Saturday, November 05, 2005

Sheltering from the bangs

Lots has been going on here not all good but we're making a go of it & trying to make things work. Things have been rough for a long time but lots of changes are taking place so it should get better soon.

I haven't done much knitting but have still been involved as I set up a group at DDs' school & had the first session last week. 3 kids had signed up for it but only 2 turned up for the first session as the 3rd was away. A friend (are you ready to be outed?) is doing it with me so the kids had 1:1 tution. The girl I taught swims with DD & has watched me knitting on poolside for the past year & has always been fascinated. She picked up knit & purl in the first hour & is keen to start her first project: a black, red & yellow scarf for her Rugby player dad. Child 2 a boy was equally keen but not as easy to teach. Both his grandmothers knit & two uncles. He was an extremly lose knitter but got the hang of it in the end. He wants to knit himself an orange & black football scarf. The 3rd child will be there this week so at least the other two got 1:1 to kick start them off.

I contacted Rowan when I first set the group up & asked for a contribution of yarn for the kids to use but when a huge box arrived I was really disappointed. See for yourself:

black, yellow & blue
black, yellow & blue


velvet tape
velvet tape


Flesh tape
Flesh tape


orange yarn
orange yarn


The best of the lot was 3 balls of Rowan Polar in cream - it's beautiful.

Rowan Polar
Rowan Polar


I think the Cotton tape was the worst - 3 balls each of flesh & pale blue, it reminded me of jay clothes. There was also some 4ply & lots of sludgy brown colours.

As I write this post the poor dogs are going ballistic due to the constant bangs & explosions of fireworks as it's Bonfire night here in England. They've been nervous wrecks for the past couple of weeks & have only been going out in the garden for a pee & then racing back in. Why can't people stick to the 5th of November rather than the weeks before & after? (A brainless idiot set some off at 1.30 a.m. a couple of days ago!) Better still ban the sale of fireworks to the public & insist that trained pryotechnics carry out the explosions (for thats what they are) at organised public displays.

I know I'm ranting but DD had a VERY near miss two years ago & the arm of her coat got burnt as she was chased by a rocket - which had been lit in someones hand & a woman tripped as she bent down to put them into the ground so it shot off & poor DD was in the way. So the dogs are in pieces, Annie is threatening to kill each & every bang, Blue has taken refuge on her favourite rug in the living room & the cats are making the most of the sofa. DD & DH are sat up on the roof (where she feels safe whereas I'm terrified of heights) watching the displays but DD is too scared to even go to an organised display let alone have any in our garden! I'm playing loud music as I type in an attempt to drown out the bangs but to little effect - Annie is still on guard in the kitchen ready take on the horrible bangs.

4 comments:

Daisy said...

Sooty is also refusing to go out and the fireworks seem to have been going on for weeks already. And probably for several more weeks to come...
What were Rowan thinking? Are those balls the dregs from the back of their stock room or something?!

Fred said...

Bonfire - we've also got Diwali on at the same time here but hasn't been too bad in our village apart from last night. Cats weren't too bad about it fortunately. There was a lady on the radio Tuesday night however in York who had let her dog out at 10.45pm for a "while" (the lady didn't expand as to how long). When she came back to the kitchen door "the dog was scratching away she opened it and the dog have scratched huge chunks of the door out, shot into the kitchen and made a mess on the floor and then took 30 minutes of sitting with to just calm down".

Becky said...

Oh I totally agree with you about banning the sale of fireworks to members of the public - they've done it in Hong Kong and it works perfectly well - why do people feel the need to light horrendously dangerous rockets close to young children ? I just don't see the point. Don't get me wrong - I love fireworks, but nice safe organised ones (although I know they aren't always safe look at Kettering) still all the same - take home firework displays out of the equation and there would be a lot less injurys and a lot less totally stressed out pets and children.

We used to have a dog who literally climbed the walls when fireworks went off and it wasn't just while they were going off, it was for the whole of the rest of the night after they had gone off, so between November and the middle of January when fireworks are pretty much constant - we got very little sleep. A total nightmare and unfair on us all.

Re the Rowan yarn - indeed what were they thinking - not very generous - just shows what happen when companies go big !

Uknitty said...

Aww poor doggies everywhere. (I miss my mutt so badly, I think she is ok ish with the fireworks tho)

Rowan have gone totaly insane recently. I have a theory its because Louisa Harding has been busy working on her own range, and Martin Story is heading up the RYC range. (Which is going from strength to strength imo) I saw Rowans shade card for the spring last week. There is some really odd tape stuff with big lumps of metallic gold thread in it, a nice ish cotton that is a look a like for the blue sky cotton( even down to the colour pallate) On the other hand there is a nice silk/wool blend in an aran weight due to be added to the RYC range which looks like it may be promising.

Designer Yarns sent us a load of freebies for knitting week, maybe you could see if they are up for sending you anything?