Great Crested Grebes and Coots swimming past my window. As we were moored in a harbour the boat didn't move too dramatically, instead it swayed from side to side making me feel as if I was living in a lumbering breathing animal. A bit like Jonah and the Whale, but with better lighting and an en suite bathroom.

Our boat is the one on the right, with the red and yellow and black.

  I loved the city, it reminded me a lot of Glasgow which is a compliment in my book. An industrial town, proud of its heritage and filled with interesting places. We could have visited some of the many museums or galleries but my favourite way to get to know a city is to wander around it and spend most of my of time in cafes. Rotterdam is very good for that sort of sightseeing. My favourite cafe was Picknick which specialises in local food. An unexpected treat was our tour of City Hall. Much of the centre of Rotterdam was destroyed in 1940, during WW2 and City Hall was one of a very few buildings to survive. While all around it was rebuilt and modernised, City Hall was kept as it was originally designed. There are incredible wood carvings, stained glass, Delft ceramics and 1920s murals, even the buzzer which calls the Mayor and Aldermen/women into session is the original one. . I can't recommend it enough.

Rotterdam Architecture.

Coffee in Delft.

Our week went by all to quickly and before I knew it we were home and facing a grumpy cat trying to persuade us that he had spent the last seven days starving. Magnus' acting skills are prodigious but what he didn't know was that they can now be viewed on the big screen. The lad has a cameo (camiouw?) appearance or three in the film and was a big hit, with people in the audience taking photos of him on their phones. Not that I'll let him know. Magnus the Diva doesn't bear thinking about.

Just when you thought he couldn't get any bigger.

On a what?

A boat, that's what. For seven nights only, I will be living on a houseboat. The boat in question is in the middle of Rotterdam which is host ( the city, not the boat, that would be a very small cinema ) to the Rotterdam International Film Festival. I'm attending the World Premiere of Dummy Jim, the film that I knitted jumpers for way back in 2011. Dummy Jim has been nominated for an award at the festival which is something to be very excited about. You can catch a glimpse of me onscreen but I'm certain to be upstaged by my trusty cat companion who managed to sweet talk Matt the director and Ian the cameraman into giving him some screen time as well. 

Birdfeeding in the snow.

We leave tomorrow and till then I have been taking it easy with a little light knitting and a lot of snow watching. We haven't been hard hit this winter, especially compared with other parts of the UK but I have enjoyed watching the light changing as the snow falls.

Chilly view from the attic.

The pus-filled cat is feeling much better, thank you all very much for your concern. He was checked out by the vet this week and all is well. While we are away he will be making the most of his favourite spot on the living room window, right above the radiator. Seems his heat seeking ability was undamaged by the big bite.

Ridiculous beast.

It was the day the cat exploded.

One of the best opening lines from any novel comes from The Crow Road written by Scottish author Iain Banks. " It was the day my grandmother exploded."  I'm having one of those.

Not a happy fellow.

 It all began yesterday* when a friend was visiting, I was thanking her for a Christmas gift, a tin of sardines for Magnus, when I happened to look over at the boy in question. He was looking a bit odd,  as if he had converted to vegetarianism and was storing carrots in one cheek hamster-style. Closer inspection found a large swelling and a nasty bite. Looked like an abscess to me.  I made a note to keep an eye on him and to make an appointment with the vet in the morning. The evening was spent fussing at the cat and worriedly examining the swollen part.  Normally this would be foolhardy behaviour because as we all know, the cheekbone is in his case, connected to the tooth bone. The lack of violence when being handled led me to believe that he was feeling rather ill and I decided to keep him inside overnight rather than offering the chilly delights of the back garden in December. I left the boy asleep, snorting gently on his favourite rocking chair.

Dyeing yarn to take to Rotterdam.  Rotterdam? More later.

7am, New Years Eve I was woken by some scratching at the door and the plaintive howling of a cat who wanted me to think he was starving.  I jumped out of bed to save the carpet from a shredding and accompanied Magnus to the kitchen. After wolfing down some catfood, the lad sat on his haunches, flicked a back leg towards his face, extended his claws and exploded the abscess. There is nothing in the world that can prepare you for the smell that exudes from a burst cat abscess. Think of the smelliest recesses of the compost bin mixed with something that has been dead for too long and you're still nowhere near. It went everywhere, on me, on the floor and all over Magnus. For the visually minded, I can tell you that it was the colour of a bad strawberry custard. Pustard.

I cleaned the floor, cleaned the cat, cleaned myself and removed my pajamas in preparation for a boil wash. By then it was 7.15.  New Year's Eve. I left a damp cat in the kitchen and retired to another, less pungent room. So there I was, waiting for the vet to open while the beast glared balefully at me through the frosted glass of the kitchen door. If this is a taste of things to come in 2013 then I'm doomed.

Happy New Year!

Socks. Thankfully pus free and smelling lovely

In other news, there has been some knitting. Made some socks of which I am rather proud. Thanks as usual to Mary Jane Mucklestone for her genius in charting Fair Isle Patterns and counting the number of stitches required so that I don't have to.


*You might have guessed that yesterday is not strictly accurate. After Magnus' recovery the whole household was struck down with colds and this is me catching up with things only two weeks late.

Season's Greetings.

Wishing you all the best over the Festive Season and a peaceful New Year. From all at Mog Towers.

Magnus helps with the wrapping.

A small hopeful rainbow

I have tingle fingers

Frost on plastic.

The weather not unreasonably for December,  has dipped to below freezing. The garden looks amazing, the unweeded bits, the trees we should have pruned in the Autumn, even the scruffy piles of seeds that the birds throw down from their feeders look magical when covered in a chilly coating of frost.  Further afield, the most unromantic of spots, the Park and Ride outside Perth is transformed. Narnia with a Megabus.

Today's chill has kept me by the cooker making Granola and lentil stew in quantities big enough to feed a hungry household. Abundant amounts of food make me happy. I like to feel that there is enough to go round and heaven knows, that feeling is in short supply right now.  Like most people our household is keeping a canny eye on our spending and bargain of the week yesterday was a big packet of chillies, marked down to fifteen pence. My final job in the kitchen was to chop them into little bits and to avoid getting chilli juice in my eyes. They must be strong little fellows. I've washed my hands more often than Lady Macbeth but still they hurt like blazes. The chillies are spread out on greaseproof paper in the freezer waiting to be put into a plastic pot in order to pep up my cooking for many weeks to come. That's enough to forgive the tingle in my fingers.

Chillies. Little did I know the pain in store.

Granola. Far more soothing.

 In other news - Deb Robson is coming to the UK. I can't wait.  Deb is one of the reasons I have a collection of fleeces in varying states of preparation, such is the power of her knowledge and enthusiasm. See her blog here for more details and if anyone has any ideas/inspirations/offers of help please get in touch with Deb, we're very lucky to have her.

Should never have listened to that spider.

The hat frenzy continues. I fear that it may be some knitted form of procrastination, where I pretend that I'm doing something vitally important and crafty when all I'm really doing is using up some odd bits of yarn. Creative? Of course, but what I'm creating is a big pile of hats whose intended heads haven't been discovered yet.  I'm sure some heads will occur to me later on but for now all I seem to be doing is making hats when I should be spinning, or writing or feeding the cat.

This hat has found the correct head..

All the same, hats are handy things to have if you don't want to think too much about a pattern or, if like me you are knitting on the bus, or in a cafe. There are at least two jumpers in the back of my mind that I'd love to cast on but I know that they will take up too much room in a bag  and will definitely take up too much room in my brain to knit in company. Hats it is then.

Hat surgery was required to re-knit a floppy rib.

I was in Glasgow last weekend, hence the need for travel-safe knitting. Friday saw us at the wonderfully named Glad Cafe in Shawlands, watching the Scottish Clarinet Quartet. The SCQ were performing a score by Matt Rodgers which was accompanied by visuals from my chum Matt Hulse. There was a trailer shown for Matt H's latest feature film which oddly enough features me. You can see it here. I'm easy to spot.The rest of the week has been peaceful and often horizontal. I've read and knitted and slept. When that became too much, I wrapped the cat up in brown paper. 

He enjoys it, honest.

Advice from a spider?

Scottish children are brought up with the story of Robert the Bruce.  Robert was a disheartened king who was inspired to carry on by the sight of a spider trying and eventually succeeding to make her web. The lesson he learned - if at first you don't succeed, try, try and try again.

Terje Vigen Mitts in handspun Hebridean and Merino ( the blue bit )

I'm in need of some spiderly inspiration myself this week after spending days knitting what I thought would turn out to be a fabulous hat. Instead of a beautiful striped affair all I have to show for my efforts is two skeins of unravelled yarn soaking in a bowl. I had hoped to make this hat and I've got no quarrel with the pattern as I was using handspun yarn and didn't make a gauge swatch. That'll teach me. While I loved knitting the clever shaping and the bright slipped stitches, the end product was too floppy to show them off and the rib had a terrible tendency to slide down over my eyes. To make matters worse, I'd already used this yarn to knit another hat pattern that tuned out too big. I'm beginning to wonder if I've been cursed with a particularly small noggin.

The felt balls before. best use for a pair of tights ever.

If at first you don't succeed - rip the thing back and cast on for another hat. That's what I love about knitting, there are very few mistakes that can't be rectified by ripping back, felting or some other radical act of craftwork. This time I will be re-knitting in a pattern called Joon. I'll make the stripes different and omit the slipped stitches for this one. Who knows, the third attempt might just be the winner.

After - cat waits patiently.

Jabob fleece after combing.

It isn't all bad,  in the last wee while I've knitted two successful projects and have been persevering with my Jacob fleece prep. I'm using some of the leftovers from combing to make felted balls. Magnus thinks that they are cat toys but I really meant to make felted garlands. The cat has won so far. There are wooly spheres rumbling around all over the floor.  There is a lot of fleece to use up so by Christmas there might be enough of them to please me and the beast.

Kaiso pattern from Knitted Socks East and West. Modified to use some Manx Laoghtan handspun.