After what seems like the forever of 'thinking about making stuff' situation that was going on Chez Trash (which we shall blame on the days and weeks and years of continual downpour we have had recently - 'drought' my arse!) I finally committed to making stuff. One bc I wanted to know I could do it, one I was pretty certain I could do it and FIVE that I have to do bc I kickstarted the whole thing over at the FQ 2012 flickrpage.
The one I love is the Maluka and by Tuesday I had completed 3/4 of it, then I realised that 8 stitches extra that are not part of the pattern on one side of a shawl is a bad thing and so have had to frog it back to where things are even. I may have cried a little.
So to keep myself going while my not very clever brain tried to figure out short rows (turns out I should trust the pattern) I 'whipped up' this Wingspan shawlette/drapey thing in some Regia sockyarn. Marmalade Yarns had a pair of socks all knitted up from this and they looked ace but we won't mention me and sock knitting in the same breath for a while yet. They were all stripey and lovely and then I saw the Wingspan pattern and, apart from a small difficulty at the beginning wherein I was knitting a rectangle, I think the stripey loveliness worked just as well when not meant for feet.
So while my unconscious still tries to figure out the fixing plan for the Maluka I have to go finish my name badge for my FQ 2012 partner and then get past the prototypes for the Sample Swap.
If you hear nothing by June send help.
Trash Towers Dictionary
Thursday, 26 April 2012
' 
Monday, 9 April 2012
What I saw this weekend.
Three ducks take off from a field, all in perfect 'three ducks on the wall' formation.
The stunningly patterned underside of the wing of a bird of prey.
Cousins I haven't seen in 34 years.
Cousins I have never met.
A fraction of the M4, 3/4 of the M5 and the top half of the M6.
The coastal road down through North Wales.
Bangor.
Slate mines.
Welsh lambs in Welsh fields in Spring.
The dead body of a loved one.
The inside of a small Catholic rural Irish church.
The sadness in my aunt's eyes.
The gleam of her unshed tears.
The scratches and grazes down the side of CK's car from the incident with the bollard at the mortuary.
My breakfast again.
Justification for always packing too much when I go away.
How genetics will always out and the similarities that exist between my boy and my cousin's son.
Castle ruins in several different countries.
The stunningly patterned underside of the wing of a bird of prey.
Cousins I haven't seen in 34 years.
Cousins I have never met.
A fraction of the M4, 3/4 of the M5 and the top half of the M6.
The coastal road down through North Wales.
Bangor.
Slate mines.
Welsh lambs in Welsh fields in Spring.
The dead body of a loved one.
The inside of a small Catholic rural Irish church.
The sadness in my aunt's eyes.
The gleam of her unshed tears.
The scratches and grazes down the side of CK's car from the incident with the bollard at the mortuary.
How genetics will always out and the similarities that exist between my boy and my cousin's son.
Castle ruins in several different countries.
Tuesday, 3 April 2012
A culinary cretin
2/4/12
CK was poking around in the freezer, muttering about 'too much stuff' and 'what is all this crap' and 'why is there no food?' He pulled out a carrier bag half-filled with small purple fruits.
"What are these?"
"They must be blueberries. I wonder where I got such an enormous amount of blueberries from?"
"Mama? Can I make blueberry muffins?"
"Not now but make some breakfast tomorrow morning."
"Oh. OK."
3/4/12
O- dark hundred this morning something landed on my bed at full tilt.
"Mama! Mama! Can I make muffins now?"
"snfflmzzgrrlfutsts..."
We lay there in semi-companiable silence for some minutes. I fell back to sleep, he plotted. By half seven the tension emanating from him was causing the house to shake a little. Telling him a lie I said to go get things ready in the kitchen and I would be down in a minute.
After giving up the search for his super-dooper school cooking club muffin recipe we bowed before the BBC Good Food gods and received their recipe for White Chocolate and Blueberry muffins. Cue much clattering around kitchen, garnering of required ingredients and intense debate about whether to have too little white chocolate or to add some milk thereby adapting the recipe. Would the BBC gods be pleased? Would a greater tribute be required to placate them? Decision made to just roll with punches and take the consequences meant I stood there picking out little bits of leaf and pulling of stems from such plump and juicy looking blueberries while mixing was undertaken. As I plucked and picked away my brain was desperately trying to remember where the fruit had come from. Had there been a mahoosive blueberry sale last Summer? Had I been gifted a kilo or more of such delicious fruit and why could I not remember?
Muffins in the oven cooking away merrily, destructoBoy tidying up his mess, me FBing to find out what has occurred in the world while I was asleep. !PING! First muffins ready to come out.
"Mama, I got them out of the oven but can't get them out of the tray. Can you help?"
Walk over, pleased to still be of some use in his life. Once all freed I peeled the case from one and cut it up so we may taste. The white chocolate had caramelised ever so slightly and the milk chocolate was still all lovely and melty, the blueberries were, wait, giant pips? There were giant pips in the blueberries? So big in fct they are stones. These bluebrries had stones!!!!!!!
My mind stretched even further and it all flooded back to me. These blueberries were in fact the sloes I had been given last Autumn so I could try my hand at making sloe gin. MAybe I should just get him to soak the lot in gin for 12 months and give it as Christmas presents????
CK was poking around in the freezer, muttering about 'too much stuff' and 'what is all this crap' and 'why is there no food?' He pulled out a carrier bag half-filled with small purple fruits.
"What are these?"
"They must be blueberries. I wonder where I got such an enormous amount of blueberries from?"
"Mama? Can I make blueberry muffins?"
"Not now but make some breakfast tomorrow morning."
"Oh. OK."
3/4/12
O- dark hundred this morning something landed on my bed at full tilt.
"Mama! Mama! Can I make muffins now?"
"snfflmzzgrrlfutsts..."
We lay there in semi-companiable silence for some minutes. I fell back to sleep, he plotted. By half seven the tension emanating from him was causing the house to shake a little. Telling him a lie I said to go get things ready in the kitchen and I would be down in a minute.
After giving up the search for his super-dooper school cooking club muffin recipe we bowed before the BBC Good Food gods and received their recipe for White Chocolate and Blueberry muffins. Cue much clattering around kitchen, garnering of required ingredients and intense debate about whether to have too little white chocolate or to add some milk thereby adapting the recipe. Would the BBC gods be pleased? Would a greater tribute be required to placate them? Decision made to just roll with punches and take the consequences meant I stood there picking out little bits of leaf and pulling of stems from such plump and juicy looking blueberries while mixing was undertaken. As I plucked and picked away my brain was desperately trying to remember where the fruit had come from. Had there been a mahoosive blueberry sale last Summer? Had I been gifted a kilo or more of such delicious fruit and why could I not remember?
Muffins in the oven cooking away merrily, destructoBoy tidying up his mess, me FBing to find out what has occurred in the world while I was asleep. !PING! First muffins ready to come out.
"Mama, I got them out of the oven but can't get them out of the tray. Can you help?"
Walk over, pleased to still be of some use in his life. Once all freed I peeled the case from one and cut it up so we may taste. The white chocolate had caramelised ever so slightly and the milk chocolate was still all lovely and melty, the blueberries were, wait, giant pips? There were giant pips in the blueberries? So big in fct they are stones. These bluebrries had stones!!!!!!!
My mind stretched even further and it all flooded back to me. These blueberries were in fact the sloes I had been given last Autumn so I could try my hand at making sloe gin. MAybe I should just get him to soak the lot in gin for 12 months and give it as Christmas presents????
Monday, 2 April 2012
Twinkle twinkle little star
Tonight CK downloaded one of those 'night sky map' appthings for his new tabletty toy
.
When it was his turn to view the stars through the magic of technology destructoBoy was glued to the screen, twisting it this way and then that. He pointed it at me exclaiming " Mama! You are Jupiter!" A few more tilts and twists followed by the immortal line "This app is rubbish, I can't find Earth no matter where I point it."
Sunday, 1 April 2012
The things I didn't buy
We took a little trip out today to the artisan market here.
It was filled with many many beautiful things although if I was the bakery goods stall set up next to the other bakery stall also selling pastelly coloured, sparkly cupcakes I might have been a bit pissed off.
The street was heaving with a weird combination of funky hippies, boring ordinary people (like us) and the older generation of the pearls and wellies brigade. You know the kind, Barbours all round, an encyclopedic knowledge and practice of gardening accompanied by G&Ts on the lawn at 4:30pm. We discovered that particular couple just before we left. I bought 4 pots of leeks barely thicker than a sewing needle, there were about 5 leeks to each pot, as well as 6 onion sets all hardened up and ready to go out this weekend despite the prediction for Arctic conditions this week. As punishment for rude and appalling behaviour this afternoon destructoBoy was tasked with redigging over the Lower 40 so I shall be out planting my crops tomorrow afternoon.
Rounding the corner toward the hill I saw this stall and just had to stop. Superlatives to do justice to these lampshades are few and far between. So delicate and yet so elemental. That all sounds a bit 'Pseud's Corner' doesn't it? But really there was something very special about them.
Made from all locally sourced feathers by the Somerset Feather Company these are something I shall be keeping in mind as the perfect spot for a lampbase topped by one now exists in my kitchen. CK and I just have to discuss which child to sell (after this afternoon I am going for d/Boy).
I also didn't buy one of these.
Or any of her fabulous ceramics. This is not for lack of wanting, possibly it was due to overwanting. The stalls were full of ceramics and pottery; some of it vintage, some it utilitarian, much of it extremely ugly. Not so much Alice Shields' work. It might be a theme of the day but these pieces also had an elegance about them. I was very taken with the ceramic bunting. Maybe next month.
I DID buy four chocolate cupcakes with more buttercream icing on them than I thought existed in the Universe, two balls of Cashmerino DK in bright red and a kit to make our own chocolate. No really. Chocolate from scratch. I have a box with a lump of cocoa butter, some cacao powder and a bottle of natural sweetener. It looks like weird jam. Senior management suggests we make it this Friday. Good Friday. Talk about blocking out the Easter Bunny!
It was filled with many many beautiful things although if I was the bakery goods stall set up next to the other bakery stall also selling pastelly coloured, sparkly cupcakes I might have been a bit pissed off.
The street was heaving with a weird combination of funky hippies, boring ordinary people (like us) and the older generation of the pearls and wellies brigade. You know the kind, Barbours all round, an encyclopedic knowledge and practice of gardening accompanied by G&Ts on the lawn at 4:30pm. We discovered that particular couple just before we left. I bought 4 pots of leeks barely thicker than a sewing needle, there were about 5 leeks to each pot, as well as 6 onion sets all hardened up and ready to go out this weekend despite the prediction for Arctic conditions this week. As punishment for rude and appalling behaviour this afternoon destructoBoy was tasked with redigging over the Lower 40 so I shall be out planting my crops tomorrow afternoon.
Rounding the corner toward the hill I saw this stall and just had to stop. Superlatives to do justice to these lampshades are few and far between. So delicate and yet so elemental. That all sounds a bit 'Pseud's Corner' doesn't it? But really there was something very special about them.
I also didn't buy one of these.
Or any of her fabulous ceramics. This is not for lack of wanting, possibly it was due to overwanting. The stalls were full of ceramics and pottery; some of it vintage, some it utilitarian, much of it extremely ugly. Not so much Alice Shields' work. It might be a theme of the day but these pieces also had an elegance about them. I was very taken with the ceramic bunting. Maybe next month.
I DID buy four chocolate cupcakes with more buttercream icing on them than I thought existed in the Universe, two balls of Cashmerino DK in bright red and a kit to make our own chocolate. No really. Chocolate from scratch. I have a box with a lump of cocoa butter, some cacao powder and a bottle of natural sweetener. It looks like weird jam. Senior management suggests we make it this Friday. Good Friday. Talk about blocking out the Easter Bunny!
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