The season of the lurgy

first TLM was sick. Then the boy got what she had, and languished at home for a week (yet still able to produce an impressive amount of work, considering he seemed to be near death). Now I've got what TLM and the boy had. I think. Though fingers crossed it's just going to turn out to be a short-term bout of yucky coughing.

I'm taking the day off work, but not because I'm sick. It's because TLM is sick - again. A mere fortnight after she sneezed and coughed away a wallet-full of money in unused after-school care, the poor creature is now laying about restlessly on the sofa having already vomited twice today and once yesterday.

Such is winter in our household...

The tattoo jumper

Here we go. The boy is proudly wearing his new jumper for the third time in four days! Even though it is still about 10cm too short! Mind you, he's not likely to wear it without a t-shirt underneath, so he doesn't risk any hairy-belly exposure...you can't easily tell from this picture, but the design is a bit bulgy and that's probably because when I floated the black yarn behind the patterned bits, I didn't do so loosely enough. Maybe it will all sort itself out in the wash...

This is the left sleeve, pretty much identical to the right sleeve....

 

 

I knitted it. He wore it.

There's a myth/old wives tale/cautionary tale, that if you knit your boyfriend a jumper (sweater) you will eventually break up. I think it's okay to knit for your husband though, because they're supposedly a bit more committed.
But that's not why I haven't bothered to knit much for the boy - mainly because it takes such a long time to make something that fits a man who's more than six foot tall and has a chest that makes gay tailors swoon.
Well, I did make him that Slytherin scarf. It took about the same amount of merino yarn as two me-sized jumpers. But he wore it, and stayed.

Today, I finally finished the Tribal Sweater (or, in Kiwi, the Tattoo Jumper), the one from the Knitting with balls book.

It was too short all over so I picked up the stitches at all the hems and added a couple of inches. I can do that because the hems are in stocking stitch not rib, and they curl up anyway. Apart from that, and many attempts at knitting the big octopus-thing on the front, it went pretty well. In fact, he's wearing it right now. And he's still here.

I'll post a photo at some stage, I just have to wait for a time when he's wearing it and it's not evening and we're not in a hurry to do something or go somewhere.

the personal politics of caged pork

Ever since I realised that Kiwi pig farmers like to jam their animals into tiny cages, just as much as pig farmers do in the UK (and no doubt a few other parts of the world too), I have refused to eat caged pork.

Even though I miss pork sausages terribly, I don't miss them enough to condone what I think is a cruel practice.
But my mum is a big pork fan, and has only just given up on trying to deceive me into thinking that the stuff she bought at Pak n Save and roasted so deliciously ( going by the smell) is free range.
On the other hand, if I accidentally (really!) buy a sandwich which has pork or ham in in, then I'd rather eat it because to throw it away means that a pig has lived and died in misery for nothing.

Which means I have to be a hypocrite - I'll refuse to buy the stuff or eat my mother's offerings, but if it ends up in my fridge somehow then I'd rather eat it than throw it out.

I still feel a bit guilty though.