Struggles

This Saturday was my DS' 4th birthday. He is now fully Ben Tenned up - pyjamas, sports bag, watch, action sticker book, monster illuminator thingy, and, of course, the birthday cake itself - thanks to his aunties and uncles and our excellent neighbor Su. He also received lots of army stuff - little plastic men, tanks, missile launchers etc. Stereotype, much ?

He was chuffed with his Ghostbusters outfit, complete with inflatable proton pack, even though he broke it within 10 minutes of putting it on. He had one friend to play, and his sister had one friend to play, which meant the kids amused themselves while the adults drank wine, lots and lots of wine. I think we'll follow this format again.

My father flew back out to Tennessee, where he'll be for about a week before heading back down to Honduras. While we have the central heating on, he may just have to put on a light jacket if the evenings get cool .... His English house is completely rewired, a brilliant job done quickly and neatly by the electrician Andy Smith.

This week, I shall be struggling to add Google Analytics to my
website, Kismet's Companion. I have the html code, it tells me where to put it; however, as I'm a technical luddite, I have a package which has a sitebuilder (point & click). I can get it to show me the html for the webpage I want, but when I add the Google html code, it shows as html code in the finished version. Hmm. I may try again tonight when the kids are in bed, and I can concentrate without interruptions. Also today, Mozilla Firefox is not cooperating at all nicely with Blogger - I've been trying to do this post since lunchtime, with brief breaks for swearing, nicotine, cup of tea, and trip to collect DD from school. It does not want to upload pictures.

Yesterday, I dug out the sweater I have been attempting to knit for

DH. It's been on the needles since the end of December 2008. Actually, I hadn't realized that it has been quite that disgracefully long! The pattern is a shawl collar sweater from the Lion Brand website. Last time I knitted a sweater for DH, a raglan turtleneck, it was also from this website; I assumed the measurements etc were accurate. It was woefully short, and the supposedly long sleeves were elbow length on my DH. Rather than frog/re-knit black boucle yarn, one of my sisters-in-law was very happy with it - so not an entire waste of £60 worth of yarn, but a total waste as being DH's birthday present.

So this time the sweater is in charcoal, in aran weight; I have diligently measured, and added 17 inches in length to the sleeves, and 10 inches to the length of the body. No, my DH isn't Shrek, I believe it's the pattern at fault again. Everything was going swimmingly - I set in the sleeves, added the panels for extra width - it all matched up nicely. And fitted. Until DH tried to get his arm into the sleeve - the underarm part of the sleevehole was too small. So I chucked it into a corner and we have been sulking at each other ever since. Which is months now.

I have now tinked back several rows on the side panel, and am knitting increases on every row til it gets to an appropriate width, and then I shall decrease like mad also, to hopefully achieve a diamond-shaped gusset thingy for the underarm. And if it still doesn't fit, if he still can't get it on, after that .....Bonfire Night approaches.

Images from the Universal Waite, and the Beardsley Tarot