Singing hedgehogs!

This is fantastic - don't click it unless you've got a spare 10 minutes though!

Tech knitting

As we're about to head off to RUSSIA, I've been thinking about what warm clothes I have and whether they'll fit the bill. I'm pretty well stocked with thermals, scarves and gloves, but my warmest hat which is a great woollen beanie from Insidious Fix in New Zealand (and only $5 - bargain!) unfortunately is a bit scratchy against my forehead so not so good to wear for long periods of time.

Solution? Buy a new hat?? Nooooo... Find out a way to line it!

And that's when I stumbled upon this great blog called 'Tech Knitting' which has a couple of posts on lining hats with polar fleece.  You can either line a strip of polar fleece at the bottom, or go the whole way and fully line the hat.  Of course, seeing as we're going to RUSSIA FOR CHRISTMAS, fully lining was obviously the way to go.

We're really lucky in that we've got a great fabric store just down the road from our house called 'Fabrics Galore' and so yesterday (a very cold, sleety Saturday morning) I headed down there and incredibly fortuitously, managed to find the exact colour polar fleece I wanted as a bargain £2 off-cut.  Score!  So much cheaper than the pre-made fleece hats I'd seen for sale.

Back to the house and the sewing began.

This is pinning the lining to size

Getting the first stitches in - sewing the tube shut

Having sewn most of the tub shut, pinning the top of the hat to size.

I look like a rooster!

Sewing the hat at the top.

Pinning back the front of the hat so it fits better.

Making the big cuts!

Hard to see, but I also had to pin back and sew the beanie because it was a bit big (always has been really).

Finished lining, now to sew it to the hat.

Getting it all pinned and in place.

Starting to sew.

Nearly done.

Finished!  Slightly uneven, but...

...I think it looks great!  No cold head for me.

 And there you have it - even a total amateur can do some tech knitting (well, in my case, tech sewing).  It only took a few hours and was really easy to follow with the great instructions.  This is the post if you're interested, and if you're a knitter, definitely check out the rest of the blog, it's really interesting.  Although I'm sure her socks aren't a patch on Emmy's wonder socks!

(Update: Adrian pointed out that I've lined the hat inside out!  So the fleece lining is actually the wrong way round...d'oh!  Ah well, it's all about learning these things isn't it...)

Snowing!

Just a quick update to say that today we've had the first snowflakes in London! I saw a few as I crossed Waterloo Bridge to go into uni, and then have seen some more from the 10th floor window as well. It's definitely of the 'blink and you'll miss it' variety, and I'm sure this is nothing compared to what might be in store for us in Russia, but still, the first snow of the season is always pretty exciting!

Winter photos

Here's the link to the photos of all the stuff I talked about in the previous post - I'll keep adding to it over this winter (although obviously Russia will get its own, probably very large, album) so keep checking back!

This one's from Secret Cinema:

Click here to see the rest of the photos.

It's Christmas time!

Posting has been slow as of late, and while that's not usually anything out of the ordinary, this time I have a really good reason!  And that's the fact that it's Christmas-time.

It really does deserve to be called the 'silly-season' I think because how can one not go a bit crazy when what seems like three-quarter's of your year's social activities are crammed into one month.  I think they even go more over-board here in the UK than in NZ because while we're all relaxed about the prospect of a nice long summer break, here it's a whirlwind of December madness before the unimitigating gloom and doom of January and February.

We've had all sorts of things on, ranging from work and university Christmas parties (the bottomless glass of prosecco party being my personal favourite), to Secret Cinema which was absolutely so much fun (but I can't tell you about it because that would spoil the secret for the people yet to go!), to leaving parties and DJ nights (my friend Duncan DJ'd at the Ministry of Sound which is a really big deal as it's one of the most famous clubs in London and we thought it was a great excuse to go and check it out), to me organising 14 of us to go to a big pub lunch and ice-skating outside the Natural History Museum...

And that's just what's been happening, not to mention the birthday party in Cambridge, Aston Villa vs Liverpool game in Birmingham, Christmas lunch, more work parties, and then RUSSIA (it definitely deserves all-caps) that's going to happen between now and Christmas.

Oof!

I've got lots of photos of various things that we've been doing, but have yet to find time to upload them all.  They include my first ever batch of mince pies which were pretty yum and the decorations I've hung on the chilli plant in lieu of a pine tree (well, considering the size of our house it'd be a pine branch probably...).  I'll get them up as soon as I can.

In the interim though, Merry Christmas to everyone!  I'm, as always, missing the sunshine and everything that comes with a Kiwi Christmas, but having lots of mulled wine to make up for it.  Got to make the cold worthwhile somehow!