We all needed a bit of cheering up last week, so I went to my favourite fabric and wool store (Calico and Ivy), which just happens to be next door to the girls’ favourite toy shop (Fun, Form and Function). I bought myself two more balls of sock yarn and A bought a doctor’s set and P are tin tea set (must be better than the china one we broke).

I’ve almost finished one sock for A (no photo as yet). I find the monotony of going around and around very relaxing, particularly if I’m watching a period drama (my latest purchase was season one and two of Road to Avonlea).

I’ve also just joined Ravelry - so far all I’ve done is add my two balls to my stash, but I’m hoping to find some time to browse through all the projects…

I bought three books from Persephone Press - Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson, The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher and Family Roundabout by Richmal Crompton.

The service was fabulous and the books arrived within a week and they are beautiful! Each with a book mark that matches the end papers.

So far I have only read Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. I liked it. It definitely had that between the wars, elegant, sophisticated movie feel about it. In fact it would make a fabulous film - (there is a film being released in May in Australia). It’s quite dated, a bit like reading old romance novels, but it made me want to stay up late drinking gin and visiting late night cocktail bars. So all in all a fun, light read.

I’ve just finished reading Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell. I read it because Jane Brocket recommended it in The Gentle Arts of Domesticity (in the section on The Domestic Library page 28).I enjoyed it - it was certainly domestic. In someone ways it reminded me of E F Benson’s Mapp and Lucia novels (although less tongue in cheek). It had lots of lovely ancedotes about lace, swapping between your two candles so they’re always the same height and everybody thinks you always burn two, etc. For the lovely middle aged genteel ladies of Cranford it is all about ‘elegant economy’ anything else would be vulgar.

I recommend this book - if only to see how women of a certain age, income and class lived in the 1800s.

I even bought the latest BBC version of Cranford (did you know that the BBC Store sells region 4 (Australia) DVDs? And they arrive in less than a week!).

I bought myself a heart shaped cake tin - everyone should own a heart shaped tin. This is a chocolate cake with rose pink icing - recipe from this book.

I went to this store - my favourite quilt store - and bought fabric for the binding and backing for my Turning Twenty Quilt.

The orange spotty fabric is for the binding and the bottom fabric in the image is for the backing.

I finished my first pair of socks! I feel extremely smug. I’m now making a second pair …

I finished one sock. I feel very pleased with myself. It is by no means perfect, but I finished a piece of knitting that I started - of course I still have the other sock to do!

So despite my first attempt at making socks being so disastrous (I have unravelled what I did and I’m starting again with smaller needles), I bought more yarn*, needles and a book. I have also found a really useful You Tube video.

So far I have managed to cast on (using the Long-Tail cast on) and knitted two rounds (it’s way too small for a photo).

* I have colour 27 yarn.