What goes up, must come down

Usually I struggle to find something to feed the blog with. After keeping quiet for four weeks, now I don't really know where to start!

Well, I know you're dying to know. Did I finish the shawl? Oh yes indeedy.


It's a terrible photo, taken in a hurry. I didn't even have time to block the shawl before I got the camera out, but it was finished on Monday (30 March) after nearly 3 months of monogamous knitting (well, apart from one evening at the knitting group in Bridport when I was unfaithful with a mitten). Here's a closeup of the border:

Did I finish before the babies were born? No way. They arrived the day after my last post. Meet Daisy:

And Frank, with his doting Mum, who was so posing for the camera, but is truly besotted nevertheless:


They were born at 34 weeks one minute apart, Frank being the elder, and ever since have been in the SCBU at Dorchester hospital, where I got to see and cuddle them on Monday (yes, 2 hours after I finished the shawl). They just needed a little fattening up and I believe they are now at home where they belong. Mother and babies are, as they say, doing extremely well. And Jenny, who is a knitter herself, was delighted with the shawls. Although they were not intended for such use, they have been proclaimed as Christening items. Oh good - more cute baby pictures to come.

As far as the knitting goes, I have resisted the urge to cast on items in all colours of the rainbow and haven't actually started anything new. The mittens, as well as looking a bit scrappy, when I tried them were a bit tight, so they took a dip in the frog pond and will be restarted on larger dpns, but I haven't got the will just now. In the end I picked up a UFO, the Back-to-School U-Neck Vest by Stefanie Japel, (thanks to Knitpicks for the non-Ravelry picture, but I'm less than thrilled with both the colour and the fit on their model) and have been cracking through a couple of rows of rib every evening. I do have plans to start a couple of new projects with stash yarn, but there's no hurry, is there? And after all, my spinning wheel has been neglected for months.

In other news, I got a new bike, a Kawasaki ER-6N. Isn't it lovely?

Whilst I loved my Bandit, it was really, really heavy. So heavy I never really got the knack of manoeuvring it around car parks and the like. I used to have to find a convenient man who would do the heavy pushing for me, and to be honest it was a bit restrictive. I always had to think twice about taking off on my own for instance. So I thought long and hard over the winter and decided it was time for a change. The Kawasaki is about two-thirds the weight, and is slim, light, nimble (unlike me) and corners like a dream. It's also in biking terms, naked, i.e. it has no fairing, so minimal protection from the wind at speed, but as I spend most of my time hooning around on A and B roads rather than motorways and dual carriageways, that's not a hardship. It's not as fast as the Bandit, lacking 2 cylinders and about half the engine capacity, but it would still hit 130 if I made it, and let's face it, you'd have to be mad to attempt that sort of speed on the public road, so I'm not sure that really isn't a good thing.

Looking at biking from a more negative angle, unfortunately Dave had an accident last Sunday and broke a collarbone and two ribs. I didn't see, because I was 2 bikes and several cars in front, but he came off when he braked on an urban dual carriageway just after a roundabout and thankfully was only doing about 15 miles per hour. A car suddenly appeared in front of him, turning left into a side road. He says he glanced in his mirrors and when he looked back at the road in front the car was just there. Not only Dave, but also our friends following behind think the car just cut across in front of him from the outside lane. Apparently Dave's acrobatics as he took his unintentional sideways dive off the bike and barrel-rolled down the road would have got 10 points even from Craig Revel Horwood! So that's my husband laid up and off work again for another six weeks and he'd only been back for seven working days after his hip resurfacing operation!

We're both optimistic about the situation, after all we don't need to be told how much worse it could have been. Unfortunately we were going on holiday on the bikes again at the end of the month but of course there will be other opportunities.