Out with the Old

Hope you all had a good New Year. We were child free, thanks to the kindness of my mother in law. We go to visit every Boxing Day, have a second Christmas with all Toby's relatives and usually stay for a few days, as she lives in a lovely part of the country. Sam and Josie then stay on for New Year and go to pantomimes, have sleepovers with their cousins, walk the dogs and generally have fun, while Toby and I get to live the single life back in London for a few days. This involves us getting very over excited, trying to do too much, usually having one spectacular argument (this year's was in the car on the way back from John Lewis and it involved a lot of shouting. I will just add that 'trying to do too much', doesn't include trips to John Lewis, I was meaning more visits to art galleries, cinemas etc) and starting to miss the children after about three days. However, it does mean we can pretty much do what we want for New Year, without having to think about babysitters, sleeping arrangements for the children and so on. Call me selfish, because that's what I am, for this week of the year.

Anyway, we spent the evening with lots of friends, eating, drinking champagne, playing parlour games (so much fun, I always wonder why we don't play them more often) and signing along to a karaoke game on PS2, complete with a camera to film you while you're singing. I think it best to draw a veil over my efforts; I'll just say I was forcibly stopped from completing my rendition of Destiny's Child's' 'Survivor'. The fun wound up at about 4am and it was bliss to wake up when we were ready (around 11am) and know there were no children to contend with while nursing a hangover. We are very lucky that we have such kind relatives who are in a position to provide us with this sort of freedom from time to time.

Not a lot of knitting has been done. I did half a sock in the car on the way back from Somerset, but I'm not happy with the heel, so am going to rip it back. Rockstar didn't get finished for New Year's Eve, but I made good progress on him (he feels like a masculine project to me) last night while watching dire telly, so he may be finished tonight or tomorrow.

In the spirit of resolutions and new beginnings, I did sort through a lot of my stash and pack it away in a trunk. I separated out the sock wool and yarn I have earmarked for 2 projects and left that on the top, so I have easy access to that. I should stress this is the main stash, which resides in our bedroom. There is still the secondary stash, which lives in the living room, beside the sofa. This consists of the more fondlable (sp?) stuff, that I just need to be able to reach out to - Koigu, Noro and various Ally Pally purchases. Then there is my actual knitting basket, one of those ones that has a wooden frame and sits on the floor by the telly. This is meant to contain whatever big project I am currently working on, so at the moment Hourglass Sweater is living in there. She will be resurrected very soon, I promise.

My other knitting resolution is to get on and take some photos of all my projects and post them, so you can see that I am telling the truth and not spinning some elaborate knitting blog scam. So keep your eyes peeled!