Taking time to smell the roses

There was a lot of drama happening at Chez HereIKnit last Saturday when Lucy brought in her present for me - a live mouse. While I appreciated her generous gift (and she was so proud of herself!) I didn't so much appreciate the two hours I spent chasing the damn mouse around while trying to prevent Lucy from eating it.

Mice aren't a big issue for me but even I had to object when it tried to use my bed to take a nap!

It was all a bit much.

This morning when I was planning my day I realised the feeling of 'it's all a bit much' summed up the last two weeks of my life. There's been nothing particularly stressful or tiring going on, it's just that there's been such a lot of stuff on that I haven't had any time to relax. I'd been operating at such a high level for such a long time that I hadn't realised that I was tense, tired and in need of a break.

So, this afternoon I gave myself permission to take an hour off and took my knitting outside. It was delightful and exactly what I needed.

I've been intrigued by an idea I saw on Christi's blog for doing the heel on toe-up socks. Basically, instead of turning the heel, you knit in a row of scrap yarn where you want the calf to go and knit another toe.

Then you pick out the scrap yarn (as you can see I very intelligently picked out scrap yarn that was in the same colour family as the yarn I was using, meaning that it took me 20 minutes to figure out which bit of the foot I was supposed to be picking out) ... 

.. leaving you with two very oddly gaping socks ...

.. which you then pick up and knit as normal. 

It's a bit fiddly so I can't see it becoming a favourite method for me, but it did mean I could continue striping all the way up the heel without trying to figure out how to keep the lines consistent with the short row.

Lucy is still so tired from her mouse-catching that she can't stay awake for more than a few hours. 

It's hard being a cat!