2012 in Images

I didn't manage any updates to my knitting blog this year and I feel a bit guilty.

In part this is due to the fact that I did NO knitting - it simply didn't happen.
As for the rest, there is this quote that can't be more true: blogging requires pasion and authority - which leaves out most people...


So I thought: today, last day of the year, let's try some images to recap 2012 (out of guilt I guess).
Before I start plastering the images, I must say that 2012 has been a great year from all possible respects.

I wouldn't know what more to ask from 2013, but looking forward to be (positively, of course) surprised.

January

The Savile Park long saga coming to an end. Started packing and frantically looking for another place.

Again finding myself all alone to fight it - but hey, been here before.

March

New home in Horsforth and we love it! New everything : furniture, carpets, plants, appliances - all in all, being abandoned had its advantages - the fresh smell of paint :).

April

Discovering the woods around Horsforth - magical place. I love it. Ten minutes away from my house.
I think I got the relocation right.

August

Romania. Valea Prahovei. 3000 m high.

Friends, barbecues, mountains, flights.

October

Visitig Jo in Grenoble. Five days of walking the city - what a nice place, and the cakes are no doubt to die for.

December

Feizor revisited. The place I'd rather be. All the time :).

(And yes, I know the picture is not right, one day I'll figure out how to rotate it, ok? it looks fine in irfanview, portrait and all that, so I'm really running out of ideas...)

Looking forward to 2013 - the knitting bit

This is a sweater I started ages ago. Unfortunately can't remember where is the pattern from nor can I find anything written down in this respect. I'll investigate soon though - it will be match my 'feeling blue' days :). The blue is not right in the picture - I hope I win the lottery and get a decent camera.

Looking forward to 2013 - the rest

(Copy/ paste from last year's December)

- get fit

- lose weight

- be nicer to people and small animals

- findind Mr. Right

- floss more often

...we all get the point, I hope...

Happy New Year 2013 !

Bewilderment

Right - I did finally buy smashingtrips.com - simply had to do it - at square one again...and trusting my intuition for a change :).


Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment.
Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition.

Crescent Moon

I'm switching hobbies these days. What do you mean 'again' ?

Nothing major (although I'm still tempted to try dating once more :)).

This is it, the Japanese crescent moon:

Not bad for my first attempt at crochet.
I'll do a proper technical post on my other 'Japanese blog' - follow the link if you're in the mood for a new shawl or in the mood for trying crochet.
It's Bank holiday today and miserable weather - really hope for an improvement tomorrow - I want to go in the Dales again for a bit of fresh perspective.This is from a few weeks ago - around Ingleton. I could feel this tree and it made me sad.

It's when I know it's time to buy the plane tickets to go home and recharge.

Overexposed

Interesting how I was searching a couple of things in Google today, and came across my own, very much neglected blog.

(OK, clarification : I was searching for Starmore's Tudor Roses - quite specialised search you'll say ... well :))

Nobody reads this blog anymore, anyway (...and for these sort of statements I'm known as the queen of sweeping statements...), apart from me, twice a year - I love revising my life, even if it's by accident, lol.
(This 'lol' stuff is a new term I've just learnt from some infamous dating site - don't ask :). I digress, however I'll come back to tell the story one day. )

The updates, in no particular order :
Emotionally I feel very much like an overexposed photo these days. Bright light and impossible to retrace back any details - can't remember how it happened or when. It just did and it feels quite nice actually.
Need to re-adjust my ISO levels I think, but for now I'll keep it going for a bit longer - never experienced this totally different dimension of human chemistry. It's probably just one-sided, however what a really interesting man... I'm totally struck.
I know it doesn't make sense but I know what I mean and that's the important bit, right?
Other updates? Not sure anything else would qualify worth mentioning by comparison.

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.