Lots of knitting, and a beautiful ginger cat

I love the sheer abandonment shown by Meg when she sleeps beside me on the couch in the evening while the log fire keeps the room nice and toasty. She is relaxation personified. 

I finished both uppers for my slippers. I really like this pattern, and remember how lovely they felt on my feet when I last had them a few summers ago.

Though I am thinking of lining them either with some black fleece I have, or with a dress-weight cotton. The fleece would make them very warm and the cotton would make them look amazing (I love gorgeous linings), BUT once I'd finished knitting them I remembered how lovely the moss stitch felt against bare feet - really good, and like a mini-massage.

But in super-exciting news, I began my scarf last night! I'm really happy with it so far. I didn't have a plan or pattern when I began, just knew I wanted to knit the Norwegian star into the ends, and have occasional stripes of yellow to save on black wool. I had to increase the number of stitches by six on the second block of black as it was feeling slightly too narrow. It's wider than my previous scarf but that is knitted in rib and stretches whereas this is just st-st.

I did all of this last night so I anticipate being finished quickly. And not a moment too soon. My old hat, scarf and mittens are looking decidedly GRUBBY. I'll be able to salvage and re-use the green Rowan Cocoon from the ends of my scarf but the rest of the wool is too well-used to have any life left in it.

Saturday

This is Meg as she sits on my lap first thing every morning - usually while I'm eating breakfast. She has her breakfast, then she approaches me and eyes my lap, so that I'll move round to enable her to jump up and snuggle in. She is such a faithful little friend.

Sometimes I pick up my knitting as I pass by, intending to only do one row. And lo and behold, Meg followed me, thought I was going to settle at my desk in the living room, and jumped up and settled down on top of my piano. It's so she can be as close to me as possible. What an honour :) I absolutely adore her.

So we went to Whitmuir Organic Farm this morning for coffee and cake, as usual. Whitmuir is a lovely place. I had shortbread today, Hagos had coconut macaroon. With cappuccino and decaf flat white.

Though I have a thumb left to knit on my mittens, and a sleeve still to knit on my jumper, I haven't been knitting lately because I haven't felt like knitting either of those things. So I picked up this incomplete project from a couple of years ago. They're a pair of cotton slippers, I think from an old Erika Knight book. I knitted the soles ages ago as I got the cotton in a John Lewis sale. Then I didn't bother finishing them. It's quite a quick knit and I should probably finish knitting the uppers this weekend. Just in time for summer.


I have been enjoying reading such a lot recently. I just finished Marianne Dreams, by Catherine Storr, which I last read when I was a child, and I'm now reading Lord of the Flies, after watching a documentary on William Golding. Again, I haven't read the book since I was a kid, and my copy is stamped with the name of my school, so I obviously didn't return it when I left. I also made a list of books I want to read and have been meaning to read for years and hope to make my way through the list to read as many as possible. But after reading Lord of the Flies I intend to read The Thoughts and Happenings of Wildred Price, Purveyor of Superior Funerals by Wendy Jones. I went to university with Wendy and am really looking forward to reading her book.

Sunday

Each Sunday we meet our friends to go for a walk, play board games and have a roast dinner. We take turns to cook. Today it was such an amazingly warm, balmy, sunny day, and we headed up to Flotterstone, this time heading off the beaten track for a really wonderful, secluded walk. The above photo was taken by balancing the camera on a tuft of grass and setting the 10 second timer. 

At home we sat in the garden and ate Doritos and dips and JJ and I planted some cut-and-come-again lettuce. Then we played Pictionary. Pudding was Lemon Tart with strawberries and ice cream as options. A great day.

Saturday

A bike ride up and down the driveway.

The daffodils are bursting out.

Coffee and cake at Whitmuir Organic Farm. (Er, the cake wasn't around long enough to be photographed. I had chocolate mocha cake, Hagos had lemon drizzle cake.)


A good start to our Saturday. The rest of the day will be spent: knitting, writing, reading, cleaning, making meringues and chocolate chip cookies. Oh, and a film and pizza in the evening. I LOVE SATURDAYS.

Chilli plants

So the planting season is upon us and I thought I'd better get at it. These will be chilli plants (hopefully). I put three seeds in each pot. Most are Hot Aji Crystal, but we also sowed a few seeds from some shop-bought chillies as an experiment.

It felt good to get them sown, actually. Next will be tomato seeds. I've only grown tomatoes from plants before so it will be interesting to see if they work. And I need to get the rest of the garlic in and also the onions. I remember from previous years that nothing happens for ages and then it seems to be a non-stop sowing, planting, feeding etc. Harvest time is the best, of course. Though I do like just watching stuff growing and developing. My favourite time of the day used to be morning when I'd go outside in my pyjamas and look at everything.

Pear Tart

Pretty much the only time I bake these days is every second Sunday, when we go to The Burnses for Sunday dinner. It's become a tradition: we cook roast chicken one week, they bring dessert. They cook roast chicken the next week, we bring dessert. 


The last couple of weeks have been heavy on the chocolate! One of which (my chocolate meringue stack) was quickly followed by me being very ill with gastric flu. So, since then I've been off chocolate, which is extremely unusual for me.

So this week I wanted to make something really pared down. Plain. Simple. With fruit! I found this Pear Tart recipe on the internet. The base is almost shortbread-like, the pears are delicious and it has a butter and sugar topping that caramelises the top. 

Often, when I go into M&S or when I come across a French market I head straight for the pear tarts in the fresh bakery section. This pear tart was really delicious, and definitely on a par with any of the best pear tarts I've bought. 

Of course, the kids didn't want any of it and they had Ben and Jerry's chocolate fudge ice cream. But everyone else seemed to like it.

My Life in Books

I almost didn't watch My Life in Books as I can't bear the way Anne Robinson treats her contestants on The Weakest Link. Any kind of rudeness or belittling makes me angry. It's just NOT FUN. 


But I'm glad I came across it in iPlayer and decided to give it a go because it's such a great programme: two guests each show talking about their life through four chosen books. 


It made me think which four books I'd choose from throughout my life and these are what I came up with:

Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr. Marianne is confined to bed with an illness and starts drawing pictures in pencil during the day to entertain herself. Then she realises that the house she's drawn is appearing in her dreams. Everything she draws during the day she then dreams about at night. I loved this book when I was a kid because it was so imaginative and a bit spooky. My parents took me to the library every Saturday, a habit I continued through my whole life until I moved to Edinburgh actually (and am hoping to resurrect).


War Poems by people like Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Rudyard Kipling etc. I was first introduced to the war poets by my amazing English teacher Mr Girvin. He took us through the poems line by line and explained the poetic devices, the history and background. Dulce et Decorum Est is so incredibly moving. As is My Boy Jack.  And just the title of Anthem for a Doomed Youth is breathtaking.


Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I first read Pride and Prejudice properly when I did my first degree as we were looking at adaptation. For me, it's such a perfect novel as it is so economically written, the plot or characterisation is continually being driven forward. Anyway, I've written about how I feel about it before. I re-read this book at least once a year.

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. Again, I've written about this here fairly recently. When I was studying for my first degree I was introduced to Tzvetan Todorov and his theory on the Uncanny, the Marvellous and the Fantastic. And Sarah Waters pulls this off perfectly. I loved it with relish.

Sewing Class Saturday

This is my neighbour Chloe. She wanted to try out my sewing machine as she's thinking of buying one for herself. She brought over some true 70s fabric to make a cushion cover.

It's been ages since I set aside an afternoon to sew in. I really enjoyed it. It's so therapeutic and the satisfaction of having something new at the end of it is lovely. I love the element of design that goes into making things too. We decided to keep the cushion cover simple and had an overlap at the back, so we didn't have to mess around with zips or buttonholes.

Et voila! The finished article. I really must get round to re-covering that chair! It clashes with everything. To think I had a whole couch in that material at one point. The chair has been with me a long time though. I bought it in my early 20s when I lived in London.


Chloe was pleased with her cushion. And the afternoon was perfectly finished off with her husband Will (hello Will!) bringing in some home-made seed bars for me and Hagos. We pounced on them straightaway. They were delicious.


I'm still recovering from gastric flu from last week. It's left me feeling a bit faint and ghost-like. It took me ages to get back to eating normally and a positive side effect has been that I've stopped eating chocolate and all other crap like Monster Munch. Things that had crept into my diet. I lost 4 lbs. Long may it last! 

Knitting Fever

In anticipation of finishing my mittens (below) I had an urge today to knit my hat. I've knitted this pattern a lot so know it only  takes a couple of hours from start to finish. I had leftover wool from a waistcoat I knitted some years ago and used that. I'm very pleased with it. Pattern, I think, is from a Rowan book I've since lost, but am lucky enough to have a photo of it. 

So I've knitted one thumb, just one to go. While photographing the mittens I spotted my ginger friend out of the window. Mouse-hunting season is upon us again. Averaging one a day for now but it'll be up to two before long.

And I've also cast on the second sleeve for my Rowan jumper. I'm hoping I'll have enough of the purple wool to finish it! I have another half ball but had to stop knitting with it because it's frayed every half metre or so. Very annoying.


Currently reading The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman. I just finished the whole of the Harry Potter series. I'm in the mood for adventure and escapism.

Mittens and Ombre Hair

So I'm a bit further along with my mittens, though progress has been slow. I think I'm not in the mood for two-strand knitting; a TV jumper is more where my brain is at. Anyway, they're nearly finished, just a tussle with the thumbs left and that'll be it.


I feel a bit like a duck at the moment, or is it a swan? Lots of legwork under the water but not much visible on the surface.


I've been thinking of dyeing my hair back to chocolate-brown recently, and then came across the ombre hairstyle! I love it. So am now trying to figure out how to get my growing-out highlights into an ombre. I think I might have to dye the top of my head and somehow try to leave the highlights in the bottom of my hair. Hm. I particularly like Sarah Jessica Parker's photo. 

Stuff

The living room table microcosm. Baking books; Nutella; chocolate; a gardening book; Harry Potter, book five; the phone; remote controls; Radio Times; a cup of tea. Sometimes the living room and kitchen tables seem to sum up precisely how I'm living my life at a particular moment.  

And then last week I drove to Dumfries to visit my parents and sister. Edinburgh was bright, clear and sunny when I left in the morning so I was surprised to come across this around The Devil's Beeftub! Keeping me company on the drive though, via Radio 4, was a programme on the recently released A Card From Angela Carter by Susannah Clapp. Love programmes like that.

This was the Haggarty/Burns outing on Sunday at Blackford Hill. We spent a good half hour at the top of this hill running around taking panoramic photos with Hagos's new phone app. We figured out we could have multiples of ourselves in the one shot by running along to the next section once we were out of the frame in the first section. We changed photographers halfway through too so we were all included. I should really have got a copy of the good shots but instead I only have my own, orthodox photos to show.

Very dull compared to the silliness we'd just been up to. I'll try to get a copy of the photos for tomorrow and post then.

Me and Batman as we watched X-Men 2 and waited for roast dinner to be ready :)

I put out the last of my chitting potatoes today. Meg's cat food boxes proved to be good containers. And through the window, Hagos had started digging up our little vegetable patch. These are Maris Pipers, 2nd Earlies.

These are a mixture: International Kidney and Casablanca. I bought Casablanca because of the name. 

I hope they taste good and are high yield.

And one thing I've learned from no longer living near a corner shop is that sometimes I run out of CHOCOLATE - eek. So today I rifled through my recipe books and found a quick fairy cake recipe and made these as a substitute. They were pretty good.

Gemma, by Laura Long

I finally finished Gemma tonight while watching TV. I thought it would take me ages to deal with all the loose ends, but I eventually just tied them together 8 times, hoping they won't come undone in the wash, and only sewed in the ends at the very bottom of the hem. There were too many to deal with and so after six years it's finally, absolutely, completely and totally finished. I originally posted about it right at the beginning of this blog, here.

So the inside doesn't look pretty, but no one except me will know once I have it on. I've already talked about the colours not really being my colours (pastel purple???), and I only chose them because the photograph in the Rowan book was so seductive. Anyway, I'm glad it's finished. (My little assistant got in on the act as usual when I was taking photos, nudging me so there were lots of blurry shots.)

All in all, I'm pleased with it. It's lovely and soft, and I don't have anything else like it.

I did look on Ravelry and discovered pretty much everyone on there who has knitted Gemma had the same problems as me with the ends. Laura Long could easily have given clear directions on that from the start. Anyway, it's finished.

The Big News

Is that there is no news, it being January an'all. So to entertain myself I have finished the first of my new mittens (sans thumb).

I like how it's turned out and think these colours may be a keeper! Phew. I've just started the second mitten so I should be finished them in about a fortnight, thumbs included. The matching hat will take an afternoon, but the matching scarf could take about three weeks. I'm thinking of knitting the Norwegian star design on my mittens into my scarf but will probably also need to do some rows of pure yellow to use up wool and get a long enough scarf. Still playing around with the design.

 

Hagos has been making soup every other day. It's totally amazing and so delicious. He uses either a lentil or a split pea base and then adds stock and vegetables. It's very healthy.

This has become my favourite spot in the house, round about 5pm. I either sit and read for an hour, or knit a few rows in silence. It's all too easy to put on the TV or radio and actually it's lovely to just sit with the sound of the fire beside me. I'm re-reading the Harry Potter books (alongside adult books too) and I usually read HP at 5pm and when I go to bed. My brain doesn't want to deal with any complicated or clever plot-lines at 11pm.

And, the snowdrops are out! Such a relief to see them poking through the earth along with other, later flowers. I really love snowdrops.

The only other news is that our Tuesday night pub quiz is doing fairly well (should be, considering we had nine members last night!). It's been great to re-instate our London pub quiz tradition, and to have three of the original members in our new team is great. 

Coffee, and Third Time Lucky with the choice of Mitten Colours?

This is my coffee ritual in the morning. A half-caf, as a fully caffeinated coffee is too much for me and keeps me awake at night.

And my new colour combination for my mittens. This is the third time I've attempted to get the colours right. The first was purple and orange (yuck), the second was green and purple, which I liked, but which now seem a bit garish. More subtle, but still striking (I'm hoping) is my honey-yellow and charcoal.

Moleskine Diary, and Me and Meg Portrait

I love Moleskine notebooks, particularly the cahier designs. And my favourite colour at the moment is around the yellow and orange end of the spectrum. 

So I was pleased when my new diary arrived today. It has a week per page as well as useful information at the front, but most useful to me will be the time zones page and the page that has a ruler with inches and centimetres :)

Moleskine notebooks are/were favoured by artists (according to Moleskine) including Van Gogh, Picasso, Hemingway and Chatwin. I love the range they do, for example notebooks with musical scores in, sketch books, story board notebooks, watercolour books, Japanese concertina books, specified city notebooks, as well as their range of sizes and colours. And they are incredibly, aesthetically satisfying to use. They are beautiful. 

This is me attempting a self portrait of me and Meg. I set the timer on my camera, and then ran to pick her up. She struggled of course. (Please ignore my hair, which seriously needs washing!)

And in this attempt she had been sitting facing towards the camera, but when I slid into shot to join her she simply walked away.