Last Christmas, we were given a calendar of pointless words.  It’s called Forgotten English and on the whole it’s pretty obvious why.  Today’s word, however, is a good one.  “Snocksnarls – all of a heap; generally used of entangled thread”.  Here’s an example in mohair:

And life is all a bit snocksnarls too.  What with Woolfest stall applications, blankets for Pakistan and various other stuff, emails are scrolling off the bottom of the page even as I read them and the phone doesn’t stop for long.  So I must apologise to anyone who’s sent me a chatty email or Ravelry message recently which I haven’t yet replied to.  I will try & get to them soon…

On Friday arrived a wonderful parcel for Pakistan from Otiva on Ravelry:

24 colourful and expertly-knitted little hats, made by her and her mother.  How wonderful!  Thank you so much to both of you!

Another parcel arrived last week – not for Pakistan, but for me.  The Laal Bear held a prize draw to celebrate 100 posts on her blog and I won!  The draw was done by Meg.  I’m sure she was entirely impartial and wasn’t in any way influenced by the little dog biscuit which she may have had here on her last visit…

What a lovely prize!  Some pretty buttons, a useful anti-depression kit, a cute decoration for the Christmas tree and some snuggly soft BFL fibre which I’ll love spinning.  There were also some pretty stitch-markers which I somehow managed to leave out of the photo (& camera now waiting for batteries to recharge), but I’m sure they’ll be visible in another picture before long, marking stitches on something!

The Wood & Wool exhibition went very well.  It was a lovely, friendly event with some great talent on display.  Our stand was next to my friend Rosemary who had brought along some squares for blankets, all made with her hand-spun merino.  I sold all my Seafoam scarves and quite a few flowers.  Jan sold socks, socks & more socks!

Tomorrow, Jan & I are exhibiting at this:

So I have been very busy making things, which also happens to be What I Mostly Did On My Holidays Read the rest of this entry »

Today the postman brought the first parcel with some things for Pakistan:

Two gorgeous, beautifully-knitted hats from Wendoline on Ravelry (accompanied by some rather splendid Wensleydales!).  Thank you ever so much, Wend!

There I was thinking its time to bake another cake (I usually bake an apple cake at the weekend); I had been pondering trying a different cake (any suggestions welcome). However I then saw a bowl of carrots that Cecilia had pulled yesterday. They weren’t very good carrots – the carrot fly had been busy – but there was enough good bits to go into a cake.

I didn’t have a recipie for carrot cake to hand, so I substituted 8oz of grated carrots for the diced apple in my spice apple cake. I was a bit worried that carrots were less juicy than apples so I put in a bit more fluid (from the soaked sultanas).

The resulting cake took longer to bake than the apple cake. It normally takes about an hour in a moderate oven (180 °C), but this one took 1hr 20mins.

A very tasty cake! I had to get a second opinion – Cecilia agreed, it was a good cake!