Quick catch-up in photos

Running out of time and haven't had much to blog this week at all so thought I'd at least just post a few photos that I have taken during the week. I had a good week and have still been feeling bad. Unfortunately I seem to have picked up a stomach bug or else I ate something bad at the barbeque I was at yesterday so I spent a goodly portion of the night draped over the toilet and, well, although I did make it out to go walking with friends this morning, let's just say that fasting today was not at all difficult to do. Even though it wasn't actually a planned fast day. But c'est la vie.

A lot of my time this week was taken up with knitting a present for a friend. Short notice invite to a party after contacting a friend to say happy 40th even though we've lost touch over the last five years or so. At any rate, I had been wanting to try out this stormy weather shawl pattern that I saw on mortgagefreeinthree (I've been working my way through the archives over the last while and it's just one of those blogs that makes everything seem so simple even I can give it a go).

I had the blue and the half ball of green already in my stash and used a voucher to pay for most of the three new balls. I also had another slightly less bright ball of blue, which is the one I ended up using. The colours aren't quite right in this picture but you get the idea.

My other crafty activity this week was making a paper chain. Each ring on this chain represents twenty euro and the whole lot is how much I will need to enable me to take a month off work in November. So, now I'll have a visual reminder hanging in my living room every day. And the satisfaction of seeing it get shorter and shorter.

I started the shawl on Wednesday evening and spent perhaps three hours on it. Then the same again on Thursday and up early on Friday to spend an hour on it before work. Another couple of hours on Friday evening before I literally ran out of time. And also wool. Although it wasn't perfect, it came out pretty well. I did my best to block it although probably could have done with another day to block it again, stretching it out a bit more. 

I don't really know how to crochet properly so didn't do the fancy scallop edge from the pattern and just finished it with another line of plain in the last of the yellow. The sharp-eyed among you might notice that I actually ended up using the yellow to finish off the last of the last line of blue - that block is an entire 100g of wool. 

I made a tomato tart to bring to the party with me, as well. Shortcrust pastry spread with mustard, topped with grated cheese, sliced, seeded tomatoes and topped with slices of mozzarella (since it was a special occasion) and plenty of oregano. 

Just for my own information this one. Smaller shop this week but included a couple of tins for the storecupboard, too. 11.75 this time.

At various points in the forest I went for a walk in today, there are signs showing various exercises to do or things like this to do exercises on. These are bars to use to do push-ups on. I can't even do one fake girly push-up but I gave it a go anyway. Using the higher one I did five - but barely managed to move down or up more than about an inch. So, something to work on there. There was also a pile of logs at this station, which you put on your shoulders to swing from side to side (you can see the shadow of my friend doing that in the back left of the photo.

So that's that. And now I'm off to bed. Hoping that by tomorrow morning I'll be feeling much more like a real, live, human being. :)

Lazy Sunday

It's a lazy Sunday and although I had a vague inclination yesterday to get up this morning and go for a nice long walk in the woods, the inclination didn't survive the night. It's very gray and windy out, although the rain has cleared up in the last couple of hours - the kind of day that makes me wish I had a fire to light. Not because it's cold, oh no. Despite the rain and generally miserable feeling of the day, it's still not far off twenty degrees, as it has been for over a week now. We had a couple of weeks where I was glad to add an extra cover to the bed and even a few nights where I happily donned my night-cap again. And now we're back to just needing a summer-weight duvet and me throwing that off during the night, too.

If I get a burst of energy later, I'll try and get back to tackling the Table of Doom - I did actually do a bit yesterday and the day before but just small things. I'd like to spend an hour or two on it though and then tackle whatever is left using the same 5 things a day method that helped before.

So far today though, after having slept late, I've mostly been curled on the couch, watching stuff on the internet and knitting a bit. I got myself some more cotton yesterday and have been making myself some more cloths. It's such an easy way to get back into a bit of knitting again and I was really pleased with the ones I made for my sister's birthday. Knitted cloths are the best and for the most part, the only thing I really use anymore. I do still have a few micro-fibre ones for dusting that someone gave me a couple of years ago but otherwise it's homemade all the way. I have a couple of different colours so that I know which ones to use for what. Yellow and green are for the kitchen, i.e. washing dishes, wiping tables etc. Pink and red are for washing myself. Blue and purple are used for cleaning the bathroom. Next up I'm going to try and knit a few very long ones, which I can use with my e-cloth mop. Well, I'll do one anyway and see how it works out.

Apart from that all I've done was prepare a spice rub for the pork neck I bought yesterday. I last bought that in June, when I wanted to make pulled pork in the slow cooker. On that post I have a note that it cost 7.60 per kilo and yesterday it was 8.90. What I bought yesterday wasn't on the bone but that's still a big difference. I'll have to make sure and enjoy every single bit of it. It's resting in the fridge right now, with the spices all rubbed in and later on I'll be trying out my new Romertopf for the first time. I'm not really following any one particular recipe - have used a similar spice rub to those I've used for pulled pork in the past and for the sauce, I'm going to use a cheap pils. I didn't realise I was that much of a beer snob though - I found it really difficult yesterday to pick up the cheapie can of beer (45c) and I spent a good few minutes looking at the bottles of "proper" beer (prices starting at about 89c, only a small selection in the place I was) and even holding one in my hand before I just put it back and bought the no-name one. Hopefully it will turn out alright. I should go now and do the washing up so that I have space in the sink to soak my Romertopf. I may come back later and post photos.

Sunday night chit-chat and sealed pot/stretch it out October update

Three down, two to go.  This is lovely cotton I have to admit, soooo soft and the colours are so nice, too.

 What are you:
Reading
1984 - haven't read this for years and it's one of those books that, although I remember the story and what happens, I don't really remember all that well. The writing is blowing me away and I know my changed views of the world, not to mention the ways the world has changed in the years since I read this (I think it was in the late 90s), are also having a huge impact on my reaction to this great book.

Watching
I've been watching Nashville. Tried and didn't even make it through the first episode a couple of months ago but I think sometimes you just need to get something in the right mood and it makes all the difference. Really enjoying it now but then again I do love some country music. Even if I don't keep up to date with it.

Listening to
Not much of anything. Just quiet at the moment before getting up to do the dinner. Might throw on The Creation while I'm doing that since our concert is coming up soon.

Cooking/baking
I prepared carrot, cumin and kidney bean burgers earlier so just need to fry a couple of them up. Going to have them with pumpkin wedges with a parmesan lemon crust (Ottolenghi recipe) and I've already chopped the pumpkin so just need to put together the rest of it and get them in the oven. I also made soup with the other half of the pumpkin earlier so lunch for tomorrow is all set.

Happy you accomplished this week
Made it through another week of work. And I managed to pull myself together enough to phone a psychologist to try and organise an appointment - I don't think I'm dealing too well with the grief since ignoring it isn't really the way to go, at least not for more than a week or two. This week was definitely better than the week before so I also got a couple of other things done that just seemed so overwhelming then. For example, I read through a friend's husband's first few chapters of a book (he wanted to know if his English was good enough to justify going on with it as it's a particular type of humour that he thinks only really works in English) and was glad to get that done, too. And I kept to my Stretch it Out October goal, too.

Looking forward to next week
My friends from Frankfurt will be up to watch the football in Cologne next Friday evening. I will watch it in the pub here (it's the German/Irish Society meet-up) but we will do something together on Saturday.

Grateful for this week
My lovely brother, who has been extra good about phoning to make sure I'm alright. And that although he dealt with things by going on a bender it seems to have been of relatively short duration and over now. Also my lovely colleague, K. who I share and office with and has been very understanding the last few weeks. And who also came to help me choose new glasses when I was being indecisive. And my lovely blog followers who have also offered me lots of support from a distance.

Bonus questions: What are you doing tonight?
Knitting more dishcloths for my sister's birthday present.

That's it for Sunday night chit-chat - if you want to join in post away and then head on over to Half-Daily Dozen to link up.

Sealed pot and SIOO update
Feeling very pleased with myself for having kept to my goal this week. I wanted to try and spend just what was in my purse (it was about 12 euro), keeping my planned budget of about 25 euro until the weekend so that I could spend it at the material market in a nearby town. And I did it, including still managing to go out one night (it's amazing how long I can make one cup of mint tea last. LOL), spending just over 5 euro from my allotted budget and still having a few euro leftover in my purse which went into my sealed pot on Friday evening. So when I went to the market yesterday I really enjoyed having that 20 euro in hand and being able to buy something just for fun.

For next week I have a 30 euro budget but that needs to cover two nights out (only one if I decide not to go out after choir). I spent nearly 10 of that yesterday on food so I really need to try and not spend anything at all if possible. I'd like to still have at least 10 left by Friday - that's enough for three pints (well, the 0.4l that they serve here) plus tip in the pub, which would be enough for the length of a match, I think. Now I just need to make sure I get up in time every day to eat breakfast at home and heat up lunch to bring in my flask, I'll be sorted.

Spend, spend, spend

It doesn't take long to get rid of money at a market like the one I was at, that's for sure. Unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera so I have no pictures for you but Dortmund is a nice town with a lively centre and as well as the material market the normal weekly market was on, too. I didn't see much of that as it was all shutting down when I got back to it but it did seem to be more the retailer type of market than the local farmers' market type like the one near where I live. I did see a at least a few local places though so it's probably a mix, as most of them are.

One thing that definitely wasn't local was the flowers. As I was passing by one stall though one of the guys was throwing some out of the buckets into piles on the ground. I wandered a bit closer, as did a couple of other people and he told us to just help ourselves. They were the flowers that were already past their prime and definitely wouldn't be saleable anymore by Monday. Free flowers. That's my favourite price and probably about the only time I would actually take flowers that were grown in Africa (fair trade or not).

The orange ones are a bit best their best but there was only one that was beyond hope - and even if they only last for a day or two at least I'll have them for a day or two

As for the market, I enjoyed an hour roaming and looking although the first two rows I wandered up and down weren't really very inspiring. And even the so-called scraps were fairly expensive. Then I found one of the Dutch stalls, were there were dozens of bundles of 100% cotton, rolled up in half-metre pieces. One for 3.50 or 3 for 10 euro. Despite having decided that I was definitely going to walk all the way round before buying anything I was too tempted. The stall was absolutely thronged as well and I had to wait a while to get to the front to be able to rummage and it seemed like a waste to just leave what I saw there and try coming back later.

 So since I spied a nice green one right away and pretty soon had gotten my eye in and was having difficultly deciding, I just went for it. I was only going to get three and leave myself with half my money to spend elsewhere but I couldn't choose which one of four to leave behind and decided to just go ahead and get six altogether. Of course a few minutes later I spied the main stall run by the same people, which was all the same material at a price of just 6 euro per metre. Typical. Although I did hear him saying that half a metre was 3.50 so the lower price was only for purchases of at least one metre. I'm still happy with my three metres for 20 euro though.

The photos aren't the greatest but the middle one of these three is a gorgeous turquoise colour. I thought the purple one with the bunting was very cute, too. The one at the back is red with yellow polka dots.

I have a pattern for some christmas cushions that I have been meaning to try for at least two and I think three if not four years. Green material, for whatever reason, tends to be quite expensive so I was delighted to find a whole selection at this stall. One woman spied the middle one of this lot in my hand and sounded very irritated that I had found it and she hadn't but she wandered off down to where I had found it to look for more, leaving her daughter standing holding a large basket full. People are funny.


In total today I spent nearly 35 euro, 20 at the marekt and the rest of it broken down like this:
Reformhaus (independently-owned health food shop)
Cider vinegar 2.29 (for hair conditioning)

Tischdame (new small delicatessen nearby with a focus on sourcing from small, family producers)
Pecorino cheese (about 110g) 3.60

Charge for using the toilet in a department shop
70c

Kiosk at train station
Ham and cheese baguette thing and small bottle of water (so annoyed to have forgotten to bring water with me) 4.85

Aldi
1 litre organic milk 95c
2 tins kidney bean @ 39c each = 78c

And, confession time, I had a quick look last night and couldn't find the cotton I am sure I have to start knitting my sister some cloths for her birthday. Since it's next week and I wanted to use the time on the train today to start I also went into one of the bigger department shops here, Karstadt, and bought four balls of cotton, which cost 8 euro. I do like the colours though and at 2 euro per 50g they weren't too expensive either. And I'm halfway through the first of what I hope will be five cloths, which isn't a bad achievement either.

Not sure there's quite enough for more than one cloth from each ball so if I want to make five altogether the last one might end up being stripey!

Information is vital

The problem with vigilence is, I think, that in order for it to be vigilence you have to keep at it all the time. Which gets boring and annoying after a while. I had so much to deal with in moving here that I spent a few weeks trying to figure out where to buy food, found the local farmers' market and that was pretty much it really. I knew that there were only a couple of organic suppliers there but as the whole organic v. local issue isn't black and white anyway that's okay too. This week I have the week off work and so I went to the market yesterday (Wednesday) and at a later time (around 11.30 - it's open from 9 to 13 on Wednesdays) than normal. It wasn't half as busy as on a Saturday at 8 o'clock so I took the opportunity to actually ask a few of the farmers about their set-up. First up was the poultry and game supplier. I remember asking them at the beginning whether they were organic and although they weren't they did give me a leaflet that explained what was free-range and what not. As this leaflet said that the egg-laying hens were free-ranging and the meat birds were barn-reared I felt like at least I knew where I stood, could get free-range eggs and, since they also sold the egg-laying hens when they came to the end of their commerically useful egg-laying days, I could get chickens to use for casseroles and so on that I knew were free-ranging as well. Anyway, I hadn't seen those leaflets for a while and had wondered anyway how things would be in winter (assuming, based on some of the blogs I read, that most hens are not too interested in spending time outside in the ice and snow) so I decided to ask again. They don't have anything free-ranging I was told, no-one could have that much land available. Big shock there. I asked them about their stocking density and they said that while the allowable amount is 8 per square meter, they have 6. However, having googled it, I found that the rules which are currently being debated at EU level fix maximum stocking densities measured in weight per square metre of floor area and farms that meet the conditions set down can rear up to a maximum of 39 kg per square metre, equivalent to between 17 and 18 chickens per square metre (at the average UK slaughter weight of 2.2kg). So now I'm very confused. If what they said was true then that seems very good (and they definitely said that they do not use any cages). But it seems so far away from what the official line is aiming for. And of course there is the possibility that I misunderstood them and they said 18 and 16 rather than 8 and 6 although I don't think so. They did also say that I would be more than welcome to come and visit anytime so I think I will try and do that this summer - apparently the boss is always happy to meet anyone who is interested and frequently has groups from schools etc out there. I wouldn't be allowed into the barns themselves but could see into them and otherwise the only place that is off limits is the slaughter house.

I also took the chance to chat to the guy I buy most of my veg from. When I spoke to him at the beginning he said everything was organic and we chatted a bit about how nice it was for me to be able to buy stuff directly from the person who had grown it. I heard him recently telling someone else that not everything came from his farm so I was curious about what had changed. I started off asking about whether the eggs he sells are free-ranging and he said yes, all of his hens have access to outside all the time (plus another invitation to come out any time and have a look around). I then asked him if he grew all the veg himself and he said that he bought in some stuff, mostly the different mushrooms, from other farmers in the area who wouldn't necessarily find it worth their while to have their own market stall.

I think sometime in the summer I definitely need to find a friend with a car or hire a car and take a few days off work and go driving around to visit all of these places and get to know them all a bit better.

Random photo of the other thing I did manage to do yesterday, which was finish a dishcloth which was last in a pile I was sending to my brother. I've done a few now in the sideways square shape which involves starting with one stitch and then increasing one every line until you get to the size you want then decreasing one every line until it's back to one. It really is a great way to practice a technique as I've always been a bit hit and miss with increasing before - I even did one this time which was in stocking stitch so that involved increasing in purl as well, which was a bit tricky but I think I've figured it out now.

I like this photo the best though - something about a nice pile that is very satisfying. I need to knit lots more dishcloths so that I can have a few for myself as well!

Meal plan and various preserving efforts

Second attempt at making tomato ketchup today after having remembered to actually buy cloves this time. Looks good. I used a mixture of tomatoes as I had bought a mixture from the market yesterday to try and see which ones I liked best. Aren't they pretty?



But what about the insides?
Even better! I liked the yellow and the green ones the best - they were very tasty and very sweet. The darker green striped ones were my least favourite.










Forgot to buy onions though and only had about half the amount called for in the recipe so I decided to make up the difference with some courgette. The recipe calls for allspice and cloves to be used but I had a look at some other recipes as well and decided to add a touch of ginger and mace as well. Tastes nice although by the time I got it reduced to a ketchup consistency there wasn't much left. Have two small (I think they were 240ml) jars and another one two-thirds full. They had already been cooling for half an hour when I realised one of the lids wasn't tight. Looks like ketchup is going to be that thing this year that just never seems to go right!

The last batch is now being called relish and is tasty although not particularly ketchupy. I'm going to buy a load of mince next week at the market and have a burger feast.

I also have a kilo of tomatoes on drying as well as 250g bilberries. I've cooked chickpeas and mixed with tomatoes and feta cheese to have for lunch during the week (the rest of the dressing has to wait until tomorrow morning as I forgot to buy lemons). And I put most of the strawberries I had bought into a pot and cooked them down for ten minutes. They'll go in a jar in the fridge and I'll have them during the week with yoghurt. And best of all, I have cleaned and tidied up after myself.

Given my apparent lack of ability to control myself when I'm at the market (I was giving myself this weekend off from any major cooking or preserving efforts but all that went out the window when I got to the market and realised plums and all the different types of tomatoes had arrived while I was on holiday), I have decided to start doing proper meal plans again. It means I'll be able to use up the food I have properly and of course it does save the effort of having to put any thought into meals during the week. I tend to only plan for lunch and dinner as breakfast is the same all the time. I am going to try and plan in deserts for dinnertime as well though.

Saturday 1 August
Lunch: cheese, turkey salami, tomatoes, bread
Dinner: boiled new potatoes, broccoli, chicken (bought marinated in wild garlic, absolutely fabulous!)
Dessert: plum crumble with yoghurt

Sunday 2 August
Lunch: cheese, turkey salami, tomatoes, bread
Dinner: leftover potato salad with broccoli and mozzarella cheese [wasn't feeling hot enough for salad so ended up making an omelette with the potatos and broccoli, a few tomatoes and some cheddar cheese]
Dessert: yoghurt with some of the raspberry jam that never was, strawberries and plums [had a few strawberries but was too full for anything else]

Monday 3 August
Lunch: chickpea salad
Dinner: lettuce, tomatoes, seeds, dressing and bread [still had potatoes left so fried them with an onion and a couple of tomatoes - washing lettuce just seemed like too much effort after the day I had it work]
Dessert: stewed plums [following the plum jam which wasn't fiasco of this evening I don't want to see another one for a while - am finishing a bottle of beer for dessert and having a few squares of chocolate]

Tuesday 4 August
Lunch: chickpea salad
Dinner: pasta with courgette, tomato, onion [more changes, very hot day today so in the 30 degrees it was at 8 o'clock when I got home I didn't feel like cooking at all. So I washed the lettuce (lots of little bugs on it, killed by the cold in the fridge I think - I look on it as confirmation that it really is organic, no pesticides on my lettuce) and had that with some tomatoes, some wine cheese and some farmers' cheese, the rest of the turkey salami, a few toasted sesame seeds, linseeds, sunflower seeds and poppy seeds and a vinaigrette dressing with one slice of bread at the end to mop up the dressing. Delicious and just filling enough.]
Dessert: yoghurt with raspberry and strawberry [I actually had this as an afternoon snack and am now sitting with my last six small squares of chocolate and going to savour eating each one of them]

Wednesday 5 August
Lunch: pasta leftovers [as I didn't have any pasta yesterday it was more chickpea salad for lunch]
Dinner: eat out before choir rehearsal [worked later than planned so only had time to grab a brezel on the way to rehearsal and then had a couple of slices of toast, one with cheese and one with raspberry jam when I got home]

Thursday 6 August
Lunch : pasta leftovers or chickpea salad (assuming I'll have some of one of these still leftover) [the last of the chickpea salad, a smaller portion supplemented by a chocolate croissant from the bakery]
Dinner: pineapple rice [latish home from work and too hot for cooking. Waited until it was a bit later and somewhat cooler and had some more salad, same as Tuesday minus the salami].

Friday 7 August
Lunch: pineapple rice [am at home on a day off so lunch was the last of the salad with a couple of slices of toast, one to mop up the leftover dressing and one smothered in raspberry jam as dessert]
Dinner: bread and cheese

In other news I finally finished the patchwork blanket I was making for a friend's 40th birthday and managed to give it to him for his 41st. Was up early that morning trying to get it finished and it is decidedly more amateurish looking than I was hoping for but I just wanted to get it finished so wasn't being too careful about the end of it. I reckon the next time I visit him I'll have a go at blocking it and maybe that will help! Wish I could say it received a rapturous reception but unfortunately he was still half asleep when I was leaving so I just told him I had left his present there for him and when I phoned the next day to see if he had remembered to look I caught him just as he was heading out the door to work and all I got was a bit of a distracted 'yes, I liked it'. Disappointing but it's so nice to be finished I'm not that bothered. I'll probably visit again sometime in winter so if he's using it, well and good and if not then I'll tell him how much my brother liked it and offer to make him something else instead. I have a few dozen squares left of colours that I decided didn't work with the overall colours I was using so I am going to put them together into a baby blanket for a friend who had a baby a couple of weeks ago. Honestly the double blanket didn't work as well as I hoped and one of the problems was that it was just too heavy. If it is used, I'd say it won't be long until it's completely dragged out of shape (which kind of makes me feel better about not getting to finish it nicely).

I also finally had my appointment for an MRI on Friday to see if there's anything in particular causing my foot numbness. They hadn't told me though, that if I was going to get something to calm me down I would need to take the full day off work so I've rescheduled it for in a couple of weeks and gotten an afternoon appointment. I didn't think I'd be too bad, it's mostly my legs that are clautrophobic and if I had been able to put something between them then I thought I'd be okay. But they didn't let me do that and then bloody hell that hole they were trying to put me into was small! She also started moving me backwards much quicker than I expected so my plan to have my eyes closed before I went in didn't work. I only held out until about half my head was in and nearly had hysterics. I was surprised at my reaction being that extreme and it took me a good long time to calm down. They've promised me that when I go back and get an injection next time, I'll love it and want to come back every day. I'm not too sure that valium (which they mentioned and I assume is what they give you) is all that good and am very nervous about going back but it has to be done. At least the appointment is for a Friday afternoon so I'll have the weekend to get over it.

Tidying up

Doc confirmed I have a cold. He gave me a prescription for some cough syrup to get rid of the 'schleim' I have. Haha. It still cracks me up that the German word for phlegm is schleim.

I haven't done half of what I wanted to do either in work or at home. Have a pile of washing up to do, badly need to hoover and it's now nearly ten o'clock so I can't. Will have to get up and do it before work tomorrow as I'm heading to the airport straight after work. Didn't finish bringing stuff down to the cellar either and that's just going to have to wait now.

I have hurt something somewhere which is making it difficult for me to walk this evening. I think I need a good massage to loosen up my shoulder and that will fix everything else. I felt a twinge in my back today and that only happens sometimes when my shoulder is acting up and I'm been favouring it without realising. A day or two later though I'll start to get twinges and cramps so I know it has happened again. I'm scheduled for an MRI at the end of the month for the problem I've been having with my other foot so it will be interesting to see if they find anything with that. I was just thinking about the fact that almost everything I have tends to happen on my left side. Possibly somewhat attributable to the fact that I'm a citeog and so obviously use my left side more. But I'm kind of wondering if the problems I had with my shoulder 14 years ago for the first time might actually be the cause of everything else. They eventually fixed that issue (which, now I come to think of it, the physio said was in my neck rather than my shoulder) with lots of physio but were never able to explain exactly what had happened or why. So it will be interesting. I'm a bit nervous as well because I remember my mum being told she had a trapped nerve and that was the start of the few months which led to more tests and the discovery that she had cancer. So it's one of those things I can be a bit irrational about. While I'm home though, I'm going to try and contact the doctor to get hold of her medical records. I don't even know what kind of cancer she had because my dad wouldn't talk about it. I only found out by accident that she had cancer about a week before she died, didn't think to ask any of my aunts or uncles at that stage and now that I'm older and realise it might be important to know, it's difficult to start a conversation with relations I've had so little contact with for so long and who may or may not actually have a clue what they're talking about. This was illustrated to me the other day when I was talking about this with my sister and mentioned that based on bits and pieces I'd overheard over the years I thought it was some kind of gynaecological cancer and she, for the same reason, was sure it was a colo-rectal one. I think it's time we just found out. I do know my dad had malignant melanoma and a brain tumour because we were brought into the hospice for a family meeting when he was moved there but it would probably be a good idea to get his records at the same time. I find as I'm getting older that I have difficulty remembering all the things that have ever happened to me so I have no hope of trying to remember if my mum or dad had x, y or z at any stage.

Better get on with packing. Nope, still haven't done that either. Nor did I manage to finish all the food I have. Still have a giant courgette in the fridge but I think I'm just going to take it with me. Have apples as well but will see what state they're in before I start planning space for them in my case. And I am definitely making sure to leave room for my blanket project. Yes, the wonderful patchwork blanket that I decided to knit for my friend's 40th birthday is still not finished but I am going to finish it on holidays. It is coming with me because on my way home after my holiday I will be visiting him for a day to celebrate his birthday. It's his 41st mind you but still. Better late than never.

Beans and things

Was very brave today and tried cooking with chickpeas for the first time thanks to a recipe I saw on this blog which I had almost everything on hand for. So easy I can't believe how often I have intended to do chickpeas and have chickened out. I can see them playing a much bigger part in my future eating. Especially since the heat here is making me wilt - anything that adds more options to cold eating for me is a good thing. It's not outrageously warm really but compared to how Ireland normally is, it is sweltering and I reckon it'll take a good few years for me to get used to it. Must have been about 30 degrees yesterday and it was due to be 27 today but it is really humid with it. We had massive thunder storms yesterday afternoon and loads of rain but within an hour you could barely tell it had rained.

Today I feel like I have spent most of the day in the kitchen but I'm doing something for half an hour then need to sit down and rest while I cool down before going for it again. Can't believe it's almost nine o'clock. The tomatoes have finally arrived back at the farmers' market and I was going to attempt my first water bath canning and make some ketchup. But I haven't gotten to it so am going to wait till tomorrow after work.

What I have done:

Cooked chickpeas which I had soaked since yesterday, chopped up tomatoes, feta cheese and combined with the dressing of lemon juice, mustard, olive oil, black pepper and garlic.

Cleaned and de-stalked blueberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants and strawberries. Ate a fair few of the strawberries and made the rest into a rough purree to have with yoghurt for breakfast or desserts this week. The blueberries, redcurrants and blackcurrants are in the dehydrator - it will be interesting to see how they turn out.

Did what seemed like neverending amounts of washing up.

Used gooseberries to make pectin stock. I want to try and make more jam next weekend without having to use jam sugar.

Cooked broccoli and cauliflower to make a bake but couldn't face turning the oven on so that will be tomorrow's dinner. Also cooked some turkey pieces to add to it - will have some of those now with bread as my supper and leave the rest to add to the bake tomorrow.

Podded, blanched and froze a kilo of broad beans (350g podded weight).

Drank lots and lots of water. And watered some plants I just haven't bothered to for a couple of weeks.

Hung up the load of washing I did this morning. Naughty me doing washing on a Sunday again but the heat had me so exhausted yesterday I forgot about laundry until it was almost eight o'clock.

In other news I am working my way through visits to doctors. My bloods are all fine, even, surprise, surprise, my cholesterol (my diet isn't as bad here as it was the last few months in Ireland but I haven't exactly been making a big effort to cook and eat healthily). The colonoscopy was clear of any problems and I just have to go back in ten years for another and in the meantime try to get a hold of my mother's medical records so we know once and for all exactly what type of cancer she had. German doctors are very interested in prevention being the best cure. I did find out that I'm allergic to birch tree pollen so that's interesting. Appointment with the orthopaedic doctor tomorrow about my feet and that should be everything.

And finally I am getting places on my patchwork blanket. I knew when knitting it that I should have been taking care of the end bits as I went along but I didn't so now I just have hundreds of squares that need to be finished before being sewn together. I'm not quite halfway through but it is getting there and going fairly quickly now. Finishing things off is probably one of the most important aspects of most crafts and it's the one I'm least proficient at and could do with working on.

Oh, and I did an online IQ test yesterday and apparently have an IQ of 131, which according to one page I found (obviously I am going to take the one with the most favourable explanation :-) ) means that I just make it out of the highly intelligent category and into gifted. Since I got a good result I think I am going to stop being so dismissive of IQ ratings as a method of rating intelligence!

Edited to add: while I was destalking the currants earlier I thought to myself they might not be all that suitable for drying as they are so small and so juicy - what's going to be left. They've been in the dehydrator for six hours now and, given their small size, I would have expected them to be shrivelled up to nothing but they're not. Really not sure they're going to work out but even if they don't it will have been worth the experiment.

Sand hole collapse and a raffle

I'm not much of a one for supporting religion and particularly not for supporting organised religious institutions. However I do find the idea of women coming together to support each other and grow a very powerful one and so I decided to make a donation to this raffle (there are some fabulous prizes but I had to think about it a bit before deciding to go ahead and support it). I'm writing about it here though, not so much to ask other people to donate but to draw their attention to this post from a year ago explaining some of the background as to why this lady has decided to set up this fundraising effort. I'd never heard of sand hole collapses before and kept meaning to write about that post but don't think I ever did. So, now I am but am taking the easy way out and just linking to Earthchicknits' post - she really talks about it far more eloquently than I ever could.

Happy Friday everyone - my last one in Dublin, this time next week I'll be on my first day in my new job in Düsseldorf.

Needle book and pin cushion

I signed up for another swap on down to earth, this time for a needle book and a pin cushion and got matched up wtih a lady in the USA. As I could see from her blog she is a very experienced seamtress so I've been glad there's so much time to complete this swap. We have until September and given that I'm in the middle of moving that's not a bad thing. On the plus side I found out today that my stuff will be in Germany tomorrow. And I won't be there for another week! It'll be kept by a German company and delivered then - I'm just hoping now that it'll be delivered fairly quickly and not just left sitting in a warehouse for weeks.

Anyway, I received my needle book and pin cushion from Cindi today and they are beautiful. Thank you so much again Cindi, in case you're reading. They even have my name embroidered on them! I did keep my camera out of the big shipment so I'll take photos as soon as I can and post them up. And as a bonus I also got an amazing bag which will be very useful for me as I learn to sew I think - I love to have things to organise everything into. Everything was so well finished that it certainly gives me a lot to aim for in terms of sewing efforts.

Although rather than starting a load of new projects I really need to finish my blanket project first - it's H.'s birthday next Monday so he's definitely not getting it for his birthday. Unfortunately the way my finishing dates have worked out mean that I won't be able to visit him for his birthday but that of course means that I have a bit of extra time to finish it. He's a chef so can't take time off to come and visit me during the season so it's likely I won't see him until September - I may be able to take a day off work then to head up to him for a long weekend. In the meantime I know we got a first edition stamp sent to work a year or so ago that nobody wanted and I put it to one side. So I'm going to send that to him in a card so that he has something on the day and to add to his stamp collection.

Zero waste

Two websites of people who are attempting to live without producing any landfil waste are:

therubbishdiet

homecompostingrecyclingforum

It's interesting reading. I currently put out our big wheelie bin about once every six weeks (sometimes longer, rarely less) - if I was sharing a house with someone who was more into trying to live a sustainable life it would undoubtedly be less. However, one thing I'm very aware of is a tendency to think if it can be recycled then it's okay. I can put plastic bottles into the green bin (which goes out every four or six weeks) and bring soft plastic packaging to a local recycle centre - I do try not to use plastic but sometimes I don't put all that much effort into it I have to admit and all because I know I can send it for recycling. It's something I do have to work on. Particularly because I'm fairly certain there are no recycling plants in Ireland and everything has to be shipped off somewhere else to be recycled. It's reduce, re-use, recycle - recycle is supposed to be the last option.

Using non-disposable sanpro has defintely had a huge impact on the amount of waste I produce - have been using washable pads for over a year and just bought a mooncup to try it out. And I finally found all those cloth hankies which I knew I had. Decided months ago to stop using paper tissues, used up what I had and then couldn't find the cloth ones. Knowing I had them somewhere (they were my dad's, so plenty big enough for my nose too) meant that I didn't want to buy new ones and so I spent a couple of months using toilet roll. Which kind of defeats the purpose! Anyway, have been using the cloth hankies for a few days now and they're so much nicer. Lovely and soft and gentle and I don't have to worry about whether a particularly big sneeze is going to blow them to bits. Won't go back from this one. Would love to start using wee wipes/cloth TP but will need to see what my new housemate is like before trying to sneak that one in.

In other news, Saturday 14th June is world wide knit in public day - there is a knit taking place in Dublin so I'll be hopefully heading along to that. Check out the website to find one in your area/find out about starting one in your area.

Knitting progress

The weeks and days are flying away from me again. Every year it seems to be more and more true what they say about time passing more quickly as you get older. I can't believe it's St Patricks day on Monday week. A friend is getting married on the Saturday of the bank holiday weekend and it doesn't seem possible that it has arrived so quickly.

I have made some progress on my jumper though, which is good. I'm hoping to spend most of this weekend working on it and would love to have it nearly finished for our class next Tuesday, which is the final one. I have really enjoyed the class and learned a lot but mostly gained a lot of confidence. Here's where I am so far:

This is the first sleeve and first inch or so of the back and front (for a bit of perspective I put a little tea light candle in a glass holder beside it). I made the sleeve about two inches longer than in the pattern and have also made the back and front eight stiches longer each. This was the great thing about the class I've done - learning that I don't need to slavishly follow the pattern measurements and giving me the confidence to decide, no that won't fit me, I'll knit a bit more.

I have to knit 8 inches more to get to where it starts to separate for the neck, then knit around the neck opening and then pick up those stitches again to knit the other side as far as the sleeve and then decreasing to knit that.

The Blanket Project

Stupid blogger is losing my posts again. I'm glad I had this one typed out on my pc before trying to post it!

It's a good friend's 40th birthday this summer. I stayed with him in Germany last September and while I was there knit him a scarf as a thank you present. He loves it and shortly after I came home I remembered that he would be 40 in July. At the same time I had been starting to teach my brother to knit and he was working on a baby blanket from one of the Debbie Bliss books. Basically it's a patchwork blanket made up of lots of 10cm squares, so a good starter project. I decided that I could do the same blanket but make it bigger to give to H. for his birthday. And then did no more about it. Last week I realised that if I wanted to get it done in time for his birthday I would need to be knitting at least two squares a day every day between now and the end of July. Aaagh. Better get a move on.

That estimate was based on four baby blanket sized ones sewn together, which would be about 140cm x 160cm. I'll probably try to actually make it a bit bigger than that so that it could be used as a cover for a double bed which is, I think 180cm or so. I had some wool for this project already, I'm using the Debbie Bliss cashmerino aran so I started in on it and knit a few dark brown and a few cream squares. I was thinking of doing it mostly in those earthy tones as I also had some nice green. And then I realised I also had a dusky pink and a navy. And I was already thinking it'd be nice to do a brighter colour for the border. Did I forget to mention the border?

Well, last week at knitting class I found out what moss stitch is. I really like the way it looks and it seems to be simple enough so when thinking about the blanket I thought it might be nice to finish it up with a border of moss stitch all around the stocking stich squares. That would probably give me the extra width I want as well.

All well and good but then I called into This Is Knit yesterday to see what other colours they had (I've had a strong feeling that there should be red in this blanket even though it may not go so well with my earthy tones and even though I wasn't sure that yarn is even available in red). I bought a few balls of different colours and am fast moving away from cream, brown and green to proper patchwork multcoloured. I now also have a lovely purple, wine, dusky blue, lighter green and red. Yes, they do it in red and it's a gorgeous shade. I'm knitting up a few squares in each colour so that I can see how they work together and am thinking I might be able to do up a simple spreadsheet of coloured squares to keep track of the whole thing. I'm very excited about this and have since come up with another idea. I'm positively shocking myself as I've never really thought of myself as particularly creative. I'm normally very much a follow-the-instructions kind of girl.

At the moment my plan is: knit a baby blanket sized blanket as per the Debbie Bliss pattern. Then knit a border around that. Then knit enough squares for three more baby blanket sized ones and use them to make the blanket out to the size I want (but not as simple as just knitting four small blankets and sewing them together). Finally, to knit a border around the whole thing in moss stitch. Now, I just need to decide on the colours. I also thought it might be nice (and easier) to sew all the squares together using one colour wool rather than sewing each square with the same colour wool as that square. So, I'll need to decide on a colour for that. Maybe that's where my red could come in. It's all very exciting and a good contrast to the frustration of the jumper! :-)

The Blanket Project

First, may I just say that I'm finding it very amusing that almost every time I type blanket, I actually type blankey. It's a silly thing but it has made me grin every time I've done it while typing this post (on my pc of course, I'd never do anything so silly as to type a post directly into blogger and then loose everything because of error bX-h59pth!

So, to the blanket project. It's a good friend's 40th birthday this summer. I stayed with him in Germany last September and while I was there knit him a scarf as a thank you present. He loves it and shortly after I came home I remembered that he would be 40 in July. At the same time I had been starting to teach my brother to knit and he was working on a baby blanket from one of the Debbie Bliss books. Basically it's a patchwork blanket made up of lots of 10cm squares, so a good starter project. I decided that I could do the same blanket but make it bigger to give to H. for his birthday. And then did no more about it. Last week I realised that if I wanted to get it done in time for his birthday I would need to be knitting at least two squares a day every day between now and the end of July. Aaagh. Better get a move on.

That estimate was based on four baby blanket sized ones sewn together, which would be about 140cm x 160cm. I'll probably try to actually make it a bit bigger than that so that it could be used as a cover for a double bed which is, I think 180cm or so. Of course I'm not so good with the square so at the moment I have slightly more regtangular shapes than square but I think once I've blocked them they will be almost square.

I had some wool for this project already, I'm using the Debbie Bliss cashmerino aran so I started in on it and knit a few dark brown and a few cream squares. Here are the first two brown ones, sorry, the colour doesn't come out too well.

I was thinking of doing it mostly in those earthy tones as I also had some nice green. And then I realised I also had a dusky pink and a navy. And I was already thinking it'd be nice to do a brighter colour for the border. Did I forget to mention the border?

Well, last week at knitting class I found out what moss stitch is. I really like the way it looks and it seems to be simple enough so when thinking about the blanket I thought it might be nice to finish it up with a border of moss stitch all around the stocking stich squares. That would probably give me the extra width I want as well.

All well and good but then I called into This Is Knit yesterday to see what other colours they had (I've had a strong feeling I should have red in this blanket even though it may not go so well with my earthy tones and even though I wasn't sure this yarn is even available in red). I bought a few balls of different colours and am fast moving away from cream, brown and green to proper multcoloured patchwork. I now have a lovely purple, wine, dusky blue, lighter green and red. Yes, they do it in red and it's a gorgeous shade. I'm knitting up a few squares in each colour so that I can see how they work together and am thinking I might be able to do up a simple spreadsheet of coloured squares to keep track of the whole thing. I'm very excited about this and have since come up with another idea. I'm positively shocking myself as I've never really thought of myself as particularly creative. I'm normally very much a follow-the-instructions kind of girl.

At the moment my plan is: knit a baby blanket sized blanket as per the Debbie Bliss pattern. Then knit a border around that. Then knit enough squares for three more baby blanket sized ones and use them to make the blanket out to the size I want (but not as simple as just knitting four small blankets and sewing them together). Finally, to knit a border around the whole thing in moss stitch. Now, I just need to decide on the colours. I also thought it might be nice (and easier) to sew all the squares together using one colour wool rather than sewing each square with the same colour wool as that square. So, I'll need to decide on a colour for that. Maybe that's where my red could come in. It's all very exciting and a good contrast to the frustration of the jumper! :-)

Knitting

I had a big long post about all my knitting achievements all written and then got an error when I tried to publish it. Blogger having lulled me into a false sense of security by working perfectly for months now, I didn't have a copy and had just typed straight into Blogger. Oh well.

I think I was saying how I had my second class and that after spending the entire week between classes swatching our teacher spent a good five or ten minutes checking my swatches and getting just as frustrated as I had because they just didn't seem to make sense. At any rate, we finally decided on 7mm needles - quite a difference from the 12.75mm (US 17) needles recommended in the pattern. Oh well, my row gauge was exactly right with 7mm and as this is a sideways knit that was most important.

When I was writing this post originally I had done a couple of inches and was just a few rows into the start of increasing. Since then I've spent a couple of hours at it but haven't gotten very far as increasing throws out the cable and I don't like the way it's looking. The rib pattern is RS: P2,K2 and then WS: K2, P2. For the increasing part of things I'm supposed to P2, K2, increase by 1 then continue in rib until four before the end, increase by one more and finish with K2, P2. Then do the same every second row twice more and then every fourth row nine times. However that means I don't have a simple K2, P2 rib on the WS anymore. Nor on RS then next time around. It's very frustrating but I'll do another hour or so this evening and then see what she says tomorrow evening. That'll be the third of five classes but I think once I have this part figured out I might be able to get a good go at it so that by next week I might have something that's starting to look like a jumper.

This is what it looked like at the end of my class last week:


I'm going to do a separate post for my other knitting project - the blanket.

Edited 2 March 2013: I've been clearing out some old drafts and it seems like some of the posts I thought I had lost ended up somewhere in drafts and in a later version of blogger have become visible again.  At least, I'm sure that's the reason I couldn't find them before.  Anyway, here's the post which I assume I was referring to above, just as I wrote it then.  Sorry if it's duplicating something else I've posted but since I wrote it, I decided to just go ahead and post it.


I've made some progress on my jumper. I spent all last week swatching and just could not figure it out so the day before my next class (last Tuesday) I decided to rip it all up and do new swatches which I could bring in and let Aileen decide on. This pattern calls for US size 17 needles, which are 12.75 mm. Knowing I am a loose knitter I thought maybe 10mm would do. Ended up swatching 10mm, 9mm, 8mm and 7mm to bring with me. Even Aileen couldn't figure it out and spent a good few minutes with the measuring tape and looking every bit like she wanted to tear her hair out (i.e. the same feeling as I'd had all week!). We finally decided on 7mm as being the closest on stitches and it's perfect for the row gauge, which is particularly important for this pattern.

So, I got started and have about 1.5" knit of the first sleeve. Hope to get a good go at it this weekend and get that sleeve finished and expand out into the body of it.

I also made a start on a present which I'm planning for a friend's 40th this summer. I decided to knit him a patchwork blanket ages ago but finally realised that if I don't start soon I'll never be finished by the end of July. I'm basing it on a pattern in a Debbie Bliss book of baby patterns and plan to knit about four times the number of squares given for the baby blanket. This means I need to knit about two squares every day until his birthday so last night I did my first two. I'm using Debbie Bliss cashmerino aran, although I think the pattern uses cashmerino chunky so my blanket's going to be a bit smaller and I may decide to do more squares if I have time. The cashmerion aran has some gorgeous earthy colours which are perfect for what I have in mind. So far I have dark brown, green and cream and I'll knit what I have before deciding whether to add more colours or not. I also want to then knit a border for the whole thing, which I'm thinking of doing in moss stitch. I've just found out how to do that and love the way it looks.

I also have three scarves on the go and have promised one more scarf to another friend (can wait till next winter now I think!) and a tea-cosy to another friend. And all of that is more than enough to keep me busy for several months so I'm trying not to think about how much I want to learn to knit socks so that I can make myself some fuzzy feet. I have to say though, that it's a very rewarding hobby. Would be nice to be able to spin too so I could make my own wool but I think that will have to be a project for another year.

Knitting

I've been knitting away and have fallen in love with Rowan Big Wool, which is 100% merino wool. And which has led to me blowing my budget for the month on buying enough of it to make myself a jumper. I had my first of five "Make a Sweater" classes yesterday evening and spent the entire time swatching. I was very pleased to learn how to do this properly though and, as I knit even more loosely than I thought, glad I took the time to do it. I'm knitting a jumper which has a sideways pattern i.e. you start at one sleeve and knit the length of that, increase once you get to the body and knit the body and then decrease when you get across to the other sleeve and knit that. It's a pattern from a book my sister brought home from the States for me last year called Hot Knits. I chose a pattern made with Big Wool as I think it should knit up quite quickly and so I'll hopefully be making good progress before I start to get frustrated. Although as I need to go down three needle sizes from what's recommended to get gauge it's going to be a bit slower than I thought. I'm ignoring minor points like the fact that I left it late to get the wool and wasn't able to get all 14 balls from the same dyelot.

I also finished my tea cosy last week and have sent it off to my swap partner in Australia. I had a lot of fun doing that as I didn't use any of the patterns available free online but instead made my own up. It was essentially the same hat pattern that I've made several times before but doubled in size. This involved a half-an-hour or so with a calculator to figure out the shaping part of it and what I ended up with was HUGE but as it was being felted that was okay. I'm not going to post photos until my swap partner receives it just in case she sees it here.

Monday 28th after a bad weekend

Lunch was home made veg soup with a bit of chicken thrown in and some homemade bread. I've also had an apple (which I brought in) and a pear and a banana from the fruit platter in work.

Dinner will be something with chicken. I bought a chicken from Coolanowle yesterday, slightly smaller than usual but still a good size. It, plus three (very tasty) rashers and a half-dozen organic, free range eggs cost €18.19. I got some onions and a few leeks from Denis Healy as well, who for once actually had marked up what was Irish organic produce which cost €2.15. I allowed myself to be persuaded to go to the cinema on Saturday, bought popcorn there (definitely not a frugal thing to do but as filling a lunch as any other) and after the film we went for a couple, well, three drinks. That plus the takeaway I felt I needed on the way home left me not much of my budget for the rest of the week. I do have €20 left from last week which will have to do me for going out to lunch later in the week. Still, I'm glad I went out on Saturday - I rarely do anything spontaneous like that and I had a good time. Mind you, deciding to get off the bus early and stroll down Grafton Street on the way to the cinema wasn't such a great idea - I couldn't believe the amount of people and then remembered why I don't go into town much anymore.

Yesterday, after spending what felt like the whole day (but was really only a couple of hours) giving a driving lesson to a panicky friend who was having her driving test today (she passed, thank goodness) I was in no mood for doing anything in the house so I spent the last hour of glorious sunshine tidying up the shed a bit and cutting the grass, turning the compost a little and generally tidying up the garden, including chatting to the neighbour over the front garden fence for twenty minutes. I really needed to get out in the fresh air. Still didn't feel like cooking or expending any effort when I came in so I just shoved the chicken into the oven to roast. By the time it was cooked though I at least felt enthusiastic enough to strip the carcass and put several portions of meat into the freezer for next week plus some into the fridge for today. And then I also made stock straightaway.

While doing all this I managed to keep the washing up under control so this evening when I go home I just have to clean the bathrooms, the cooker and do the floors. A last quick tidy up before I go to bed (for which read, bringing everything that's lying around upstairs and dumping it in my bedroom instead!) and the house will be good enough to show people tomorrow - the landlord will be over and showing the other room to prospective new tenants. I spent a few hours knitting yesterday instead of cleaning the house and I really want to get back to it so it's an added incentive to not dally while cleaning and just get it done.

I made a new hat for my youngest niece and started and am halfway through a scarf for her older sister. This is really their Christmas box I'm making stuff for as I couldn't summon up the energy in December to make and send things. It's my nephew and brother-in-law's birthdays this weekend so I'm aiming to post stuff over by Wednesday for both the birthdays and Christmas pressies for everyone.

Dishcloths

Having read so many blog and comments from people who knit their own dishcloths I decided to finally try my hand at it. I plan to send these to my sister in Sydney. I wanted to try this a while ago and so when I was in a shop and saw some cotton yarn I bought it and it has been sitting in a bag for months waiting for me to do soemthing with it. Of course, that was before I really copped on that there are different sizes of cotton yarn, just like wool and these were very thin types. I'm still not sure what worsted weight is but I just went for it and knit these by using the two different cottons together, one is a light yellow and one is a cream colour. The colours don't show up well in the photos.

I also had some cotton yarn which was given to me for the workshop on continental knitting I attended during the Knitting and Stitching show and it's a lovely soft one (possibly not so good for a dishcloth but what the hell). All three cloths are slightly different lengths and widths. I look forward to making some for myself now.

Knitting

It must be a time of year thing (can't really say it's a cold weather thing as we've been having far better weather the last few weeks than we had all summer). Howandever, I've been knitting lots recently and really enjoying it.

I finally finished the scarf I started for myself in March. It's a pattern called mistake rib, which is with 20 stiches - row 1:knit 2, purl 1 and row 2: knit all, repeating those rows to the end. Of course I didn't realise that when you purl on a line you've been knitting you're supposed to bring the yarn over and so I have a mistake-mistake rib. Or maybe a reverse mistake rib? But it's pretty I think.


I've also made a couple of hats.
The dark one is Sirdar Denim Ultra, which is what I have a pattern for. The other one is a different wool called Gedifra Charme which was left over from what I bought to make a scarf for my friend when I was Germany (that one I knit as a proper mistake rib one). It's much smaller and I don't know how to size a pattern up so will need to figure that one out or else find a new hat pattern for less chunky wool. The range of colours I can get of the Sirdar isn't great and I'm bored with dark grey and dark brown hats.

And finally I've started two new scarves. One for my sister as a birthday present - I met her the other day for brunch and dragged her into This is Knit to choose some wool. Very much a girl after my own heart she went straight for the bargain bin and chose a nice Debbie Bliss merino dk in light purple and then proceeded to look longingly at a scarf which looked complicated. Good thing she was standing beside me or I might have bottled it. I didn't though and it turns out to be not too bad. I needed a couple of starts to get it right but it's going well now. It involves a lot of "yarn over" so it's good I'd figured out how to do that properly from my own scarf mistake already. I also dug out a few balls of Taos wool from Crystal Palace Yarns which I thought were really pretty and have started a similar scarf in that. Haven't decided who it's for yet but am liking it a lot so it may just be another one for me! Have loads more wool to keep me occupied now.

The Knitting and Stitching Show is back in Dublin on November 1 - 4 and I've just booked tickets. If I don't book ahead of time I never make it to these things so not only have I booked a ticket for the Saturday and Sunday, I've also signed up for workshops on Crochet, Continental Knitting (not actually sure what it is but was told it's knitting for left-handers and being a citeog that'll suit me alright) and Felt & Beaded Flowers. I meant to book on to the Knitting Flowers one but got all mixed up so decided to just leave it. Felting and beading will be interesting too and I can always see if there's a free space on the day for the other. I remember last year that I didn't really buy anything as I found nothing that I couldn't get any time from my normal suppliers at the same price (or less) so this year decided to use my budget for attending workshops instead. Anyone else in the area going to be there on the Saturday or Sunday?

Potato harvest

Yes, there were actually some potatoes in there - can't really believe it because the plants were only in a couple of weeks before I had to chop them down. I got three potatoes from the two plants which were planted in a tyre stack in the back garden. Two were very squishy and one, which was a big potato, had a baby slug and lots of slime on it and also felt a bit squishy - they all went straight in the bin.

From the plants I put out in the front garden later in the year though (thinking they'd give me some potatoes for Christmas), I got this lot:
That's just over 1.2 kilos although I admit I did also weigh the teeny tiny ones. I also picked the last of the scallions.

It was all very exciting and with yesterday being such a lovely sunny day it reminded me of something I'd forgotten over the course of our miserable, wet summer -it's all worth it when you get to pick stuff and then eat it!

I'm wondering now if I need to wait a year or two before planting anything in the same space - do blight spores live a long time?

I got a lot done yesterday. I made a trip to my sister's storage unit and brought back all the spare duvets and bed clothes which I'd taken out in July for my other sister (visiting from France) to use. That has cleared a hugh space on my bedroom floor which is a big incentive to finish tidying up the rest of it too. I also brought over three small vacuum pack bags of clothes in sizes too small for me to wear at the moment, which has cleared a bit more space (both physcial and psycholoigal) in my room. She's decided to stay on in Australia for a while longer so renewed her storage contract for another year. It's handy for me as I can make use of the small amount of space left in it without falling into the trap of just shifting all my clutter somewhere else without properly dealing with it.

I also made it to Spring Wools to pick up a couple of balls to make hats with. I need something simple to knit and I did a good few of these last year so it'll keep my hands busy without needing a huge amount of concentration.

And finally I managed to get to the library with my overdue books. I finished Awarenes by Anthony Mello and thought it was good but not necessarily one I'd bother reading again. Barely got a few chapters into Gestalt Therapy Verbatim but a large part of the reason for that is that someone had underlined huge parts of the book and made notes in the margin and I find that really distracting. Particularly as it was a library book I was adding annoyance at how inconsiderate people are to that distraction.

I did enjoy the book on preserving I got but it's not the "one". I think I'll have to spend a bit of time in a good bookshop to find one which suits me better. And finally, there was the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I still haven't actually finished this book but have bought my own copy because I really like what part of it I have read. It's funny really because a lot of the ideas are very similar to Awareness but that didn't resonate with me half as much. I'm looking forward to reading further in it but think this is a book I'll probably come back to again and again.

And then I ended the day by heading in to Christchurch Cathedral which was hosting Voices for Hospice. People from lots of different choirs gathered at 5 or so to rehearse excerpts from Messiah, which we then performed at 7.30. I was on time (for once) for the rehearsal and we had a half-hour break between rehearsal and performance, which was just enough to get out to get a drink of water and introduce myself to the people sitting near me. The evening flew by and I was wondering why I was starting to feel tired towards the end of the performance when I realised that it was after nine and we'd been there (and singing) for almost four hours. What a great way to spend a Saturday evening.