Spuds, and knitting

Earlier this year we bought a 25kg bags of locally-grown potatoes that saw us through till our own crops were ready.  Yesterday we bought another bag of local spuds as we have now finished all our home-grown ones.  

The variety is Marfona, and we have tried them mashed, and very tasty they are.  We have no objection to the fact they come with a fair amount of good honest Island soil still attached to them!  We paid £6.95 for the bag; it works out at about 28p/kg which is a lot less than we would pay in the supermarket.  The bag should keep us going for quite some time.

It's been a bit wet here for the last couple of days, not a light drizzle but more of a steady downpour.  However it cleared up briefly this afternoon and I managed to get out for a brisk walk for an hour or so.  I'd been getting a bit 'cooped up' indoors and really enjoyed the fresh air - two and a half miles round the town was just right.  It may be urban walking, but there's usually something of interest that catches my attention - this afternoon it was an old-fashioned drop-leaf writing bureau in a second-hand shop that warranted a second look.  I didn't take my purse so I wasn't tempted to spend, but I may take N to show him as we are thinking of a new desk in the bedroom.  On the subject of furniture, we retrieved a dismantled cupboard from the loft this morning, and N put it together to try it out in stead of the very dark unit the TV currently sits on.  We were both amazed at how well the cupboard fits in; it's made that corner look much lighter.  With the added bonus of much needed storage space, we can hopefully now find a permenant home for some paperwork.  N wants to give the cupboard a bit of a spruce up over the next few days and then we can start moving things into it.

I have finally started knitting a jumper for N with the beautiful North Ronaldsay wool we bought on our trip to Orkney last May.  I think it may prove to be a challenge ;-).   I have spent quite a bit of time on the internet researching traditional gansey jumpers to reflect this very special wool.  The traditional fishermen's jumper  is usually knitted in very fine wool on fine needles and showcases wonderful intricate and very traditional patterning.  The wool we have is aran weight and after much consideration N has decided he is happy with a much plainer design, letting the wool itself carry the jumper.  I don't have a written pattern as such, so I'm 'winging' it just a little, using another jumper for sizing, and information I have gleaned from various websites on shaping etc.  I have worked a tension square to determine my gauge (which rather inconveniently seems to fall between two options) and have had the calculator out to work out the number of stitches.  To date I have cast on with 4mm and 4.5mm needles, and various number of stitches, all of which have been unpicked with growing frustation!   I took a break for a while, started afresh with 5mm needles and a different number of stitches, and it all seems to be going a lot better.  I was advised by the lady who sold us the wool to knit the body of the jumper 'in the round', something I've not tried before, so I'm looking forward to tackling that and hopefully becoming competent in a new technique - I did look up a couple of videos for advice on YouTube.  Hopefully I shall have some photos of knitting progress soon.

Not much is growing in the greenhouse at present, except this apple seedling (the other only has two leaves, although it does still seem to be alive), and the four lavender cutting I took at the end of summer.  I check on them every so often and hopefully they can all be successfully nurtured through the winter.

Depending on the weather tomorrow morning, we may be supporting the U9s football, or we may be curled up on the settee with a good book (him) and knitting (me)!  It's screen-free Sunday and I shall try to be good.