Who should I vote for ?

I could vote for the Labor Party - they have a good chance to carry on destroying the economy and making the pound weaker and weaker. As the work I do might involve getting paid in euros - all in all it might not be a bad thing.

Or I could vote the Lib/dems - the guy has a Spanish wife - he might understand that being a foreigner in this country is not easy. Good job Mrs. Duffy decided to go visit her English relatives established in Canada : she might get all enlightened about how different people flock in different countries.

Or I could vote BNP - it might be my only chance somebody will get me out of here.
Just joking. Sort of.

Oh, and I'm not voting Conservatives - they want to stop public spending - and I work for a public agency so I'm not going to cut my own branch, am I? How many other millions of people are doing the same kind of thinking?
Saying this in their manifesto was clearly not very clever.

Speaking about immigration, is manifesto an English word or did we flock it from somewhere?

Hiking season started - Walsden

Nice weather yesterday, well at least sunny, so I thought we should get moving again. The car is in a right state (again) which only allows us to travel short distances around Halifax.
I had a look in my Walks in Caldardale booklet and picked the Reddyshore Scout and Allescholes farms walk, and this became the winner just based on the mileage (4 miles and the shortest of all). Too cold for long walks and we need to get back in gear first, after a winter of TV watching.
This walk is above Walsden and it ended up that the trail was way too close to the road, (at least according to my standards), in order to be fully enjoyable.
If I would have remembered to take the camera AND the memory card, I would have had some photographs.
The only thing I can do now is to steel some from the net.

Pylons all the way,

The Summit Railway Tunnel ventilation shafts,

...and obviously the main historical attraction of the walk, the Allescholes milestone which shows direct distances to Rochdale and Halifax and some other villages that I can't remember now.

It has been good as an exercise, but clearly I need to work more on selecting the trails in the future.

Charlie

I've stopped my current knitting for Charlie's first sweater. He is not born yet but I need to mail the sweater to New Zealand so I could not afford to wait longer.

Charlie has English parents, so I thought I will add a Celtic Starmore element into his first sweater. Not that he will know it now, but maybe in a few decades from now, he will see it in pictures of him as a baby.

Apart from this, I am in a very bad shape - I have a new job which involves four hours of commuting in Barnsley,almost daily, on dirty and cold and late trains and buses. Plus some twenty minutes walking in the rain or wind or snow, at half past six in the morning, to the bus stop. Just great.

I can't read while traveling because of the constant noise, half of the people in the carriage shouting in their mobile phones in the same time, and can't knit either because it's too crowded to get my gear out.

So it's nothing but a frustrating waste of time.

I wanted to post today because tomorrow's post will be about our traditional First of March Day.

I am thinking what to do next: I need to finish this sweater first. It has been patiently waiting for a while and I'm almost there.

Then I will start a coat - jacket which I want to design myself. Because I need a jacket.
I have some dark blue purple merino Otto from Pavi Yarns and it looks very nice in the ball.

Then I need to get rich (or the US dollar to go down again :) and buy some more Beaverslide wool from the States.

Then I think of using some Jaeger extra fine merino DK for a 'Japanese' sort of pattern or for the Gedifra 509 which is in my queue for a while now - but I'm not sure yet which one will be.
That's the 2010 knitting plan. Apart from this, I have an impressive hiking plan, and an even more impressive website to build. My job is definitely in the way :). I need to meet that secret millionaire soon.

2010 January

I've spent an hour today going through old posts and comments - somebody left a comment with a question on an old post, I was going to answer but I've got no idea which post was it. So, here we go.
I was hoping I can see all comments by date, but somehow blogger is incapable of this sort of advanced feature.
On a different note I think I want to keep this blog alive - the experience of revisiting was quite good. Trying to remember how the last half of 2009 went: lots of trips and hiking in the Dales and the Peak District, difficult summer back home and a very complicated end of the year.

I did some knitting, mainly to keep sane, this is my last FO - finished in December last year.

The pattern is called Demi and it's from Rowan Vintage. Very popular on Ravelry. I love the neckline style and the buttons - I am going to use it again for the next sweater.
I bought the yarn from Beaverslide Dry Goods, from Montana, the colour is Lake McDonald and to be honest I can't wait to order more.
Not because I could not find yarns in England but because the experience was so positive all around I don't feel like trying anything else: very soft texture, no change in size after washing and extremely warm. I hate being cold, and this sweater is the warmest thing I've ever had.
It took me through the so called winter.

This being the first post for 2010 - just hope we'll all have a good year.