Mostly about my trip away

As you can see, we didn't have the nicest weather, this is the view from my friend's living room this morning! I've been down to see a friend who lives near Sheffield to belatedly celebrate her birthday. We have a mutual friend who is kind enough to drive to my flat, collect me and drive over the Pennines and bring me back again. I took the camera with me, but the weather was so poor I didn't get any pictures on the journey, I'm sorry because normally the heather is well worth a picture or two.

In lieu of pictures of the journey, I present you with pictures of her teddy and rat collection!. I should explain that her husband buys her teddy bears regularly and that she keeps fancy rats as pets so people tend to give her stuffed toy rats as well. This is her collection of 'quality bears'






These next two pictures are of her rats - I've only ever found her one cuddly rat so far although I keep looking out for them .











More bears, she definitely has more than I do, and mine are currently packed away in boxes.










I made a serious muddle of this sock yesterday, I forgot to turn the heel before picking up the gusset stitches, I've put it right since then, but it wasted a lot of time and serves me right for thinking I knew what I was doing!










The sock now looks like this, I didn't do much knitting while I was away, we went out for a meal at the Strines Inn near Sheffield, good food and a nice evening. It's been a while since I went away even for a short time. Hecate didn't like me being away but behaved relatively well, possibly making up for switching on the vacuum claner in the middle of the night on Friday night. She has managed to squirt herself with air freshener this evening and has had to suffer the indignity of having her tail and back legs washed to remove the chemicals!




I invited my friend to pick a yarn to have socks out of and she chose this, cornflower from the Natural Dye Studio, surprisingly the dye is coming off on my hands - I've had this problem with blue yarn from them before, none of the other colours just blue, I plan on emailing them about it!