Business as usual

New year, new projects - at least that's the idea. I've actually been pretty busy on the knitting front since Christmas, making a cardigan for Gemma's baby friend Alice who was born in the same birthing pool exactly 2 weeks later than she was! Incredibly annoyingly I ran out of yarn about 5 rows from the end of the final sleeve. Grrrr. Still, it's given me renewed vigour for making things, and my yarn stash is relatively healthy (well, for me anyway) so there are a few little hats on the way, finally finishing my Central Park Hoodie (a mere 15 months after starting it, eh-hem...) a jumper for Gemma, and then, enticingly, a package from Clothkits on its way. They have a sale on at the moment and when I saw the image below I just couldn't resist ordering the dress, and then a little birdie skirt to go with it. You can't adequately describe this kind of cute, can you?



In other news, I've decided after much humming and hawing to stop going to the monthly bookgroup for a while. I've gone to the Mostly Books Wednesday evening bookgroup since its inaugural meeting back in 2006, but over the last 12 months have been attending sporadically due to a certain little one's arrival. I have read all the designated books each month however, and have increasingly found that doing this gives me little or no time to read my unread mountain, making me slightly resentful of the bookgroup book I feel I have to read. (Naming no names, Silas Marner). Now that I'm back at work full time, I decided I would see how that affects my work-life-reading balance, get through a pile of books of my choosing, and see how I feel later in the year about re-joining the group.

Finally, a nice feelgood end to the post - I had a fantastic piece of luck a few weeks ago while working from home due to the snow. As nursery was shut, Ali and I were sharing Gemma duties while trying to answer emails etc and after she'd woken from her morning nap on the second day at home we decided to take a walk to avoid cabin fever. We made it into town, went to Scuffs (a brilliant kids shoe shop in the market square in Abingdon) and bought the next size up in Padraig Slippers - the only shoes she cannot pull off, hehe.. On the way back home, trying to avoid slipping and sliding in the heavy snow/ice, I put the shoe bag and my purse in the bottom of the pram. On reaching home however we found the bag had disappeared. Disaster! So I retraced my steps into town (including a heavy tumble on the ice which gave me an enormous bruise to my knee and my dignity), hoping to find the bag still where it had fallen, whereever that may be. No luck. I got back to Scuffs without much hope of finding anything, only to be told that some kind soul had found the bag, looked through my purse to find my contact details, handed the bag and purse to a local community policeman, and phoned Scuffs with the details in case I ended up back there. The police phoned me as well to let me know they had the bag safe, so I picked it up from the station that afternoon, intact. The guy who was so honest was a chap called Ed Carlin, and he phoned me a number of times to make sure I knew my purse was safe, as well as sending me a very sweet text afterwards declining my offer of a thankyou gift. It's wonderful to know there are honest, helpful and conscientious people out there. Bless 'im.

Progress

Of sorts, anyway. It looks like I did no posts at all in February - first time ever I've skipped a month. However in my defence I have been posting here on a reasonably regular basis, and as my life is pretty much all about Gemma at the moment I didn't want to duplicate on this blog as well.

Today I managed to clean the living room though, without even having to stop once and rock, sway, feed, change, or otherwise entertain my daughter. I took her out in the Baby Bjorn this morning and when we got home she was so spark out I used the opportunity to get some stuff done. Feeling slightly more on top of things now she is 10 weeks (today!).

The other things that have made me feel a little more back to 'normal' (whatever normal is now) are: joining Twitter, which may or may not be a ridiculous thing to attempt, but at least tweeting or twittering or whatever makes a change from a) posting long entries here and b) updating my Facebook status on a regular basis with wholly baby-related posts. I elected to follow Stephen Fry, Phil Jupitus and Chris Moyles, as the celebrity Twitterers who I know about, but drew the line at Phillip Schofield. How do these celebs have time to post so much? Stephen Fry especially, while I do revere him utterly, must be a smidge annoying to be around, given that he must be surgically attached to his iPhone to be tweeting so much.

Some other normal things - am getting back into bookgroup mode with two books on the go, though whether I will have time to read them is another matter. The Mother and Baby group is reading the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, and the Wednesday evening group is on John Banville's The Untouchable. Neither of which I've started yet, ho hum. My knitting has picked up - am halfway through a little beanie hat for Gemma. And this week or next I want to get out and give the garden a good seeing to now that spring appears to have sprung in this part of the world.

Will try and post at least once a month from now on. In the meantime here's a gratuitous photo of our gorgeous and totally wonderful daughter living it up in the baby gym.

Websites that make me happy*

No, it's not that sort of post. Honestly, what were you thinking?

I'm talking about those sites I've either used for years or recently discovered, which tap into my personal loves and interests and/or make life easier. One of the recently discovered ones is Ravelry.com, an online knitting and crocheting community (bear with me) recommended by Arianne, whose role on our agency account I have appreciated for some time but until recently having no idea that we share a love of yarn and needles and generally making cute stuff. So I joined Ravelry the other day and now have a whole load of new patterns I want to try, yarns I want to buy and projects I want to get started on. Luckily with my leave coming up I might even have a chance to get going on some of them before Chewie arrives and occupies my every waking moment.

LibraryThing is another of these kinds of sites. I guess the beauty of both this and Ravelry, and Bloglines and even the dreaded Facebook to a certain extent is the cataloguing aspect of them (tapping into the librarian deep in my core, hmm); where knitting projects, books I own, blog feeds, friends, photos etc are all kept in nice easy places for me to access pretty much whenever I want to. I'm yet to find a gardening website that feeds my soul as much, but there's bound to be one out there somewhere.

Maybe I'm getting old, maybe it's preparation for being a mum, I don't know, but 10 years ago only books and music really excited me in my leisure time, that and drinking cider with various cronies of course :) Now I get far more out of creating stuff, whether it's a little beanie hat for a friend's toddler (it's nearly finished Julia and will be on its way to Calgary soon!), a banana loaf for a Bonfire Night get together, a batch of dahlia seedlings growing and blooming over the summer, or even dare I say baking a baby for the last 8 months. I still love reading and listening to music, at gigs or at home, but they exist more as activities to relax me and for pure enjoyment, whereas the more creative stuff seems so much more rewarding. Maybe I should have been a Home Economics teacher rather than taking up with all this online marketing malarkey.

*and other nice things

Two coats...

...little and large. The large one (though still only a size 10, yay!) is my early birthday present from Ali - it caught my eye on the Toast website and when I went and tried it on in their Oxford shop last weekend, it lived up to all expectations. It's voluminous enough to cover the bump, hopefully even up to the full 9 months, and drapy and gorgeous enough to look fantastic after bump has become babe in arms and I can pretend to yummy mummy status.
The little one has been in the making for some time now - but I've only just got round to finishing it. A few errors crept in along the way and it was actually knitted for Archie originally but my tardiness in completing it has meant that it will become Chewie's when he/she is big enough (it's size 3-6 months). It just needs a few buttons and we're there.

Next up for a knitting project is the Central Park Hoodie, using Debbie Bliss Donegal Aran Tweed in a lovely dark brown colour - something for me for a change! With my current rate of progress it may or may not be done by the time I can fit into it ;0)

Summer holidays

A rather belated update about our holiday, and life in general over the last month. We've been so busy that I've had no time at weekends, no time in the evenings, and even less time on lunch breaks (what are these, exactly?) to finish updating the random topics I started about a month ago.

So. Holidays - can you tell we've been away? I was annoying everyone at work and most of my Facebook friends I'm sure by doing a daily countdown to holiday time before we went. I hadn't had any time off since last October (had to work over Christmas) and was sooo ready for a break. Ali and I went with Inntravel again after our brilliant holiday to Tuscany last year except this time we were right in the top left corner of Italy, in the Valle d'Aosta region slap next to the Alps. Our hotel was a gorgeous wood panelled antique haven with lots of cheese making implements strewn artfully everywhere and our room had a breathtaking view over wild flower meadows towards the snowy Alpine peaks beyond - truly beautiful. The Michelin starred restaurant was pretty damn delicious too and we managed to treat ourselves to dinner there three times, the other nights making for the Bar a Fromage next door or the local pizza place. On day 3 we took a trip on the cable car from Courmayeur over the top of Mont Blanc and over to Chamonix and I think that has to rank as one of the best things we've done on any holiday we've had together over the last 6 years - it was bloody spectacular. All the mountain walking we did in the region was great, and we saw chamois goats, wild fox, all manner of beautiful alpine flowers and some amazing waterfalls and mountain scenery. That is until Ali stepped the wrong way onto a loose rock on the Saturday afternoon at the end of our first week and ended up in plaster up to the knee for the rest of the trip. After a frankly terrifying journey in the hire car along windy mountain roads to the nearest hospital, during which I was containing my nerves admirably - I am not the most confident driver when driving somewhere I don't know, so add in an unfamiliar car, with the gearbox on the right and having to drive on the wrong side of the road, and you have one very stressed Kathryn - the x-rays luckily showed no break - phew - instead, a possible chip on the bone. As the swelling was so bad the doctors plastered Ali up and then we spent a couple of very slow days, while he rested it as much as possible and I ventured down to the hotel spa to lounge by the pool drinking green tea and reading my books. Lucky I'd brought five with me, eh? By some (un)fortunate twist of fate the weather changed for the worse for our last 2 days anyway so even if Ali had been fit and well we wouldn't have got that much good walking done.

Off to Milan on the Tuesday, another hairy trip down the autostrada for me to drop the hire car off before schlepping into the middle of Milan on the bus. The heavens opened that afternoon and evening so it didn't bode well for the last two days of our holiday but miraculously throughout Wednesday and Thursday we basked in 30 degree sunshine. Lack of mobility meant we couldn't do too much sightseeing but we did go to the Duomo which I found a total let down. Ali called it 'cathedral fatigue' and maybe he's right, but although I could appreciate the beauty of the architecture and the stained glass, and the little chapels and confessionals and the magificent altar were all wonderful, I didn't feel any sense of awe, respect, spirituality, call it what you will. I was almost. Well. BORED. Other than that, we travelled on the Metro to see the Museo della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci, except when we got there (and not before, you understand, not on any of the posters or directions leading up to it) we found out it was closed for the summer. I mean, what bright spark thought that one up - oh, we'll close one of the most popular tourist attractions in Milan, for the 3 most touristy months of the year.

Then on the Wednesday night we saw Radiohead play the Civica Arena in the middle of the city. We managed to get in via the disabled entrance thanks to Ali's cast, and the gig itself was, as usual for Radiohead, amazing. The light show was spectacular (all done on low voltage LEDs) and the set was lovely - it was great to hear In Rainbows live now that they're a bit more polished in playing it than they were in Blackpool last year before it came out. It has to rank as one of the smokiest gigs I've ever been to though - even though we were outside in an old amphitheatre, the fact that every single Italian person there was chain smoking made it feel like the grubbiest of British pubs before the smoking ban. A mild annoyance to an otherwise fantastic evening and a great way to round off our holiday. Next year I think I'd like to try another different bit of Italy - maybe Amalfi and the coast. God bless Inntravel.

Kind of holiday related in that it wasn't our holiday but Ali's parents' and nephew Liam's, was the weekend a few weeks ago where they came to visit. On the Friday we took a trip to London to see the dinosaurs in the Natural History Museum and then have a turn on the London Eye. A visit to Hamleys made it into the itinerary for some Lego purchases and overall it was a great day. We even went to Garfunkel's in the early evening for a meal, bringing back memories of my own trips to London with Mum and Dad when I was only a bit older than Liam, who's 8 very soon. In those days (oh so many years ago...) there weren't many other places you could actually go with kids and guarantee they'd eat anything, I guess. On the Saturday my Mum and Dad drove up to complete the party and we had a relaxing (and chilly) couple of hours on a leisure cruiser up to Oxford along the Thames before wandering round a bit and getting the bus back. The boat trip was nice, but took a looooong time considering you can drive to Oxford along the A34 and park up inside 20 minutes.

Knitting I was going to gloss over, as I've slacked off remarkably here. After finishing the tank top and sheep for Archie I got going on a little coat for him, which is age 3-6 months and going to be way too small at this rate if I don't get a wriggle on. Next free weekend (roll on 2-3 August) I'll get back into it.

Music, has been all about Radiohead really. After Milan we saw them again exactly a week later in Victoria Park in Hackney, having an exceedingly enjoyable catch up with friends Matt and surprise guest Susan who'd flown in from Toronto the previous day. Another great gig, but full of complete arseholes. The weather was great and a lot of people had probably been drinking since before noon, explaining somewhat the abundance of idiotic behaviour and general lariness. At least the Italian fans had all been passionate Radiohead afficionados, singing lustily along to every track - but you were lucky to even hear some of the quieter tracks at Victoria Park due to the crowd's hollering. There was also a Pimm's tent, which struck me as mildly out of place. Other than that, no musical exploits to note. We've got tickets to see the Gutter Twins in Oxford in a few weeks time which should be good and loud.

Long time no post

It does feel ages since I last posted and in fact this does appear to be my first post in May. Being as it's now 26th of the month that's not very good going.

I haven't even got the excuse that we've been too busy - the only thing that's graced our calendars this month really has been our trip to New York last week and weekend. I was out there with work for 4 days of meetings and conferences, and Ali came over and joined me on the Thursday. We hadn't been in the Big Apple together since our first romantic holiday together over 6 years ago, so it was lovely to be back. The weather wasn't that kind to us - tramping round Soho and Little Italy in the pouring rain isn't really having that great a time - but we had a sunny day on the Saturday and took a blowy Staten Island ferry trip as well as discovering a great little Italian restaurant near the Brooklyn Bridge. The obligatory credit card splurge took place but other than that not much to report.

Apart from this we've really been quite quiet. At the end of April we went up to Manchester to see Alison, Stuart, and Archie. Cue loads of photos of adoring auntie and uncle... My knitting projects went down really well and I've now finished a couple more things for him - a little orange tank top (apparently he's put on quite a growth spurt in the last few weeks so I'm praying it will still fit) and a toy sheep. This one didn't take me too long in the end but it was really fiddly and I had to read the pattern through about 4 times before I could get to grips with it - also my first attempt at intarsia was, well, interesting to say the least. Luckily none of the mistakes show on the outside. The pictures aren't very good but I didn't want to disturb Ali while he's ironing to get him to take more professional looking ones ;o)

So now it's the May Bank Holiday and it's been chucking it down all weekend. Not being able to get out in the garden has been really frustrating, though we have had to make some emergency fix-it dashes to tie back drooping roses, sort out the plastic around the tomato plants etc. I have dahlias that are bursting out of the cold frame and really could do with planting out - so here's to a sunny few days next weekend.

tulips and hats

Ali took some arty shots of the tulips in the garden last night. We've got loads and they're looking really good right now.

Also I finished the little hat for Archie the other day, which is very sweet. It's definitely a winter hat though - it's very snuggly - which is a good job as he might have grown into it by then.

two nice things to be doing

I've recently been getting stuck into two things I really enjoy; gardening and knitting. The gardening has been curtailed somewhat by the lack of nice weather at weekends but I have at least managed to get some seedlings on the go. Trouble is, with all the recent overnight frosts, they've been stuck in the nice centrally heated kitchen getting all leggy, whereas in reality they should have had a few weeks hardening off in a cold frame by now. I am eternally hopeful that Saturday will see maybe half an hour's worth of dry, so I can at the very least get the sunflowers and dahlias planted out and the morning glory and nicotiana potted onto bigger pots in preparation for their final positions. The raspberries, blackcurrants and redcurrants seem to be doing OK though so that's one blessing.

Knitting-wise I have been furiously clacking like a madwoman recently. Of course this is due to new nephew Archie being born at the end of March :o) so I have 2 capes completed, plus a teddy made out of Alpaca wool (one leg is longer than the other but that's just character, obviously...) and a hat 3/4 of the way there. The hat is going to be really a bit big for him until he's about a year old I reckon so some other lucky older baby might get that one. And now I have yarn spilling out of bags everywhere, to make a hat for Ali (the same as the baby hat even down to the colours, though trying to scale up the pattern by 38 years is going to be interesting), some little astrakhan sheep and a baby tank top in burnt orange. Our friends Cameron and Elaine had a new baby yesterday; my friend Lynsey from work had her baby this morning; and there are at least 2 more in the pipeline (wrong phrase? probably) for other friends this year, so I can't see my fingers getting a rest any time soon. I'm really enjoying this burst of creativity - although I'm not quite productive enough to start selling any of it yet. We have a new shop in Abingdon called Local Roots which only sells things produced within a 30-mile radius of the town, and while in there on Saturday with my bulging carrier from Masons full of wool and needles, the owner pounced on me with a League of Gentleman-like 'are you LOCAL' and 'ooh do you knit'. I managed to avoid any further mention of my basic knitting exploits by pointing Ali in the direction of some local purple sprouting broccoli and hard goats cheese and scoffing some gorgeous white chocolate with berries in it - so for now at least all my knitting projects will be with particular babies in mind - much the best way.

Getting On With Things

It’s amazing how perky you feel once you’re better after a poorly spell. I’m still coughing (mostly when having conversations with people, which makes me sound a lot worse than I actually am) and my sinuses are into overdrive a bit, but I feel about 3000% better than I did this time last week. It feels like it’s my first proper week back in the office since Christmas so I should be taking advantage of the renewed vigour for work, rather than blogging, but hey…

Had quite a quiet weekend, being as I was still in recovery mode; although I was pleased to make a start on a few jobs that had been bugging me. We got stuck into the piles of clutter in the top room, many of which had been sitting in dusty boxes since before we did the extension – that’s OVER 2 YEARS! – and most of which ended up in black bin bags for recycling or dumping. The room looks a lot clearer now and we even started to have a discussion on what we’ll end up doing with it – en-suite, bespoke shelving for an office, the possibilities are there but all expensive. We’re both agreed that the hideous lemon yellow artex that’s on every ceiling surface and the eaves will have to come off though. We got a guy in to give us a quote for re-fencing one side of our garden before the dilapidated boards that are there now collapse entirely. And we went to the pictures to see The Golden Compass, which was enjoyable enough but couldn’t match the fantastic quality of the book, and seemed to end very abruptly too.

What I didn’t do, mainly because I was paranoid about getting my carving knife cut infected (it’s getting better and I don’t have to wear rubber gloves in the shower any more which can only be a good thing) was re-pot some house plants that are in dire need of it. The peachy coloured anthurium in the bathroom hasn’t stopped flowering for about a year now and needs room to spread out a bit; and about 3 or 4 weeks ago one of the cacti on the kitchen windowsill put on an amazing growth spurt and started flowering! The flowers didn’t last long and are looking a bit wizened now but Ali managed to capture them when they were in their glory. So that’s my job for next Sunday.

I also just ordered the cutest looking knitting kit for a new born baby cape, which I’m going to aim to have completed before Stuart and Alison’s baby is due at the end of March. It doesn’t look too hard and Alison’s a big cape fan so hopefully it’ll go down well. So my good intentions are back firing on all cylinders now I’m better again – it’s Body Balance tomorrow too!