Book Nook

At Christmas, I received a Book Nook from my husband.  (In truth I saw it when we were out, asked him to buy it and give it to me for Christmas 😆).

It is a Rolife Garden Room and goodness me it was fun to put together.  So much so I have bought another kit!

Everything comes flat packed that you unpeel or pop out of the sheets of parts. The instructions are clear, everything is labelled well. 

There are numerous companies that make these and tons of themes. I have chosen garden/greenhouse themed ones as they tie in with my gardening hobby.  But there are bookshops, cafes, witchy shops, even an Alice in Wonderland themed one. 

Knitting

I finished my DK socks.  West Yorkshire Spinners Colour Lab in Rock.  Mostly I follow Deb’s Super Simple DK socks pattern, but I do 3×1 rib to make them fit better.

A hat I knitted in 2021, using baby camel and silk handspun, fell in a muddy puddle last Sunday, so I washed it.  My goodness it grew and grew and basically if I put it on it covered my head to my collar bone! So I unpicked a few rows at the top, added some rib and cast it off and its now a cowl!  Someone did warn me baby camel and silk wasn’t a good idea for a hat…well without washing it worked fine for 5 years in rotation with my other hats.

Spinning

If you were here last week, you’ll know the drive band on my Nano 2.0 wheel broke and I was waiting for some new bands to arrive from Amazon.  The good news is they fit!  So far so good.

If you have a Nano 2 or 2.1 they both use the same band and the one you are after is available in the US from 3 suppliers that are linked on the Dreaming Robots website.

If you are in the UK what you need to look for is an AS-036 O-rings, Nitrile Rubber O-Rings 2-3/8″ ID (Inside Diameter), 2-1/2″ OD (Outside Diameter), 1/16″ Width Round Sealing Gasket for Automotive Machine Plumbing Sealing Repair (70 Durometer, Black)

This is the UK Amazon link, at the time of writing they have 1 left in stock.  Good luck!

I was at work when we had one of the Guild January challenge zoom calls but made the one on Thursday night when I finished the pineapple fibre sample, which was not an enjoyable spin. It kept getting up my nose and a little like mohair getting everywhere.  I received the fibre in 2018 in one of the World of Wool Fibre Club boxes…in case anyone was wondering why I bought it.

It isn’t as soft as last week’s banana fibre.  I will be doing another non-wool fibre on Monday at a friend’s, either milk protein, mint or ramie (nettle fibre).  Yesterday I spun some more of the BFL and mulberry silk which I should finish this week.

Obviously, the book nook took away some spinning time this week.  I had said to my husband I would start it in February, but then opened the box just to have a little look…oops. 

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Other News

I am loving my Kindle Paperwhite so far.  Its definitely helping my bedtime routine not looking at my iPad in bed.  In fact, I am really just using my iPad in my craftroom for Zoom chats and watching things whilst I craft.

Rather than make a list of resolutions this year, I have in mind some small changes to implement bit by bit as the months go on.  So far so good on the first change.

I noticed the last two weeks a massive spike in my viewing, especially for posts in 2018!, and thought it suspicious.  When I have investigated more it looks like its coming from Singapore and when I googled it, it says “Bots from Singapore (often linked to Chinese IP ranges) are visiting your blog, creating artificial traffic spikes with near-zero engagement in your analytics, not real users. These sophisticated bots bypass standard filters by using large data centers in Singapore and China, often appearing as “Direct” traffic, to harvest content and train new AI models quickly.”

Interesting that after I used the AI functions of WordPress in a couple of early January posts this is now happening.  So just a heads up to others. 

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This is a Year of Projects post. Officially the Group is in its 15th year, but this is my 8th year participating. If you would like to find more about the Year of Projects Group on Ravelry, as you’d be very welcome to join us.

Year 15 list.