A mini snow day

I'm hesitant to say this but I think we might almost be feeling healthy again.  Having written that I now fully expect to be struck down by yet another plague.  Seriously, I've had a cold, the flu, and the Noro virus in the last three weeks, Kitty's had a chest infection and H got a cold, a throat infection and his fair share of Noro.  Fingers crossed, that's it for us for a while. (I didn't say that, I really didn't, I promise; we could really do with just catching a break).



The snow fell again last night.  Only a tiny dusting this time, light enough to cling to the tops of blades of grass, and form a crisp icy crust across the pavement.  Kitty has just a touch of cabin fever, mainly characterised by bringing me her coat at regular intervals and trotting down the hall to pound on the front door, so I bundled her up this morning for a quick blast of fresh air.  We walked up to the allotments, counting foot prints, and different sized doggy prints, and added our own swirly patterns to the path.



The walk to the allotments always detours to the baby playpark, and even the snow doesn't stop a pointy hand and cry of "Dap!" escaping from the buggy.  The slide was out of action with a snowy crash mat at the bottom but she loved stepping out making little flowery footprints into fresh snow.


It's all melted now, and the forecast has switched the snowflakes for little round sunshines so I think we may have seen the last snowfall for the year.  I'm glad we got to go out and play though, to see her with rosy pink cheeks and and a pink-tipped nose, playing in the snow, the winter she was one.

One week

You know when you have a week where everything falls into place: you get more full nights' sleep than not; the laundry fates align so that every family member's clothes are both clean and dry when they need them; delicious suppers materialise out of things you'd bought from a list, with a meal plan; your hair falls naturally into the bouncy glossy style only normally produced by your stylist and an army of blow drying assistants; trains run on time; and at work, opposing counsel lie like scattered dominoes, felled by the devastating power of your carefully worded legal arguments.

And then there are the weeks that counterbalance.  The ones where a twitch of your skirt has got caught up in life's mangle, and there's nothing to do but ride out the storm and wait for it to spit you out sodden, snotty and slightly crushed on the other side.

Where have we been? let me give you a clue.  Poor darling Kit's cough of a week ago turned into a full blown chest infection, complete with steam-train breathing sound effects that landed us at the out of hours doctors at some tiny wee hour of a weekend morning to get mademoiselle started on antibiotics pronto.  And then just as she started to perk up, H and I, exhibiting rare synchronicity on the illness front, were taken out by the same lurgy within 24 hours of each other, just in time for H to take an exam through a cold fog momentarily held at bay by just about every over-the-counter pharmaceutical on the market. My pharmacopoeia being rather limited by the nursling, I've made up for it by a lot of groaning.

Last Tuesday I went down with a fever and the shivers and it wasn't until Sunday afternoon that I started to perk up, and only today that I've felt even vaguely human, and that's while speaking makes me cough, and I appear to have swallowed several golf balls.

On Saturday, having run out of, well just about everything, we ran a carefully planned mission to the butchers (for pie) and then both had to have a little lie down.  Seriously people, if you know me in real life and you haven't had this horrid cold that's doing the rounds - run and hide (and chain eat Vitamin C).

But life goes on, and we are on the mend, a little less:


and a little more:


The fairies came at the weekend and did the washing up and took us for a restorative roast lunch at the Durham Ox and you never know, if you're very lucky, there may even be some crafty making in the offing.  Come on this week, you really can't be worse than last week (and for the avoidance of doubt, that in no way shape or form resembled a challenge)!

Winter, as in igloos and eskimos and penguins and ICE!

It turns out that I may have been a tad over-optimistic in putting the laundry out yesterday!

From one of the mildest winters in my memory we've jumped down the thermometer 10 degrees or so, although it's not a patch on last year, when a brisk minus two was the daily high. Even so, the world outside today is covered with a brittle of ice, like a white cold creme brulee. 


The fuchsias that had decided that it was spring have been scorched by the ice and defrosted into a pulpy mush, but these delicate pink berries seem to be holding up.  I don't actually know what they are; they grow over the fence each year to greet the new year, and I think they're beautiful.  Answers on a postcard/in the comments if you've any ideas.

The barbeque, sat outside patiently waiting all through the summer for the promised warm weather, could do double duty as a freezer, and it is to my great regret that Kitty's trousers


say "Ahoy there matey", and not the more appropriate "Shiver me Timbers".

We had Kitty's slide out in the lounge today so a lot of the day has been spent first lifting her up to the top, and then stretching out a watchful hand or two just in case when she figured out how to climb the steps.  I did manage a little sewing last night and this afternoon while Mademoiselle la princess took a petite nap.


Her newest trousers are finished, I just need some daylight and a cheerful girl to take some pictures, but there've been distractions today, aside from the slide, the first instalment of Kitty's Christmas present to me arrived yesterday, and it's an addictive read:

On the fourteenth day of Christmas ...

our lovely friends came to play.

By virtue of some alphabetical wiztrickery, H and A were lab partners at university, realised they'd spotted each other before at church, and we've all been the best of friends ever since.  We count A as family, particularly now that he is Kitty's godfather, which mostly means that I don't sweat the tidying up if he's coming over. 

His better half, L, has an appreciation for the merits of Persephone books, salted caramel almonds from Hotel Chocolat and all things handmade, so we were always going to hit it off.

They came to spend a quiet cosy Sunday with us; a big roast gammon and sticky toffee pudding lunch, followed by Christmas presents, and an afternoon tucked up in my quilt collections, playing Sonic, eating sweeties, reading, knitting and playing shop with Kitty.  It was restful, fun and quintessentially English; if only we had a roaring fire and it had been snowing outside we would have been quite the picture postcard (well minus the computer games perhaps).

But you didn't really want to know about all that (and apologies to anyone whose New Year's virtuosity is wavering because I mentioned sticky toffee pudding (with ice-cream)).  Sunday was the unveiling of the final handmade Christmas presents for 2011.

First, there was a large, flat, square, squishy parcel for A, which Kitty assiduously helped him to unwrap.

A 'very useful quilt for snuggling under on cold winter's days when part of your house has a stone floor'

The pattern is Pandora's Box from the Jelly Roll Quilts book by Pam and Nicky Lintott, and the fabric is a Moda jelly roll that I bought from my very first Festival of Quilts.  It perfectly fulfils the criteria of 'colours that I have seen A wear' and in fact he turned up in a jumper that perfectly matched the orange border.

It's a really great pattern for jelly rolls and just generally; it's nice and simple to show of the fabric to its best advantage and as it's all mixed up together, the quilt doesn't suffer for the quilter not being able to separate the jelly roll neatly into light and dark.

It also lent itself to a piecemeal construction.  On one evening I took the jelly roll apart and did the first stage of cutting, another night I matched the strips into pairs for the centre sections, sewed them together during one nap time, and cut the second stage during another.  At the end of each stage, all the pieces could be tucked away from tiny fingers in a bag without loosing my place, or upsetting a precisely piled stack of cut pieces.

Once I'd sewn up the main quilt top I stood back and marvelled at the centre points of the blocks; my quilting has improved so gradually through little bits of practice here and there I forget that I can be pretty accurate now if I take my time to do it properly.

The border is a flaming orange and gold weave; it doesn't feel like a printed quilting cotton but is much softer with more drape.  There was just enough on the bolt at Quilter's Den for the borders or I would have been tempted to have a little bit more for a skirt in one of my favourite colours. 

I had enough white on lime green polka dots left over from my sampler quilt for the binding, so all that was left was to choose the backing, and what a backing:

Enough sunshine to chase away any rainy day gloom (also from Quilter's Den).  I really ought to pay more attention to the names of the fabric I'm buying I know.

I used a pure cotton wadding and quilted it all over with lime green thread in a square stipple.


I can't imagine life without my quilts, they have so many uses from extra blankets on cold nights to tents in the lounge and space to lie out in the garden in the heat of summer so I'm glad A and L like their very own.

And just in case he doesn't share -

L has a pair of handknit socks.  It's Regia (definitely Regia this time - I found the ball band) Circus Colour in Akrobatik, bought on my last trip to Liberty's.  L once borrowed a pair of my shoes on an impromptu muddy walk so I knit to fit me, using a 64st cast on and a slip stitch heel and I think they should keep her feet nice and warm walking around the stone floor of their kitchen on chilly mornings.

So there we have it; four pairs of socks, two quilts, a hat, a scarf and a jumper.  Not a bad turn out considering that I didn't start until mid-October.  Maybe this will be the year that I start a bit earlier (yes yes, I can hear your hollow laughter from here!). But first I have two new balls of Rowan Big Wool in a delicious deep pomegranate to go and squoosh.

Feast

Whether they realised it or not, I know for a fact that the key influence on H's brother and his wife's decision to move back down north from Scotland to Yorkshire last year was the proximity of their oh so cute nieces aged nearly two and one and a quarter.  Kitty (and H and I) are now a couple of hours away and K (and C's sister and brother-in-law are even closer).  The better jobs, bigger house and the rest of the family had nothing to do with it - oh no.


(Kitty in her party frock)

(and K in hers - it had snowmen on the bottom just out of shot)

They were working for their first Christmas back home (the perils of being doctors) so a couple of days later they hosted a party for fourteen, and both sides of their family got together for Christmas Take 2.


(Kitty explores her new Martian Mansion)

(with help from K - who clearly doesn't wiggle as much as Kitty - and Auntie A wearing the bows from everyone's presents)

H and I volunteered to bring pudding and the two Cs pushed the boat out for the starter and main course; bacon and scrambled eggs Benedict on little toasties to start, followed by a gargantuan buffet that took up most of the kitchen.  We had a rib of beef that had been cooking (a la Heston) for 18+ hours at a really low heat to leave it melt in the mouth tender, and a pork belly that was brined and slow roasted for nearly the same amount of time, all polished off with roast potatoes, parsnip puree, sauteed Brussels sprouts and red onions and a selection of gravies.

Now a supper that I haven't had to cook and won't have to wash up (all hail their dishwasher) is always going to get brownie points but this was right up there in the gold star category.  It was delicious and amazing and I loved it.

I also may have eaten it all before I even thought of taking any pictures.

For pudding, I spent a good part of Boxing Day making 78 profiteroles (using the Hairy Bikers' recipe), and the creme patisserie from Nigella's Feast. The next morning I used up four of my twelve spare egg whites to make the Fig, Ginger and Almond meringue from Annie Bell's Gorgeous Cakes and then we packed the whole lot up (plus a raspberry jelly as a special request from H) and drove it gingerly up a heavily laden M1.

Once we'd unpacked we found the largest remaining serving plate and started piping custard and stacking my croquembouche. I thought that making spun sugar in someone else's kitchen was a step too far, and I'm also not very good at it, so I stuck to the caramel sauce in Nigella with some ingredients purloined from our hosts and it turned out really well. 

In fact the only hitch in the whole operation was that the serving plate wasn't very big.  I stacked and glued the best I could and then called for an engineering consult from H (MEng) and C's Dad (model railway builder).  Their professional opinion was that I'd reached my limit, so we had a big croquembouche and a little mini one on the other side of the table like sugary cairns marking the location of a feast.

So here they are:

Two croquembouche, covered with caramel sauce and dusted with snowflake sprinkles, two trees and Father Christmas,

and a spicy and light meringue that impressively survived the journey from Warwickshire with only minimal damage.
H's Mum and sister had also been busy and arrived with trays of colourful cakes - just in case anyone had any teeny tiny space left over.

We made some pretty good inroads into the table groaning with food but there was still plenty to send home with all the branches of the family, and still be left with more for late night fridge raids, and I may or may not have eaten a couple of profiteroles with my breakfast the next morning!

I don't think I was hungry again for the rest of the week. Now that's the sign of a good party - and a New Year diet.

A Handmade Christmas Part 3: for the Mummies

Every now and then I come across a really beautiful knitting pattern, crafted from what can only be Rumplestiltskin's gold, or something else luscious looking but equally unavailable, and I sigh, and cruise the internets and Ravelry to work out a substitution, or how to not eat for a month to afford the shipping.

So when it turns out that the yarn in question is in fact a nice little Rowan, available from all number of places including a shop five hundred yards from my office; well, it seems only right and proper to knit it up right away to encourage the knitting muses to foster more such synchronicity.

I saw the Drifted Pearls scarf on Pinterest in a gentle grey, and when I saw it called for Rowan Lima, I knew I had Mum's Christmas present-to-be.  It's knit as a traditional scarf with a loopy bobbly edging until you get a little over half the length you might want in an ordinary scarf, then the fabric is pleated, and the pleats securely knit into a loop.  Tuck the end through the loop and you have a gorgeous warm wide scarf, perfect for Mum who tends to wear her ordinary scarves this way.

(Photo shamelessly stolen from Mum)

The Amazon blue matches the hat that I made for her last Christmas, and I hope they are both keeping her warm in the wild winds that are currently howling at our windows as they whip around the house.

Further north, lots further north, is another cozy Mum.  We have a simple formula for H's Mum's Christmas gifts: fruit jellies (the good ones made with actual fruit juice) + handknit socks = happiness.

And when you know the recipient likes your knitting so much she wears holes in the heels on a regular basis, you can't but pick up the needles:

Edwardian Boating socks, knit from an Opal blank that I hand-dyed with Kool-Aid.  With a linen stitch heel and a sock yarn with a 25% nylon content I'm hoping not to see these in the mending pile for many years to come, and to be honest they may fall into the 'oh darn' over the bin pile as I'm not sure I could work out how to reknit linen stitch without dropping almost all of the stitches.

It's an addictive pattern though; I'd always want to knit to the next waterboatman, and the next and the next, until I had two socks sat in front of me.  I'm glad I didn't knit them for me though as the linen stitch is not very stretchy and I would never have got them over my ankles.  I know if I really wanted them for me I could change the heel flap to a simple rib, but it was nice to knit them as they were designed.

That's almost all of the Christmas craftiness out in the open; the last little bit is still wrapped up under our tree, but before I'm truly caught up I've still got to tell you about the Christmas Croquembouche and my brother-in-law's amazing ultra-slow roasted beef.  That'll have to wait for another day though as it's late, and after an evening spent chasing electricity with a hairdryer when we got home from work to discover that none of the plugs were working, I'm off to make a nest in which to hide from the storm with a couple of quilts, a knitted blanket and as much of the duvet as I can persuade H to part with.

The here and now

There is a moment that comes on the best of days.  Towards the end of the day, but before H arrives home from whichever far flung extreme of the Midlands he's been travelling to.  The chores are done, or at least I've made my peace with the ones that aren't going to get done, and the house is at rest.


We used to spend the time in the garden, cloud gazing and reading stories but the squally showers that swept though this week, and the rose bramble making insistent and repeated requests to enter through the window make it clear that those days are gone for now.



So we sing, we make funny noises with cardboard tubes and many shaky rattley noisy toys, we play tents, and we snuggle together to read a story, before Kitty takes on the most important task of her day; emptying the bookcase (again).



It isn't a saccarine-soaked picture of rosy-cheeked perfection, straight from a Mabel Lucie Attwell drawing; sooner or later there will be a nappy to be changed, a little hand will stretch for some out of reach contraband, and given Madam's predilection for Mummy's big books, something heavy will often be carelessly discarded on my toes.  But it is my present and my memories, and to me it is perfect.

Kitty and the rose

Well it's not exactly sunny today, it's one of those days optimistically described as 'dry and bright', meaning complete cloud cover.  None the less it's a good sort of light for photographing creamy pink roses because nothing gets completely washed out by brilliant summer sunshine.  And we wanted the pictures to be good, because this is a very special rose.



My father has a talent for choosing unusual but perfect gifts for people; every now and then he finds something that no-one else would ever have thought of, but becomes something very treasured - my Ancient Greek interlinear bible, a present for getting an A* in my Greek GCSE, being a classic example.

When he and Mum arrived with Kitty's Christmas present, he explained that a few days after her birth he was thinking about her name, and decided that if there wasn't a rose with her name, there really ought to be.  And so began a little research into roses, that ended with a bare stem in a sea green pot arriving at our house in January.


It survived the frosts and the snow and slowly buds emerged and little green leaves unfurled and now we have beautiful fragrant creamy roses with a pink blush centre. It sits just outside our lounge doors and the scent floods in on a warm evening.

A little while ago we received a parcel from Kitty's Grannie with an almost finished dress and matching bloomers, and last week I finished it off.  So her we have Kitty, in a dress made by Grannie, with her rose chosen by Grandpa:




Of course, having got her all set up, I thought I might try to take some actual knitting pictures. I mean, what with this being a creativey type of blog and all.

First to be finished, the Bellyfant Baby Cardigan in Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino






Next off the needles was the wonderful Sweet Bunting. It's a Cosmic Pluto pattern and as soon as I saw it on Laura's blog I knew it was perfect for little miss. It's Baby Cashmerino again with a little scrap of aqua Sublime Baby Cashmere Merino Silk DK for the bunting string.









(and yes that is what generally happens when the baby gets too near the flowerpot!)

Last but not least, the cardigan I made in Venice, the Silver Cardigan, but in pink Sublime Cashmere Merino Silk DK with pink heart buttons in the exact matching colour.









They all have a little room for her to grow over the summer so hopefully she'll sport fewer 3/4 length sleeves in the future - although I love her Tulips Cardigan so much that she'll still be wearing it as a short-sleeved bolero.  Perhaps a bigger version should be the next Kitty cardigan on the needles?

Venice Part 3: Modern art and performance art

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is housed in a little one storey Venician palace not far from our hotel.  It was supposed to be as big and grand as the palace it faces across the Grand Canal but for an unknown and much speculated reason (possibly the neighbours' influence in 18th century circles) it never got higher than the basement and ground floor.  Many many years later Peggy moved in and started to amass her collection around her.

From the street side you enter a little courtyard full of sculpture and statues,






And then some more modern glass and mirrors









I don't have a photo of my favourite; a wishing tree where wishes were written on little pieces of paper and hung off the branches. There were wishes for world peace, wishes for happiness, and wishes from all over the world. My wish was a little closer to home (I'm not telling or it won't come true).

Inside the rooms were cool and plainly decorated to show off the art to its best advantage.

I'm fairly picky about modern art so I skipped a few rooms that didn't have anything to hold me and lingered more in others. There's no photography allowed inside the rooms so these photos are borrowed with thanks from the Peggy Guggenheim website and the links underneath each will take you to the appropriate page.

Agostino Bonalumi's Black


(here) is one that I just wanted to get inside and have a good look at to see if it's really concave or whether it's just an illusion (it's concave and it moves around the room with you).

Lucio Fontana Spacial Concept


(here) which I spent ages staring at to decide whether the black is a painted stripe or a slit in the canvas.  Conclusion: a slit. I know that seeing it just as a picture you think 'oh anyone could do that, how can it be classed as art' but in the flesh there's something more to it; it's a very engaging piece of art if it was simply an artist's tantrum.

Hundertwasser Shelter

(here), the inspiration for a whole line of Regia yarn

Jackson Pollock Alchemy


(here) I've loved Jackson Pollock from afar for years but this was the first time I'd come face to face and it was completely wonderful. I could have spent hours looking at them, close up, far away, somewhere in the middle.

The photos are good but nothing can really convey the texture; it's chewy and thick and you just want to dig your fingers in and squish it. It's no wonder they've got all of them under glass.

I'm not sure what Kitty made of modern art; she liked the ones with bright colours and then she went for a little snooze in her carrier until we ended up back in the shop where she woke up to be petted and cooed over by the shop assistants.

And while she napped away the heat of each afternoon, I sat on our balconey and knit:

I finished a little cardigan while we were there, and it's since gained some buttons and had a gentle block. Kitty had three new cardigans that need a photoshoot so I'll have to hope the sun's shining next time she's in an amenable mood.

It was sunny every day until the last day when after we came back from our early morning trip to Piazza San Marco when the heavens opened, and there was a sudden need for brollies.

H bought me a lovely red umbrella with little white hearts and a white frill and I loved it unreservedly. I twirled and sang singing in the rain and it was big enough to keep Kitty and I nice and dry all the way to her toes.

It was too big to fit in the suitcase so we had to leave it in Italy and I was quite sad. H has promised me a replacement but I've got to do some serious research to find a proper replacement.

And now, to round off my picture tour to Venice I have one more photo. You see cruise ships come to Venice, towed in tightly fore and aft, rounding past San Giorgio Maggiori and down the Zattere to the sea port, and well, they're just a little disproportionate: