Needles, Needles Everywhere

The first lot of knitting needles arrived on Saturday. And then the second lot arrived today. They took respectively four weeks and six days to arrive, posted on 28 January and 19 February, both posted by First Class International Airmail. Oh well.

That's the first lot in the photo. They've been washed and artistically arranged; the second lot are lying around in a plastic bag. I'll get to them.

I've even tried knitting with a pair from the first lot, and have cast on for the Habu Kusha Kusha scarf. The combination of superfine merino yarn and stainless-steel-and-silk yarn isn't bad to knit with at all, but I still don't feel I've got the right needles; these are short enough, but I think they're too heavy. I can't believe I'm making so much fuss about this. Maybe I just need new glasses, but I have to get a new tooth first so the glasses will have to wait.

I knitted one ball of the Mavis scarf while I was away on Friday night, between the train journey and sitting on the sofa. I expect it to grow quite a lot when blocked, and I have some bits and pieces left over, so one more ball should be enough. I need to block the sweater pieces first, and do the small rolled collar, but I can't block the pieces meanwhile.

I have been kept from my knitting and my blogging lately by a series of domestic disasters, the most pressing of which were a busted lock on the street door and a puddle of sudsy water which kept appearing and disappearing on the bedroom floor. The busted lock meant that we could hear the buzzer on the entryphone, and speak on the intercom, but I had to keep dashing downstairs to let people in. The sudsy puddle meant endless confabulations with my upstairs and downstairs neighbours to try and trace its origin. My upstairs neighbour was somewhat distracted because her bank had just informed her that someone had used her credit card to book a £650 hotel room in Dubai, amongst other things, and my downstairs neighbour had a dose of flu. Do you think there might have been a small black cloud hovering over our property?

The sudsy puddle and subsequent investigations have meant that I am moving the bedroom furniture around rather frequently, and I just can't face trying to block sweater pieces on the bed at the same time. They will have to wait until I am feeling slightly more serene. The source of the water ingress has now been found, which caused only minor devastation, but it appears that there is a blockage lower down so we are waiting to establish the extent of that. The plumber will be back at sparrowfart tomorrow.

While I was away, I was able to check that one of my youngest relations is putting to good use the items that I knit for her. I would say that she is. Do you think I should have made it a little smaller?