Thursday 29 October 2009

Crazytown

Welcome to Crazytown :-) Pull up a chair, you'll have to move some yarn, and possibly a cat, help yourself to a chocolate biscuit while I put the kettle on. This might take a wee while.

I'm slowly drowning in a sea of yarn, books and equipment. Yes. it was that time again - the Visit Down South. This time, I got to stay with the beloved for a couple of days, which was lovely and we went to car boot sales (why are there no car boots in Western Scotland? I think we should be told) and washed my car and had birthday cake and lots of great food and admired the garden and also bought yarn. So all good there.

I then toddled over to the Parental Units and got more good food and Sorting Out was achieved. Well, I say sorting out. It was more a case of discovering that the corner where all my Stuff was has been taken over by Other People's Stuff. There is a suspicious box of railway books in there, and an old television. Neither have anything whatsoever to do with me.

It turns out that Mum has been rescuing things from Granny's house, before my uncle's pyromaniac urges take over and he starts burning books to fire the heating. Bless him, he is a man of many talents and charm, but he does not have the hoarding instinct that runs so strong in every other part of the family. So, instead of a gentle meander through my paperbacks, in search of the rest of my Terry Pratchett books, I came home with this lot:



That is a pile, bum-high, of mainly books, only about 20% of which are actually mine. (the bag on the right is full of coned yarn! Yay me) The rest is a selection from Granny's ginormous collection of cookery and gardening books. Let me explain a little. Years ago, my grandparents had a quite serious fire at the house, which did a lot of damage and wiped out a lot of their belongings, books included. (The ones that remain smell decidedly odd.) When the insurance came through, Granny was keen to replace her reference books, which she did in some style. Some were second-hand, or from library sales, the rest were new. There is a ruddy mountain of the things, and I, as you know, am a sucker for gardening books. It appears I also have a severe blind spot where cookery books are concerned too. In short, I'll not be short of a recipe or 500 over the coming years :-)

I came back with something else too. Mum has been threatening me with this for the last year, and I'd swerved it up until now. Finally, Dad got involved, fished it out of the garage and opened the Big Green Box.



Yes folks, it's a knitting machine. A Singer, dating from 1967. My mum bought it brand new for £55 16s 9d. That was expensive.
We always thought the instructions had gone, which had put us off as no-one had the faintest idea how to make it go (even Mum has forgotten.) However, when Dad opened up the case, he discovered the original manual, all the tools, all the extras and the original receipt. Well, I could hardly say "no" at that point, could I? It was either me or the tip, and that seemed a shame. I was thinking "eBay!" at first, but when I had a good look at it and the handbook, my curiosity got the better of me. I'm keeping it :-) I shall be spending a good chunk of the weekend servicing and cleaning it, and seeing if it needs any serious work doing. I'm determined to get it working now - I loves me a technical challenge, and I've definitely got one here...

Craft Fair
Nearly forgot!

EPIC fail on the selling front. We didn't shift a THING. Got some interest and some nice comments, and had a nice day keeping Ange company and having a super-quick tour round Troon, but NO SALES. Meh. Hopefully I'll be doing the next one too which is November so peeps will be thinking Christmas. I hope.

Here is our stand - I think it looks pretty darn good:



Another New Addition to the Family
A picture says a thousand words, so:



Yep, I bought a loom...

And now Firefox is being a muppet with Adobe so I shall have to sign off and beat it with a big stick.

~*~

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