And she’s back again!

Not so small daughter arrived home to Manchester airport on Monday afternoon.  Now, on Sunday, it’s hard to believe that she was away for two weeks – and has been home for nearly a week as well!

There wasn’t much washing as she’d been encouraged to travel light and they did have their clothes washed for them whilst they were away, but those last bits and pieces such as spare boot laces, an unused roll of gaffer tape (her contribution to the emergency kit, thankfully unused) and her walking poles are still waiting to be put away – well, I’ve been waiting for not so small daughter to put them away somewhere, but it looks like she’s got too used to having sherpas to hand her stuff over to and there’s no sign of them moving!  It’s good to have her home, though.

We’ve had lots of stories and anecdotes but I think the best person to tell the tales of Nepal to you is not so small daughter herself, and she’s promised me a blog post with lots of photos to show you … I’m not quite sure when that will materialise, but I’ll keep on at her!

Her hand knitted socks stood up well to the trek – no signs of wear and tear, and you’d never know that they had been walked in for 7-8 hours a day up and down mountains.  I’m really pleased with how they’ve worn, and yes, they have been in the washing machine as unless they’re hand-dyed yarn socks that look like they won’t cope with the machine, they go in at 30° C in a laundry bag on a wool cycle and I have never had any problems doing that.  Apart from the water being too hot being an issue, I think it’s the spin cycle that really does the damage and I’ve found that the shorter, gentler spin cycle of a wool wash is fine.  Here they are, drying on the Aga.  If there are only one or two pairs in the wash, I usually dry the socks on the Aga lids, but if there are more pairs they go on this rack (it took me years to decide to buy one of these as they are specially made and expensive, but it’s been money very well-spent!), or on the clothes dryer in front of the Aga or even over the radiators in the winter if I’m cooking, and that level of heat is OK for the socks.

As a reminder in case you want to knit some trekking socks of your own, the yarn is West Yorkshire Spinners Colourlab DK Sock and the two colours we used were Jazz (the bright pink pair) and Soul (the blue variegated pair).  I used the Sound Waves socks pattern that I designed for WYS for the launch of this new yarn (you can get a copy here) which is based on my Basic 8ply (DK) Socks pattern so you can use the Sockalong tutorials for help if you get stuck, and I used my own Reinforcing Heels, Soles and Toes tutorial to make the socks a bit thicker along the bottom.

This week has mostly been about adjusting to having not so small daughter back.  She’s got the post-holiday (trip) blues as you might expect and that’s the subject of my Monthly Musing which I’ll post tomorrow (I know, if I’d been more organised this post would have been out yesterday and the Monthly Musing today, but it isn’t so it’ll have to be a Monday morning read instead of a Sunday morning read 🙂 ), but she did get to spend some time with the friends that she’s made on the trip who live locally in a non-trek environment this week, which they all enjoyed.  She’s also been back in work as she’s saving up again – maybe for uni, maybe for the next trip, we’re not sure yet!

I’ve been making good progress with my Polkcats jumper, which I started when not so small daughter was away.  I’m not far off finishing the body of the jumper (it’s a shorter, boxy style) and I have really enjoyed knitting something so different from my usual socks.

I’m a little bit worried that the fabric is looking puckered between the cats, but I think it’s a combination of the nature of the grey yarn which is slightly slubby, and I may have pulled my floats a little tight on the first few cat rounds – I’ve been wiggling stitches to make sure the floats are loose enough and wiggling the grey stitches to try to even those out too, so I’m hoping that when I finally block the jumper it will sit flat.  I’ve got two chances – but I don’t want to pull out all that work and start again, only to find that it does the same thing because of the slubby yarn!

I also discovered what the problem was with my camera that I mentioned last week – the photos have been getting progressively more blurry for some time and it turns out that it’s a fault with certain batches of my phone model and I seem to have a faulty one.  I can send it away to be repaired but have a different one to use in the meantime – I realised that I might mutter about my family being glued to their phones but I am just as bad, and especially as I like to take lots of photos!  The photo above is one taken with my new phone, and I am so relieved that it’s not blurry on the left hand side any more!

We had a worrying day with the dog on Friday when he went into the vet’s for an operation.  When he went for his vaccination boosters a couple of weeks ago, the vet was concerned with some lumps that had developed and grown quite quickly and felt that they should be removed.  Our boy is getting on a bit now – he’s 13 – and letting him undergo a general anaesthetic was not a decision that we took lightly, especially as he’d needed to be sedated for a scan earlier in the year, but our vet is lovely and very capable and we trusted that she would look after him.  She did indeed, and the dog apparently enjoyed the attention and change of scenery in the hospital both before and after his op which went very well.  I was told by both the vet and the vet nurse how much fun he had been and I’m not quite sure what means, but I can imagine that he was his usual happy self and has kept everybody entertained with songs during the day.  Sadly, though, the effort must have been a bit much, and now he’s home, he’s suffering from the post-op blues so he and not so small daughter make a good pair between them.

You know, I’ve had a lovely break whilst not so small daughter was away (I wrote about the last two weeks doing not very much here and here).  Thank you very much for your emails after last week’s post – I have read them but haven’t got round to replying yet (as you’ll have noticed), but I will do!  It’s all been a bit more full-on this week than I expected, but doing not very much whilst not so small daughter was away has been exactly the right thing to do and I absolutely feel ready to get back into everything again.  Winwick Mum things are back on the list again now, which was my plan for this year but I didn’t seem to be getting very far very fast with.  I want to update the blog – for a start, the Monthly Musings page is well out of date, and I don’t think I have all my designs listed on the Patterns and Printables page so I need to update that too.  I also want to put all of my patterns into the Winwick Mum shop here on the blog, including the free ones, to make it easier to download patterns without necessarily having to scroll all the way down a post to find the PDF.  I’ve also got audio plans which I mentioned a while ago (I’m thinking of an audiobook version of Super Socks) but that’s probably going to wait until at least September to keep me distracted when not so small daughter goes to uni.

My biggest task will be trying not to do everything at once, and I’ve still got the house and the garden to look after, although I must say (in a whisper) that I am looking forward to not falling over lots of pairs of shoes in the hallway in a month or so, so perhaps when I tidy up then the house will stay tidy for a little while!

This week, though, has been a slow return to normal so there are shoes where they shouldn’t be, plus gaffer tape and walking poles.  We’ll get it sorted.  Not so small daughter and I sat down to sign her accommodation license agreement this morning and it’s six weeks until she moves in.  That’s not long, is it?  Another adventure awaits!