Up, up and away

My second sock is pretty close - I've done the heel shaping, heel flap, and am just finishing the gusset shaping. I did have a minor set back where I was tired, so I got mixed up on whether I was on an increase row or not, so decided to frog back a few rows, couldn't work out where I was, so frogged back more, right back to where you pick up the stitches for the gusset. When will I learn that I should put down the needles when I'm tired? Anyway, it actually turned out for the best, as I was able to fix up the little error I made on my first sock.

See this huge hole between the gusset and the instep? And how the stitches are kinda loose around there? It was the only thing I wasn't really happy about on my first sock. But for the 2nd sock I used Nancy Bush's advice from Knitting on the Road (a great book with lots of cool socks from all over the world). She suggests picking up an extra stitch on each side when picking up the stitches on the heel flap, then on the first row decrease those stitches. See the difference?


Yesterday was really nice, I went to my Zoo induction training. I'v been volunteering at the zoo for the last month or so, it's so much fun. I am doing it every second Sunday, and get to facepaint kids, look after the volunteer animals (mostly insects and reptiles) and will eventually be able to give talks to the public about animals, and do presentations with the volunteer animals, where kids can touch them! So far I've held a taruntula as big as my hand, a giant african land snail, once again as big as my hand, and petted rats.

After the zoo, we went to the Bristol Balloon Fiesta, along with everyone else in South West England. There were so many people! The roads were crazy, we caught a bus there that just crawled all the way, so we walked home (took about two hours!). The funniest thing was the night glow, where apparently the balloons, which were landed, would fire up in time to music. It didn't really work, but was pretty spectacular anyway. The funny thing about it was the music choice - absolutely bizarre, with no real theme or coordination. I thought they would use classical music, but no, it was Gypsy Kings, Kylie Minougue, Barry White, the Lambada song, Funky Town by Lips Inc, Gypsy King's again, singing My Way in Spanish(?), followed by the Frank Sinatra version. It was hysterical! It finished with some fireworks. I have to say, I love how many public displays of fireworks there are in the UK. In Australia, well at least in NSW, fireworks are illegal, and we really only have public dispays for New Years Eve and Australia Day.