I've moved!

So, I've moved to Burnley :)

Burnley is in Lancashire and I moved up from the Midlands - a good 3 hours drive.  The move itself was relatively painless, with only a few hiccups along the way, although I don't want to be doing it too soon in a hurry.

I had to leave my job.  The thing is, the commute was doing my head in - 45 minutes, but usually an hour, given the traffic.  The diesel was costing me a week's wages every month (well, 4 weekly as that's how often I was paid) and as I was the only one working in our household, money was tight.

My life was so complicated; hence the lack of blog posts.  I'd be out of the house for close to 12 hours a day for 4 days a week (including college) and then for 2 days I'd be pretty much doing half days, although I was good for nothing, especially on the Saturday as I'd have been up since 5:30 (but usually earlier, as if I was on my own, I liked to get in earlier).  Sundays was my only real day to myself, which was filled with cleaning, catching up on college work, laundry and occasionally some knitting.  I was rarely able to cook and although I cooked at work (I worked in a canteen), it's not the same as cooking lovely things for yourself.

The thing about the move is that I'm able to attend Uni up here as well.  I've finished my certificate course in counselling and I'll be able to go on and do my masters degree.  I didn't get in this year, which I have mixed feelings about.  Part of me is relieved as I'll have a year to catch my breath after living such a hectic life for a year or so and part of me is a bit upset.  It's for the best though.

The Mr. has a better opportunity for jobs up here.  In the week that we moved, he had 3 job interviews.  We've not heard anything yet, although I remain hopeful.  It will make things so much easier when we are both working. 

I've got some temporary nights work - for how long, I'm not sure - it's ongoing temporary.  I can't say I'm keen on working nights, but I'm glad that we've got some money coming in.  The money is a little bit better than what I was earning before, plus it's full time, plus it's closer, so less fuel costs, which will help.  We still have some council tax to pay back from when we were living in Nottingham, but we overpaid our gas and electric so we should have some money coming back off them soon (although some of that will get eaten by the Mr's overdraft!), which will help. 

What's cool is that we are paying the same in rent but getting a bigger property.  In Nottingham, we lived in a top floor 1 bedroom flat which was basically 2 rooms.  Now we have a 2 up, 2 down house, with a teeny yard out the back to call our very own!  For the first time, I have my own herb garden.  Well, I call it a herb garden, but they are pots of herbs bought at the supermarket.  It's a little late in the year to be planting them outside, but we will next year.  Along with some chillies and maybe some tomatoes. 

The best thing though is that my sister lives just round the corner from us, which is ace.  She's handy to have around, plus she makes ace cakes!  It's fantastic.

We haven't done any decoration yet, because a) we aren't really sure exactly what we are doing and b) it's probably a better idea to wait until the Mr. has work and I have more secure employment.  Not that we'll be spending a fortune of course!

I have located a few of the local knitting and spinning shops.  There's a shop in Clitheroe that is a distributor for Ashford wheels and also has fibre.  It was great to go in!  I also found out that there's a knitting and spinning event called Yarndale in Skipton, which I'm definitely going to go to!! 

The second best thing that happened as a result of my move?  I now have my cat Hobbes living with me!!! Epic!  When I moved in with the Mr. from Leicester to Nottingham (keep up at the back!!), I had been asked to leave the place I was staying and as neither of us could afford the estate agents fees to move, we ended up in the Mr's place - a teeny, damp, cold, depressing top floor flat.  Not good for us, and unkind on the cat.  Now that we have moved, we've been reunited.  Damn, I've missed that cat!  He's as twp as a sledge though (gotta love Welsh phrases, nobody says it quite like us), but great to have around.

I hope to be posting more regularly from now on too!!  Perhaps with more pictures as well, although I have no idea where my camera is.  Tucked in a box somewhere no doubt!

Funny how time flies...

I can't believe that it's April.  April!!!

I've not had a huge amount of time for knitting and spinning recently, because I am spending about 12 hours a day out of the house 4 days a week, and 8 hours out of the house 2 days a week.  Add college work into the mix and a bit of housework and I'm stressing.

It's not been easy lately; the fella is out of work so the pressure is on me to bring enough in to pay the bills.  He was a student nurse, but had to give up the course because of money issues and he was struggling to do the actual course.  He's had 6 job interviews in 6 months, which is pretty good.  Especially when there were 1700 applications for 8 jobs in a new branch of Costa just up the road from me.

I really hate my flat.  It's small and messy.  We have been struggling to heat the flat because of money so when the boiler packed in at Easter, it was annoying.  Yesterday, the guy from the boiler repair place came out and condemned the boiler as the flue is leaking exhaust gases into the flat, which means there was carbon monoxide leaking into the flat.  Fuck!  Luckily, I don't think the boiler itself was hugely faulty when it was actually lit, we just couldn't get it lit.  As the flat is damp, our windows are open a teeny bit to allow the air to circulate (we think it's condensation more than anything), so thankfully, neither of us has any symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning.

I saw my family on the weekend as it was my nephew's 21st birthday party. It was great to see the family and I got to dress up in rockabilly style clothes as it was a rock and roll theme. I felt rough though so didn't feel up to much and was a bit anti social :s

On the way back, I persuaded the fella to take a diversion to The Threshing Barn and I got some really nice yarn and fibre. First up was some 70/20/5 merino/nylon/sparkle hand dyed yarn

Then 100g of Corriedale in purple, green and red. To match the Corriedale, I got 100g purple merino to ply with it.

That was gonna be it but then I saw a 500g bump of a blend of alpaca, llama and merino for £25! All natural colours. Yay!

I've not spun with alpaca or llama before. This should be entertaining!

I'm really looking forward to getting involved with that, but I've just started spinning for my celestarium so it'll have to wait. I have no idea what I want to do with any of it, other than the yarn, might do some socks with that. I can never have enough socks :)

I'm also working through a bit of old stash to make room for new. I'm also working on wips as well, seeing as though I have 2 blankets, 1 sweater, 1 shawl, 1 pair of socks and a hat on the go. I would like to get 1 old project finished for every new project that I start. Having said that, my blankets are a long term project so I'm not worried about rushing to get those finished. Perhaps I could spend a couple of weeks working on one of them for every new project I start :)

I have finished the sock pattern I've been wittering on about for ages, but it probably only makes sense to me. I am not brilliant at writing sock patterns it seems, mostly because I can knit a sock from memory, so when writing out a pattern I leave out the really important stuff that's obvious to me that wouldn't be for a newbie sock knitter and I feel a bit uncomfortable about releasing a pattern that's going to annoy some people. We shall see :)

Back to the knitting methinks :)