My life has taken on an edge of the surreal this year, as some of you reading this may well know. It has been so much fun talking to people I admire for their amazing skills and design abilities, as well as all our wonderful UK yarnies out there. The UK Ravelry day seems to have taken off hugely - far much more than I was expecting- and we've got some really fantastic people coming to the event for us to share their knowledge with... It is proving to be incredibly hard to keep my mouth shut - or rather my fingers as they're the ones that do the typing!- but all I can say is that I can't wait until 25th February - which is also my Dad's birthday- to announce the line up, both of people doing workshops and talks, but also about all the wonderful small indie companies that will be coming along.

Which leads me on to a problem I've been grappling with recently. What do you knit for one of the most ungrateful people you know (that's right, I mean my Dad!)? He's so bloody hard to buy for and has upset me, Mum and Angie (my sister) on more than one occasion over presents. When I said to Mum on Skype that I'd be knitting him socks, the reply in the background was "I don't wear woolen socks". So what have I done? I'm knitting socks with a huge cotton content in them; Opal Petticoat Cotton to be precise. I've not taken a photo of the WIP but will probably add this to the post later. The yarn is a lovely mix of blues, greys and sandy colours, which reminds me of the seaside - perfect for someone living in Cyprus.

When people think of Cyprus and Greece, they correctly think of hot sunshine, clear blue skies and the such like. What they don't realise - and I know only too well- is that Greek and Cypriot winters are, in many ways, an awful lot worse than they are in the UK. First of all, when it rains, it rains! Not the drizzly rain that we get here, but it literally power showers everything under it. Then there are the storms. I'll never forget a storm that happened in Thessaloniki in the winter of 1999- blew over trees and everything and was really a sight to behold. In Cyprus, they also get amazing storms which bring sand over from the Sahara (how cool is that?!) and amazing lightning/electrical storms too.

The reason I'm going on about the weather over there is that my mum has requested some knits from me. She's not a knitter (although she could be if she put her mind to it, but claims she's too impatient), but admires the knitting I do. Anyway, to get back on subject, she needs some woolies to keep her warm. The houses in Cyprus are made of concrete and the floors are all pretty much tiled, which is great if you've got underfloor heating (pretty much all of the houses there don't have underfloor heating btw) or if you've got air conditioning which blasts out heat in the winter. I've made her a Boho Waves scarf with two hanks of 'Pebble Sand' magic balls from the wonderful Adele's Mohair - beautiful fairtrade yarn from South Africa (which was sent to me last year for a scarf that was meant to appear in a magazine, but that's another story). I'm thinking of doing a really basic hat to go with it too...

I've done a bit of spinning recently to keep me sane. I got some gorgeous tops from World of Wool, and decided to dye some of it, and to leave some of it the natural shade. [Photos to follow]

And a bit of designing too, messing around with some yarn that was also in the stash - beautiful Scotian Silk from the fabulous Fleece Artist. This jacket (I think I can call it a jacket despite having short sleeves) took only two hanks.

I've called this 'In the Woods'
Yarn: Fleece Artist Scotian Silk
Shade: Woodland (yes, that's where I got the name from)

This is a UK size 10, and took just under 2 hanks of yarn (750 metres). The yarn is slightly heavier than aran; tension will be in pattern which I'll eventually write up after I've refined it with version 2.

Finally, one other thing I've been taught to do is play around with photos on Picassa. Here's one of my 'baby', Poppy (who's now 9 months old, but this was taken when she was about 6 months old). She is such a lovely natured dog (she is doing puppy dog eyes in this one, isn't she?) and we as a family can't thank the Dogs Trust enough for rescuing this little cutie so she could become a part of our family. She was abandoned in Ireland with her sister when they were tiny, tiny puppies. How can people be so cruel as to take puppies away from their mummy at such a young age? It's beyond belief.