Friday 30 May 2008

Cooking again!

I appear to have managed to make three things in the kitchen (which aren't dead simple - like boiled egg) in the past 24 hours.  This is an achievement, since I haven't been cooking properly since I was pregnant.  It's entirely possible that this might not last (especially if Immy has another growth spurt), but I just wanted to record the occasion for posterity (lucky posterity).  

Yesterday, it was the rather unappetizingly entitled 'Brown Stew' from my Mum's old Stork cookbook.  I varied it a bit by seasoning the flour with paprika and adding tinned tomatoes and porcini mushrooms.  And apart from a mini mini disaster in the shape of some of it sticking to the bottom of the pan (I managed to ignore the injunction to stir it occasionally), it was actually rather yum.  I think it might have to go onto the list of keepers (dishes Marc would like me to make again).

And today I managed to make the passionfruit trifle from the BBC Good Food Desserts cookbook.  I have no clue what it tastes like yet since it's to be taken to Claire and Kev's for lunch tomorrow.  However, it smells divine and it's taking me all my self-control not to wolf the lot and make up some poor excuse for its absence.  Cross your fingers for me!

I also made the pork chops in mustard sauce from Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries.  People, you have to try this recipe!  It's so gorgeous I could probably eat it all week.  Well, not quite, but it was seriously delicious.  We had it with mashed potatoes (Nigella style made with warm cream and freshly grated nutmeg) and peas.  This too is a keeper.

No knitting,  but half the day was spent shopping and then it was Too Darn Hot and humid to even contemplate it.  Plus I was shattered.  I'm going to try and manage something this weekend.

Monday 26 May 2008

It's infected my dreams

That's it, I think I've finally gone completely mad (something my friends have been predicting for years).  I've started dreaming about knitting.  Now, those who are Knitters may say that this is perfectly reasonable.  They may start talking about beautiful lace, gorgeous colours and the like.  And if it were that of which I had been dreaming, I would suggest they had a point.  Unfortunately, I woke up this morning realising that I had been dreaming about how to do mattress stitch.  Now, I realise that you might claim that this is at least an appropriate stitch to be dreaming about in bed.  And, in my defence, I had been reading Maggie Righetti's excellent, Knitting in Plain English the night before.  But, really.  I'm sure there's something wrong with me.  And I still can't seam neatly.

Sunday 25 May 2008

Hurrah!

Tilly's poncho is finally finished.  Here it is:



I'm reasonably pleased with how it's turned out. I had to disguise a couple of miscreant holes. And I'm not sure that the blocking worked entirely (I perhaps should have got the towels hotter and steamier). But hopefully Claire will be able to reshape it after handwashing and it will be better. Otherwise I'll email her the instructions I had for steam blocking and that should remedy it.

Now, onto my next project!

Friday 23 May 2008

Progress on Tilly's Poncho!

I have now managed to do all of Tilly's poncho bar the hood, which I'm going to tackle this evening.  The quality of this photo isn't great (oh how I'd love to live in a house with better light), but it does show you that it's looking vaguely garment-like:



Just hoping I don't foul it all up with the hood. The pattern said to work the back until it was 14 1/2 inches, but this didn't seem quite right, so I just made it match the back (fortunately I'd been counting rows, so could work that out). The instructions for the hood say to sew it up, but I'm going to pinch Elizabeth Zimmermann's method and graft the top together (hopefully). That way it ought to look a bit neater.

Fingers crossed!

Sunday 18 May 2008

Friends, food and fun

Had a lovely day yesterday with Kev, Claire & Tilly.  We ate a very late (3pm!) lunch at Nandos followed by going back to theirs just to chill and chat.  It is nice to spend time in such relaxed company.

Speaking of Tilly, I'm now nearly half way through her poncho.  I shall be taking it over to Claire's tomorrow so that she can see the colourway.  I'm hoping that she'll like it, given that it's a mixture of sea greens and blues which, to my mind, ought to suit Tilly very well.  I decided that the pattern (the Lion Brand Hooded Baby Poncho) had too small a neck.  This may well have been because my row tension was off, but I worked in a few extra rows to compensate.  I will just have to adjust the back accordingly.  Mercifully I have a lot of that yarn, so I'm hoping that it will last.  Once I've worked the hood I will then try and decide whether I want the pocket or not.  I'm not entirely sold on the idea that two year olds particularly need pockets.  Apart from for the odd tissue, I suppose. Anyhow, I'm hoping that I'll have it completed by the end of the week.  That would mean I was a week early and could get on with some other projects.  Which will be useful given that since I've joined Ravelry I've seen project after project that I fancy doing.  And I kind of have a yearning to make yet another hat.  So that will be my reward if I manage to finish this poncho to any degree of competence.  Fingers crossed!

Friday 16 May 2008

Waves of grief

Funny how grief works.  Similar to buses, but twice as crushing.  I just keep getting hit by waves and waves of it.  You never realise how much you love someone until they're gone.  And now I just miss Uncle more than ever.  He was like a father to me - hence why he gave me away on my wedding day.  And I'm so grateful he managed both that and to attend my graduation.  I miss him horribly - I haven't felt this much pain and sorrow since my Mum died.  And this bereavement is making me miss her, too, since she is the one who would normally have comforted me when I'm feeling this bad.  Poor Immy doesn't know what to make of me because I keep bursting into tears.  Overwhelmingly, he's also left us all a great deal of money.  It will help with the mortgage and whathaveyou, but every penny of it seems hollow because he's no longer here to see the benefits it's giving us and especially Immy.  I would rather not have the money and have him instead.  It's just such a shame that I wasn't able to visit him owing to late pregnancy and then feeding issues.  While perhaps I could have asked Marc to take a day off or tried to go at a weekend, I know he wouldn't have registered who we were and that might have been even more painful.  This is all so hard to process.  And, like a child, I keep wishing him back here because he was so dear to me.  I hope this all eases soon, I'm finding it very hard to deal with.  Particularly since I'm on my own for such long periods of time at the moment.

Thursday 15 May 2008

Boo hiss!

I appear to have caught my Uncle Alec's cold.  My nose is all bunged up, such that I can't breathe properly at all and my throat hurts.  Unfortunately, I think Immy has it as well.  The only mercy is that, since I'm breastfeeding her, she ought to be able to fight it off as swiftly as me.  

I didn't feel much like knitting, therefore, although I kept wanting to.  Then some patterns on Ravelry caught my eye and gave me a case of startitis.  So I cast on for these.  Unfortunately the pattern gives no tension, yarn quantity or finished size, so I'm just going to see how big they turn out.  I can only presume that when it says to rib for 6 inches, it means from that point rather than from the beginning, since it doesn't specify.  I'm hoping it works, anyway, since it will make a nice present for a couple of somebodies. (I'm not going to mention which particular pair since, if by some miracle they happen to be reading this, it will give the game away).

Tomorrow I'm going to try and get on with that poncho.  Particularly since rain is again forecast which will keep it cool enough to do so comfortably.  My third skein of yarn needs winding into a ball, so I will probably do that first.  But hopefully there will be enough time to get onto the front of it.  I'm really hoping I can get it done in time and up to standard.  Unlike most people, I'm praying for a cool summer, so that I can keep going with my knitting and try and improve.

Wednesday 14 May 2008

Uncle Henry

Yesterday was my Uncle's funeral.  The day dawned clear and bright and we had a swift and pleasant journey to Margate.  The service was held at Thanet crematorium at 2.40 pm.  I had wondered why I was in such fine spirits for most of the morning, but it turned out that the grief hit us all when we were actually in the service.  I could scarcely sing for sobbing.  There were very few of us there - just family and a couple of staff from the care home.  It was a lovely service and the vicar was lovely.  She stopped to talk to us afterwards and enquired about our respective babies.  Poor Keziah found it all a little overwhelming.  I don't think she fully understands, poor thing.  She just knows that she misses him.  As we all do - terribly.  RIP Uncle, we love you with all of our hearts.  

Thursday 8 May 2008

Finally!

Lexie's jacket is now completed.  Thank goodness for that!  And I do think, now I've had a proper look at it, that it will fit her.  At least, I hope so.  It's the Modular Tomten Jacket from Elizabeth Zimmermann's 'Knitting Without Tears'.  The pattern calls for a zip but I gave up on that idea and turned it into a hoodie instead.  If Nat decides she wants them, I may also make a couple of ties at the hood, but I quite like the open neck effect.  Anyhow, here it is:



Not too terrible, even if I do say so myself!

Whew!

It ain't half hot, Mum.  Imogen and I are both very warm indeed.  Which is making feeding a little bit of a challenge.  I'm hoping the current heatwave calms down a little soon.  The only bright side about Uncle Henry's funeral on Tuesday is that at least it's happening in Margate, where temperatures are a full 6 degrees Celsius cooler than here.  Which should make us both a lot more comfortable and ensure that she's less likely to grouse during the service.

Naturally, given the clement weather, I'm still knitting woolly hats.  Because this is the sane thing to do when you just want to lie in a bathtub full of ice, drinking homemade lemonade.  Clearly.  Anyhow, the Noro hat from this pattern (knit on straights instead of in the round) is now finished as you can see:



And I've finally got round to finishing off Alexia's jacket, which I'm currently sewing up. I've decided that, instead of putting in a zip (which looks tricky and, besides, the ones which have arrived from eBay look to be slightly too long), I'm just going to mattress stitch the two sides together. Then she can just pull it over her head and have a hoodie instead. That way it should be finished by the time that Nat and everybody arrive on Sunday and I can cast on something else guilt free. Plan and a half, I feel.

Tuesday 6 May 2008

Ta da!

The Baby Yoda Sweater is finally finished!  Hurrah!  I haven't yet tried it on Imogen on the basis that she's been far too hot today.  However, this is what it looks like:



Again, Marc's camera hasn't shown the true shade of green, but it's not too bad. I need to improve my sewing skills, though!

On another note, it appears that Imogen might be teething already - which is just ludicrously early!  She's drooling a lot and biting hard on things, plus stroking her cheek.  I'm really hoping that this doesn't affect feeding too badly.

Monday 5 May 2008

Grand tidy up

Well, semi-grand, anyway.  I managed to get most of what I wanted up in the loft.  Marc still hasn't put his LARP stuff up there, but at least the spare room looks slightly less like a bomb's hit it.  Plus Marc put up the cot because Immy was beginning to outgrow the Moses basket.  We now have to negotiate the cot each time we want to change her, though.  It's unfortunate that our room is such an awkward shape, really.  Great size but difficult to maximise the use of that space owing to the fact that a chunk of the room is taken up accommodating the stairs, if you see what I mean.

Other than that, I didn't really manage to get much in the way of knitting done.  I had fully intended to finish the Baby Yoda sweater, but I was quite tired and didn't feel that I would do it justice.  So I just carried on working on the Noro hat.  Excuse the rubbish photo, Marc's camera's annoying me at the moment, but this is what I've done so far:



Hopefully I'll get it done, along with my other projects, by next weekend.

Sunday 4 May 2008

Woohoo!

Finally got my invitation to Ravelry today.  I have set up my profile and can't wait to get going properly.  What a lovely end to the day!

All the fun of the fair

Well, we've just got back from a lovely but tiring day going round the fair at Morden Hall Park.  Imogen appreciated precisely nothing of it, though, since she slept through the lot!  We spent an inordinate amount of money on food and bits and pieces, but it was a very nice day out.  Just a pity that, although it was warm, the sun wasn't much in evidence.  Kathy has now gone home, so that means that tomorrow will have to be spent sorting out all the stuff for the loft.  Hopefully we'll get our spare room back then, which is just as well, considering that Liz, Nat, Kez and Lexie are all coming to stay next Sunday!

Saturday 3 May 2008

A nice surprise

Well, I was going to sort out all the stuff for the loft and get our home cinema ready for sale this weekend, but my plans were thwarted by a very pleasant surprise visit from my mother-in-law.  We had a very nice day shopping (during which she treated us to a cot mattress for Immy - thank you Kathy!) and after which we visited Marc's grandparents, where this photo was taken:





I'd show you a picture of his grandparents, but I didn't manage to get a decent (by my standards) shot.  

I can't believe she's exactly three months today.  In some ways it seems like an eternity ago that she was born - it feels as if she's been with us always.  And yet, it also feels like it was only yesterday.  I'm looking forward so much to all her developmental milestones.  Hearing her say Mummy for the first time is going to be magical.  I'm loving watching her grow up and seeing her change.  Already she's making different noises each day.  She's begun to recognize how I prepare to feed her, so she calms down when she realises that's what I'm doing.  And the other day she followed Marc out of the room with her gaze.  She's such a happy, sweet natured child and I feel incredibly lucky that she's been given to us.  At the risk of sounding horribly twee, we are truly blessed.

Friday 2 May 2008

Oh dear

Apparently the Tories have done very well in local elections and Boris Johnson is ahead in the London Mayoral election.  I can't think of a worse thing to happen to London politically than for him to be in charge.  Public transport will rapidly deteriorate and services will also be affected.  The man's a right wing idiot and I'm utterly disgusted by the prospective result.  My only consolation is that the Lib Dems appear to have done slightly better than Labour, but my worry is that this presages badly for the future and that the Conservatives might actually get in at the next election. Then the country really will go to pot.  I feel sick, frankly.  What a week of bad news: first my Uncle, then Humphrey Lyttelton, now this.  Appalling.

My only consolation is that at least Imogen's Baby Yoda Sweater is coming along nicely.  I've finished the second sleeve and got through 2 1/2 i-cords.  I just need to do the remaining i-cords and make up.  And I've managed that despite the fact that Immy appears to have been having a frequent feeding (possible growth spurt) day today.  Phew!

Thursday 1 May 2008

Shepherds fear unkindly May....

... Frost by night and hail by day.


Flanders and Swann may have been in jest, but it actually was hailing this morning when I answered the postman's knock (quiet down at the back there).  I couldn't believe it.  The poor postie must have been freezing.  

Oh well.  At least such weather justifies my knitting.