And the small struggle to be an actually responsible twenty-something
When it comes to blended tops, I reckon Spin City has it covered. Beautifully bright colours, a big range of wools and fibres, and drafting is easy-breezy - they basically spin themselves... I've not been disappointed by an order yet!
I'd been meaning to go to a Holi celebration for years now. It's the Hindu festival of colours, celebrating the beginning of spring, where people dance, laugh, have fun and, most recognisably, throw coloured powder at each other. As luck would have it, there's a big celebration in Barcelona every year. We donned our white t-shirts and prepared to get messy.
On Saturday, we took a day trip to Blanes. Querube was desperate to go to the Costa Brava, and Blanes is the first town along that coastline (it's also conveniently on the train line that passes Masnou, which made things easy-breezy for me...). Forecast was good, sun was shining... We packed our bags and headed out.
Normally, we spend Easter with family - eating, drinking, going to church, eating some more... The last two years have been somewhat different. Last year, I spent Easter with friends in Uruguay, relaxing on a gorgeous farm in a little town called Mercedes, and being bitten to death by mosquitoes. This year, what with my host family not being religious, Easter was a very low key affair that really was nothing more than a lazy weekend - and it was fabulous.
A little while back, I saw an Instagram post from Greta and the Fibers that they'd been busy dyeing some sock blanks for All You Knit Is Love - and there and then, I knew I'd have to have them. While my parents were visiting me in Barcelona, we popped in briefly, where a gorgeous grey, teal and turqouise sock blank caught my eye.
On Monday, the weather cleared up nicely. Still a little cloudy, but the sun was so desperately trying to break through that we got a few rays here and there. I was working during the day (I live for the lunchtime school runs) but we managed to get together for one last dinner before the Doks headed home.
After Saturday spent eating, drinking, and wandering around... we did the exact same thing on Sunday. The lovely part about having seen all the major sights already was that we could wander wherever, with no time pressures, no rush to see anything specific... Just spending time together and talking about anything and everything.
This post is photo heavy!
Well, this weekend was super happy and super sad at the same time. I spent a great weekend with all the girls - drinking, dancing, gossiping and brunching - to celebrate Emma's last weekend in Barcelona. She's moved back to Wisconsin (cheese state, can I get a what what!) to go to college and see her family and generally get her shit together after Barcelona Baby-adulthood, and we're really, really going to miss her.
The sheep is Pam. Named after the fabulous Pam Poovey. Bear claw rawr-rawr!
Another happy mail day: I got my fibre from February's Odyssey Trail update at Countess Ablaze, a Turkish spindle, and some 40" circular needles for making socks (I'm learning to knit two-at-a-time magic loop, but more on that in an upcoming post).
I recently treated myself to some goodies from Hilltop Cloud - a shop I'd been ogling for a long time, but never ended up buying anything for some reason. I bought Imbolc and The Valleys, as well as a little wooden WPI gauge. My lovely little parcel arrived on the same day as the gorgeous invitation for my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary party that's happening this May. Everyone's super-mega-excited and scrambling to find an outfit - the whole family will be there (and my granddad is one of ten children so that's a lot of cousins and second cousins...) and you gotta look your best!
I'm living in the Temple of Disease and Pestilence. A couple weeks ago, Littlest Bug had chicken pox, closely followed by stomach flu (let me tell you, you can never quite unsee the moment when something so little manages to barf up the Pacific Ocean...). Everything seemed fine... until the early hours of Friday morning, when all hell broke loose. Stomach flu snuck up on me, and made its surprise appearance very well known by 3am. Bigger Bug now has chicken pox. And Littlest Bug is battling another round of bronchitis. Basically, a terrible weekend had by all.
There's nothing better than a relaxing weekend spent gossiping with friends. Except for a relaxing three-day-weekend spent gossiping with friends. I never really know when Spanish fiesta days pop up, so it's always a lovely surprise when I get an extra day off for no real reason except for the fact that some saint somewhere did something somewhat notable at some point in the past. M'agrada molt*.
I told myself that this year, I'd purchase something from each monthly update of Countess Ablaze's new collection: The Odyssey Trail. As usual, updates are rough. You essentially have about one minute and seventeen seconds to put everything in your basket and click through to checkout, and even then you don't manage to score everything you had your eye on. I actually really wanted some superwash Merino in a black/orange/pink/red colourway, but by the time I'd hit checkout it was sold out. Wow. Luckily, I also quite fancied this braid of Southdown and managed to get my grubby mitts on it just in time.
The postlady waddled up to my door yesterday with an extra bag attached to her little trolley. Inside, two big parcels - just for me! That's dedication, and I told her so in my weird mix of Spanish and Catalan (Spanalan?) - she briefly laughed and went on her way, while I closed the door as nonchalantly as I could, before sprinting upstairs to rip open the packaging.
Have you ever caught a virus from a child? They're evil mutant diseases that take hold, and don't let go for ever and ever a good couple of weeks. Recently, I caught bronchitis from the kids. Two weeks of a deliciously mucusy hacking cough that puts so much pressure on your head, your eyes feel like exploding. I've spent a lot of time sleeping - coupled with eye strain, that meant very little time spent on spinning. The fifteen minutes of daily spinning I looked forward to began to feel like a chore. I slowed right down - instead of managing four or five batt strips in that quarter hour, I was only halfway through the second when the timer beeped. I was picking up the spindle with a sigh, rather than a smile. It made me sad that I didn't even look forward to my favourite activity anymore. I'd been working on Hen for a long time - my only current spinning project. Maybe putting Hen aside, and starting something new in the meantime would pick me up?
I'd never spun from a batt before - I'd always been somewhat scared of "ruining" it by stripping the fibre apart. What can I say? I love them. No predrafting required (my nemesis, it's so boring), the colours fade beautifully, and they're like little clouds of fluffy fibrey goodness to play with. What's not to love? I like big batts and I cannot lie.
I intended January to be a month of cold-sheeping (a slightly fluffier, less gobble-gobbley cold turkey). Now, I know some people just cannot hold back when it comes to wool, no willpower or thoughts of actual money management... What? No! Who does that? Yeah. Okay. I lasted ten days. Nunoco opened after their Christmas break, and my self-restraint is that of a peanut. -1 responsbility. Boo.
I first picked up a spindle in May 2014. A clunky wooden thing, nothing extraordinary, yet it opened up a whole world of possibility. Spinning soon became my way to unwind and relax - the ultimate stress-buster - and I got serious about it from August, when I moved to Barcelona. From August to December, I managed to spin 1,495m from 1.04kg of fibre. Nothing too amazing, all on spindles, but still - it would take about 18 minutes to walk from end to end, and I think that's pretty damn cool.
Going back to London for Christmas was fantastic. "Only hand luggage" was not. I got some really lovely things for Christmas, and even more in the Boxing Day sales, and there was just no way to lug it all back in my teeny little Apfelgrun suitcase. This is the part where Mama and Daddy came to the rescue - I got a knock at the door today, with a UPS man bearing an incredibly large, incredibly heavy parcel.
