A river runs through it - and a little bit of knitting:-)

Woke up this morning to the words 'the shed is flooded......' Whaaa....whaaaat?!' I dozily replied. How, what, why? Well, that certainly woke me up this morning I'll tell you! Grabbed some messy working clothes, donned my welly boots and slogged up to the shed, through boggy puddles which, it transpired, were caused by the river running out of the shed door. 'Oh...... (substitute a big sweary word -or two -here).

I wish I had been more with it to take some pics - or a video, but that may have had to be edited:-) - to show you just how awful it was. Over two inches of water deep with water running out of the back wall along the full length of the shed about a foot up from the floor. Running out? More like pouring literally through the blocks. On further investigation, it seems there is a new drainage ditch running along the back of our sheds in the field behind, which isn't abviously draining. Well, yes, it's draining, but following the path of least resistance, which seems to be through our shed and down the slope of our garden towards the house. And still the rain keeps on filling the drainage ditch up........

Poor shed, it was so nearly dry inside and ready for the electrics. Sigh! Maybe its just as well I hadn't got them done yet with that amount of water pouring in. And at least I had tidyed it so not much was actually on the floor to be damaged. I'm looking really hard for a silver lining .....

Anyway, back to knitting. That has been slow going as I've been tidying like mad for my parents visit this week. They are staying for three days and I had to make a space in my spare room/workshop - major job with a lot of shifting of my 'stuff':-) - for them to sleep in. But it all looks lovely and tidy now.

But on to the knitting. My first christmas project is Durrow designed by Jodi Green. This is for John - but its okay, he knows about it so I can blog about it safely:-) It is mostly a 4x2 rib for the body with an intricate cable on the sleeves - lovely. So perfect tv knitting. I've knitted about 14" of the back so far and I will start shaping - small size - at 17". Not bored so far with the rib pattern as it's not quite as monotonous as stocking st:-) but enough that I sometimes switch off and then find I've made a mistake inches down. I'm hoping after laddering to pick up all these stitches, blocking will be very forgiving!

The yarn is an wool/acrylic mix by Robin -75% acrylic and 25% wool  - and comes in big 400gm balls. It feels nice to work with and has a tweedy look to it which is making the larger areas of knitting more interesting and breaking up the solid colour nicely. Each 400gm ball has 800 metres of yarn so I think two balls should be enough to cover it!

But can't wait to get to the cables as it seems a very interesting pattern - more celtic swirls that regular cable structures. Well, I'll have to wait and see - if I can manage to be patient till then! I may not have a lot of blogging time over the next few days as my computer is in the 'guest bedroom aka workshop' but maybe I will have made more knitting progress by then:-) It's easy to knit and talk at the same time, don't you think?!