On the days when it is not pouring with rain, I walk along the Thames from London Bridge to the Tower of London on my way to work. I enjoy the walk along the river, particularly since it is one of those areas in London that is surprisingly quiet even when the rest of the city is bustling.

It also means I get to see some interesting sights: Tower Bridge being raised to allow a tall ship or a steamboat underneath; a luxury cruise liner incongruously moored alongside HMS Belfast; Rainbow Warrior moored outside the Tower of London.

I think my favourite might be the vision that greeted me this morning; a polar bear on a ice floe being towed upriver.

Unfortunately it was too sunny for me to get a photo and I haven’t seen any mention on the news yet but I’ll keep looking.

Edited: The BBC has a picture.

Tonight is Burns Night, the anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns. In fact, this year is the 250th anniversary.

Traditionally, Burns suppers are held round about this time. Friends get together, eat, drink, recite poetry, sing and generally make merry. Steven and I were invited to a Burns supper that some friends of ours were throwing last night and I wanted to take something traditional with us since we were going to be nearly the only Scots there. Since I’m completely incapable of making edible shortbread, I decided to make some tablet to take with us. (I’ve got about a 50/50 strike rate for tablet but it’s still more likely to turn out well than shortbread.)

Tablet is a type of Scottish confectionery that is a bit like a grainy fudge but even more sugary. I use this recipe, which works perfectly if I follow the recipe exactly and fails miserably when I don’t.

Hence, on Saturday this:

became this:

Not much of it got eaten last night but I have been nibbling away at it ever since. Fortunately, we have friends coming to stay with us for a couple of days to help us eat the rest!

… a little silliness must fall.

A very busy and stressful two weeks degenerated recently into this:

Steven and I bought a new dining table and had been discussing what we should put on it that would look nice and stop us from using it as a dumping ground for junk. Steven thought that we should put out my cake stand and buy some knitted cupcakes from All the Fun of the Fair in London for the top. Several episodes of Battlestar Galactica and some stash yarn later, we had this:

The ghosts in the first picture are a salt and pepper shaker that I’ve had for ages but one of them had broken one of its arms, making it very difficult for them to hug (or attack huge cupcakes!). Fortunately, Steven had recently glued it back together.

The single cupcake is a little lonely on its own so I’ve already cast on for the next!

My Sahara jumper is finally finished! Unfortunately, I won’t be able to take any pictures of it until the weekend so you’ll have to make do with the last in-progress picture that I have.

This was a brilliant pattern and I love the finished jumper. The only thing I would change if I knitted another would be the sleeves. I knitted the long-sleeve option and the sleeves are just a bit baggier than I would like. They’re not so bad that it would be worth re-knitting them smaller but I would do it differently if I made another.

I am also considering sewing up part of the neckline as suggested by the pattern rather than continuing to wear it as a really deep v-neck. The weight of the cotton is already starting to stretch the neckline a little so I’m hoping that a bit more structure will help.

Having finished Sahara I went back to working on my Vino cardigan, complete with an updated version of the pattern from the designer. Unfortunately, I decided that knitting it from the top-down was proving too complicated so I started again from the bottom up but all in one piece. This was going pretty quickly until I started decreasing for the waist and realised (with 7″ of cardigan already knitted) that I was exactly 100 stitches short having screwed up my mental arithmetic in spectacular fashion. Various words were uttered and the cardigan has now been consigned to a bag until I can face frogging it.

As an alternative, I’ve cast on for a pair of socks for Steven. Since these are going to be exactly the same as the pair that I recently finished for me, I’m not anticipating any problems. Of course, as with most things, “past performance is no guarantee of future results” so watch this space!

… than with a finished project. December 29th saw the end of my quickest pair of socks ever. These are the Gentleman’s half hose in ringwood pattern from Knitting Vintage socks, otherwise known as my Cyberman socks.

The pattern was delightfully easy to knit and gives a beautiful texture that works very well with the solid-coloured yarn. What is even better is that they fit me perfectly!

These were originally going to be socks for Steven (especially when it looked like his Christmas present might not be delivered in time) but, since he ended up with my Leyburn socks, I decided to make these for me.

Turns out that I’m not going to get away with not making him a pair though. He was so impressed with my pair that I just can’t resist making another for him. Since I still have enough of the solid grey yarn left, they will unfortunately be identical to mine but matching husband and wife socks aren’t the end of the world, right?