Getting to Know you Contest Questionnaire:

In answer to the questions on Knitty Otters blog for the 200th post giveaway

1.) How long have you been knitting?

Since November 1965 when my Aunt Dagny taught me. I knitted a scarf for my teddy in moss stitch; about 15sts on 3mm needles, I still have those needles somewhere. It was a magical scarf, My Aunt visited every Sunday and that was when I knitted. Every time I got it out, all my mistakes had magically disappeared and it had grown, just a bit, not a lot.

2.) How long have you been knitting socks?

Now, I have to guess here as I honestly cannot remember, but I would think sometime in the mid to late 70's

3.) What do you do with a problem like Maria?

Leave her to run around in the alps singing; I would not be able to hear her from here

4.) What is your all time favorite sock yarn?

I'm not sure. I don't think I have found it yet, currently knitting in Regia Bamboo

5.) Toe Up or Cuff Down?

Until recently cuff down, had never heard of toe up. Now toe up two at a time ( thanks to Totty)

6.) What's your favorite color (this week or for all time)? Do you have a color family/season/palette you prefer? Any colors you just can't stand?

yellow to red spectrum, though most other colours are nice too.

7.) Do you have a pet(s)?

None at the moment. Have had dog, budgies, guinnie pig, rabbit, chickens, hamsters and tropical fish

8.) Babies: Oven Roasted or Barbecued?

Roasted, have to be, bbq is not big enough

9.) Besides socks what is your favorite type of thing to knit?

Anything I can felt and of course Munkeas

10.) What's your favorite scent?

Anais Anais

11.) What music are you really loving right now? Like a song or a band?

I don't really listen to music. I am a spoken word listener, books or radio 4

12.) How many pairs of socks have you hand knit?

Recently 2 pairs. in total, I really have no clue, but must be around 50 pairs

13.) What's your favorite treat? Salty or Sweet?

definitely salty. Am very much a savoury person

14.) What was the most interesting thing you smelled yesterday. Not good or bad necessarily, just the thing that stuck out most so that you actually took notice of it.

Garlic, when driving past an Indian restaurant

15.) Needles - DPN's: Wooden, metal or plastic?

Bamboo!

16.) What is your favorite sock pattern that you've knit? What do you recommend?

Can't really recommend one as I tend to knit "on the fly"

17.) The last Question: If you were stuck on a deserted island who would you want with you, what knitting would you want with you and would you ever want to leave?

I must be a boooring person, I want my other half and the kids. As for knitting, something very very complicated that will last forever or at least until I figure out how to make yarn from whatever I can find on the island

Photos from Greece

I promised quite a while ago to post some photos from our holiday.

Here they are:

This is the view of the hotel pool from our balcony. You might just be able to see the sea above the trees in the background, further back from there is the mainland of Greece and mount Olympus

The rest of the photos are from the day trip we took (the only thing we did all week apart from going to the pool) to Kefalonia, the neighbouring island.

View from the restaurant (on Zakynthos) were we had breakfast whilst waiting for the ferry to arrive.

Dave and me on the ferry, reflexion in coach windscreen

Looking back from the ferry, somewhere in the trees is the restaurant where we had breakfast

Monastery on Kefalonia

Very large cave full of "tites and mites"

A cave lake, the roof collapsed many, many years ago

Another view of the lake

A lovely beach. Some of you might recognise it from "Captain Corelli's Mandolin"

Blue bee-hives on a hillside. This is in an area badly affected by an earthquake in 1957

Rain is expensive

if it happens when you are outside Waterstones bookshop!

I heard last Monday evening that there was a woolshop in Alton, so decided to go and have a look on my way home from "Knit and natter" Tuesday, a rather showery day.

Found this lovely wool, which is now on needles, more on that later.

Alton also have quite a few charity shops, so I had to have a look in the ones I found.

In the first one I found this:

In the second these destined to become wallets

and in another this, to replace the book I cannot find.

I turned for the carpark, but before I got there, the rain started, very heavy rain, so... what do you do...I looked left and what did I see.... Waterstones! Now I know they have comfy chairs to sit in and browse the books, so in I went. When I left 15-20 minutes later I was carrying these:

On a slightly different note, I found this amongst the stash of yarn I had in the loft, look at the date! There are some really nice patterns in there, even one or two I might attempt at a later date, though the yarns used are no longer available.

I am still here

and I know I promised last week in a comment on some-one's blog, to show pictures of what I made on holiday

I saw the dodecahedron here and was intrigued. I had to make one too. Found there was a crochet version too, so ideal for the flight to Greece. I had some pure wool from Kauni which I bought in Denmark last I was there. It is a rather hard wool so I thought it would benefit from being felted. I stuffed the "ball" rather loosely and washed it at 40 degrees first, didn't really do anything so put it back in at 60 degrees. It came out lovely and soft, but has holes at most of the joints, needs a session with needle and thread, otherwise it turned out more like a berry than the spiky original.

The rest of what I did on holiday still needs to be finished off, how unusual for me, NOT!

I wil show you a few holiday photos in another post.