School's out ...

Sorry Susoolu, should have posted an update earlier - here it is ...

Loop was lovely, and because I didn't have a huge amount of time spare, I escaped relatively lightly, having only bought 2 magazines, and 3 skeins of the Louisa Harding Sari Silk - think this is destined to become Loopy and Luscious scarves. The magazines were the two Interweave Knits specials, Knitscene & Crochet. There's a gorgeous little pink jacket (very ladylike!) and a rather nice linen-y looking drawstring top with big buttons that I particularly want to knit from Knitscene, though I was a little irritated to find that they hadn't put all the patterns in the magazine, as some are to be found on the web instead - strikes me as a little strange, and perhaps lessens the value of the magazine? - What if I still want to knit those patterns in years to come, will they still be available ...?

Studying all done till February - the exam was OK, not bad, not good, but at least the questions were pretty much in line with previous exam papers. We were allowed a handbook of formulae etc (which I never find that helpful as it's all in greek, if you see what I mean ...) and we were allowed to annotate this as well - a dubious privilege in my view, as you can bet that any extra notes which I choose to include will be of no help whatsoever! On the whole, I think that I've probably passed, and if so then I've only one course left to do next year. The OU have 'kindly' posted copies of the relevant exam papers on our personal student pages - I am absolutely not going to look! - post mortems are too depressing for words, they only tend to show up how many bits you completely c**ked up. The questions were on such delights as factors contributing to mortality rates, the use of plots and graphs in general linear modelling, how closely length and breadth are related in a population of jellyfish, efects of nitrogen fertiliser on grass yields, etc, etc.

The exams both days finished at 5.30pm, and the strange thing was that because I'd been in a room with very little natural light (and the curtains were drawn), I found myself quite surprised when
I came out to find it was actually still daylight! Felt a little bit like a mole must feel when it makes another bumps in the lawn.

The dinner on Thursday evening was terrific, probably the best steak I've ever eaten, which is most unusual for a function of that type, the menus usually tend to be rather bland to avoid offending too many people (eg. chicken is almost alway served), and it was held in a really beautiful guild hall in the City of London - I have taken some photos, and will post them as soon as I can locate my card reader - in the meantime, check this link

Since Thursday, I've been knitting wildly, and I'm about halfway through my cabled top. I'm experimenting with allowing the size of the knitting needles to create some of the shaping for me, so started the main part with 4mm needles, and changed up to 4.5mm after about 3 inches, will possibly change up again to 5mm in another inch or so, that's the bit over the bust - think it seems to be working quite well so far, the step between the two needle sizes used so far is not nearly as noticeable as I thought it might be, but I think it will still improve the fit just that little bit. Have taken photos, and will post in next day or so ...